adminfrom hit sitcom “Two and A Half Men” is currently playing out in TV ads for satellite company DirecTV and carmaker Fiat in which the 46-year-old star displays his trademark smirk and even extols the virtue of “house arrest” after racing the Fiat 500 Abarth through the halls of a mansion.
“He is who he is, and we’re not going to change that,” said his long-time manager Mark Burg, who plotted a series of TV appearances last year he now refers to Sheen’s “mea culpa tour”.
On June 28, Sheen’s new show, aptly titled “Anger Management” and loosely based on the 2003 movie of the same name, launches on cable channel FX. In the show, Sheen plays “a stalled minor league baseball prospect whose road to the majors was sidetracked by his own struggle with anger issues”, the network said in a Press release.
Sheen’s character becomes a “non-traditional therapist specialising in anger management” after he goes through his own therapy.
The show is a leap of faith that Sheen has overcome his issues with drug and alcohol abuse, FX president John Landgraf acknowledged during a presentation to television critics in January.
“We’re a network that likes to take risks,” he said.
Sheen’s role is “the character that Charlie ought to be playing at this point in the sense that he is a character who has a checkered past but is pretty self aware, is struggling in a very honest way with that checkered past and desire to do more positive things in his life,” Landgraf said.
By the time Sheen pitched FX on the program, manager Burg already was in full image-altering mode. He had hired Larry Solters, a veteran of public relations makeovers and crisis management, to direct the star to appear on talk programs such as “Today” and “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”.
Sheen began apologising for erratic behaviour that included undertaking a short-lived substance abuse rehabilitation effort in his home and often rambling interviews and Web videos in which he criticised “wo and a Half Men” creator Chuck Lorre.
The “mea culpa” tour highlight was an appearance on cable’s “Comedy Central Roast” last September, where Mike Tyson, William Shatner and Jon Lovitz were among those who hurled good-natured jabs at the star.
With 6,4 million viewers in its first airing, the roast was the show’s highest rated instalment, the network said in a Press release.
The actor also turned up that month on the Emmys, US TV’s top honour show, where he wished his old colleagues on “Two and a Half Men” “nothing but the best” for their current season. — Reuters.
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