Two and a Half Men finally wraps for good Thursday evening after 12 seasons. While cast and crew are mum on whether Charlie Sheen will make a surprise return , one actor, Jon Cryer, revealed to The Toronto Star which piece of the show he’d like to take home for keeps .
“I would never, ever take something from a great corporation that has been my benefactor. Never. Ever. Ever. Well, if I had to, let’s say it would be my sad lonely futon. But I’m thinking the Smithsonian might be wanting that.”
If the accountants behind Two and a Half Men are worried they might lose some inventory, it won’t be their only budgetary concern. Executive producer Chuck Lorre told The Hollywood Reporter he planned to pull out all the stops for the series’ end. He described it as a low-risk proposition aimed at pleasing long-time fans of the show.
“The goal was always go big or go home. Do it. Let’s go for it. Don’t watch the budget. We can’t get canceled because we’re done. There’s nothing we can do in the episode to win over people who don’t like the show, we don’t have to worry about that. So let’s just try and put on a show that’s gratifying to the people that have stayed with us.”
Part of the fun will be the rumored parade of guest stars, which may or may not include Charlie Sheen. As Lorre told The Toronto Sun , “[t]here’s going to be an awful lot of folks on the finale of Two and a Half Men . Oh yeah, it’s a cast of thousands.” CBS has been teasing that Sheen will indeed return, four seasons after his firing in 2011 after a well-publicized fall out with Lorre. The list of “guest stars” includes “Surprise!” on official CBS materials and the show synopsis says, “Charlie Harper is alive. Or is he?”
Sheen was replaced on Men by Ashton Kutcher who, when asked if he ever got comfortable enough to think of the long-running sitcom as his show, answered, “it’s Jon Cryer’s show.” Cryer, hearing Kutcher’s acknowledgment, credited his fellow actor for bringing the show back from the brink.
“(The show) would not have been here, it would not still be Jon Cryer’s show, if not for Ashton Kutcher. He just came in, day one, fearless, willing to just go anywhere with a joke. And that was astonishing to me, because he was under such a microscope. The hype was just insane. I would have been a mess.”
In addition to Sheen, the show lost another original cast member in controversial fashion: Angus T. Jones, the “half” in Two and a Half Men . Jones left after a decade on the program and called it “filth.”
The hour-long Two and a Half Men series finale airs at 9pm on CBS .
[Jon Cryer image: Getty]