Melanie Lynskey clears up 'Two and a Half Men' salary rumors
Melanie Lynskey clears up 'Two and a Half Men' salary rumors
Sameen Chaudhry, USA TODAYTue, November 3, 2026 at 7:40 PM UTC
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Melanie Lynskey is setting the record straight when it comes to her "Two and a Half Men" salary, insisting it's not as much as rumored.
The "Yellowjackets" star shared the actual figures she earned on the CBS sitcom after an Instagram user claimed she was making $200,000 to $300,000 an episode by the end. The comment appeared beneath a clip of her former castmate Holland Taylor discussing her own pay.
"Sorry, but this insane number is floating around on the internet and I must tell you how wrong it is," Lynskey wrote. "I only did 63 out of 262 episodes of that show. I made literally one tenth of that stated number per episode."
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Lynskey, 49, said she earned $20,000 an episode when she signed on to play Rose on "Two and a Half Men." Her biggest paycheck, as she recalls it, was about $43,000 for one episode in the final season.
The actress added that this amount was "before agents, managers, business managers cuts, and taxes, so you take home around 50% of what you are paid."
She went on to add that she was "extremely grateful for the job and for the money," which set her up financially.
"I was 25 years old when I got that job, and a couple of years in I was able to put a down payment on a house," she wrote. "It wasn't my show and I felt fine with what I was paid - l just get annoyed when it's misreported.
"But there is this insane idea that I made millions of dollars and it's so ridiculous," she continued. "If Holland's talking about it I'll talk about it too."
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The discussion ensued under a clip shared on Instagram from Taylor's appearance on the "Alchemy with Anthony Mason" podcast where she opened up about her salary on "Two and a Half Men."
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What did Holland Taylor say about her 'Two and a Half Men' salary?
Taylor played Evelyn Harper, the mother of Charlie (Charlie Sheen) and his brother Alan (Jon Cryer). On the Oct. 21 episode of "Alchemy with Anthony Mason," she said the sitcom paid her about what she'd made on another series eight years earlier. Even four Emmy nominations for playing Evelyn didn't bring a raise, she said.
"They never paid me very well on that show," Taylor told Mason. "I loved a lot about that show, but they were not full of courtesies."
When her six-year contract ended, Taylor said, producers told her they couldn't pay her more. By then, she had decided she wanted to return as a guest so she could choose when to say yes.
"They said, 'We can't afford to give you more.' I said, 'I'm cool with it. I just will come back as a guest sometime if you need me.'"
Back on Instagram, Lynskey called Taylor "a legend and a queen" and said she deserved plenty of raises.
The discrepancy in salaries among the cast seems stark. In his memoir "Sitcom," series co-creator Chuck Lorre estimated that Charlie Sheen, who played Rose's neighbor Charlie Harper, made about $1.25 million an episode, but the exact amount was "maybe more," according to Lorre.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Melanie Lynskey clears up 'Two and a Half Men' salary rumors
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
