{"id":140588,"date":"2025-09-13T08:35:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T08:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/140588\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T08:35:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T08:35:06","slug":"jon-cryer-really-likes-comparing-charlie-sheen-to-north-korean-dictators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/140588\/","title":{"rendered":"Jon Cryer really likes comparing Charlie Sheen to North Korean dictators"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jon Cryer<\/a> had an extensive career\u00a0before\u00a0starring in CBS sitcom hit\u00a0Two And A Half Men\u00a0with Charlie Sheen, and he\u2019s had a pretty good career since then. (Notably having a\u00a0lot of hammy fun as the Lex Luthor of the now-defunct Arrowverse.) But he\u2019s now once again picking up attention, not for his own life, but for the ways it\u2019s been pulled into Sheen\u2019s undeniable orbit over the years. That\u2019s courtesy of a new Netflix documentary about his old co-star,\u00a0aka Charlie Sheen, which Cryer ended up sitting down for an interview for (after a number of stated reservations), and which saw him compare his old colleague to no less weird a figure than former North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il.<\/p>\n

Cryer specifically deployed this geopolitical nightmare metaphor while talking about Sheen\u2019s contract negotiations as Two And A Half Men\u00a0(and his various crises) went on, which ultimately saw Sheen take home roughly three times what Cryer was making on the series. \u201cThe dictator of North Korea was a guy named Kim Jong-Il,\u201d Cryer notes in the doc (per Variety<\/a>). \u201cHe acted crazy all the time and thus got enormous amounts of aid from countries who were so scared of him that they would shovel money at him. Well, that\u2019s what happened here. [Sheen\u2019s] 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.\u201d (For what it\u2019s worth, this is\u00a0not\u00a0the first time Cryer has compared Sheen\u2019s tactics to North Korean appeasement strategy; in an interview with us last year<\/a>, he compared Sheen to Kim Jong-un, instead.)<\/p>\n

Cryer points out that Sheen (who was \u201cin the midst of falling apart in every way that I can imagine\u201d) had CBS at least partially over a barrel because the show had been pre-renewed for multiple seasons before Sheen\u2019s struggles with addiction kicked back up. (Sheen ultimately left the series before a final season, which brought in Ashton Kutcher to replace him; the show\u2019s final episode remains a weird meta commentary on the whole situation, with the characters worried \u201cCharlie\u201d is coming back to kill them, and creator Chuck Lorre dropping a piano on a Sheen stand-in to end the show as a whole.)<\/p>\n

Cryer\u2014who also wrote a lot about Sheen in his 2015 memoir<\/a>\u2014is apparently gun-shy enough about the whole thing these days that he really debated even sitting down for the aka Charlie Sheen\u00a0interview. \u201cIf you wonder what it\u2019s like to work with Charlie Sheen for eight years,\u201d he jokes in the just-released doc, \u201cWhen I started, I had hair. I had some trepidation about participating in this, partially because part of the cycle of Charlie Sheen\u2019s life has been that he messes up terribly, he hits rock bottom, and then he gets things going again. And he brings a lot of positivity in his life, and that\u2019s when he burns himself out again. He just can\u2019t help but set that house on fire, and I didn\u2019t want to be a part of that cycle. I\u2019m not here to build him up and I\u2019m not here to tear him down. But I sure hope this doesn\u2019t go bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jon Cryer on the lessons you can learn from Charlie Sheen<\/a>Jon Cryer\u2019s Lex Luthor makes his Supergirl debut in an overstuffed episode<\/a><\/p>\n

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