Hugh Grant turned down $750K Two and a Half Men offer, Chuck Lorre says

In his new memoir Sitcom, creator Chuck Lorre says he dangled $750,000 per episode to land Hugh Grant as the new lead of Two and a Half Men after Charlie Sheen’s 2011 exit — and thought a deal was close. Grant’s sticking point, according to Lorre, was performing in front of a live studio audience, so Lorre even offered to scrap it and add prerecorded laughter instead.

“When it came time to sign a contract and proceed, he bailed. He just bailed. I've never spoken with him since that time. Just some agent or manager called and said, 'Mr. Grant doesn't want to do this,'”

Lorre writes that the live-audience workaround didn’t change Grant’s mind. The actor ultimately passed, and Lorre never spoke to him directly again about the part.

The push to keep the sitcom alive came from then-CBS chairman Les Moonves, Lorre recalls; he’d first considered ending the show altogether when Sheen left in 2011. After a wide search for a fresh lead, Grant emerged as the target before negotiations collapsed.

Asked later why he thinks Grant walked away, Lorre told PEOPLE it likely came down to the actor’s priorities at that point in his career, not the paycheck.

“I would have to guess that he decided that, for his career, it wasn’t a good play,” Lorre said. “The money was secondary to his needs and demands as an actor and as an artist.”

With Grant out, Lorre kept looking and eventually tapped Ashton Kutcher, who joined the show and took it in a new direction.