Adding yet another layer of winking self-reference to Charlie Sheen’s Anger Management, the forthcoming FX sitcom has just added Brett Butler, who was getting booted from major network sitcoms for drug abuse and erratic behavior back when Sheen was… well, doing those things too, but not on CBS’s dime. Butler—who recently revealed that her own downward spiral led to her living in a homeless shelter, because she didn’t have the foresight to turn it into a nationwide tour or make T-shirts—will join Sheen’s show as a bartender named “Brett,” thus hammering home that she, like Sheen’s character “Charlie,” is essentially playing herself and thus poking gentle fun at her own damaged, self-destructive past.
And of course, there’s even more self-awareness at play here: Both Butler and Sheen had very public rows with their shows’ shared producer Chuck Lorre (who’s spent most of his career working on sitcoms where he ended up hating the star and vice versa), suggesting it won’t be long before Anger Management brings in a “Chuck” for both “Brett” and “Charlie” to humiliate. “See, back in the ’90s you had to deal with consequences and have regrets and shit, but now you can just turn those into TV shows,” Sheen no doubt said to Butler while pitching this.