WHAT A DIFFERENCE A YEAR MAKES: Charlie Sheen, who was making front-page news with his rants last year, has begun filming his new sitcom. (
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Charlie Sheen — who 12 months ago looked as if he might never work in TV again — has just finished filming the first two episodes of a new sitcom in LA.
His character in “Anger Management” — which is set to debut on the cable channel FX in June — is a former big shot who sabotages his career but comes back as a sadder-but-wiser man.
Sound familiar?
“You can’t help but see that there is some resonance between Charlie’s real life and this character,” the show’s executive producer, Bruce Helford, tells The Post. “He is a ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ sort of guy.”
In his first TV role post-“Two and a Half Men,” Sheen plays Charlie Goodson — a former baseball star who now provides anger therapy out of his home in the San Fernando Valley.
“Charlie has anger issues of his own,” Helford reveals in an exclusive preview of the show for The Post.
“We see during the course of the show that he is often more messed up than his patients.
“There is an old Charlie that comes from a time when he was very angry and always getting into fights with the fans and an evolved Charlie. So he is not a typical hero. He is a very real and flawed man.”
And Sheen? He looks ready to put the tiger blood and warlock talk behind him and create a new legacy.
“He made a joke at the first table read and said, ‘I don’t intend to obliterate all of this before it gets off the ground,’ ” Helford says.
“Anger Management,” a half-hour comedy filmed without a studio audience, is not associated with the Jack Nicholson-Adam Sandler movie of the same name.
In fact, Helford says, the show was created specifically for Sheen. It’s already turning out to be “even edgier than ‘Two and a Half Men,’ ” he notes.
“Because we are on FX, we can deal with real honest issues and say things you can’t say on network TV. We have some pretty complicated relationships, and we are dealing with subject matter in a more adult way. ”
In the pilot episode, Charlie has to come to terms with the re-emergence of his anger. “Charlie, as a therapist, has to go back into therapy,” Helford says.
The divorced dad — and father of a 13-year-old daughter with obsessive-compulsive disorder — quickly finds himself in bed with his own therapist, played by Selma Blair.
“That is a very, very complicated relationship,” Helford says. “It may be the most dysfunctional relationship I have ever seen.”
Sheen’s character will date “a variety of women” throughout the season, but “is not looking to float from flower to flower,” Helford says. “He is definitely a guy who is in the hunt for a better relationship.”
On the show — which employs a dozen crew members from “Two and a Half Men” — Charlie provides group therapy to a recurring ensemble of patients including:
* Patrick (Michael Arden): a gay personal shopper. “He is passive-aggressive and was put into anger therapy for slapping a customer,” Helford says.
* Ed (Barry Corbin): a former factory worker who is forced into retirement and is now angry at the world. “His wife says, ‘You’ve got to go into therapy. You are a mess,’ ” Helford says.
* Lacey (Noureen De Wulf): “She shot her boyfriend in the balls for cheating on her,” the actress says.
* Nolan (Derek Richardson): a cubicle-bound office worker who is attracted to angry people. “He likes angry bosses and angry women,” Helford says. “He has a big crush on Lacey.”