Tom Arnold, former “Roseanne” writer-producer and ex-husband to Roseanne Barr, fired back at Chuck Lorre early Thursday after the “Two and a Half Men” creator alleged that scripts for Barr’s eponymous sitcom were falsely credited to Arnold during his time in the writers’ room.
Ripping Lorre as “an angry dry drunk” and a “bitter hack,” Arnold alleged that his former colleague, who wrote for “Roseanne” for two season from 1990–1992, “lies every time he opens his mouth.”
“Some thoughts on uber producer Chuck Lorre’s new book … He thinks he’s brilliant and beloved like Norman Lear but Chuck ‘Chuckles’ Lorre’s a terrible human,” Arnold wrote in an X tirade posted at 1 a.m. PT.
“He trashes Trump, but he is Trump and he’s a bitter hack who actually believes his lame vanity cards at the end of his lame shows are Paddy Chayefsky worthy,” Arnold added, nodding to Lorre’s “Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage” end card trolling the president and his supposed “Trump Derangement Syndrome” last week.
Arnold also claimed that Lorre took advantage of his “Two and Half Men” star Charlie Sheen while he was “naive and cracked up,” adding that the actor is “clean and sober since he’s not under Lorre’s strange, abusive tutelage.”
Lorre, Arnold maintained, is trashing all his former colleagues in his tell-all memoir “Sitcom,” which hit bookstores Tuesday, “to make him feel cool.”
“But don’t worry,” he concluded, “Chuck hates himself more than we ever could. I wish everyone could’ve seen his arrogant, sad clown face the day Roseanne made me fire him.”
Read Arnold’s full post below:
The X missive came just hours after reports from Entertainment Weekly and elsewhere that “Sitcom: A Memoir” goes hard on his years at “Roseanne,” and specifically targets Barr and Arnold for creating a toxic work environment. The “Big Bang Theory” creator claims that Danny Jacobson, who wrote for the first two seasons of Barr’s memoir, was “fired by Roseanne for being talented” and that on his way out, Jacobson explained to Lorre that his scripts were forcibly (and falsely) credited to Arnold.
He recalled, according to EW, Jacobson showing him “a sloppy, hand-scribbled couple of pages and explained this was a ‘script’ by the show’s new executive producer, Tom Arnold. It had been part of Danny’s job to write real scripts and put Tom’s name on the front page — as if Tom had written them.”
It’s hardly the first time Lorre and Arnold have gotten in each other crosshairs, as it was apparently Arnold who, at Barr’s bidding, fired Lorre after his two seasons with the show.
“This happens with every show. After a couple years as head writer, we kind of wanted to refresh things,” Arnold recalled in a 2023 interview. “And I had to give Chuck Lorre the bad news that he was not coming back to the show. Then he went on to do all these other things. He’s never forgiven me.”
Lorre’s “Sitcom: A Memoir” is available in bookstores now.
