CBS called Melissa McCarthy, Jon Cryer and Christine Baranski 'the death of comedy.' Nobody ever apologized

Chuck Lorre's memoir Sitcom is out, and its ugliest running theme is confirmed by the author in The Hollywood Reporter: at CBS castings over the years, Christine Baranski, Jon Cryer and Melissa McCarthy were each dismissed as "the death of comedy." Three actors, three different decades of hits that followed, one label.

Asked whether any of those executives ever apologized once the shows became the network's spine, Lorre's answer in the interview was one word: "No."

The case files

The memoir has receipts on each name:

• Jon Cryer. Before Two and a Half Men, CBS casting chief Peter Golden warned Lorre: "Just be warned, we don't want to hear the words 'Jon Cryer'" — the actor's string of failed sitcoms had branded him the death of comedy. Les Moonves sat grim through the audition and, when Lorre applauded, asked: "Really? Applause?"
• Melissa McCarthy. For Mike & Molly, Lorre writes, "once again, CBS hated her" — one executive suggested casting a more attractive actress in a fat suit instead. Lorre's position hardened into a sentence: "Melissa was going to be my Molly. End of discussion."
• Christine Baranski. The same label trailed her through CBS before Lorre cast her anyway — first in Cybill, then as Leonard's ice-cold mother on The Big Bang Theory.

The scoreboard on those three bets is almost comically lopsided. Cryer played Alan Harper for twelve seasons and won two Emmys, in 2009 and 2012. McCarthy won her Emmy for Mike & Molly in 2011, the same year Bridesmaids made her a movie star. Baranski took an Emmy for Cybill in 1995 and collected four more nominations for Big Bang.

Cryer won two Emmys playing the role CBS didn't want to hear his name for.

The actual lesson

My read: this isn't a story about executives being wrong, which is routine. It's a story about what stands between a wrong executive and a wrong decision — a showrunner with enough leverage and stubbornness to spend it on actors. Lorre kept doing it after these three, most famously handing Mom to Allison Janney, who turned it into two more Emmys for the network that keeps not apologizing to anyone.

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Viewers, it turns out, can feel this pattern even without knowing the casting history:

"MOM was a great show with Allison Janey. It should have gone on forever."

— a YouTube comment under a recent Lorre interview, 65 upvotes

The uncomfortable version of the question is the one Lorre's "No" leaves hanging. All three of these actors were one compliant showrunner away from never getting the roles at all — and the people who almost made that happen went on to run the same network, unbothered.

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