Charlie Sheen called his return to television “surreal” after dealing with drug addiction and alcohol abuse.
Sheen is starring in the new TV series “Bookie.” The actor joined “Two and a Half Men” creator Chuck Lorre again to portray a fictional version of himself alongside comedian Sebastian Maniscalco, who plays a Los Angeles bookie.
“Look, for a while, there wasn’t much about my life to complain about,” Sheen told People magazine. “I lived a life where people were really happy when I showed up, and they were sad when I left.”
“That went away when everything turned to s—,” he added. “It turned into, ‘Oh, God. Here he comes,’ and then ‘Is he gone? Good.'”
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Sheen previously compared his downward spiral in 2011 to a “demonic possession” during an interview on “Loose Women.” However, he now feels ready to return to the spotlight after spending the last six years sober with a “predictable routine.”
“Chuck reached out, he said, ‘Hey, it’s time to bury the hatchet. It’s time for us to give each other a hug. And remember the great stuff that we did together,'” the actor told the outlet. “Because we made a lot of people happy for a long time, and we left some really solid work behind us.”
“Both of us were just beaming. Beaming,” he told People about the reunion on the set of “Bookie.”
Sheen also admitted, “It’s one of those things that is so surreal that I keep hearing Al Michaels’ famous hockey call: ‘Do you believe in miracles?!’ It’s a trip.”
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Lorre echoed a similar sentiment in his own interview about working with Sheen again years after the actor’s public meltdown.
Sheen publicly attacked Lorre in 2011 after the creator shut down production of “Two and a Half Men” as the “Anger Management” star entered rehab. At the time, the actor wrote a letter to TMZ calling Lorre a “little maggot” and also referred to him as a “stupid, stupid man.”
Public comments and an interview when Sheen said he was “winning” and had “tiger blood” led to his firing from the show.
“Well, I think it’s important to say first, for eight and a half years we had a terrific time,” Lorre recently told “Entertainment Tonight.” “We were friends, we worked together, and we made a show we were proud of. We laughed a lot. It was a crazy, edgy, risqué show, and we took great pride in pushing the envelope.”
“And then it all went down in a very dark and difficult way,” he continued. “It was really hurtful, it was humiliating, it was depressing, it was infuriating. It was all sorts of horrible things. For a long time, I couldn’t watch the show, I couldn’t watch reruns, it was just too painful.”
For Lorre, the first table read with the actor was “closure” all these years after the “Two and a Half Men” drama, and he believes it was the same for Sheen.
“The first time I saw him [was] before the table read for the first episode, which is nerve-wracking to begin with,” he shared. “It was just the most natural thing in the world. The two of us hugged… It was closure. It was healing. And it was a big weight off my heart.”