Mount Helix Resident Left Hit CBS Show Before Charlie Sheen Imploded

You might think working as the assistant to the executive producer* on the hit TV shows Two and a Half Men and the Big Bang Theory would yield some juicy gossip, but Tara Stillions Whitehead insists it was all pretty tame. Despite party boy Charlie Sheen’s recent zany behavior, she says he kept to himself on set.

“I didn’t see him,” said Stillions Whitehead, who worked on the show in 2008 before moving to the Mount Helix area in 2009. “He was usually in his trailer gambling. He had TV screens, and was gambling on horse races and smoking packs and packs of cigarettes.”

The job had its dreamy aspects, but the hopeful writer left the field because of the lack of opportunity to produce scripts. Now she’s working on a master’s degree in creative writing at San Diego State University and working on her thesis project—a science-themed murder mystery she’s calling Shadow Bands.

She’s already won third place in Glimmer Train Press Inc., a magazine that showcases literary fiction from new writers. The award was for General and the Tornado, a story involving a man named General, his obese wife, a widow who moves into town and a tornado that changes everything.

She says it’s very loosely inspired by her grandparents.

“That one I haven’t really showed them, so I don’t know if they’d like it,” Stillions Whitehead said. “It’s kind of based on this detached relationship they have with each other, but I like to add a fantastical element to it.”

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Tara Stillions Whitehead was the assistant director.