[IMG:L]”At the risk of sounding a little self-important, if I’m the quarterback,” said Charlie Sheen looking over at his co-star Jon Cryer on the set of Two and a Half Men, “then this is my tight end. If we’re an ass, Jon‘s my right cheek.”
Cryer was more than okay with the analogy. “I knew the second I came in to audition and I saw Charlie Sheen there, I said, ‘Some day, I’m going to be that man’s right butt cheek, I can sense it now.'”
The two stars had just completed filming the 100th episode of their CBS sitcom, raising glasses of celebratory cider as their cast and crew enjoyed, appropriately, two and a half cakes. And they weren’t afraid to let a little of the show’s trademark snarkiness slip in amid the sentiment as they feted the landmark achievement.
“I think I’ve memorized something close to 4,500 pages–because I’m in every scene,” said Sheen, pausing to glare at series creator Chuck Lorre to big laughs before slipping back into a sincere smile. “And for that, I’m grateful.”
“For me, it’s about gratitude and it’s about genuinely being involved in something that I see as really a once-in-a-lifetime experience–unless you’re Kelsey Grammer,” he joked to his colleagues, though he himself enjoyed a long TV run after taking the lead in Spin City after Michael J. Fox. “This type of lightning usually doesn’t strike twice in a single lifetime and I’m just so blessed to have been struck in this way with you people.”
Cryer also expressed his joy at finding such a long and fruitful gig, especially after a slightly more checkered career on the small screen. “I had done four television shows, all of which I loved in different ways, but all that which did not last particularly long, which won me the wonderful nickname of, I believe it was, ‘The Show Killer’ … ‘Captain Show Killer,’ actually. And I just want to say it took probably the best crew in the world, frankly, the best cast in the world, some of the best writers in the world to finally make a show I could not kill.”
[IMG:R]After watching the cast knock out the particularly funny centennial episode, “City of Great Racks,” which marks a turning point in both Charlie’s emotional maturity when it comes to the women he dates, as well as his friendship with his one-time stalker Rose (Melanie Lynskey), Hollywood.com sat down with Sheen, who sneaked in a cigarette as we took in the surreal experience of chatting with him in the Harpers’ Malibu living room. And the actor talked about how early on he felt that the show had a shot at longevity.
“I knew we had something pretty special,” Sheen admitted. “I’d be lying if I said I knew we’d be standing here 100 weeks later talking about this episode, this milestone. The first time Jon and I ever read the parts, ever put anything on its feet together, just the two of us in the scene, something happened that was pretty unusual. It was two guys–at the risk of sounding arrogant that just got it–especially Jon. What I said about him, I meant from the heart, though I could have had a better analogy that didn’t deal with football or an ass.”
“A lot of the times, it’s me and Jon. We never discuss a scene before we play it. We never say, ‘Well, if you do that, that means I gotta do this.’ We don’t look at it, we just organically understand what our responsibilities are and just go from there.”
Perhaps because of his series of shows that didn’t make the cut, Cryer confided that his confidence going in wasn’t nearly as high as Sheen’s. “I have to say I didn’t feel really good about it. Chatty [Conchata Farrell, who plays Berta] claims that she knew we were going to be a hit. Yeah, right. She came on in the second episode. So she did have the benefit of having seen the pilot once she came on. I had no such certainty. The second I went in and auditioned for Chuck with Charlie, I knew that that relationship was really going to work, because Charlie‘s awesome. We just had that immediately. We totally got each other and totally got each other’s sense of humor.”
Cryer was concerned because to audition for the role of Alan he had to pass up a trip to Vancouver to try out for the part of Battlestar Galactica’s Gaius Baltar. “There would have been a lot less shirtless scenes if I had done it, which I think would be good for everybody,” he laughed. “At any rate, I was very nervous because I’d given up a chance at that to do this. But you just never know. I’d done a pilot with Chuck the year before and had a great time, and thought ‘This guy has a great show.’ And Jim Burrows was directing and I had done almost the whole first season of Partners with Jim. So I thought, ‘Oh, God, if ever the stars were aligning for something great to happen, this would be it.'”
“Also, I lived 10 minutes from Warner Bros,” added the always-practical actor. “That’s a commute that you dream about. So basically I did the show for the commute.”
Co-creator Chuck Lorre said he actually did think the show had the potential to amass 100 episodes, but “I didn’t know if I had the stamina for it. I really believed in the show from the first episode. I just thought Charlie and Jon and Angus [T. Jones] were remarkable from day one. I had a lot of faith in it. I didn’t know that I’d get to it. It’s a lot of work.”
Lorre is especially pleased with the genuine sense of family that’s emerged among the cast and crew over the course of five seasons. “We’ve watched a lot of things happen here: babies being born, there’s been marriage, there’s been divorce. Life is happening and we’re all in it. The family environment has been created over the years here. Charlie is a generous and very compassionate leader on the set. He truly is. He’s very selfless. He’s not counting the lines. There’s no star stuff. He’s a part of the team. That sets the tone on the stage.”
In an era when the half-hour sitcom appears to be something of an endangered species and the show’s traditional three-camera format is considered passé by some critics, co-creator Lee Aronsohn said the show’s popularity has endured “just by not settling and by paying attention to what’s going on, especially with Angus as he’s growing up, and paying attention to the kids that we have in our own life, and changes that we’ve gone through.”
“In the time that this show’s been on the air,” Aronsohn continued, “almost nobody is still married to the same person that they were married to, if they were married in the beginning. I was single when we started. I’m married now. Chuck was married then. Now he’s single. Charlie was married and now he’s engaged to somebody else. Jon was married to somebody. He’s now married to somebody else. I’ve had a son grow up at about the same rate that Angus has. So we’ve got a whole lot of reality to draw upon here, in terms of broken marriages and dating and childrearing.”
And indeed the anniversary episode was a family affair, with Cryer’s wife, Los Angeles entertainment reporter Lisa Joyner, and 7-year-old son Charlie watched the taping alongside Sheen’s fiancé Brooke Mueller from the other side of the cameras. “Brooke and I were talking to each other when they were doing all the cake-cutting,” Joyner told Hollywood.com. “I looked over at her and I said, ‘This is a really good time for us. It’s a really good time.’ I think we all realize it. Charlie realizes it and Jon, when he wakes up in the morning, he looks at me and goes, ‘Thanks for marrying me.'”
[IMG:L]”Today, things are, yeah, fabulous,” said Sheen, who despite a recent round of acrimonious verbal and legal sparring with ex-wife Denise Richards, said life is just about as good as it gets for him. “I don’t want to shortchange tomorrow and say that that couldn’t be any better. But yeah, I don’t have any complaints. I’m looking at what’s here, not what’s missing.”
There was, however, one aspect of the show that Sheen might change if he could: Charlie Harper’s taste for colorful silk retro-bowling style wardrobe, many by menswear designer Nat Nast. “I’ve got something I’ve wanted to say for 100 shows: I hate these f*cking shirts!”
“Oh, Nat Nast is going to be maaaad,” laughed Cryer.
