by Jon Cryer
The cast, meanwhile, was quickly coming together, too. When the show brought on Conchata Ferrell as Berta the housekeeper, it was immediately obvious this was a great addition. When I met Conchata, I geeked out because I’d loved her in the movie Network, and even the short-lived seventies sitcom Hot L Baltimore. As she listened to me rattle off her IMDb page to her, she laughed it off as if it were impossible for her to believe I was actually a huge fan.
I was. Am. Always will be.
* * *
The ratings out of the gate were great, pulling in nearly the same numbers as our esteemed, beloved, award-winning lead-in, Everybody Loves Raymond. The second week’s numbers barely dropped. We were an instant hit, and this was something I had never experienced.
There was some guilt involved, because my wife moved out two months into that first season, so while I was feeling horrible about what my young son was having to go through at home, my professional life was going to be a source of comfort, creativity, and happiness. Knowing the show wasn’t going anywhere for at least a little while was a balm, believe me.
I made a joke to someone that it took only the best sitcom producer currently working in television, the best writers, the best cast, and the best crew to finally create a show that even I couldn’t kill.
* * *
I looked at Charlie and Denise Richards that first season, married a year, a kid on the way, and assumed they were still in postwedding euphoria. Denise did an early episode of the show, and she and Charlie were on the cover of TV Guide. The story inside: all about the playboy who’d finally settled down.
One day during that first season, I got a knock on my trailer door. It was Charlie. Our trailers are next to each other, right outside the Warner Bros. soundstage where we shoot.
He seemed panicked. “Dude! Dude! I need your help.”
“Sure thing,” I said, and ended the cell phone call I was on. “What’s going on?”
He handed me a heavy shopping bag. “Denise is coming over,” he said, “and I need you to hide something for me.”
Oh, boy, I thought. If this is drug paraphernalia . . . “Is it legal?” I asked.
“What? Yeah, oh, yeah. It’s legal. Hey, thanks.”
He left, and I had to look. By legal, he meant barely legal. It was a bag filled to the brim with porn. Curiosity getting the best of me, I had to find out what kind of porn captivates Charlie Sheen, what decadence frightens him into having me squirrel it away for him. Grannies and trannies? Clowns? Golden-shower pictorials? German scat porn starring Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke? I was prepared for the weirdest, but it really was all pretty tame, some of it just topless mags.
Really, if this was the worst I’d have to deal with regarding Charlie’s vices, bring on the bags of porn for me to hide. Even when I secretly hoped for a sighting of Sheen decadence, as when we traveled to Las Vegas to promote the first season by hobnobbing with CBS affiliates from around the country, I was confronted by a pretty grounded, sober married guy. We landed in Vegas, and I was ready to get the Sin City tour from my costar. Instead, he went to his room and took a nap.
We showed up at the party for the syndicated stations, and then Charlie went back to his room to sleep. I watched our director, Jim Burrows, play blackjack. What happened in Vegas didn’t have to stay in Vegas, because it was boring as shit.
* * *
As our first season of Two and a Half Men hit its stride, it was becoming clear to me that work was going to be my refuge. I was trudging through a divorce at the same time my character was going through one as well. Quite a few people openly asked me if this was “fun,” because I got to bring all that stuff to the show.
Uh, no. Not fun at all. This was not, “Yay, I get to have turmoil in my life and play it at work!” Of course, it brought added depth to scenes Alan had with Jake, but it’s not as if I was thinking, Thank God, the pain is so readily available!
When Charlie heard about what I was going through at home, he very sweetly took me aside one day and said, “Hey, man, I know things are really tough for you, so if you need a place to stay, you can crash at my house.”
I looked at him quizzically and said, “Thanks, Charlie, but . . . how much like the show do you want your life to be?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, smiling ruefully. “Bad idea.”
* * *
Charlie was in his element acting in a sitcom. His comic timing was impressive. I asked him if he’d done theater. He said he hadn’t. Of course, he’d done Spin City for two years after Michael J. Fox left, but that’s never a guarantee somebody’s comfortable with that format.
“I’ve just watched a lot of sitcoms,” he told me. “I used to love ’em as a kid.”
That was a real bonding moment for us. I pictured these two little boys with performing parents on separate coasts glued to fourteen-inch Magnavoxes watching Tootie get her heart broken on The Facts of Life. (Again, you know you watched it.) He and I laughed a lot that day about the shows we used to watch, and how ironic it was that we ended up making one together.
The first year of Two and a Half Men I learned something interesting, though. Where Charlie was most nervous was during the table read. Mondays we sit around a table and read the script out loud for the writers and producers. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are rehearsal. Thursday we shoot scenes in advance—whether outdoor scenes, or shots that point toward the “wall” that would be where the audience is—and Friday is when we film in front of the audience. Performance night Charlie was great, no more nervous than any of us. But what he hated was the table read.
That’s because Charlie used to have a mild stutter as a kid. He’s worked hard to overcome it, but he was always self-conscious about it. And since the table read is really a cold performance of a new script with no physical acting, it’s like a radio play—all you have to do is say it right—and therefore more daunting to Charlie.
He doesn’t like public speaking. He has anxiety about being in crowds. He didn’t like attending parties. He likes “partying,” but not going to parties. It was an interesting window into what made him tick, what might have spurred his self-medicating in darker times.
But he was sober Charlie those first few years, as far as we all knew, and he was a great, friendly, witty colleague.
* * *
As it was becoming clear that the show was turning into a breakout hit, CBS sent Charlie and me to the Television Critics Association convention to schmooze with the people who’d be passing judgment on us for the next few years. Television critics are a fiercely quirky bunch, but it was nice to see that generally the reception for the show was very positive. As I sidled up to the bar, I met a tall man with a profound widow’s peak.
He shook my hand and uttered three bone-chilling words: “I’m Marc Peyser.” Who the hell on God’s green Earth is Marc Peyser? you ask. Well, he was none other than the television editor of (ominous chord) Newsweek magazine, the same publication who so casually dismissed my entire career and earned a sharply worded letter from me in response.
I tried to give him my best “Hello, Newman” reading as I replied, “Hello, Marc.”
He smiled warmly and said, “I just wanted to tell you that that we all loved your letter; it got passed around the office quite a bit.”
I softened. “Really?”
“Yes, we’re thinking about writing a follow-up to the first article about how we got it wrong.”
I softened more. “Really?”
“Yeah, we were considering putting your letter in it, and maybe even the one your dad wrote.”
I blanched. “Really?”
“Oh, yeah,” he replied. “His was just scathing. Looks like your dad’s totally got your back.”
I suppressed the lump in my throat from my father’s sweetly protective gesture of parental support, assured Marc that it’d be fine if they wanted to print my missive, and
marveled at how fast fortunes can change.
In the first week of November, Newsweek ran “The Curse of the Show Killers,” a terrific piece about many of the journeyman actors who’d been unfairly tagged with the stigma. They even mentioned my dad’s letter, but they didn’t print it, or mine for that matter.
* * *
While work was fulfilling my days, most nights I was still coming home to an empty house. The cascade of emotions surrounding my divorce would send me into an energetic funk—a mixture of frustration, anger, and sadness that I called “full-tilt mope.” I went all hermit, ordering in, surfing the Web, and watching late-night TV. One particular night I chanced upon Fuse—a channel that showed nothing but music videos. Hey, remember when MTV showed music videos? I mused to myself as I watched a Nine Inch Nails clip.
The next one was a song I’d never heard before. It started with a stadium-style backbeat, then a scruffy but irresistible guitar lick. The video itself was clever too, with some visual puns that instantly brought a smile to my face. Then came the chorus, a repeated admonishment to “get over it!” This was turning out to be a great song. The exact song I needed to hear at this moment. As the video ended it hit me: Damn it, they’re right! I really should just fucking get over it. I checked the name of the band. This was the first single from a new band out of Chicago called OK Go.
I got their CD the next day and the whole thing was terrific—propulsive, playful, and hilarious. I bought ten more CDs and started handing them out to my friends at my weekly pickup Ultimate Frisbee game. (Yes, I still played Ultimate Frisbee. Again, thank you, nerd school.)
I gave one to Richard Schenkman and he became an instant fan as well, and informed me that they’d be playing one of their first LA shows at the Troubadour on April 16.
April 16?! I thought. That’s my fucking birthday! It would be my first since the separation. As a birthday gift he bought me two tickets and instructed me to “take someone cute.”
The week of my birthday we were shooting an episode that introduced the character of my ex-wife’s sister, played by Teri Hatcher, who was squeezing in one last gig before filming the pilot of a show called Desperate Housewives. She was killing it on our show, with her warm but sardonic sense of humor, and she was beyond “cute.” So I asked her to the concert. She, too, was going through a divorce at the time, so she politely declined, citing unnamed “plans,” but I suspected that she wisely felt that a date for two people going through that shit concurrently was a lousy idea. I then asked a woman I played Ultimate with, who never replied to my e-mail. Another actress I invited actually laughed in my face. It was a good-natured laugh, though, a “that was a wonderful joke you made” laugh. This was not helping my spirits at all. In the end, I did go with someone “cute,” and his name was Richard Schenkman.
It’s nearly impossible to be despondent at an OK Go concert. They are generally pretty ecstatic experiences. But I was managing it. As they finished their song “What to Do” to deafening applause, they immediately leaped into another one, a tune I didn’t recognize at first.
Their lead singer, Damian Kulash, came to the mic during its opening chords and said, “Hey, everybody, there’s someone in the audience tonight who’s a big fan of the band, and frankly, we’re big fans of his.”
Now those opening chords were ringing a bell.
As he started singing, “Caroline laughs and it’s raining all day; she loves to be one of the girls . . .” my mouth dropped open. I looked at Richard, who had a sheepish grin on his face.
“Did you do this?” I yelled.
“Yeah,” answered Richard. “I e-mailed Damian. These guys are so cool!”
As Damian wailed, “Isn’t sheee pretty in pink? Isn’t sheee?” then shouted, “Happy Birthday, Jon!” I realized that it wasn’t nearly impossible to be despondent at an OK Go concert. It was actually impossible.
* * *
Working on a sitcom isn’t just the holy grail for actors; its steady and often enjoyable employment is also the goal for all of the artists and tradesmen who compose the crew as well. And when you have the luxury of a show that is known to be a hit, you end up with a group of fellow employees who are pretty much the cream of the crop at their respective trades. So much so that you begin to take their expertise for granted. For example, you could throw a ridiculous last-minute request at our prop mistress, Lee Lee Baird, such as, “For this scene, I’m gonna need a twelve-foot cheesecake with the words ‘Happy Bar Mitzvah, Ramon Garcia’ on it,” and without batting an eye, she’d stonily reply: “We got one on the truck.”
And this was typical of pretty much everyone on the show. Even our warm-up guy, Mark Sweet, operated at a level that boggled the mind. A warm-up performer’s job is to keep the audience entertained and engaged while the crew is preparing to shoot the scenes. There is a fair amount of downtime, and it’s quite easy for the audience to get bored. However, Mark’s capable of amping up a room of prisoners awaiting a firing squad. One Friday night there was a breakdown in the camera’s “tap,” the part that transmits what’s being filmed straight to the monitors, so the audience can watch a rough edit live. (Sometimes the sight lines aren’t great for the audience, so they need the monitors.) If that system doesn’t work, there’s no point in having an audience. There was much frantic hair pulling and effort to fix it, and we were down for two straight hours, which meant Mark had to keep that crowd energetic with jokes, then interaction, more jokes, maybe some magic tricks, and then even more interaction, for two whole hours. No comedian alive has that much material prepared and ready to go on a moment’s notice.
He not only vamped like a pro the entire time, but in one respect, the audience was so raucous that by the end of it, I thought that actually resuming the show would be something of a letdown. The rest of the crew has never been asked to step up in quite that fashion, but I’m confident that these guys would have what it takes to perform extraordinarily.
* * *
Fridays were great at Two and a Half Men, because the actors usually had a couple-hour break in between rehearsals and the live taping. And that meant one thing: laser tag.
Angus T. Jones was a rare creature; even though he had an incredible facility for remembering lines, taking performance notes, and delivering punch lines, he also remained a normal kid in show business. So when I noticed the laser-tag set that I bought for my son was going unused, Angus jumped at the chance to battle me in the environs of Stage 26. The two of us had the run of the place, and as long as we didn’t break anything no one seemed to mind. Some days I’d climb up into the light rigging to get a sniper-style bead on him; others it was strictly run and gun. Either way it was exhausting, and a great way to blow off steam before the show.
One night at the end of the game Angus handed over his laser rifle and said, “Will you tell your son thank you? Y’know, for letting us use his stuff?”
I said, “Sure.”
Angus was that kind of kid, deeply goodhearted. The next time I picked up my son I was about to pass on young Angus’s gratitude when I paused, and realized that I didn’t want to tell him. That it might actually hurt him to know that the dad whom he now saw only a few days a week was playing with a pretend son at work. And even using his own toys to do it. I suddenly felt ashamed.
That night after I put him to bed, I cried that divorced-dad cry. The one where you despair that the inexorable course of your life has caused your child pain.
* * *
When Charlie’s marriage to Denise ended during the second season—which I was truly saddened by, for obvious reasons—both Charlie and I became single at the same time. Which was . . . interesting.
Our parking spaces were right next to each other, and they were in front of the soundstage alleyway that housed our side-by-side trailers, so in the morning I’d often see him sitting outside his trailer smoking as I walked toward mine. During this time we’d have a conversation, and
he’d mention that things had been going well for him romantically. “Romantically” is my choice of words, not his.
Then, as if to prove this, he’d show me a picture he’d taken of somebody’s vagina. It was always a perfectly nice-looking vagina, but I would invariably think, Why just this, and not the rest of the person?
And what do you say in that moment? “Thank you for that vagina picture”? “How long have you been seeing . . . it”? “Please tell me she was awake”?
* * *
We talked about prostitutes. He’d said publicly that you don’t pay prostitutes to come to your house; you pay them to leave. He’d thought this through, obviously.
I was in a bad state right after my divorce, and I certainly didn’t feel dateable. I was an emotional basket case. What good was I to any woman I might have an interest in? I decided I might as well pay someone for company and certain intimate pleasures so that I could at least get my equilibrium back with the opposite sex. Charlie suggested a few online purveyors he occasionally used, as this was when prostitution was gaining a foothold on the Internet. He and I had different tastes, so I didn’t go with his exact recommendations, but my forays into prostitution were about as awkward as you might imagine.
I went with an out-call for my first try, which means they come over to your house, and as I waited for her that evening, I couldn’t help but think of my hooker-loving Upper West Side neighbor, Mr. Green, and his violent encounter with a tagalong boyfriend. My chosen vendor was alone, though, and she drove a white BMW to boot (nice!), plus sported a sexy Finnish accent. It was really a very friendly experience, maybe because the act of having sex is quite the conversational icebreaker. Afterward I inquired about seeing her again.
The next time I went to her place, which probably wasn’t really her place, but there you go. It was pretty depressing, but that didn’t matter, because we sat down, tried to make small talk, and awkwardly stumbled into a conversation about recent fluctuations in the stock market. Somehow I ended up spending twenty-five minutes of my hour helping her with financial planning. That was fine, really. I learned that the sex part of these transactions is fairly perfunctory, and that you may have a perfectly nice time chatting, but you always feel weird afterward, because you’ve spent all this money for the part that never lasts as long as you want it to. What I really needed to do was gear myself up to date like a normal person.