Lorre takes gamble with new show ‘Bookie’
Producer cast Sheen years after falling out during production of ‘Two and Half Men’
When Chuck Lorre, the veteran TV producer behind such hit comedies as “Two and a Half Men,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “The Kominsky Method,” was considering bookies who operate on the fringes of legality in sports betting as the next subject to mine for laughs, it didn’t seem all that personal on the surface. But a risky profession confronting technological advances? It’s all too familiar.
“The thing that first resonated with me about bookmaking is how it’s become a sort of anachronism,” Lorre says. “An age-old profession threatened by technology and legalization. I couldn’t help feeling that there was a parallel with being a sitcom writer. When I started, there were probably 56 comedies being made every week. Now, the number is maybe six. The image that comes to mind is a dinosaur looking up at the sky, watching a meteor hurtling down and wondering if he should be concerned. And yeah, I’m the dinosaur.”
“Bookie,” streaming on Max, stars comedian Sebastian Maniscalco (“The Irishman,” “Green Book”) as Danny, a Los Angeles bookie struggling to maintain his grip on sports betting while disruption of his business looms. He’s joined by Omar J. Dorsey (“Queen Sugar,” “The Blind Side”) as Ray, a former NFL player who serves as Danny’s sidekick and enforcer.
Lorre co-created the series with frequent collaborator Nick Bakay, who has experience in the sports betting world and worked on other Lorre shows including “Mom,” “Young Sheldon” and “The Kominsky Method.”
“I really like the idea of doing a show about people who are working outside the boundaries of society,” Lorre says. “Nick and I interviewed a lot of bookies, which was really thrilling because they are wonderful characters with wonderful stories. There’s a scene in a later episode where a guy is performing open heart surgery and a nurse is holding a phone to his head in a plastic bag so that it’s sterile and he’s making a bet. The addiction seems to be benign, but it’s not. It was important to be respectful to some extent about how damaging it is.”
The season opens with some notable guest stars, including Ray Romano, as a family man whose gambling addiction is more powerful than his willpower, and in a surprising twist, Charlie Sheen, the former star of “Two and a Half Men” who famously had a bitter feud with Lorre, playing a version of himself.
In writing the pilot script of “Bookie,” Lorre and Bakay thought it was only fitting that the show find a way to feature a Hollywood star playing a version of themselves as a high roller. After all, plenty of celebrities have been lured into the gambling world, so it’s likely a bookie would have some high-profile clients. Early drafts of the pilot simply noted the character as a “TBD” — to be determined. Lorre eventually decided it should be Sheen . The actor was fired from “Two and a Half Men” in 2011 after he publicly insulted Lorre and unleashed a series of erratic rants not long after filming was put on hold so Sheen could undergo treatment for drug addiction.
“I remember calling Nick at night and saying, ‘I think I know who should do this: Charlie.’ He rolled heavy. (Charlie) used to tell me stories on the set about
some of his Sunday action. I’d be like, ‘Oh, my God. I’m nauseous just thinking about that level of stuff.’ It was a part of the world that Charlie knew a lot about. And the question was, at first: ‘Am I capable of doing this? And who knew how he’d feel about it?’ And the answer, frankly, was, ‘It’s ancient history for me.’ ... I’d be comfortable working with Charlie if Charlie is comfortable working with me, and we’re all in a good place — physically, emotionally and spiritually. With that, I called him.
“We had a terrific conversation. He was surprised. And he was gracious, and he was grateful that I was reaching out. He was eager to put it all behind us . ...
“Since he’s playing a fictionalized version of himself, I wanted him to be comfortable, so I sent him the script. The day of the table read, it was the first time I’d seen him in many, many years, and we hugged, and it was just kind of wonderful. Then he proceeded to sit down and just killed it. The executives from HBO Max and Warner Bros. were going, ‘Wow.’ He’s the real deal. His chops for playing comedy are impeccable, and they hadn’t diminished at all.”
“Bookie” is Lorre’s third series on a streaming platform, following “Disjointed” and “The Kominsky Method,” both of which were for Netflix. And, like “The Kominsky Method,” it’s shot in the single-camera format, with no live studio audience.
“I was very suspicious early on about the idea of bingeing. But what I didn’t know and I discovered in talking to people who had watched the show is they would watch three, four episodes at a time. If somebody’s watching Episode 4, you know they watched (Episodes) 1, 2 and 3. You don’t know that in network television. On any given night of a network comedy, you don’t know if they were there last week and if those stories connect; the best you can do is ‘previously on.’ ”
For a veteran writer and producer who came up in the broadcast network system, adapting to the streaming era and embracing single-camera comedies has been a revelatory shift to the routine he had grown accustomed to for so long.
“To my horror, my first drafts as a writer were not perfect. And in a writers’ room, I saw them get way better. I didn’t want it to be true. But a group of great comedy writers tearing my script apart made it much, much better. That was a lesson in humility. Fast forward, I did ‘The Kominsky Method’ — I wrote pretty much all of them myself. I wanted to see if I could, because in the beginning, when you’re trying to break in, you write by yourself. And then you spend 25 years in a room with other people and suddenly there has to be a consensus; people debate: This is good, this is bad. It’s this cauldron of opinions. And yes, it makes it better, but it’s a different process.
“With ‘Kominsky,’ I wanted to see if I could still sit in a room by myself, because I’d been sitting in a room with other people for 30 years. And I really loved it. Writing, in any other world, is a solitary profession. Only in television, with a writers’ room, is it a group effort. I was on set all the time, every scene, every episode, making Alan Arkin and Michael Douglas absolutely crazy because I kept running over to change things. I can remember having the headphones on and as I’m walking toward the set, hearing Alan say to Michael, ‘Oh, God. Here he comes.’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, no. I really can make the scene better.’ Why would you waste the opportunity? If I think I can make it better, why wouldn’t I do that? That’s the four-camera education, it doesn’t leave you.
“When you don’t have that audience to tell you, ‘You failed’ when you’re shooting single-camera — I did this on ‘Kominsky,’ and I did it on ‘Bookie’ — I’m there every second, and I’ll run over and ask the actors to make some changes. I don’t want to find out in the editing bay that the scene doesn’t work out. I don’t want to edit my way into success. I want to shoot successful comedy, then editing will be a plus to it. The magic of editing is a terrific thing, but it can’t replace the scene work.”