Roseanne’s axing was quick, but not the most public

ROSEANNE’S axing took just hours. But fallout from Charlie Sheen’s 2011 meltdown took so long it left many wondering what the hell you had to do to get sacked in Hollywood.

Charlie Sheen on a rooftop in Beverly Hills at the height of his 2011 meltdown. Picture: Supplied

IT was the speed with which Hollywood star Roseanne Barr was axed that was most telling.

Within hours of composing, posting, then deleting a racist tweet, Barr, and the hit show which had shot her back into the ranks of a Hollywood hit maker, were over.

ABC, the network that had rebooted the hit show and was enjoying its massive ratings and financial spin-offs wasted no time in drawing the line with its star.

Barr’s comparison of African-American, former political adviser Valerie Jarrett to an ape was a step too far.

“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” ABC president Channing Dungey said in a statement.

Rebooted Roseanne was one of the most successful comedies in years, raking in millions, and attracting an audience of 27 million for its season finale this year.

But in the wake of the racist tweet, Disney’s chief executive said: “There was only one thing to do here, and that was the right thing.’

Some said it should have happened sooner: only when Barr became “an immediate liability that everyone involved finally looked at her racism and dealt with it directly,” said opinion writer Roxane Gay in The New York Times.

The growing influence of social media probably hastened Roseanne’s demise, said former ABC programming executive Ted Harbert.

He’d been at the ABC during the first run of Roseanne in the 1990s.

“This is a person who, left to her own devices, is not totally in control,” he said. Social media complicates the efforts of networks to keep stars working and things running smoothly, he added.

Swift demise: Roseanne Barr was sacked, and her show axed, within hours of the fateful racist tweet. Picture: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

Barr isn’t the first celeb to be fired for offensive behaviour.

But the swiftness — and finality — with which it happened is a potent reminder that celebrity can’t — and won’t — be an excuse for bad behaviour, especially in a world where the lid has been lifted on heavy hitters like disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

STARS BEHAVING BADLY

Roseanne’s axing wasn’t a first, but it was one of the most brutal — and one of the few where a show has been cancelled entirely along with the star being sacked.

Last November, when sexual assault claims were raised against Oscar winner Kevin Spacey, Netflix was quick to dump him from House of Cards, but swiftly rewrote the remainder of a shortened six and final season of the political thriller without him.

Likewise with Two and a Half Men, which survived the torching when Charlie Sheen set fire to his career in one of the most public, lengthy and excruciating star meltdowns of recent times in 2011.

Ironically, Sheen himself harked back to that meltdown on Tuesday when he joined the Roseanne debate.

“Good riddance,” he tweeted about the “Roseanne” cancellation. “Hashtag NOT Winning. The runway is now clear for OUR reboot.”

“DU H, WINNING”

The reference to “winning” was Sheen’s nod to the phrase that became the catchphrase of his car-crash addiction-fuelled demise seven years ago.

In terms of public meltdowns, Sheens 2011 effort was epic.

It stared with his addiction issues forcing production to be suspended on Two and a Half Men while the star of the show got treatment.

adios
Roseanne!

good
riddance.

hashtag
NOT Winning.

the
runway is
now clear
for
OUR reboot.

©#CharlieHarperReturns pic.twitter.com/HcqMvIoxCM

— Charlie Sheen (@charliesheen) May 29, 2018

It ended with Sheen fired, still slagging off the show and its creator Chuck Lorre with sometimes anti-Semitic insults, and a grimly fascinated public left with no shortage of memes and bizarre quotes to remember it all by.

The public implosion was all anyone — at least on the internet — could talk about for a solid month.

Almost daily there was a new twist, a bizarre quote, something new to watch with car-crash fascination.

It took from January to sometime in March for the meltdown to be complete.

Along the way, Sheen variously referred to himself as a “warlock,” claimed to have cured his drug addictions with the power of his mind, and told an interviewer: “I am on a drug; it’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available because if you try it you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.”

Actor Charlie Sheen is on the rooftop of Live Nation building drinking 'Tiger Blood' in 2011. Picture: Jean Baptiste Lacroix

That little gem was enough for his publicist, who quit that day and left him to it.

Undeterred, Sheen continued to give car-crash, nonsensical media interviews, made a bizarre appearance on a rooftop regaling the cameras an onlookers drinking something he called “tiger blood” and, despite the fact it was obvious to many he was losing a battle with himself, coined the phrase “duh, winning”.

In early March, police removed his two young sons from his from after his ex, Brooke Mueller, filed a restraining order.

Asked if he as going to try to get his kids back. Sheen replied: “Born ready. Winning,”.

Cue another round of rapid-fire interviews in which he variously said he had “tiger blood,” “Adonis DNA” and was “tired of pretending I’m not a total bitchin’ rock star from Mars.”.

All of this before he joined Twitter. Which he duly did, on March 3, 2011 gaining a million followers in 24 hours.

Sheen described himself a “warlock” in some of his many bizarre interviews. Picture: AP/Carlos Osorio

By March 7, after he’d called Two and a Half Men” a “pukefest,” CBS and Warner Bros. had had enough, and officially fired him from the show.

In 2015, after revealing himself HIV positive, Sheen told Today’s Matt Lauer he regretted a few things in his life: “I regret not using a condom one or two times when this whole thing happened,” he said.

“I regret ruining Two and a Half Men. I regret not being more involved in my children’s lives growing up …”

In 2016, he said the meltdown was fuelled by too much testosterone cream.

‘I was taking a lot of testosterone cream, and I think I went too far with it. It was kind of like a borderline … not a ‘roid rage, but a ‘roid disengage.’ he said.

“That was a very specific period of time that did feel very out-of-body and very just detached from all things real. I felt superhuman during some of that.”

Sheen and Two and a Half Men co-star Jon Cryer. By the time it was all over, Sheen had called the show a “pukefest”. Picture: Supplied