Show's creator offered to quit over Sheen

"Two and a Half Men" creator Chuck Lorre said in an interview that he offered to quit as showrunner in the midst of verbal fracas with Charlie Sheen last winter, before Sheen was forced out by Warner Bros., the show's producer.

"I said, 'Listen, if for some reason I'm now the Antichrist, I'm happy to leave,' " he told TV Guide. " 'It's not in my interest to stop the show, and I certainly don't want to put all these people out of work. Keep going. Get another guy. Don't stop on my account.' "

Of Sheen's firing, he said, "The studio and the network chose to make a moral decision as opposed to a financial one. This was not a game. This was drug addiction writ large. This was big-time cocaine, and in his own words, an 'epic drug run' that could have ended with either his death or someone else's."

When the magazine asked whether Lorre and the studio had tried to prevent Sheen's behavior, he said, "We intervened all the time. I was so afraid my friend was going to die. When we would shoot a show on a Friday night, there was always that 'I'll see you Monday. I hope.' The holidays were the worst, because those long stretches of time were the ones we feared the most."

Meanwhile, Sheen's ex-wife, Brooke Mueller, has checked herself into a full-time rehab center, TMZ.com reports.