Fox Broadcasting on Sunday night threw quite a party as part of the Television Critics Association winter press tour, and where there’s a party… there was Charlie Sheen, ensconced in a mob of reporters and flutter of flashbulbs, the kind of frenzy that accompanies very few TCA soiree guests.
Speaking with myriad outlets, here is what Charlie Sheen had to say about parting ways with TV’s most-watched sitcom, the bad-boy behavior that led up to that split, and his new FX comedy Anger Management, which is inspired by the Jack Nicholson film and is due to debut this summer.
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ON LAST YEAR’S TSUNAMI OF CRAZY
* “It was a lot about what had been going on for all the years on the job… It was also 30 years in the business, pressure cooking up, and finally saying all the things I wanted to say. And I said them all at once. And it created a tsunami of bizarre proportions.”
* “I’m not crazy anymore! That was an episode. I think I’m a different person than I was yesterday. Everything is a lot more mellow and focused and much more rooted in reality.”
* Any regrets in retrospect? “I would’ve been a little less vocal about the people I work with in the executive branch. That’s about it, though.”
ON MOVING ON FROM TWO AND A HALF MEN
* “I just didn’t want that to be my television legacy. I wanted to do something that ended better, will end better. Nothing against those guys. They know what they did, I know what I did, and we all moved on. So I’m happy about that.”
* “I went from making $2 million a week to $17,000 a week on [Roman Coppola’s A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III], and I was never happier. It ain’t about the money.”
* “Man, it’s a bit nutty,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “I’m just a white guy from Malibu who dropped out of high school. I’m amazed that there’s still all this interest in what’s going on.”
ON CBS’ NEW MEN
* “It was a little bizarre to watch your own funeral. It was a little mean-spirited. But it’s dead and buried now, right?”
* “It’s a different show. I thought the [season premiere] moment of the urn, with the smoke of my body and [Ashton Kutcher’s] reveal at the window, was one of the great television moments of all time.”
FX Acquires Charlie Sheen’s Comeback Vehicle, Anger Management – Will You Watch?
ON BRINGING HIS ANGER TO FX
* “I spent a year in anger management, so I’ve already done my research,”
* “There’ll be no fart jokes, and [no] d–k jokes, and [no] poo-poo jokes, and [no] j–k-off jokes.”
* “Every time I see [Anger Management showrunner Bruce Helford], it’s like 100 warm hugs. To have my input welcome is an alien concept to me.”
* “I just wanted to do a show and play a character that dealt with more mature themes… with stuff that actually exists in the real world,” he told the L.A. Times.”A lot of the time on [Two and a Half Men], I felt we were servicing the comedy and not allowing it to come out of character situations.”
ON THE CATCHPHRASE THAT TOOK AMERICA BY STORM… FOR A GOOD 12 HOURS
* “I find it really strange now when someone comes up to me in the supermarket and says, ‘Winning!’ “
