EXCLUSIVECharlie Sheen Eyes Television Comeback — 'Entourage' Creator Spills Exclusive Details On Their Collaboration
It’s like a scene straight out of Entourage. Screenwriter and director Doug Ellin, the mastermind behind the long-running HBO hit, hops in his car — takes off his mask — and says he’ll call back when he gets home from Malibu. He was just having lunch with screen icon Charlie Sheen.
The Entourage creator, who just landed Sheen as a guest for his popular “Victory The Podcast” alongside cast members from the HBO dramedy, became fast friends with the Two and a Half Men star in recent days — and now they’re planning a project of their very own. And it’s in its preliminary stages.
“We’re trying to figure out a TV show together,” Ellin exclusively tells OK!. “I want to convince him and his dad to do something together. I have some loose ideas that I’ve given him, he’s going to mull them over.
“I think he really wants to do something streaming that is a little more adult and less joke-driven than things he’s done in the past and really get back to the movie star that he was and the great, great actor that he still is.”
It’s no secret that Sheen went from the top of his game as one of the world’s highest-paid actors, commanding over $1.2 million per episode of Men, to a dark place when he was ousted from the series in 2011 amid a very public battle with substance abuse.
However, he’s sober and — by the looks of it — planning an epic comeback.
“He’s iconic, and he’s great,” says Ellin. “When you sit down and talk to him, you can feel the talent just waiting to get out there and do the right thing. We know how successful Two and a Half Men was, but I think that he wants to do something a little deeper, a little more dramatic, and that gets into some of his life and possibly mine as well.
“So, we’ll see…” he vaguely adds.
Ellin’s collaboration with Sheen began after a mutual friend introduced the two, and Ellin soon enlisted Sheen to fill in for Kevin Dillon, a.k.a. Entourage’s one and only Johnny Drama, on the podcast — where they reminisce on the HBO show and talk about everything from mental health to the behind-the-scenes goings on in Hollywood.
Now, in addition to their possible TV endeavor, Ellin is trying to convince Sheen to start a podcast of his own.
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“He is a podcast,” he says, laughing, “so now I’m trying to convince him to do his own podcast because he’s just got such a great outlook on things and such a great voice for it, so I’m talking to him about that as well.”
Ellin and Sheen’s newfound friendship has been a long time coming. In 2011, it was reported that the HBO show was pursuing Sheen for the series, which featured numerous A-list cameos over its eight-season run.
“He loosely inspired Season 7 of Entourage,” Ellin reveals, though a role for Sheen never came to fruition.
But with renewed interest in Entourage, due largely in part to the “Victory” podcast — which recently hit 3 million downloads and has been soaring on the charts — he may have another shot at joining Vincent Chase, Johnny Drama, E, Turtle and agent Ari Gold.
The Entourage creator, who has expressed interest in rebooting the series, says that the limousine door is open for Sheen to join the crew.
“I obviously cannot speak for him, but I think right now we both have a really strong feeling about each other and want to do something together,” he tells OK!.
“So whether he would ever be in Entourage as Charlie Sheen or whether I would create a character for him, I would be all for it. I can’t speak to what he would say, [but] I feel like he would do it, yeah.”
After all, in preparation for his stint on “Victory,” Sheen binged the series and the subsequent 2015 film.
“I was telling Doug the other day that I was walking around in a funk for two days after it ended because I had no one to hang out with anymore,” Sheen said on the “Victory” podcast. “I had to bid farewell to this group of people I fell in love with.”
