Melanie Lynskey denies ‘ridiculous’ rumor about Two and a Half Men salary… after co-star Holland Taylor hit out at iconic sitcom

Melanie Lynskey got painfully honest about her Two and a Half Men salary just days after castmate Holland Taylor hit out at the sitcom and CBS.

The 49-year-old actress found herself in the comments section of a clip featuring 83-year-old Taylor revealing that she was never offered a raise for her role on the show during an appearance on the podcast Alchemy with Anthony Mason.

A fan wrote: ‘She was amazing in Two and a half Men. It’s crazy! She’s right they only paid her 75,000 an episode!! Sheen made 1 million to 1.8 million Jon Cryer made 575,000 Angus made 300,000 per episode. 

‘Conchetta made double 150,000 even Rose Melanie Lynskey made 200,000 to 300,000 in the end.’ 

Lynskey replied to the comment by clarifying the ‘insane’ rumors about her salary.

She wrote: ‘hey! Sorry, but this insane number is floating around on the internet and I must tell you how wrong it is. I only did 63 out of 262 episodes of that show. I made literally one tenth of that stated number per episode (started at $20,000 with I believe a 5% raise each season, but more than half of the episodes I did were in the first two seasons). 

‘The highest paycheck I got on the show was I think $43,000 for one episode in the final season. This is before agents, managers, business managers cuts, and taxes, so you take home around 50% of what you are paid.’

On the sitcom, Lynskey portrayed Rose who was Charlie Harper’s (played by Charlie Sheen) devoted, obsessive neighbor and stalker who was endearingly devious. 

She finished off her comment with expressing that she was grateful for the job, but called rumors that she had made millions from the show absurd. 

Lynskey concluded: ‘I was extremely grateful for the job and for the money, it allowed me to pay my small mortgage and pay bills and be able to work in indie movies and build a career, but there is this insane idea that I made millions of dollars and it’s so ridiculous. 

‘If Holland’s talking about it I’ll talk about it too [laughing emoji]’ 

She was referring to Taylor’s recent comments that she was never offered a raise for her role on Two and a Half Men.

‘They never paid me very well on that show,’ the 83-year-old veteran actress candidly divulged on a new episode of the aforementioned podcast.

The star, whose longtime partner is Sarah Paulson, explained, ‘I was paid on that show what I had made on a series like eight years before or something.’

She went on to highlight that despite earning four Emmy nominations for her turn as Evelyn Harper – mother to Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer’s characters – she never received a pay increase during her six seasons as a regular. 

‘They never gave me a raise. They usually do, just as a courtesy. I loved a lot about that show, but they were not full of courtesies,’ Holland noted.

The Hollywood fixture added that she left producers ‘astonished’ when she decided not to renew her contract in 2009. 

‘I said, “I don’t want to be under contract anymore,” and they said, “We can’t pay you any more money,”‘ she recalled.

She detailed, ‘First of all, I said, “You could actually pay me the cost of this building, but don’t bother, because I don’t want to continue on under contract.”‘

Instead, she made guest appearances at her discretion, telling producers, ‘I will visit the show occasionally if you want.’

Holland acknowledged the significance of her role, telling podcast host Mason, ‘I mean, I did play the boys’ mother [after all].’

She claimed that CBS ‘didn’t want to’ increase her pay because ‘they were just trying to protect themselves against giving me a raise of any significance.’

 And she pointed out that Cryer ‘quadrupled his salary’ when his contract was up.

After her contract expired, Holland did return occasionally in a guest capacity. 

In the end, she appeared in all 12 seasons of the series throughout its run from 2003-2015. 

In September 2025, 60-year-old Cryer opened up about earning significantly less than Sheen, 61, on the hit show. 

In the Netflix documentary aka Charlie Sheen, the 60-year-old actor said he earned one third of Sheen’s salary.

Per Forbes, Sheen was earning $1.9 million per episode at the show’s peak. 

Meanwhile, Cryer made only $620,000 per episode, as claimed by The Hollywood Reporter.

Cryer detailed how he felt about the pay discrepancy.

‘He’s in the midst of falling apart in every way that I can imagine, and he’s renegotiating his contract for another year of a show that I’m supposed to be on, too,’ he said, according to an account from People.

He went on to compare his troubled co-star – who was eventually dismissed from the show amid personal struggles – to a dictator.

Cryer stated: ‘The dictator of North Korea was a guy named Kim Jong-Il. He acted crazy all the time and thus got enormous amounts of aid from countries who were so scared of him that they would shovel money at him.

‘Well, that’s what happened here. [Sheen’s] negotiations went off the charts because his life was falling apart. Me, whose life was pretty good at that time, I got a third of that.’

He also revealed that the show’s network, CBS, had motive to ‘spend this astonishing amount of money on Charlie’ because it had ‘pre-sold a couple extra seasons’ of the series.

However, Sheen was let go from the television comedy in 2011 after he publicly criticized show creator Chuck Lorre. He was replaced by Ashton Kutcher.