Charlie Sheen explained why his former Two and a Half Man costar Jon Cryer was the “one person” he didn’t “personally” ask to participate in his tell-all Netflix documentary.
“I didn’t have the right number for him, so the director [Andrew Renzi] reached out to him,” Sheen, 60, told People after aka Charlie Sheen was released on Wednesday, September 10. “But when I saw everything that Jon spoke about — so honestly and very compassionately — I wrote to him and I said, ‘Hey, thank you for your contributions, and I’m sorry we didn’t connect personally. I hope to see you around the campus.’”
Sheen issued a public message to Cryer, also 60. “I’m thinking I wrote to the wrong number. It’s not like Jon did not respond,” he added. “He’s super responsible like that. So if you’re reading this, Jon, DM me your new number!”
Aka Charlie Sheen featured interviews from a variety of Sheen’s exes, former costars and others affected by his past addiction struggles. Cryer candidly addressed how Sheen’s drug use derailed their experience making Two and a Half Men.
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“I worked with Charlie Sheen for eight years and if you wonder what it’s like to work with him for eight years, when I started, I had hair,” Cryer quipped in the doc. “I had some trepidation about participating in this, partially because part of the cycle of Charlie’s life has been that he messes up terribly, he hits rock bottom and then he gets things going again.”
Cryer added: “He brings a lot of positivity in his life and that’s when he burns himself out again. He just can’t help but set that house on fire. I didn’t want to be a part of that cycle. I am not here to build him up and I’m not here to tear him down.”
Two and a Half Men, which aired for 12 seasons, followed brothers Charlie and Alan (Sheen and Cryer) living together while raising Alan’s son, Jake (Angus T. Jones), and navigating their very different lifestyles.
In 2010, Sheen entered a facility amid his substance abuse issues. He later returned to the show and signed a two-year deal for $2 million an episode — which made him the highest-paid TV star in history at the time.
“He’s in the midst of falling apart in every way I can imagine and he’s renegotiating his contract for another year of a show I am supposed to be on too. Apparently they had pre-sold a couple of extra seasons of the show. It was worth their while to spend this astonishing amount of money on Charlie,” Cryer recalled. “[Charlie’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.”
Sheen entered rehab again in 2011, and the show was put on hiatus before Ashton Kutcher ultimately replaced Sheen as a new character named Walden Schmidt. Sheen subsequently slammed the show, creator Chuck Lorre and even Cryer, who declined to publicly address the drama at the time.
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After hearing what Cryer had to say in his doc, Sheen praised his “really insightful” and “compassionate” words.
“It was really cool to hear from his perspective. He was in the line of fire with all that stupid s*** going on, and it was affecting him and his family and his career and all that. I can’t debate anything that he said,” Sheen continued. “He nailed that, and I’m so glad he opened that door, because it gave me a chance to really start thinking about that. He said, ‘He’s a guy that doesn’t believe he deserves the things he has, or that it was he earned,’ and I was like, ‘Whoa.’”
Sheen acknowledged that Cryer made some important points.
“Suddenly, I felt like I was on a couch in Jon’s therapy office, and he was dead on. That’s something that I’ve felt my whole life, because I had no formal training. I had no formal education, I didn’t even finish high school,” he explained. “And suddenly I’m working and traveling, I’m a star and all this stuff. It just happened. There was no plan. And there was always the voice of doubt there, telling me it’s only a matter of time before this all goes away, so to enjoy this as heartily as you can.”
Aka Charlie Sheen is currently streaming on Netflix.
