Big Bang Theory & Two and a Half Men Creator on Signing a Billion-Year Scientology Contract, Why Success Didn’t Cure His Alcoholism, and Surviving the Public Battle with Charlie Sheen | Chuck Lorre

What happens when the man behind some of television’s biggest sitcoms is secretly battling addiction, low self-esteem, and a lifelong need to prove he’s special? In this episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, Chuck Lorre opens up like never before about the personal demons, painful experiences, and unexpected turning points behind his extraordinary career. From his childhood struggles with alcohol and a mother consumed by rage to spending a decade in Scientology, Lorre reveals the darker side of a life spent creating some of the most beloved shows in television history. He discusses how he found sobriety while filming Dharma & Greg, why his alcoholism escalated despite professional success, and how tying his self-worth to his work and humor affected his relationships. He also opens up about his complicated relationship with Charlie Sheen, why he failed to recognize the full extent of Sheen’s struggles while filming Two and a Half Men, why The Big Bang Theory became his safe space amid the chaos, and how the two eventually reconciled. Chuck Lorre also reveals: - The psychological paradox that shaped his life: living with low self-esteem while simultaneously believing he was special, and how that contradiction influenced his relationships, ambitions, and career - How music saved his life: learning guitar as a child, finding direction through music, and discovering a path away from the future he feared - How the creator of The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men broke into television: his journey from music to writing for animated series and eventually creating some of the most successful primetime sitcoms ever - The unexpected story behind the iconic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song: how he wrote it and why he believes it remains so popular decades later - The moment he learned to trust his comedy instincts & the breakthrough that helped define his unique approach to sitcom writing - His brilliant philosophy on comedy writing: his unconventional perspective on crafting sitcoms, finding the funny, and creating characters audiences never forget - What it was really like working on Roseanne, navigating a production led by a powerful, complicated female star and the difficult lessons he learned about show business - His lifelong comedy inspirations: the performers, writers, and influences that shaped his comedic sensibilities - Personal cost of turning humor into an identity: how his work became intertwined with his self-worth and affected his closest relationships - Being diagnosed with colitis: his experience navigating a significant health challenge while building an extraordinary career. - Behind the scenes of The Big Bang Theory: Chuck Lorre shares his thoughts on iconic moments featuring Mayim, including the unforgettable tiara scene and Sheldon’s spanking scene - The next chapter of The Big Bang Theory universe: how Stuart Fails to Save the Universe came about and what inspired the project - Lessons that only decades in Hollywood can teach you — the difficult truths he discovered about success, creativity, relationships, and the entertainment industry From writing one of the most recognizable cartoon theme songs of all time to building a television empire with The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, and Young Sheldon, Chuck Lorre’s journey is a remarkable story of ambition, creativity, addiction, recovery, and self-discovery. How does someone who creates laughter for millions learn to live with his own pain? And what happens when professional success can no longer silence the struggles within? This is Chuck Lorre beyond the sitcoms: unfiltered, introspective, and full of hard-won wisdom about comedy, addiction, Hollywood, and what it means to finally understand yourself. If you love behind-the-scenes Hollywood stories, the real stories behind legendary television shows, and deeply honest conversations with the creative minds who shaped pop culture, this is an interview you won’t want to miss. A high-quality and effective air purifier is key to tackling the fall allergy season. Visit https://rabbitair.com or call their 24/7 consultants today. They can't harm you, if they can't find you! Use code MAYIM at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/mayimFind the fall pieces you’ll reach for most at Quince. Go to https://www.quince.com/breakdown for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Go to https://helixsleep.com/breakdown to receive 20% off your Helix mattress. Chuck Lorre’s memoir, SITCOM: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/sitcom-chuck-lorre?variant=44983794106402Chuck Lorre's music: https://www.youtube.com/@ChuckLorreMusic Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/mayimbialik%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mayim Bialik?

  He was the most successful television producer in the world, creating shows like The Big Bang Theory, Dharma and Greg, Young Sheldon, and Two and a Half Men.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Hollen Taylor's character on Two and a Half Men, she was my mother with money.

• 0:12Mayim Bialik?

  That's the only thing you have to tell a therapist on the first meeting.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Dharma and Greg, can I create a female lead who's loving and joyful? Would they be funny?

• 0:21Mayim Bialik?

  What do you remember of the tiara episode?

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Tiara was a tour de force for you. I don't think I've ever laughed harder in my life.

• 0:29Mayim Bialik?

  What you don't know about him is that he escaped a 1 billion year contract with the Church of Scientology.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  I was so desperate, I drank the Kool-Aid. Took me about 10 years to wake up.

• 0:40Mayim Bialik?

  He battled alcoholism, fought his way out of poverty, was in a series of public battles with Hollywood's biggest stars.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  When Charlie left the show and went on that Tiger Blood tour, I had no skills for understanding how to deal with this. It was really painful.

• 0:55Mayim Bialik?

  We felt like you had two kids and one was misbehaving, and we wanted to be the kid that wasn't misbehaving. We're gonna take a sneak peek behind the curtain of fame, celebrity, addiction, and success with the man who has shaped the culture of modern America through thousands of episodes of television. Chuck Lorre joins us on My Ambialic's Breakdown.

• 1:23Mayim Bialik?

  Hi, I'm My Ambialic.

• 1:24Jonathan Cohen?

  And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

• 1:25Mayim Bialik?

  And welcome to our Breakdown. What does it take to go from a childhood shaped by fear, addiction, poverty, and family turmoil to becoming the creative mastermind behind some of television's biggest and most popular sitcoms? Today, the creator of The Big Bang Theory, Chuck Lorre, is with us. He's gonna talk about his memoir sitcom, and he's best known for creating not only The Big Bang Theory, but Two and a Half Men, Young Sheldon, Mom, and Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. Chuck's gonna talk about all of the pieces of his life that lined up, from his failed music career to wandering into an animation studio in Sherman Oaks and getting a job writing afternoon cartoons,

• 2:10Mayim Bialik?

  to how he ended up creating the most successful comedy in television history.

• 2:16Jonathan Cohen?

  It's an unexpected journey, including a stint in Scientology and writing the theme song for the teenage mutant ninja turtles.

• 2:24Mayim Bialik?

  It's such a pleasure to welcome Chuck here in person. I also had the pleasure of doing some events for this book, but this is a really, really special conversation. And yes, he's gonna talk about The Big Bang Theory. We're gonna talk about the tiara. We're gonna talk about spanking. We're gonna talk about casting, all those things. He's also gonna talk about the very public struggle and battle that he had with Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men, and how he got through it. It's a pleasure to welcome in person to the Breakdown Chuck Lorre. Welcome.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Break it down. Thank you.

• 2:57Mayim Bialik?

  We've had almost every cast member from The Big Bang Theory, but this is the mothership now.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Oh, my.

• 3:03Mayim Bialik?

  Thank you for being here, and thank you for this book. You know, I have, obviously, I know a lot of the stories in this book, and there were a lot of things I didn't know about you. And I think what's most sticking with me is the premise of the book, which this is sent from your publisher. Honest, funny, and surprisingly moving. That's how they describe this book.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Interesting. I did not write that.

• 3:28Mayim Bialik?

  No, I know you didn't. But I want you to tell us a little bit about this surprisingly moving journey you decided to take through writing your story this way.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  I'm not clear that it's surprisingly moving, just because somebody wrote that on the flap. Surprisingly, I just told the truth about what I went through, both as a kid and as some teenage stuff, and about 15 years of hell as an adult before I stumbled into television. So if that's surprisingly moving, great. I'm happy to... I hope that provides some reason to read the book. You know, I wanted to tell the truth. That was the point of doing it.

• 4:16Mayim Bialik?

  You've had a lot of opportunities, you know, as you talk about in your career, where you were misunderstood, where you either quit or were fired, or you had conflict. Was this some way to also sort of air some stuff out so that your truth could be told?

• 4:32Speaker 01

  I didn't set out to make this a cathartic experience, but it was. It really was. You know, first of all, it's a memoir. It's based on memory, which is not my strong suit at coming up on 74 years old, you know? But that said, in the writing of the book, I was... I had some perspective. And you know, writing is different than thinking. Writing changes your perception. So the act of writing, regardless of whether it ever got published or anything, was, there was a little bit of healing in that I kind of forgave myself for being

• 5:14Speaker 01

  less than good. You know, so, yeah, there was, there was a... There was a cathartic experience in stringing it all together and seeing that even the missteps, the poor choices, let's say... I'm being kind to myself by calling them poor choices. They led to where I am now.

• 5:39Mayim Bialik?

  There's so much in here, and we'll get to it. You know, some of the fun stuff of kind of how you got into writing after really starting as a musician, and a struggling musician at that, and you had two young kids. And, you know, you were driven by this really specific, you know, fear of, as you described it, you know, fear of poverty, a fear of being destitute, a fear of letting down your then-wife, your kids. And also just this notion that like, I've gotta do something, right? There was this sort of like engine behind you. But I think what really struck me from what I know about you, from you being my boss for all these years, and from the book, is, you know, your story, and you kind of talk about this, your story's in many ways ordinary.

• 6:24Mayim Bialik?

  Like, you're a kid from Long Island, you know? And you were raised the way a lot of people of your generation were raised. And a particular kind of alchemy, right, occurred in your life that led you to be this creative. Can you talk a little bit about when it started to dawn on you that you were an artist, that you were a musician, that you had that kind of talent?

• 6:43Speaker 01

  I don't know that I ever had that experience. I suffered from that low self-esteem combo with arrogance, you know, that I think it's often referred to as the piece of shit at the center of the universe syndrome. You're familiar with it?

• 7:00Mayim Bialik?

  The most important piece of shit in the room is how I describe it. Not about you, just about people who have this.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  And that's a collision. That's a really uncomfortable place to be, where you don't believe you're enough. And yet, at the same time, you believe you're somehow special. And the two things don't cohere, but, you know, and there's no perspective, especially, you know, as a kid and as a young adult, there was no perspective. There was just, what do I gotta do to climb out of this hole? And what do I gotta do to, you know, express this insanely persistent belief that I could write, that I could write the song that could lift me out of poverty? You know, it was doable.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Somehow, this can't be, you know, an unachievable, you know, goal. It turned out to be unachievable. I mean, unless you count the turtle song.

• 8:00Mayim Bialik?

  Well, I mean, we kind of have to get to that. I mean, so you started as a musician. Were you musical as a kid?

• 8:06Speaker 01

  I got, I think I talk about this in the book.

• 8:09Mayim Bialik?

  Everything I ask you, you talk about in the book, but now we have to talk about it for everybody else.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  I don't need that handle anymore. Okay, I can't avoid it.

• 8:17Mayim Bialik?

  I read the whole thing. So I'm asking you things I know and you know, but now everybody gets to know.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  When I was about 10 years old, my uncle, who was a wonderful saxophonist, professional, came into my home, and he's a fall-down drunk. And he came into my house with a little box guitar, and he handed the guitar to me. He said, "Here, learn to play this." And then he fell down drunk. But, and I did. I, you know, I learned how to play the girl from Laredo and Malaguania, you know, and all these really boring things. It was all pretty boring. And then the Beals happened. And suddenly, that guitar took on an entirely different significance.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  You know, it was, first of all, I was a year or two shy of testosterone, but I recognized that girls like guys who play guitar. Clearly, there's something going on here, right? And so I formed my first band, probably when I was about 12, 13 years old. And we did covers. We did, you know, "Mrs. Brown, you've got a lovely daughter." And I literally would do it with a 12-year-old version of a Cockney accent, right, with braces. It was a great look. But that was the first effort to... And very slowly, in high school, you know, music became the center of my world, and drugs.

• 9:46Mayim Bialik?

  And drugs. I was just gonna say, a lot of your stories about what drugs let you escape, what persona you could take on. You know, this is something a lot of people that we get to speak to talk about. But I'm always curious, for you, was it recreation? Were you trying to escape something? Or did it just kind of happen? You had a heavier habit than even I had realized when you were a teenager.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  I don't know that I called it a habit.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  But I certainly, you know, at the time, I had no perspective of what was happening. I had no idea that I had to drink. I had to get loaded. And early on, I just thought, okay, I might have a problem, but so what? You know, I'm not hurting anybody, you know? And I had this rather juvenile attitude that addiction builds character. You know, I'm dark, I'm troubled, you know? And I would lead with that, you know? I'm a messed up human being, you know? I do remember a conversation I had early on with a dear friend of mine.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  We were tripping in a graveyard.

• 11:04Mayim Bialik?

  Like you do?

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Like you do. And he was talking about the chemical that was coursing through our veins as a vehicle to transcendence, to, you know, cognition.

• 11:20Mayim Bialik?

  An altered state of consciousness.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  An altered state of consciousness that was elevated. And I said, and I still remember this, I don't know why, out of all, you know, because that stuff kind of messes with your memory. But I remember saying, that's bullshit. We're getting loaded to get loaded. I was a champion of being obliterated, you know? Wiped out. You know, my sense of self was meant, needed to be, you know, annihilated, at which point I'd be comfortable. So, yeah, that was the first time, I think, I ever articulated that my goal was not to learn something about myself.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  My goal was to wipe myself out, at which point I'd be comfortable. And, you know, it was, that was it, to be comfortable in your skin when more often than not, around other human beings, you're not.

• 12:17Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and I think that's, you know, this notion that alcohol or drugs is not the problem, it's the solution.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 12:24Mayim Bialik?

  To having to live sober in the head, the consciousness that you were given that is so overwhelming, that being someone else, or even just not being yourself, right, is the solution.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Initially, it was so that I could be comfortable around other people.

• 12:41Mayim Bialik?

  What did you feel? What was it like?

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Just, just lack of fear of being around, especially with women. Towards the end, I couldn't, it didn't work anymore. I couldn't stand to be around other people. I couldn't go into a bar and drink.

• 12:56Jonathan Cohen?

  What age did it start for you, the trajectory towards annihilation?

• 13:01Speaker 01

  10, 11. I think I mentioned this also. It began with NyQuil, which was, back then, I don't know, I don't think it is the truth now, but it was about 25 proof. It was some serious green, green liquid. And, you know, when I discovered NyQuil, I had a sore throat for about two years. I was, this is it, this is great. You know, I'm a little scratchy. Mom, I think I need the NyQuil, you know? I got a little, I'm stuck, I don't. And then at some point, I brilliantly figured out that the stuff in the liquor cabinet did the same thing that NyQuil did.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  But, you know, it didn't clear up your sinuses, but, you know, it did the same thing.

• 13:50Mayim Bialik?

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• 18:00Speaker 01

  So I started drinking pretty early. I don't think I crossed the line that early. I crossed the line a few years down the road. But I've also uncrossed the line at different times in my life, so.

• 18:11Mayim Bialik?

  You mean, you've chosen to?

• 18:12Speaker 01

  I have, you know, I've had long stretches. One, for many years, I couldn't drink Coca-Cola because of the colitis. I couldn't put anything like that in my body.

• 18:26Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, I mean, you're hitting kind of the great triumvirate of the Long Island, you know, Eastern European, needing to escape something, some sort of tension, right? And then your stomach problems. Can you talk a little bit about it? Because when you were a kid, when you were a teenager, even really until 10 or 15 years ago, our understanding of this part of the body and what it holds for us has been very mysterious. But that's a place in the body that often people have problems when they're having confusion, upset, stress.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I certainly understood none of that.

• 19:02Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  I just knew that something terrible was happening to me. And it never occurred to me to go to a doctor. Didn't have health insurance once I left home and whatnot. There was no doctors to diagnose this. This was just happening. And it was frightening. I just dealt with it, you know? I hate to say this because it's a little, it's not particularly pleasant image, but I would get in the car and I would have to bring spare underwear and pants because I had, I was losing control of my body. And I was down about 100 pounds, maybe.

• 19:43Jonathan Cohen?

  Wow.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  You know, 100, maybe a few, 105, something like that. And.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  I finally, without health insurance, without any money, I finally went to, here in Los Angeles, a place called Cedars of Lebanon, which then, years later, merged with Mount Sinai and became Cedar Sinai. But when it was Cedars of Lebanon, it was a teaching hospital. And you could get examined for free if you were willing to do it to a classroom of medical students.

• 20:21Mayim Bialik?

  Yes.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  And a doctor/teacher.

• 20:24Mayim Bialik?

  Yep. Tell us the story.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  You know the story. I had no choice. I had it. So I submitted to this exam and was gifted with a, hard to say it, but there it is, an anesthetic-free colonoscopy in front of a classroom full of medical students, which was...

• 20:47Mayim Bialik?

  Humbling.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Torture.

• 20:49Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  I was screaming. It was horrifying. It was when, many years later, I came to understand that this was preparing me for a life in show business. So, you know, nothing's wasted. Yeah. It was, I don't, you know, I see now, at least, I get the impression now from all the drug ads on television that there's drugs for this stuff now.

• 21:20Mayim Bialik?

  There's different drugs now. Yeah.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Or none then.

• 21:22Mayim Bialik?

  No. Well, yeah.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  It was a colonectomy or a colectomy.

• 21:27Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  That was the solution. And that was what they proposed.

• 21:31Mayim Bialik?

  What were your parents like? And the reason I'm asking is because, you know, the Wolowitz character and Mrs. Wolowitz, you know, gets a lot of attention in terms of son and mother dynamics. And I wonder, was that pulled from any of your own relationship with your mom? Were your parents creative? Just anything that you can share about, you know, the person that is Chuck and what you came from?

• 21:56Speaker 01

  I think the mother in Two and a Half Men is closer. If you, and I, often, I remember, she was my mother with money, which is like, you know, arming, arming the devil, giving him a sidearm, you know? The money gave Holland Taylor's character on Two and a Half Men a great deal of leverage in life. My mom, they didn't have any money. They were broke.

• 22:22Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  But the darkness, the anger and resentment, the rage she had towards many people, that impacted on me. And the character on Two and a Half Men was very much a reflection of that. In fact, I once, my mom came out to visit me once, and as a, she had the ability, and I'm sure you've known people like this, she had the ability to take anything you said and spin it bad.

• 22:54Mayim Bialik?

  I don't know what you're talking about at all.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Spin it dark. And as an experiment, I tried, I worked really hard to compose something to say that was undeniably benign and could not be twisted into anger, resentment, fear, horror.

• 23:13Mayim Bialik?

  Hostility.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Hostility. So I said to her while she was visiting me, "Isn't it a beautiful day?"

• 23:20Mayim Bialik?

  No.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  And she said, and this is where, you know, I recognize the power of the darkness. She said, "Isn't it sad they're all not like this?" And I was like, "Okay, that's it. I don't know how to..."

• 23:41Mayim Bialik?

  That's the only thing you have to tell a therapist on the first meeting.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  And believe it or not, I word for word put that in the Two and a Half Men script, where Charlie and Alan, Charlie says, he wants to prove to Alan that she's Satan. And he says something as innocuous as that, and her response is twisted, and they both recognize finally that this is the evil one, right? This is the sign of the devil. The three sixes right there.

• 24:11Jonathan Cohen?

  What strikes me is that I think a lot of people listening, without the explanation, would be like, "Yeah, that sounds about right. I know people like that." It's only by highlighting it do we really recognize how twisted that perspective is and how much it sucks the energy out of the room.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And of course, with Mrs. Wolowitz, you know, I've done a great deal of television dealing with mothers who hurt. Let's just, that's the title of that book.

• 24:45Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, I'm trying to like, follow the thread, you know?

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Look, Allison Janney's character in Mom, very destructive force in her daughter's life, you know?

• 24:56Mayim Bialik?

  Mrs. Wolowitz.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  While other women were working, you were cooking meth, otherwise known as working.

• 25:04Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah. What was your dad like?

• 25:08Speaker 01

  He was a gregarious, jovial man. One of 11 Republicans in the country at the time. Jewish Republicans. I left out the key word there. Jewish Republicans. Believed wholeheartedly in every man lifting himself up by his bootstraps. Loved comedy. I think that he had an enormous impact on me because, well, starting with, he only had one night off a week. He worked six days a week, six, seven days a week, and he had one night off, Sunday night.

• 25:48Mayim Bialik?

  What did he do?

• 25:49Speaker 01

  He had a luncheonette. Shall we stop and explain to your listeners what a luncheonette is? And so Sunday night was Sullivan, Ed Sullivan. I wanted to watch The Wonderful World of Disney, but I would lose every week. I'd say, "Let's watch The Wonderful World of Disney," and he'd go to bed, or sit here and watch what I'm watching, you know? And I got to see every great borscht belt comic there ever was stepfoot on that stage. And it made an impact. It really did. Yeah.

• 26:25Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, when you list your greatest influences, I mean, it reads like a who's who of a very particular era of comedy.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:33Mayim Bialik?

  That you were raised in.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:36Mayim Bialik?

  You end up being a musician. You're still enjoying partying. And you're, you end up getting into a relationship with the woman who became the mother of your children.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Eventually, yes. Yeah, first I went down the well and fell into Scientology.

• 26:53Mayim Bialik?

  You ended up in Scientology for a time.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Yes. 10 years.

• 26:58Mayim Bialik?

  What's 10 years among friends?

• 26:59Speaker 01

  A decade.

• 27:00Mayim Bialik?

  So you're in LA.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  No, I actually started, I was traveling around the country in a cover band, played bars and hotels and whatnot.

• 27:09Mayim Bialik?

  You're the guitarist and also you sing.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Yes. And the sax player in the band was a member of this organization in Columbus, Ohio. He said, "Do you want to go with me to this thing?" I didn't know what it was, but there were girls there. And I took an introductory course.

• 27:31Mayim Bialik?

  What did they promise you?

• 27:31Speaker 01

  It was called the communications course. And they promised you better communication skills. How can you argue with that, right? It was, you know, it was fairly benign. And when I came back to Los Angeles, I kept going because it was fun. There were pretty girls there. And I didn't see any downside to, music is communication. You know, anything in the arts is a form of communication. So why not get better at it, right? So, yeah, that was the beginning of a slide into a...

• 28:10Mayim Bialik?

  What do you do for 10 years? Like you live your life...

• 28:14Speaker 01

  That actually became, you know, a priority in my life, you know? I actually, I drank the Kool-Aid. I was all in. I thought this was a pathway out of, out of the human predicament into a better life. I really did. I was so desperate. It was a frightening world to me, and this provided answers. And I was looking for answers. And I was very naive, very, very naive. I was easily, easily manipulated. And it took me about 10 years to wake up and go, "This is bullshit."

• 28:54Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, what happened, you talk a little bit in the book about kind of a series of events that occurred that precipitated you leaving.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Well, poverty, just, you know, extensive poverty. One of my goals in life was to not be poor. But we were desperately poor. And we now had two children and no health insurance, no steady income, and this clearly wasn't working.

• 29:26Mayim Bialik?

  I think that's what you said. You said that everybody who was going to Scientology still had all of the problems that you were hoping to not have anymore.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Divorces, car accidents.

• 29:36Mayim Bialik?

  Heart disease.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Heart disease, colds, you know? All the things that happen in life were still afflictions that happened to people who were promised to be risen above this, you know, this turmoil. And my then wife, who was also in the organization, said, we agreed, it's time to go. And we were like, communicated, and all our friends wouldn't, could not talk to us, or, I mean, it was a whole social world. So we were cut off. And then I, you know, I just made it my business to, if I'm going to get out of this, it's going to be on my own efforts. If I'm going to get out of this hole we're in, it's going to be on my own efforts, so.

• 30:22Mayim Bialik?

  I think you also mentioned that since you had no money, there wasn't a big hubbub about you leaving.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Nobody chases you when you're broke. "Wait, come back. Wait, come back. You drain on our resources. Come back."

• 30:35Jonathan Cohen?

  Is it accurate that you signed the one billion year?

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Why would I lie about signing a one billion year contract? I told you I drank the fucking Kool-Aid.

• 30:46Mayim Bialik?

  What does it promise you?

• 30:48Speaker 01

  It prom-- well, first, the billion year thing is predicated on the belief that we are immortal spirits.

• 30:55Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  That, that when you, when you die, the spirit finds another body, a baby body.

• 31:01Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  And, and so, and, and if you buy into a reincarnation as a fact of life, then a billion years is--

• 31:11Mayim Bialik?

  What's a billion years?

• 31:11Speaker 01

  What's a billion years? Because you're around, you're going to be around forever. Right? And, uh, and if you want any insight into how stupid I was, I believed this. I absolutely believed it. I didn't, I didn't, I wasn't going, hmm, sounds fishy, but okay. You know, no, I, I, I, I believed that this was a path out of the darkness.

• 31:33Mayim Bialik?

  It's also not just your naivety, like to your credit, and it took, you know, a couple decades for you to, I think, get some vindication here. It, it's pretty much known to be a cult. Meaning the tactics, it's not just you, like, it's the tactics used are very specific.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  The tactics of separating you from your family, that's cult stuff. Literally, having any other outside interests cutting you off from them.

• 32:00Mayim Bialik?

  It's a red flag.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  It's a red flag. Because if this one person becomes the source of everything, then, you know, that becomes, well, it's not unlike POTUS. He is the source of everything. He is the government. There is no branches. There's him. It's very similar to, uh, you know, creating a monolithic force that calls all the shots.

• 32:24Mayim Bialik?

  And you can't ask questions.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  And if you're, and if you're a frightened little boy, which I was, you say, yes, sir. You, you, you go along with it. And, uh, and you're, and you're grateful. Your dumb ass is grateful.

• 32:40Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 32:40Jonathan Cohen?

  What happened in the two days from signing the contract to leaving? Because it sounds like a pretty significant about face to happen in a very short period of time.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Music happened. I, I was still determined. I was still determined to find my way into a career in music. And I just simply, I realized I could not give it up. I just, I wasn't going anywhere. But I, I wasn't willing to put it down. And, and having, if I had proceeded to stay in that organization, no matter how long the term, I would be essentially giving up my dream, my childhood dream. And I wasn't able to do that. That's why I packed up and ran.

• 33:25Jonathan Cohen?

  Music saved you.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Yes, it did. Yeah. Yes, it did.

• 33:29Mayim Bialik?

  I want you to tell us about, um, how you went from music to writing. It's a, it's a comical story. I used, I grew up watching the DIC cartoons. Can you talk about, I think you walked into an office on Ventura Boulevard?

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Above Barron's Hair Salon.

• 33:47Mayim Bialik?

  That's right.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  I still remember, near Laurel Canyon.

• 33:49Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was going door to door selling these little FM radios during, uh, between Thanksgiving and Christmas as a stocking stuffer.

• 33:59Mayim Bialik?

  This was just to make money?

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Just to make money. I was trying to gigging at night, bar mitzvahs and weddings, any way I could to make a living and keep us indoors. And I was doing that during the day. I'd get these things on consignment. And, uh, and they, on consignment, they were like $10. And I would try and sell them for 20. Two for 30.

• 34:21Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  I'll take a check. I'll take a credit card. I, I had the thing. Any form of money, I would take. And, uh, I was having a very bad day, very depressing day where I wasn't selling anything. And I stopped in front of these stairs next to the hair salon that went up this dark stairway. And I didn't know what was up there. And I wanted to just throw in the towel, go to Hamburger Hamlet, get a giant mug of beer, and wash away the pain. And for some reason, I walked up those stairs and it was an animation company, DIC.

• 35:01Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  And I said, what do you guys do here? While I'm trying to sell the radios. And I did sell two radios. And then some guy, might have been one of the writers, there's, there's only about 20 people up there. They said, we make children's animation. And I, and I, with the arrogance of the stupid, said, do you ever do anything funny? And he said, sometimes. And I went, this is your lucky day. So, uh, I don't know how this happened, but they said, come back after Christmas. And if you pitch us some stories that we like, you get a shot to write a script. And the scripts paid $500.

• 35:48Mayim Bialik?

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• 36:33Mayim Bialik?

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• 37:18Mayim Bialik?

  It's completely risk free with a 30 day money back guarantee. Check the link in today's episode description to get started.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Which was, are you kidding me? So, I came back after Christmas. And I walked in there, I was not leaving till I saw the goddamn story. And I did, I saw the story. I still remember--

• 37:37Mayim Bialik?

  What was it?

• 37:38Speaker 01

  It was called, it was for this cartoon called Heathcliff.

• 37:42Mayim Bialik?

  I watched it.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Right? The, the name of the, the script, the episode was, "An Officer and an Alley Cat." Heathcliff, big mischievous, is sent to a, uh, uh, uh, military academy where he is mischievous.

• 38:02Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  You know, it doesn't go well.

• 38:04Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Right? And I wrote the script. I had to run out and buy a typewriter. And, and I got a book called Sid Fields, "How to Write a Screenplay." You know Sid Fields? And I had the book and it told you what the spacing was and, and where you put the thing. And I wrote the script. And I brought it back. And they liked it. And I wasn't leaving there without another script assignment. And within a short period of time, after a couple of months, I was writing two or three of those fuckers a week. You know, I was making--

• 38:41Mayim Bialik?

  And I was watching them with milk and cookies when I got home from school.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  With milk and cookies. So I, uh, at one point, I was writing so many freelance, they decided it was cheaper to put me on staff. So they gave me a, a staff job where I was now editing other people's scripts as well as writing my own.

• 38:57Mayim Bialik?

  Did you feel like, oh, this is what my brain was for?

• 39:01Speaker 01

  I don't know that I had that kind of perspective, but I, I, I just, I believed I could do it. I believed I could visualize a scene that had comic content and, and explain it. Because a screenplay, teleplay, is a blueprint. It's not a novel. It's not describing the woof and wharf of the fabric on the couch. It's, there's a couch. Right? And, uh, and I, I, I believed I had the, the the necessary tools to explain in a readable and entertaining way. Because I thought these scripts should entertain you. You should want to read it. It shouldn't be drudgery. And, uh, and I got real good at it. And I wrote a lot of those.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  And at some point, I got headhunted by another company.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  And I wound up at Marvel. Looking back now, I don't look back. If you want a memoir, I wrote the memoir, it's done, we're over.

• 40:00Jonathan Cohen?

  But it's not so easy to crack the, like, the format of the writing. So to hear someone who sits down and writes one off their first go after reading the Sid Field book, like, had you watched a lot of Heathcliff?

• 40:14Speaker 01

  I didn't, no.

• 40:15Jonathan Cohen?

  No?

• 40:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 40:16Jonathan Cohen?

  What am I, an idiot?

• 40:17Mayim Bialik?

  You grew up reading comic books.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Sure, I grew up reading comic books. And I watched cartoons as a kid, but, you know, the act of writing a script was something novel.

• 40:27Jonathan Cohen?

  It's unusual, like, really unusual, that someone doing that for the first time could bring in a script for that show, that the writers would be like, this is close enough to what we normally do. Like, there's usually just experienced things that someone going for the first time wouldn't be able to crack. So it's just kind of amazing that whatever was driving you, however your brain was working, could accomplish that on the first try like that.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  I don't know what to tell you. Blame Mad Magazine.

• 41:00Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  You know, I mean, you know, Florence of Arabia, Officer and the Alley Cat, you see the lineage?

• 41:05Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  You know, the lineage of making fun of-

• 41:07Mayim Bialik?

  It's farce.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  It's farce, you know, um, you know. I loved Mad Magazine.

• 41:13Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  You know, I devoured it, you know?

• 41:16Mayim Bialik?

  I have the first ever published.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  You're kidding me? I hope it's under glass.

• 41:21Mayim Bialik?

  It is not under glass, but it is sealed.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Okay, good. Oh, my God.

• 41:25Mayim Bialik?

  They did a Blossom parody in Mad Magazine, it was the most proud moment of my father's life.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  I have Two and a Half Men and-

• 41:33Mayim Bialik?

  They did Big Bang.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Big Bang.

• 41:35Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Um, and Dharma and Gludge or something, it was, you know, Pharma and Gludge, whatever. I got them to sell me the pencil drawings of the cover.

• 41:46Mayim Bialik?

  That's unbelievable.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  You know, because I was, being in Mad Magazine, having them make fun of a show that I created, it was, ah, I've arrived.

• 41:56Mayim Bialik?

  At the Skirball Museum, they have a standing exhibit about comic books, and in particular, um, the Jewish relationship of comic books, and how Mad Magazine came out of a distinctly-

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Superman creators.

• 42:07Mayim Bialik?

  Correct.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 42:08Mayim Bialik?

  And just like this distinctly farcical, like sarcastic, you know, play on words, which was also, that was Borscht Belt Comedy, right? It was very, it was very Yiddish infused in its-

• 42:20Speaker 01

  There are all Jewish guys writing those things.

• 42:21Mayim Bialik?

  Exactly, yeah, anyway. Um, I wonder, because we have this sort of like writing career, and I want to make sure that we get, you know, to this sort of break, and how we get to the Roseanne, Dharma, and Greg of Chuck Lorre's career. But I also want to mention that you did still have stuff musically happening. French Kissin' in the USA is one of them. And the other thing that you, you wrote the theme song to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that everybody sings. That was you.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Me and Dennis Brown, a guy that, actually, the way I met Dennis was, he's a beautiful guitar player, and when he had two weddings on Saturday night, he'd throw me one, right? If he couldn't, if, you know, he'd tell whoever was booking the gig, you know, I can't do it, but, so he's, our friendship began with him, you know, throwing me.

• 43:14Mayim Bialik?

  Gigs.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, we're basically, you know, life rafts.

• 43:18Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Because those gigs, you know, eighty, a hundred bucks meant a lot.

• 43:22Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  And he and I, we wrote that theme song in an afternoon.

• 43:26Mayim Bialik?

  What was the scenario? Like, the show doesn't exist yet, right?

• 43:29Speaker 01

  The show doesn't exist yet, um-

• 43:30Mayim Bialik?

  You tell the whole story in the song, as you describe it?

• 43:33Speaker 01

  That was Gilligan's Island, right? I mean, Gilligan's Island tells you the entire story in the song. So that, my influences there were pretty clear, right? Um, the guy who produced the fir-, they somehow managed to scrape up enough money to make six episodes and see how it goes.

• 43:52Mayim Bialik?

  That's right. And the conceit was a bunch of turtles raised underground. Right, but I'm saying, like, that's the, yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  And, uh, and, um, they were trained in the martial arts by a rat. You know, Splinter. I can sing it for you, but I don't think we need to go there. Anyway-

• 44:11Mayim Bialik?

  It's kind of a great soundbite, but, you know.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  It really was. I was so proud of that thing, it just, my kids were so proud. Oh, my God, it was, my kids were like, my father wrote this, we've arrived.

• 44:21Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  But, um, the producer of those six episodes approached me about writing the six episodes, and I said, I can't, I'm under contract at Marvel Animation, I was working with Stan Lee and stuff, which, you know, and, um, but I can do the music. I'm not under contract to do the music. And he said, yeah, well, that's okay, I can't help you there, we've got the Turtles to do the music.

• 44:45Mayim Bialik?

  The Turtles, it's a band, for those of you who, yes.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Happy together.

• 44:48Mayim Bialik?

  Right, that's the Turtles.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Dun, dun, dun, dun. And I went, oh, okay, yeah, sure.

• 44:52Mayim Bialik?

  Makes sense, it's right on the nose.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  They're gonna do the theme song for the Teenage Mutant, okay, great. And a few months later, he calls me, guy's name was Fred Wolf, Mirakomi Wolf was the name of the company, and he calls me and says, the Turtles blew it off. I got nothing. Can you, you're still interested? I went, absolutely, absolutely, I wanted anything to do with music.

• 45:15Mayim Bialik?

  It was running around in your head all those months.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  I wanted to do anything to do with music, uh, and, uh, so he said, all right, I got, I've got in the budget, I believe it was $2,500, to write and produce a theme song and score all six episodes.

• 45:31Mayim Bialik?

  Wow.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  And Dennis and I sat down and wrote that song, and I, lyrics came naturally to me, so, you know, heroes in a half shell.

• 45:41Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Turtle power.

• 45:42Mayim Bialik?

  Very catchy. It just came to you, like, heroes in a half shell?

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:50Jonathan Cohen?

  It's a great one.

• 45:51Mayim Bialik?

  It's a great one.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  I don't, I'm just trying to wonder, did I pull it out of one of the comic books, or did I come up with it? I don't, I don't recall, but, um, we went into a studio, we bought the cheapest time imaginable in a studio, 12:00 midnight to 8:00 AM, and we recorded the song, uh, amps all over the studio stamped with a band called Journey. They were, they were working there during the day-

• 46:23Mayim Bialik?

  What?

• 46:23Speaker 01

  They were working there during the daylight hours.

• 46:26Mayim Bialik?

  Jesus.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  We took the graveyard shift, spent every penny we had, spent every penny on, on, this theme song, and turned it in. And, um, Fred said, great, we're done. And I went, this is a demo. He goes, no, we're done.

• 46:48Mayim Bialik?

  Was it you singing?

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, the lead, no, I did the voices of the Turtles. That's a fact, Jack. You know, you know. We sped up my voice.

• 46:57Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  We did the chipmunk thing with my voice. And I actually said to him, I said, you'll bring the actors in who do the voices to, to replace my voice? He goes, no, it's fine. It's fine, don't worry about it.

• 47:07Mayim Bialik?

  And that's what we're singing, like, when people sing it?

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah. Splinter taught them to be ninja teens, they're heroes in a half shell, and they're green. When the evil shredder attacks, those turtle boys don't cut them no slack. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And it has continued to be something in kids' lives for the last 35 or more years.

• 47:33Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  Every genera-, new generation comes along and goes, this is weird.

• 47:36Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  And I have a theory why it worked.

• 47:38Mayim Bialik?

  Say it.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  You want to hear my theory?

• 47:39Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  If you're seven, eight years old, what do you want to be? You don't want to be an adult, you want to be a teenager. Teenager is the next stage. Teenager is an empowered stage, teenagers have cars, teenagers leave the house, right? You know? And, you know, and if you're, you know, a creepy looking kid, mutant. Mutant works, yeah, I get mutant, you know? Ninja is empowered. If you had ninja powers, you weren't helpless. So teenager, ugly, power. Magic formula that I guarantee the guys who created that stuff, which is a home, a

• 48:25Speaker 01

  homebrewed comic book, garage comic book, in black and white. The original episodes were in black and white, they didn't have the money to make them in color. I doubt that they were thinking that, they think, I think they just thought, this is cool. Right, and it was, but I think there was a visceral connection with kids.

• 48:42Mayim Bialik?

  Can you also talk about, because it's an interesting part of this story, that you were called in to discuss royalties on this song? And I wonder if you can explain some of the logistics surrounding your rights to that song?

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Dennis and I were called into an office in Century City by, I forget who owned the, someone came in and bought the whole thing up once it hit.

• 49:04Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  And it was huge, it was global, it was on all the time.

• 49:10Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  It was, uh, video games, Nintendo, Nintendo arcade games.

• 49:16Mayim Bialik?

  Merchandising.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  And VHS cassettes.

• 49:18Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Millions and millions of VHS cassettes, because that was, in the late 80s, that's what's starting to happen. People had VCRs. And, uh, we were called into this office, and we were surrounded, two schlumpy musician clowns in this office, and the guys in suits, you know, four or five guys in suits, who explained, who just, a guy sits down and he goes, we're not going to pay you royalties for any of the VHS cassettes sold, or the Nintendo games sold, all of which used our music. And I said, why? And he said, because we don't want to.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  And then he threatened us and said, if you fight us on this, we'll scrub your music from all the episodes. And by then, there were over a hundred episodes, because they were buying them in blocks of 65, because it was so successful, it was in syndication, and CBS was buying 26 a year episodes, and syndication was buying in blocks of 65. It was an enormous runaway hit. And we, it didn't occur to Dennis and I to say, we'd like to consult an attorney, it didn't occur to us to do anything but be bluffed right out of our socks, and we, we signed away our rights to that, you know?

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Which, uh, I think I mentioned in the book, reminded me of being cornered in a room, whatever it was, 20 years earlier, signing a billion year contract, you know? You get, when, you know, you just don't have the wherewithal to go, hang on a second. Never occurred to us that this was a bluff. Scrubbing our music off the television show would have been deadly. That would have been devastating. We, the television income was phenomenal. It still exists all these years later.

• 51:18Jonathan Cohen?

  Have you ever done the back of the napkin math?

• 51:21Speaker 01

  I try not to.

• 51:22Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't want to know. It's just, you know.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  On the path, on the journey, we're occasionally fucked by others. Some might call it do's. It's just, you know, we've, we live to fight another day. You know, yes, we lost untold amount of money that was deservedly ours. But, you know, these are the things that, that cause you to, you know, down the road, you know, dig your heels in on stuff. You know, those are the hard lessons.

• 52:07Mayim Bialik?

  No, and I think that's important, especially as we kind of pivot into, you know. I mean, the book is, you know, for anyone who's interested in the history of television, or really any aspect of kind of the history of show business. It's such a, it's such a helpful walkthrough, you know, so many phases of the industry, from the conception of an idea, to working with actors, to producing, to what it means to run a show. Talk a little bit about how you eventually ended up switching from children's animation into primetime television.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  I had heard about this thing called the Writers Guild. And they offered something that I thought was the panacea. That was the answer to all my dreams. Health insurance. You can take your kid to the doctor and not have to declare bankruptcy. You had health insurance. That meant the world to me with two little kids. And they had this other thing, which I was unheard of, and to this day is unheard of in animation. This magic thing called residuals. And if you wrote something and it aired, and then it aired again, somebody sent you money. It was incredible.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  The script gave you a little, a little tiny bit of equity that, that you could count on to, to get by, to pay the rent, to buy food, you know, to, to live a life. And, and I desperately wanted to get into the Writers Guild. So the only path to the Writers Guild was to write for primetime. They didn't cover animation. They, they had nothing to do with children's animation. So I had to get onto a primetime show. And I did.

• 53:57Mayim Bialik?

  What was the first show that you were on?

• 53:59Speaker 01

  It was called Charles in Charge.

• 54:03Mayim Bialik?

  I watched that. Oh, I loved that show.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:05Mayim Bialik?

  To the depths of my soul.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I was free, I wrote some freelance scripts for that show. You know, when you write a script and they ask you to, you know, come back and write another one. You know, I remember the first script I wrote for that show, the fee was $5,000. And the cost of joining the Writers Guild? Guess? $5,000. And I gladly paid it.

• 54:33Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  I was so excited to be, I wasn't alone anymore. I, I had this, this, this institution behind me. I didn't, you know, they laid out the rules. You didn't have to invent them or have someone else invent them for you. The Guild had over many decades fought for all these things, like residuals and health insurance and all these things where the companies, you know, pay you a, a fair amount. And so that, that, that's why I, I scrambled. Late at night, when I was at Marvel and everyone went home, I'd stay there in my little office and write spec scripts.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  I wrote, and that's, you know, again, Sid Fields right there.

• 55:21Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  You know, I wrote a Golden Girls because I loved the show. I just loved the show. It was a show that made me laugh. And I wasn't picky about comedy or drama. I just wanted to get into the big time. I wrote a Miami Vice.

• 55:35Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, it's a great story.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  Miami Vice and the Collins Avenue Kid was the title. And in my mind, I, I had casted in my mind with Walter Matthau and George Burns as two retired Jews who live in South Beach in Miami. And they're taking the morning constitution along the beach and they find a bag of cocaine, a giant garbage bag full of cocaine. And rather than turn it in, they decide to go into business. And so the bad guys, the coke dealers are chasing them. And, and the Miami Vice guys, I forget their names. Don Johnson and the other guy.

• 56:17Mayim Bialik?

  Michael.

• 56:18Jonathan Cohen?

  No.

• 56:19Mayim Bialik?

  His name was Michael something. Philip Michael Thomas?

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:22Mayim Bialik?

  Did I do it?

• 56:23Speaker 01

  I know it's three names.

• 56:24Mayim Bialik?

  Philip Michael Thomas.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:25Mayim Bialik?

  Why my brain chose to remember that guy?

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Everybody was chasing them.

• 56:30Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  As they're, they're going into a nightclub, it's in their brown, tawdry suits, and selling bags of cocaine for $10. You know, they had no idea what it was worth. And then going to Wolfy's to have soup.

• 56:43Mayim Bialik?

  I love it.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Right?

• 56:44Mayim Bialik?

  The, the in-joke is that the actual pronunciation of the name Weiss, W E I S S, is Vice. Like, my grandmother's name, her given name, was Weiss, is how we said it in English, but it's Vice.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  I didn't know that.

• 56:57Mayim Bialik?

  So Miami Vice, I thought that was the joke.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  You thought it was Miami Jews?

• 57:01Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah. Um, you also wrote My Two Dads?

• 57:06Speaker 01

  I wrote My, the guy who created Charles in Charge went off to do My Two Dads.

• 57:11Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  And he, he asked me if I'd like to be part of the pilot.

• 57:16Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  And I got two weeks paid vacation at Marvel. And I took my two weeks and worked on the pilot. And the pilot got picked up.

• 57:25Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, it's another, I mean, I watched all these shows, you know. I'm 50, so I, I was, as you were, just a bit older than me.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  But you were a working 12-year-old.

• 57:34Mayim Bialik?

  I started, I was a working 12-year-old. Yeah, I started work at Webster was like one of the first shows. I did eight episodes of Webster. I was on Facts of Life. I mean, this was.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  You were in the movie with Cher too, right?

• 57:45Mayim Bialik?

  No, Beaches, Bette Midler. And Laney Kazan.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  I saw that movie. I loved that movie.

• 57:50Mayim Bialik?

  Well, here we are, all these years later.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  It was a great movie.

• 57:53Mayim Bialik?

  Another, another interesting loop to our life together. Do you know the reason that I started acting again after having my second child? I needed health insurance.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  You're kidding me. What about all the years in SAG?

• 58:05Mayim Bialik?

  You don't, you don't get health insurance from residuals at those years. I was in.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  How long were you a paying member of SAG?

• 58:12Mayim Bialik?

  It, it didn't, it didn't work like that.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  That's terrible.

• 58:15Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, I was a grad student.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  I'm a hit show as a SAG actor.

• 58:18Mayim Bialik?

  I'm just saying, I was, I went to college and I went to grad school and I wasn't working. And I had never acted as an adult. I did a couple of episodes of Curb. But whenever people ask me, why, you know, how did you get on the Big Bang? Did, did they just find you? Because you, I said, no, people don't, you know, 12 years later, after leaving the industry, yeah, I needed health insurance. So you and I connected in a very interesting time. I was living in this house also when I got on Big Bang. I was in the next room. I remember where I was standing when I was told I was being offered a contract on The Big Bang Theory. I used to live in this house and now we podcast from here. It's a lot of full circle. I want to highlight something that you do dedicate a good amount of time to in the book.

• 59:00Mayim Bialik?

  And it's something that I resonate with, both as someone who worked for you and also someone who, after The Big Bang Theory, Jim Parsons and I went on and we worked together. He produced a show that I starred in. And I had the, you know, the dubious blessing of seeing what it's like to have your own show, which I can't remember who said it. It's like being beaten to death with your own dream. Is that, is that?

• 59:25Speaker 01

  That's pretty good.

• 59:25Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, that's kind of what it felt like.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  It's horrifying.

• 59:27Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, so I, but I'm reading the other side of it. And in particular, you had, you know, three very, very strong-tempered, you know, females who were notorious for a certain kind of interaction, especially.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  How gracefully put.

• 59:41Mayim Bialik?

  I am trying to be graceful. But you, you make it very clear, you know, that there was, you know, these series of shows where you were working with these, you know, I mean, I think difficult, like it's hard because with women, it's.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Angry.

• 59:57Mayim Bialik?

  They're, okay, angry. I'll go with angry.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Let's go with angry.

• 59:59Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah. I mean, you worked with Roseanne at the height of kind of the insanity that was happening at that show. You know, one of the things you, you know, kind of say is like, is there a lead actress, you know, who's not?

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Angry?

• 1:00:14Mayim Bialik?

  Angry, yeah. What was your?

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  That actually was how I got to Dharma and Greg. I tried, I, as an experiment, I was, as I was developing that show, I was trying to figure out, can I create a female lead who's loving and life-affirming and joyful? And if I did create such a character, would they be funny? You know, because.

• 1:00:35Mayim Bialik?

  Every woman wonders that.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Because anger and sarcasm and malice, it's funny. There's no question about it. You know, that, Roseanne's humor is terrific. I don't want to denigrate it by any means. It works. But I'd had enough of it. I had, I had been punished by it. I didn't want to do it anymore. And, and Dharma, you know, was almost like a character from Mars. She was the kind of character who, walking down the street with the straight-laced Greg, would stop and feed somebody's parking meter so they don't get a ticket. Someone she doesn't know, because it's the right thing to do. That turned out to be a source of comedy.

• 1:01:17Mayim Bialik?

  Well, the tension, I think.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  The tension between the two of them. But it was novel to have a character who was not angry, who was not mean-spirited, who was not frightened.

• 1:01:25Mayim Bialik?

  Well, I mean, also for women, it, it is a complicated place to be because in many cases, we are placed in this position of either being, right, the attractive one, right? Which for much, much of the shows that I grew up watching, those were kind of your choices, was you could be the hot one or you could be the nerd, right? But once you get into these kinds of shows, and especially when you talk about Dharma and Greg, you were crafting this relationship, you know? And you were allowing this woman to kind of exist. It's a very special thing.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  And to write about old Jewish hippies really was not a stretch for me.

• 1:01:58Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:03Mayim Bialik?

  We're going to hit pause here. There's so much more in part two of our conversation with Chuck Lorre. We're going to talk about finding sobriety, how he dealt with Charlie Sheen's addiction, why success did not solve his alcoholism.

• 1:02:17Jonathan Cohen?

  And why being funny has always been so closely tied to his self-worth.

• 1:02:23Mayim Bialik?

  All that and more in part two of our conversation with Chuck Lorre, from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time.