![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/e65f803570cb7a22747f9691cee601c055-charliesheen-doc.rhorizontal.w700.png\")
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\n There\u2019s also a whole aside about how Charlie loves diners.
\n Photo: Netflix\n <\/p>\n
Once upon a time, a Charlie Sheen meltdown could control a whole news cycle: He\u2019d freak out, he\u2019d do a tell-all interview even more chaotic than whatever freak-out he\u2019d had, there\u2019d be lawsuits, and his father, Martin Sheen, would quietly try to help his son maintain dignity in the face of endless press baiting and hounding. While this happened several times throughout Charlie\u2019s career, it occurred most recently and notably in the late 2000s and early 2010s, when his severe drug addiction and erratic behavior led to his being fired from Two and a Half Men<\/a> and embarking on his nationwide \u201cMy Violent Torpedo of Truth\/Defeat Is Not an Option<\/a>\u201d tour.<\/p>\n The Charlie of those decades is not the Sheen we see front and center in Andrew Renzi\u2019s two-part Netflix documentary, aka Charlie Sheen. Now eight years sober, Sheen is still brash, uncouth, and frustratingly charming, but he seems to have finally reckoned with his path of destruction. The three-hour-long doc is complete with commentary from his co-star Jon Cryer, two ex-wives, one brother, two children, and Sean Penn. Because Sheen\u2019s mess has been public for so long, it could feel as though we\u2019ve seen this all before, but aka Charlie Sheen goes deep and is a fun companion piece to his memoir, The Book of Sheen, also out this week. In both, Sheen muses on the lasting ramifications of his decades of drug abuse \u2014 and how he\u2019s trying to make up for lost time. Here are the eight biggest takeaways.<\/p>\n Toward the end of the second part of aka Charlie Sheen, Sheen goes on the record about things he\u2019s never discussed publicly, including Corey Feldman accusing the actor of sexually assaulting Corey Haim on the set of Lucas in 1986. \u201cIt\u2019s a piece of vile fiction,\u201d Sheen says. He also addresses the lawsuits wherein he was accused of knowingly transmitting HIV to his sexual partners. \u201cThere\u2019s only one person in the entire fucking mix who has this thing,\u201d he says, referring to HIV. He points to himself and adds, \u201cAnd that\u2019s this guy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis would have been a star-turning moment,\u201d Sheen explains, but he had already signed onto Grizzly II: Revenge, a campy horror sequel to the 1976 film Grizzly. Though the film he agreed to do also starred Laura Dern and George Clooney, Sheen could feel that The Karate Kid was a better opportunity. When he took the dilemma to his father, Martin told him he had to stick with his word and go ahead with Grizzly II. \u201cYour word in this business is going to carry you further than one big movie,\u201d Martin said at the time. Charlie wasn\u2019t happy, though he stuck with Grizzly II despite feeling \u201cterribly misled.\u201d<\/p>\n When being indicted for pandering, the infamous Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss purportedly had a list of celebrity clients, including Sheen. His name went public because he paid for services in signed traveler\u2019s checks, allowing police and investigators access to his identity. The U.S. Attorney allegedly told Charlie that he would be granted immunity if he testified against Fleiss. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be a rat, but there was no other way out of it,\u201d Sheen maintains. Fleiss put it another way: \u201cHe\u2019s a crybaby rich boy. They\u2019re not gonna do shit to him. He\u2019s Charlie Sheen.\u201d<\/p>\n CBS presold a few seasons of the hit sitcom Two and a Half Men in a way that made it tricky for Sheen to pull out of his role when he started using drugs. Les Moonves, the network\u2019s CEO, went to Sheen\u2019s home to advocate for his return to the show, even as he was crashing out. Sheen felt like he was done, but he was able to negotiate his contract up to a whopping $2 million per episode. \u201cThe dictator of North Korea was a guy named Kim Jong-il. He acted crazy all the time and thus got enormous amounts of aid from countries who were so scared of him,\u201d Cryer says. \u201cThat\u2019s what happened here.\u201d<\/p>\n Charlie\u2019s ex-wife Richards tells a story about being asked to check on the actor in the aftermath of their separation. She brought sandwich ingredients over, and Cryer watched her make sandwiches not only for Sheen, but for the sex workers who were at his place. \u201cI\u2019m trying to help \u2014 get \u2014 well, keep him good,\u201d Richards says of her mission during that time. Of all the people from Sheen\u2019s past who weigh in on their time with him, she seems both the most grounded and most agonized. In the final shot of her in the documentary, she wipes away tears: Whatever pain she experienced with him still resonates, even though she supports him from afar.<\/p>\n Not long after Richards and Sheen separated, he started dating actress Brooke Mueller. Jon Cryer recalls his wife going to Sheen\u2019s wedding in his stead and recalling Martin\u2019s brief words of encouragement: \u201cI hope you know what you two are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n How exactly did Sheen get sober after all these attempts at rehab and lifestyle changes? His drug dealer and friend Marco gets credit. As Sheen\u2019s addiction and behavior got worse in the early 2010s, it became clear that nothing was going to stop him from going down this path. \u201cHis drug counselor at the time told me, \u2018Is there any way you can make it less potent?\u2019\u201d Marco recounts. He then started to incrementally decrease the amount of cocaine in the crack he made, giving Sheen weaker and weaker drugs. It took about 18 months, but Charlie eventually got tired of smoking \u201cbunt crack\u201d that he thought was \u201cgood crack.\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s supporting players that are more important in the story than myself,\u201d Sheen concludes \u2014 and Marco is certainly one of them.<\/p>\n Childhood friend and loyal companion Penn speaks to Sheen\u2019s wayward creativity as a teen and their overlap as young heartthrobs in the \u201980s, but every time he appears in a talking head, Penn is clutching a cig. This might be unremarkable in and of itself, but it\u2019s the third time in recent cultural memory that Penn has brought his security cigarette with him: Just earlier this week, he appeared with one in a New York Times photo shoot<\/a>, and he went through at least four cigarettes on the season finale of John Mulaney\u2019s Everybody\u2019s Live<\/a>.<\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s also a whole aside about how Charlie loves diners. Photo: Netflix Once upon a time, a Charlie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[18455,430,2868,15094,859,156,11871,18454,409,1094,111,43,139,69,18456,437,2871,18457],"class_list":{"0":"post-16435","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celeb-documentary","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-charlie-sheen","11":"tag-denise-richards","12":"tag-documentary","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-jon-cryer","15":"tag-les-moonves","16":"tag-movies","17":"tag-netflix","18":"tag-new-zealand","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-newzealand","21":"tag-nz","22":"tag-streaming-movies","23":"tag-tv","24":"tag-two-and-a-half-men","25":"tag-winning"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}