Chuck Lorre's Memoir Reveals His Decade Inside Scientology

Chuck Lorre has revealed for the first time that he spent ten years inside Scientology, signing a Sea Org employment contract for one billion years as a young, starving musician. The confession anchors his new book, "Sitcom: A Memoir," which the veteran producer discussed with Variety.

The admission is likely the biggest surprise for the executives, stars and producers who have worked with Lorre across hits like "Grace Under Fire," "Two and a Half Men" and "The Big Bang Theory." He writes that as his father was dying, "I actually thought I could heal him with Scientology." Soon after, he contracted severe ulcerative colitis and still believed, "no worries, Scientology would heal me."

When Lorre and his then-wife, Paula, left the church, they were excommunicated by their Scientology friends. But the church, he says, didn't chase them. "Turns out this is only true if the departing thetans have any money," he writes. "We were so broke, no one noticed we were gone."

Why speak now?

"It was always a great source of embarrassment to me," Lorre says of the decade. "I burned a decade of my life up in that thing. I can wallow in regret, but I've chosen to recognize that even that was a step that had to be taken to get to where I am."

The book's method is simple: full disclosure. "I decided if I'm going to do this, I'm going to tell the truth as best I can," he says. "There was no point in doing it if I was going to sugarcoat my life."

That truth includes a list of miseries he inventories flatly — "alcoholism, soul-crushing poverty, life-threatening illness, decade in a religious cult, three failed marriages, lifetime prescription for Valacyclovir" — and one very bad business decision: signing away games and home video residuals to the theme song he wrote for "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

Which scores does the memoir settle?

Lorre names names, and several don't come off well. The book takes aim at:

• Carsey-Werner, the "Roseanne" producer, for absenteeism while stars misbehaved. He accuses the company of tolerating anything to reach the "magic number of 100 episodes" that guaranteed syndication wealth. "With that as an economic model, morality and fair play was nonsense," he writes. Carsey-Werner did not respond to a request for comment.
• Leslie Moonves, the former CBS boss, who reluctantly approved Jon Cryer for "Two and a Half Men" after casting head Peter Golden called Cryer "the death of comedy."
• Brett Butler, whose set on "Grace Under Fire" he calls "just a big, heartbreaking nightmare." He writes that Butler threw a full can of Coke at one of his writers, "barely missing his head."
• Cybill Shepherd, who in success "became a different person" and made Lorre take script notes while sitting on a footstool in her trailer.

On "Roseanne," he recalls writers having to attach Tom Arnold's name to scripts Arnold hadn't written, and watching Bob Iger, then president of ABC, trudge to Roseanne Barr's dressing room to have network notes addressed.

What does the book say about 'The Big Bang Theory' cast?

Lorre admits disappointment when the show's original five stars — Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Johnny Galecki, Simon Helberg and Kunal Nayyar — refused a 10% pay cut so Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch could get raises. "I assumed they'd quickly agree, you know, all for one, one for all. Wrong again," he writes. "They were outraged that they would even be asked."

In the interview, he softens the judgment: "Nobody was equipped for that kind of skyrocket that the show became." Most of the cast, he adds, "is filled with gratitude. Only a few don't take my calls."

The Charlie Sheen theory — and the reconciliation

Lorre offers a new guess about Sheen's famous "Two and a Half Men" meltdown. When Sheen seemed to be struggling, Lorre cut the season two episodes short. "In my wildest dreams, I never considered that Charlie might have needed the money that two more episodes would've paid," he writes, theorizing Sheen may have lost serious money on sports bets.

He stresses he doesn't know it for a fact. What he does know is that the two men reconciled on Lorre's show "Bookie," an "enormously gratifying" experience — and that Sheen wrote a blurb for the book. Of the four famously difficult stars Lorre worked with — Barr, Butler, Shepherd and Sheen — Sheen is the only one he's made peace with.

Elsewhere, the memoir ranges widely: Lorre half-jokingly blames the Writers Guild's 2007-2008 strike for the death of democracy, because it pushed networks toward reality TV like Donald Trump's "The Apprentice." He recounts an Al Pacino table read for "The Kominsky Method" that went so badly he finally said no to improvising. And he reveals CBS wanted a "hot young woman" for "Mike & Molly" — one executive suggested an attractive actress in a fat suit — before Melissa McCarthy was cast.

On the Skydance-Paramount consolidation, Lorre is unbothered: "None of that touches what I do for a living, which is to try to make people laugh." He sees the current environment as "incredibly exciting and vibrant," noting Netflix's Ted Sarandos was the only executive who said yes to "The Kominsky Method" after HBO, Hulu, Amazon and Apple all passed.

And is he bracing for angry calls from people named in its pages? "This is my memory of how things went down," he says. "And if you disagree, write your own fucking book."