Chuck Lorre built the comedy empire behind Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory, but before any of that, he wrote for Roseanne when it was the top sitcom in the country, and those years were not happy ones. His new book, Sitcom: A Memoir, arrived from Dey Street Books on October 13, 2026, and in its pages and the interviews around it, he describes that writers’ room in blunt terms.
Lorre, 73, turns 74 on Sunday, October 18. According to Kirkus Reviews, the 368-page book covers his on-set conflicts with Roseanne Barr, Brett Butler and Cybill Shepherd, and it gives Charlie Sheen’s 2011 exit a chapter of its own. The most personal part of the Roseanne story, though, is why he kept showing up at all.
What Was Really Going On In The ‘Roseanne’ Writers’ Room?
He joined the Roseanne writing staff in the late 1980s, when the ABC series starring Barr and John Goodman was a ratings giant, and he lasted about two years. He has said he was let go with no explanation, according to the Los Angeles Times, which interviewed him for the book’s release.
Lorre first previewed the story on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s podcast Dinner’s On Me, and he did not soften it. As The A.V. Club and Variety both reported on October 7, he described the mood of the room in a few words. “And it was malice. It was absolute,” he said.
In his telling, the tension was built into the job itself. Barr, he said, “hated that there were writers. Fundamentally hated that other people wrote words that she would say.” He traced that back to her roots as a stand-up comic who had made herself a star with her own material, and according to The Daily Beast, he added, “So there was this built-in animosity between Rosie and the writing staff, any writing staff.”
With the Los Angeles Times, he went further still. “We were punished, the writers,” he said. “The word ‘cruelty’ comes to mind.” The paper reported that the way Barr and her then-husband Tom Arnold treated the writers made the 70-hour weeks hard to bear. So how does Barr remember it?
What Has Roseanne Barr Said About Chuck Lorre?
Very differently. Barr, who is also 73, shared her own version publicly years before this book came out. In March 2011, as the Charlie Sheen saga was playing out, she came to Sheen’s defense in a blog post, and according to NBC Miami and The Daily Beast, she wrote, “I fired Chuck Lorre for being a big drunk on my show.”
In that same post, NBC Miami reported, she lumped herself in with other stars she felt had clashed with him: “Me, Cybil S(hepherd), Brett Butler, Charlie Sheen (stars who lost big when working with Chuck).”
There is more to Barr’s side of the ledger, too. She fought hard for control of her show, but she also opened doors for young writers, and Joss Whedon and Amy Sherman-Palladino both got early writing jobs on Roseanne. The series ran on ABC from 1988 to 1997 and was revived in 2018, then canceled that May after Barr’s offensive tweet. She has stayed in the headlines ever since, including her recent feud with former TV son Michael Fishman. Lorre’s other famous falling out, meanwhile, came more than 20 years after he left her show.
How Does Charlie Sheen Fit Into The Story?
Once he was free of Roseanne, Lorre created Grace Under Fire in 1993 and Cybill in 1995, then co-created Dharma & Greg. In 2003, Two and a Half Men premiered on CBS with Charlie Sheen, now 61, as Charlie Harper, and it became the highest-rated sitcom in America. The Big Bang Theory followed in 2007, and after that came Mom and Young Sheldon.
Sheen’s run ended in March 2011, when CBS and Warner Bros. Television ended his contract, and the memoir does not look away from how it came to that. In an excerpt published by Vanity Fair and quoted by TheWrap and The Daily Beast, Lorre describes the final scene Sheen filmed. “The last scene we shot was with Charlie and Melanie Lynskey,” Lorre wrote. “He couldn’t remember any of his lines and had to use the furniture to keep himself upright.”
“Melanie was terrified,” he continued. “It was clear to everyone that this man, whom we’d all grown to love, was in trouble.” Lorre wrote that he “had no choice but to shut down the show.” The Daily Beast also quoted his memory of the sick calls that came before it, when Sheen often claimed “food poisoning, usually bad clams,” Lorre wrote.
Sheen, of course, has his own account. The Daily Beast noted that in his 2025 memoir, The Book of Sheen, he blamed Lorre for his exit, a claim Lorre calls “ridiculously untrue.” Even so, the two men eventually made peace, and in 2023, as ET reported, Sheen joined Lorre’s Max comedy How to Be a Bookie. “I know it sounds treacly, but it was really healing to work with him again,” Lorre told the Los Angeles Times. The reason he put up with Roseanne in the first place, though, goes back much further.
So What Kept Chuck Lorre On The ‘Roseanne’ Set?
Lorre was in his late 30s when he landed on Roseanne, with long, lean years as a struggling musician and freelance writer behind him. So when Ferguson asked how he endured that room, his answer had nothing to do with comedy.
“I’d had, I don’t know, 15, 20 years of poverty and health issues and all sorts of stuff, and I was not going to go back,” he said, as quoted by The A.V. Club. He continued, “Under no circumstances was I going to go back to scrambling to pay the rent, scrambling to take the kid to a doctor because they have an earache.” Variety reported the same words, along with his conclusion. “That is why I put up with it,” he said. “60-, 70-hour weeks every week.”
In the end, he was a father trying to hold on to a steady paycheck, and decades later he sees those hard years as the thing that made him. “I became a better writer being there,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but I did become better.”