Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award-nominated series Two and a Half Men boasts of a small but unique cast that brings together Charlie Sheen, Jon Cryer and Holland Taylor in a comedy series that has spanned five seasons, with its sixth beginning a few weeks ago.  Tonight, we’ll get to see the gang come back for Episode 6.03, “Damn You, Eggs Benedict,” which sees Charlie attempting to cook while Alan tries dating two women at the same time.

Two and a Half Men is created by Chuck Lorre, the man behind another successful comedy series, The Big Bang Theory.  He brings together the wonderful mix of great actors with the ability to create dynamism through comedy and laughter.  The show boasts of a cast that includes Holland Taylor, one of the most revered actresses in television today.

“She has a Thatcherite bearing,” series star Jon Cryer said.  “There’s just a chin-up sort of power that she’s got. If she’d been born in Europe, she’d be nobility.”

The 65-year-old actress has built a successful career beginning with Bosom Buddies, her first television series in 1980.  Her role as a powerful and quite eccentric judge on The Practice earned her an Emmy in 1999, and in 2001, she appeared in the film Legally Blonde as a demanding law professor.  More importantly, her role as Evelyn Harper on Two and a Half Men earned her three Emmy nominations.

“As an actor, I do have a certain authority,” Taylor admitted.  “I can’t be in a subservient or an obsequious part. I’m really not good at it.  But in my life I’ve often been very much on my back foot and very timid.  So I don’t know where that sense of maturity and strength came from, because I didn’t really have those strengths.”

While Taylor may think that she isn’t believable as Evelyn, creator Chuck Lorre says that “[Evelyn] is a great toxic character, an incredibly narcissistic woman who truly views every word and action through a prism of me, myself and mine.  But Holland has also captured the ambivalence in the character, that she needs her children but sees them as an extension of herself.”

Additionally, Taylor admits, “I don’t know anyone like [Evelyn].  So it’s very hard to do.  But I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘She’s my mother’ or, ‘It’s my Aunt Helen,’ so obviously this woman exists in plentitude.”

Catch more of Holland Taylor on tonight’s Two and a Half Men, which airs at 9pm on CBS.


-Valerie Anne del Castillo, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: NY Times, TV Guide
(Photo courtesy of CBS)