Jon Cryer opens up about Charlie Sheen: ‘It was blindsiding’

Emmy Award-winning actor Jon Cryer made a spirited debut on The Howard Stern Show on Tuesday, discussing his career in film and television. Cryer, perhaps best-known for his role as Alan Harper on Two and a Half Men, revealed his feelings about his co-star Charlie Sheen’s very public meltdown.

“When he and Denise split, obviously I was very sad about that and I liked Denise, but it didn’t seem right away that there was gonna be an issue,” Cryer said. “He still seemed very even-keeled, and he was always great to work with, by the way. Even during the craziness, on the set he was still bringing it, although something was off. If you watch the last season, he doesn’t look good and his timing was a little weird.”

Sheen appeared on The Alex Jones Show in 2011 and questioned the validity of the September 11 attacks, saying the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers looked like a controlled demolition. Cryer wasn’t unfamiliar with Sheen’s conspiracy theories, but he never took them seriously and started to worry after the Alex Jones interview.

“He had joked about stuff like that, and I talked to him about it making a joke because I thought it was the most ludicrous, dumb thing, and he stuck by it,” he said. “We started having sort of a playful argument in the makeup room, and I realized the people doing his makeup were really uncomfortable. We were all looking around going, ‘Is he serious about this?'”

Sheen later had his contract terminated by Warner Bros. and was replaced by Ashton Kutcher. After his dismissal, he made some disparaging remarks about Cryer and the show.

“It was blindsiding, is what it was, because it came out of nowhere. There were a million feelings, but the biggest one was worry because he just went crazy out of nowhere,” Cryer recalled. “We all loved him, we were very close as a cast and he was a great guy. You could not ask for somebody more loyal and cool.”

Cryer said he later received an apology from Sheen, but he didn’t know how sincere it was.

“The thing is, when you’re dealing with somebody with an addiction problem, you never know what is sincere and what is when they’re just trying to get to the next thing. He said it in the context of wanting to do another show with me. He wanted to do a show where the Harper brothers are back together again, this stuff never happened, basically start a new universe. I thought he was joking at the time, I laughed. But I do believe he was sincere.”

Cryer continued: “He said, ‘I’m sorry for all the bullshit, man.’ I was like, ‘That’s it?’ There was a lot of bullshit, there was an emormous amount of bullshit! Like I said, the biggest issue he’s got is he’s got an addiction that’s just kicking his ass. I’d love to have him back in my life again, I’d love for him to be sober. I don’t hold ill-will toward him because he’s got a disease.”

The show’s creator Chuck Lorre took the brunt of Sheen’s wrath, which still frustrates Cryer.

We all were really frustrated, all of us in the cast, because his anger just came out in this insane way and it was all directed at Chuck,” he said. “Chuck Lorre, our producer, had considered himself a friend of Charlie’s and they used to go to A.A. meetings together.”

Cryer said Sheen never indicated he had a problem with Chuck or the show prior to his meltdown.

“He liked the show. The weird thing about the explosion toward Chuck was that he didn’t complain about it,” Cryer said. “Every now and then he would complain like he didn’t like a line here or there, but everybody has that, everybody has something that’s not their favorite. And you know what? He’s Charlie Sheen, he can say to the writers ‘I don’t really like this can we fix it,’ and they would! They would’ve fixed it happily because they loved Charlie!”

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