Jon Cryer has blasted his former Two and a Half Men co-star Charlie Sheen, comparing him to a North Korean dictator over pay disputes stemming from the 2000s sitcom.
Cryer — who played Alan Harper, the brother of Sheen’s Charlie — reflected on his relationship with the actor in the recent Netflix documentary, aka Charlie Sheen — and let’s just say the years since the show’s conclusion have done little to cool down tensions.
As he explained while being interviewed for the doc, Cryer’s animosity all boils down to pay, with Sheen’s tumultuous (and infamous) personal life thrown in for extra measure.
From his substance-abuse struggles to legal battles and marital woes, Sheen was the stuff of pure tabloid fodder in the late aughties to the 2010s, and Cryer claimed this notoriety impacted pay negotiations whenever the pair were heading into a new season of Two and a Half Men.
“He’s in the midst of falling apart in every way that I can imagine, and he’s renegotiating his contract for another year of a show that I’m supposed to be on too,” Cryer said in the doc.
Then came the dictator comparison, with Cryer claiming Sheen was often given whatever he demanded in the same way Kim Jong-Il, the predecessor of Kim Jong Un, was given “aid from countries who were so scared of him”.
“The 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 that they would shovel money at him,” Cryer said.
“Well, that’s what happened here. [Sheen’s] 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,” he added.
If you’re wondering what a third of “off the charts” is, well it’s still a very pretty penny indeed.
By the show’s eighth season in 2010, Sheen was officially the highest-paid actor on television, earning an eye-watering $1.8 million ($2.7 million AUD) per episode, which is enough to buy another half of a man and round it out to a nice Three Men.
Sheen was axed from the sitcom and replaced by Ashton Kutcher by season nine, after Sheen called series creator Chuck Lorre a “clown” and a “stupid, stupid man”.
Elsewhere in aka Charlie Sheen, Cryer shared his “trepidation” around participating in the doc given the tumult that often circles the actor.
“If you wonder what it’s like to work with Charlie Sheen for eight years, when I started, I had hair,” Cryer said.
“I had some trepidation about participating in this, partially because part of the cycle of Charlie Sheen’s life has been that he messes up terribly, he hits rock bottom, and then he gets things going again … He just can’t help but set that house on fire,” he added.
For what it’s worth, Sheen appeared to take Cryer’s criticisms on the chin, telling PEOPLE that despite being the only person in the doc whom he didn’t personally contact to participate, Sheen “can’t debate anything” his co-star said.
Also appearing in the doc is Sheen’s ex-wife and former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Denise Richards, with whom he shares two daughters, Sami and Lola.
Two and a Half Men wrapped up after 12 seasons in 2015, but that hasn’t stopped this writer’s dad from rewatching it enough times to pay Cryer’s rent in residuals alone.
Lead images: CBS and YouTube
The post Jon Cryer Compares Charlie Sheen To A Dictator Over Unequal Pay On Two & A Half Men appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
