Then they make an forthright, but fatal mistake. When they asked him to go right now, he said he needed a day or two. They believed him and left. The
Then they make an forthright, but fatal mistake. When they asked him to go right now, he said he needed a day or two. They believed him and left. The next day, he announced he would be getting sober at home—what he called Sober Valley Lodge—with his own nurses, doctors, and sober companions. Complete and utter bullshit. He was getting loaded the entire time.
I knew one of his thousand-dollar-a-day “sober companions” and called him to see what was happening. He said he was watching TV in the living room while Charlie was freebasing in the bedroom.
Me: “Why don’t you do something?!”
Sober companion: “What can I do? The door’s locked.”
Then Charlie started to go after me. On TV talk shows, online, everywhere. It was ugly. It was humiliating. There was no way I could continue doing my job, but I didn’t want to put everyone else out of work. So I offered to quit.
WB said it wouldn’t make any difference, they no longer wanted Charlie on the lot. I suggested they move the show to the CBS stages. That didn’t fly either.
And now let’s be clear about something. For years, the media has reported that I had Charlie fired. Ridiculously untrue. Anybody who knows anything about the television business knows that writers don’t have the power to fire the star of a billion-dollar show. We are fungible; stars are not. (Of course, this bullshit story wasn’t helped when Charlie sued me for $100 million for wrongfully firing him.)
So for about two years, I had to eat shit. Not just from Charlie. A lot of people piled on: David Letterman, NBC’s Today show, ABC’s Good Morning America, Alex Jones, Piers Morgan, TMZ, Twitter. Even Roseanne Barr, who always hated that I had a career after leaving her show. Charlie’s testosterone-cream, crack, and vodka meltdown was ratings gold, and everyone eagerly cashed in on it.
