A two-part documentary about Charlie Sheen will premiere on Netflix on Wednesday, exploring the highs and lows of the actor’s multi-decade career.
aka Charlie Sheen, directed by Andrew Renzi, reveals Sheen’s reflections on pivotal moments throughout his life — from an unconventional childhood as the youngest son of an actor and artist in Malibu, Calif., to becoming the highest-paid TV actor, to his very public, drug-fueled downfall in 2011.
“I find the way he approached it to be brave and amazing,” Renzi told Netflix’s Tudum. “I wanted to show that he had beautiful times but also horrible times. We see the consequences of these actions. I wasn’t shying away from the truth.”
The new documentary will be released one day after Sheen’s new memoir, The Book of Sheen, is set to come out on Tuesday. As we head into what will likely be a week full of revelations about the 60-year-old’s life, here’s what we know about the Netflix docuseries.
Sheen didn’t want to film the documentary at first
In the trailer for aka Charlie Sheen, Sheen says, “The stuff that I plan on sharing, I had made a sacred vow to only reveal to a therapist,” adding that nothing is “off-limits.”
Despite Sheen’s transparency in the finished product, director Renzi told Tudum that the actor initially did not want to be involved in the project at all.
“[Sheen] was like, ‘Why step into this arena in this way?’” Renzi said. “I had seven to eight months of relationship building with him before we even sat down to shoot the film. That was really important to me.”
Sheen says in the trailer that he understands he’s the only person “who has the answers to so many people’s questions about me,” which is why he decided to share everything he can — the good and the bad.
An undated photo of Sheen that’s featured in the documentary. (Netflix)
Sheen addresses the 2011 period that ended his career
While Sheen had faced negative tabloid coverage earlier in life, his 2011 public downfall was a significant turning point that ended his TV career — a period he addresses directly in the series.
“Shame is suffocating,” he says in the trailer. “I lit the fuse, you know, and my life turned into everything it wasn’t supposed to be.”
His “fuse” ignited in January 2011, when his hit show, Two and a Half Men, went on hiatus to accommodate his third stint in rehab for drug addiction, less than a year after it was announced he was earning $1.8 million per episode for the show — making him the highest-paid actor on television at the time. Months later, CBS fired Sheen after he publicly criticized creator Chuck Lorre in a radio interview with Alex Jones.
Sheen went on to give more headline-grabbing interviews throughout early 2011, repeatedly slamming both Lorre and Two and a Half Men. In March of that year, he gave the now-infamous interview to ABC’s 20/20 in which he declared he had “tiger blood” and coined the catchphrase, “Winning!” While Sheen had openly dealt with drug and alcohol addiction for years, at the time, he denied that his addiction issues were behind his behavior.
He has since publicly admitted to drinking alcohol every morning in 2011 and that he was addicted to crack, which contributed to his sex addiction, and eventually led to his HIV diagnosis — all of which he talks about in the documentary.
Sheen, who has been sober for seven years now, has addressed this public meltdown in the years since. He has many regrets about that time, he told Yahoo Entertainment around the 10th anniversary of the 20/20 interview.
“There was 55 different ways for me to handle that situation, and I chose number 56,” Sheen told Yahoo in 2021, referring to being fired from Two and a Half Men. “I think the growth for me post-meltdown or melt forward or melt somewhere — however you want to label it — it has to start with absolute ownership of my role in all of it.”
Renzi told Tudum it was important for Sheen to explore how and why everything unfolded — and to examine his role in it — for the documentary.
“This behavior is something that Charlie knows is not to be glorified,” he said.
Who is interviewed in the docuseries?
Sheen’s ex-wife, Denise Richards, is one of the people interviewed in the docuseries. (Netflix)
aka Charlie Sheen features interviews with many of Sheen’s close friends and family members, including his Two and a Half Men costar Jon Cryer, ex-wives Brooke Mueller and Denise Richards and his brother Ramon Estevez. Sheen’s daughter, Lola Sheen, is also interviewed, as are “Hollywood Madam” Heidi Fleiss, actors Chris Tucker and Sean Penn, and Two and a Half Men creator Lorre.
Sheen’s other brother, Emilio Estevez, and dad, Martin Sheen, are not interviewed in the documentary, but not because of any sort of rift within the family, the New York Times reported. Emilio Estevez told the Times that he and their dad watched a rough cut of the docuseries and thought their perspectives didn’t add anything to the story, so they chose not to participate.
