Jon Cryer is happy that his former Two and a Half Men costar Charlie Sheen and the show’s cocreator Chuck Lorre have put their feud to rest.
“I’m really glad they made up,” Cryer, 58, told Entertainment Tonight on Monday, December 18. “I can only [speak] for Chuck, clearly. He has the enormous relief of somebody who’s been able to rekindle a friendship that was really meaningful to him.”
Cryer added that Sheen, 58, and Lorre, 71, were “very, very close” during the early years of the CBS sitcom. “That they’ve managed to reconcile is really lovely,” he said.
Sheen and Lorre had a falling out in 2011 after Sheen publicly called the television producer a “contaminated little maggot” for shutting down production of Two and a Half Men amid Sheen’s struggles with drug and alcohol addiction. Sheen was subsequently fired from the show.
After over a decade of estrangement, Lorre asked Sheen to play a version of himself in his Max series Bookie, which premiered in November.
During an interview with Variety last month, Lorre recalled reaching out to Sheen’s rep about the role after “assuming [Charlie was] in a good place.” Despite feeling “nervous” to reconnect with his old friend, Lorre soon found that Sheen was also ready to bury the hatchet.
“Almost as soon as we started talking, I remembered, we were friends once,” Lorre said. “And that friendship just suddenly seemed to be there again. I don’t want to be too mawkish about it, but it was healing. And he was also totally game to make fun of himself.”
After struggling with alcohol and drug abuse during his time on Two and a Half Men, Sheen got sober in late 2017. During a 2022 interview with Entertainment Tonight, Cryer recalled being worried about his costar during the height of Sheen’s addiction.
“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,’” Cryer recalled.
As for whether Cryer would team up with Sheen again for a Two and a Half Men reboot, Cryer said on Monday that he’s “not going to rule anything out.” However, unlike Lorre, Cryer hasn’t talked to Sheen recently.
“I have not spoken to Charlie. I don’t know that he knows my number anymore,” Cryer admitted. “But anything could happen.”
Two and a Half Men came to an end in 2015 after 12 seasons. Ashton Kutcher joined the cast in season 9 to fill the void left by Sheen. During the season finale, Sheen’s character, played by a body double whose face is never seen, returns to his former home only to be crushed by a falling piano.
