Holland Taylor knows her worth. That’s the reason she ditched her Two and a Half Men contract at the height of its success.
The veteran Hollywood star shed some details on her time on the hit sitcom where she played Evelyn Harper, the mother of Charlie (Charlie Sheen) and Alan (Jon Cryer), for all 12 seasons from 2003 to 2015.
Obsessed with celebrity news? Download our new app and never miss a headline
Despite the show’s success, Taylor, 83, said the paycheck wasn’t as big as she would have liked. Therefore, she chose not to renew her contract after six years, instead opting to appear on the show occasionally as a guest star.
“They never paid me very well on that show. I was paid on that show what I had made on a series like eight years before or something,” Taylor said on a recent episode of the Alchemy with Anthony Mason podcast.
“And I got four Emmy nominations, and they never gave me a raise. They usually do. Just as a courtesy.”
Taylor said her decision left producers “astonished”, but the move worked in her favour as it gave her greater flexibility to star in other projects.
“I stopped being under contract. So, in other words, they would say, ‘Can you do a guest appearance at the end of March?’ And I would say, ‘No, I cannot,’” she recalled. “I only did it if I wanted to do it.”
“I loved a lot about that show, but they were not full of courtesies,” she continued. “In any case, when the six years was up, I said, ‘I don’t want to be on a contract anymore but I will visit the show occasionally if you want.’ I mean, I did play the boys’ mother.”
The actress said she didn’t even try to negotiate for a bigger salary because the studio kept claiming they didn’t have the funds, telling her, “We can’t pay you any more money.”
“I said, ‘You could actually pay me the cost of this building, but don’t bother because I don’t want to continue on under contract,’” she hit back. “And they said, ‘But we can’t afford to give you more.’ I said, ‘I’m cool with it. I just will come back as a guest from time to time.’”
The sitcom experienced a shake-up when Sheen was fired from the show in 2011 due to his struggles with substance abuse, erratic behaviour and public scrutiny of the show’s creator, Chuck Lorre.
Sheen was reportedly paid $US800,000 ($1 million) per episode in the early seasons, but later he reportedly earned up to $US2 million ($2.8 million) per episode before his departure.
Ashton Kutcher went on to replace Sheen, reportedly being paid $US700,000 ($995,000) per episode to play billionaire Walden Schmidt in the series for four more seasons before Two and a Half Men wrapped altogether.
In her podcast interview, Holland claimed that co-star Cryer – who had an equal amount of scenes as Sheen – “quadrupled his salary or something like that” when Kutcher joined the show.
But it appears she may be mistaken in light of the 2025 Netflix documentary, aka Charlie Sheen, which details the actor’s rise and fall.
In the doco, Cryer likened Sheen to controversial dictator Kim Jong-il.
“The dictator of North Korea was a guy named Kim Jong-il,” Cryer explained. “He acted crazy all the time and thus got enormous amounts of aid from countries who were so scared of him that they would shovel money at him.”
“Well, that’s what happened here. [Sheen’s] negotiations went off the charts because his life was falling apart. Me, whose life was pretty good at that time, I got a third of that.”
It’s believed Cryer earned roughly $US550,000 ($780,000) per episode before getting a paybump to $US620,000 ($880,000) per show following Sheen’s exit.
Originally published as Holland Taylor refused to renew Two and a Half Men contract over pay dispute: ‘Never paid very well’