Jon Cryer may have been one half of “Two and a Half Men,” but his paycheck was barely a third of Charlie Sheen’s.
Two Men, Two Salaries
“Two and a Half Men” starred Cryer and Sheen as brothers Alan Harper and Charlie Harper, respectively, with Sheen’s character portraying a persona largely based on the actor himself. Charlie was a self-indulgent jingle writer, a womanizing bachelor living in sunny California on a beachfront. Alan was the responsible, uptight sibling, a single father raising a son — the “half-man,” played by Angus T. Jones.
Cryer appears in the new Netflix documentary, “aka Charlie Sheen,” which revisits the actor’s chaotic rise and fall and how his addictions to drugs and sex unraveled his life and those of people around him.
In the doc, Cryer revealed that Sheen was paid far more than he was, according to the New York Post.
At the peak of his run, Sheen earned $2 million per episode by season 8. Cryer, by comparison, made $620,000 an episode in 2011, roughly a third of Sheen’s haul, and only after Sheen was fired for his off-screen antics.
To explain the disparity between the two men, Cryer said:
“The dictator of North Korea was a guy named Kim Jong-Il,” Cryer said. “He acted crazy all the time and thus got enormous amounts of aid from countries who were so scared of him that they would shovel money at him. Well, that’s what happened here. [Sheen’s] negotiations went off the charts because his life was falling apart. Me, whose life was pretty good at that time, I got a third of that.”
Cryer’s Kim Jong-Il comparison has some merit, as CBS, the network that carried the Chuck Lorre and Lee Aronsohn show from 2003 to 2015 for 12 seasons had a massive hit on its hands.
CBS and Warner Bros. Television halted production of “Two and a Half Men” in February 2011 following Sheen’s third stint in rehab within a year, a shutdown that led to the cancellation of the remaining four episodes of the eighth season. Those lost episodes caused an estimated $10 million in losses for the studio and network, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Adding fuel to the fire, Sheen, who was making $2 million per episode, was demanding $3 million per episode and complaining about being underpaid. The final straw that led to his March 2011 termination, in addition to his erratic behavior, was his public bashing of Lorre.
At the time of his rehab admission, Sheen had support from the network and Lorre, who were confident they could recover from the lost episodes, close to $160 million in potential advertising revenue from cancelled episodes, in a written CBS statement obtained by SheKnows:
“Looking forward, the financial impact of the shutdown is not material to CBS. Any ratings declines will be more than offset by the reduced programming costs for episodes lost this season. We will begin to address the scheduling issues this week. The network is strong and deep with hit series; we’re not reliant on one show. In addition, Two and a Half Men has always performed well in repeats, and we have the option of ordering additional episodes of other popular comedies on the network.”
As Forbes reported, “Two and a Half Men” ranked third on TV’s biggest moneymakers list in 2011, during Sheen’s departure when his character was killed off-screen. Despite slipping ratings after the show’s main character was unceremoniously written off, it still generated $3.24 million in advertising revenue per half hour.
Sheen’s replacement was actor Ashton Kutcher, who made slightly more than Cryer, $700,000 per episode.
