A complex history. Jon CryerAnd Charlie SheenWere costars on Two and a Half MenSheen was fired in 2011 after eight seasons of the hit sitcom.
“In the early years, the life with Charlie Sheen was great,” Cryer told Entertainment Tonight in June 2022. “We got along great, he had been sober for two years when we started the show, and it was really important to him to keep sober. And for those first few years, the show was also going so smoothly.”
The Pretty in Pink actor previously stated that he believes Sheen’s 2006 split from Denise RichardsThis may have been what led him to re-inject drugs that year. “At first he could handle it, and he was still incredibly professional — and still lovely, by the way, to everybody on set — but you could just see that stuff was wearing on him,” Cryer told Entertainment Weekly in 2020.
Production Two and a Half Men was halted twice, first in 2010 and then again in 2011, while its star attended rehab. While reflecting on Sheen’s battle with addiction in 2022, Cryer told ET that he and Chuck Lorre, the show’s creator, were deeply worried about the actor’s health.
“I think there was a moment where Chuck Lorre and I were looking at each other and we said, ‘It’s not worth this show going on if going on enables Charlie Sheen to kill himself. If giving him enough money to do whatever the thing is that ends his life, you know, we don’t want to be a part of that,’” the Emmy winner said.
Less than a week before Sheen was slated to return to the sitcom after his 2011 stint in rehab, he called into the Alex Jones radio show to rant about Lorre, calling him a “charlatan” and a “clown.” The Platoon actor also mocked Alcoholics Anonymous, calling it “a bootleg cult” with “a 5 percent success rate.”
The New York native was fired from his top rated series the month following. Ashton Kutcher later joined the cast as a billionaire who purchased Sheen’s character’s house after his untimely death.
After being fired, the Three Musketeers actor had some harsh words for his former costar. “Jon has not called me,” Sheen claimed while speaking to E! News in March 2011. “He’s a turncoat, a traitor, a troll.”
However, the upcoming February 2021 election will see the Spin City alum told Yahoo! Yahoo! Entertainment that he had regrets about how he acted at the time. “There was 55 different ways for me to handle that situation, and I chose number 56,” he said at the time. “And so, you know, I think the growth for me post-meltdown or melt forward or melt somewhere — however you want to label it — it has to start with absolute ownership of my role in all of it, and it was desperately juvenile.”
Scroll through for a timeline of Cryer and Sheen’s ups and downs:
