Jon Cryer details Charlie Sheen’s meltdown in his memoir, ‘So This Happened’
ADULT magazines, prostitutes and a co-star out of control ... Jon Cryer has opened up about what really went on behind the scenes of Two and a Half Men.
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ADULT magazines, prostitutes and a co-star out of control ... Jon Cryer has opened up about what really went on behind the scenes of Two and a Half Men.
In his soon to be released memoir So That Happened, Cryer shares some revealing stories about his longtime co-star, Charlie Sheen, who was fired from the sitcom in 2011 after making derogatory comments about the show’s creator, Chuck Lorre.
“One day during the first season of Two and a Half Men, I got a knock on my trailer door,” said Cryer in an excerpt of his memoir published in The Hollywood Reporter.
“It was Charlie — my trailer was next to his — and he seemed panicked ... He handed me a heavy shopping bag. ‘Denise (Richards) is coming over,’ he said, ‘and I need you to hide something for me.’”
Cryer was worried the bag contained illegal substances, but he was relieved to discover its contents were much more “tame”.
“The bag was filled to the brim with porn. I was prepared for the weirdest, but it really was all pretty tame, some of it just topless mags. Really, if this was the worst I’d have to deal with regarding Charlie’s vices, bring on the bags of porn for me to hide.”
At the end of the show’s second season, Charlie Sheen split from his wife Denise Richards.
“Both Charlie and I became single at the same time,” said Cryer, “Which was … interesting”.
The newly single Sheen started hooking up with plenty of women and he would often show Cryer X-rated photos of the females he’d slept with.
“He’d show me a picture he’d taken of somebody’s vagina,” said Cryer.
“It was always a perfectly nice-looking vagina, but I would invariably think, ‘Why just this, and not the rest of the person?’”
Sheen eventually convinced Cryer, who was struggling in the dating department, to turn to prostitutes to alleviate his loneliness.
“Charlie suggested a few online purveyors he used, as this was when prostitution was gaining a foothold on the internet,” said Cryer.
But the actor, who played Alan on the show, said he found the experiences quite awkward.
“If Charlie’s example of his evening’s entertainment was best exemplified by a snapshot of lady parts, mine would be a picture of me hunched over a table of papers and telling a hot lady, ‘The real estate boom is building, you need to diversify.’”
On Christmas Day in 2009, it became clear to Cryer that his co-star wasn’t sober anymore, after Sheen was arrested for spousal battery of his third wife, Brooke Mueller.
“Alarmed and freaked out, I texted him: ‘Dude, my thoughts are with you. If you need to talk, give a call; if you’ve got bigger problems, call me when you get back.’
“Charlie texted back: ‘Thanks bro. Yikes — f**k me, wut a bad day … I’m flying home tonite. I’ll try to call over the weekend. Shower rape was bad but the food was okay. Hair and makeup for mug shot got there too late.’”
Shockingly, the show’s producers seemed happy to overlook Sheen’s problems and rewarded him with a pay rise.
“He managed to secure a massive raise [to $1.8 million an episode], fully three times what I was being paid,” said Cryer.
“I immediately began contemplating a series of well-publicised drunken brawls in retirement homes or possibly leading cops on a destructive car chase just prior to my next contract negotiation.”
When Sheen was eventually sacked in 2011 after his meltdown, Cryer was shocked by the public’s reaction, describing it as “unsettling”.
“An astounding number of people stood up for Charlie, as though people should be able to show up to work rarely, if at all, verbally abuse their co-workers publicly with anti-Semitic slurs, get arrested on a regular basis — as well as abuse drugs to the point where they can barely function — and not have their high-paying jobs threatened.”
Read the full expert at The Hollywood Reporter. ‘So That Happened’ by Jon Cryer will be published in April by New American Library.
Originally published as Jon Cryer details Charlie Sheen’s meltdown in his memoir, ‘So This Happened’