In his Today show appearance with Matt Lauer last week, Charlie Sheen revealed something interesting about the terms of his new show, Anger Management, which is in development for FX. Apparently, his contract includes what Deadline is calling a “standard morals clause” because, as Sheen put it “There’s so much money at stake, I don’t blame them.”
If that’s the case, it means that FX is holding Sheen to a higher standard of behavior as a condition of his continued employment than CBS may have. When Sheen was fired from his network hit Two and a Half Men, one of the major issues in negotiating the terms of his dismissal was the unusual morals clause in his contract that stipulated he could only be terminated if Warner Brothers television believed he’d committed a felony. A standard morals clause normally gives a network much more latitude, saying that an actor can be fired if they behave in a way that brings negative attention to a show.
Given Sheen’s behavior, it seems appropriate that, even given his status as a big draw, he’d be held to the same standards as his fellow actors. FX president John Landgraf may not be able to define what sort of actions or behavior would make him consider an actor unemployable. But at least he’s giving himself wide latitude to fire this one.
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