Nearly 15 years ago, actor Charlie Sheen went on his “Torpedo of Truth” tour to tell the world what really happened after being fired from “Two and a Half Men,” but his substance abuse, not the truth, torpedoed that tour.
Now, after maintaining his sobriety since December 2017, Sheen is back on the road to once again. This time, he plans to leave everything on the table through an in-depth discussion of his memoir “The Book of Sheen.” The memoir, out now, was released last month in tandem with the tell-all Netflix documentary “aka Charlie Sheen.”
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“I still have stories to share that aren’t in the documentary and the book. I want this to be audience-oriented and for them to ask the questions they’ve wanted to ask more directly,” Sheen said during a recent phone interview.
The actor will host a live discussion of the book, moderated by his longtime friend Billy Bush, at Morongo Casino Resort & Spa in Cabazon on Saturday, Nov. 1 and at the Balboa Theatre in San Diego on Nov. 16.
“This tour was actually my idea, how about that?” Sheen said. According to Sheen, the 2011 tour, “My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat Is Not an Option,” was not his idea, and he says he wasn’t in the right state of mind to do it. While some shows were reportedly well-received, others were met with chants demanding refunds from the audience, and his frequent use of the term “winning” became indelibly memeified.
Much like the documentary, “The Book of Sheen” delves into the life of the four-time Emmy-nominated star of “Two and a Half Men,” who was once one of Hollywood’s highest-paid television actors. Sheen’s memoir details his upbringing, his rise to fame, and his fall from grace, fueled by drug addiction that led to an erosion of his public persona and personal life.
Before heading to Cabazon, Sheen talked with Southern California News Group about his upcoming book tour, why sports provide the ultimate inspiration, and what he imagines the last “Two and a Half Men” would look like had he stayed on. The following conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Q: What made you want to do the documentary “aka style Charlie Sheen” and your new book?
I felt like the road to a comeback or a path to a reset had to happen somehow. It had to be me finally telling the stories as they actually happened. There’s enough time now that I have perspective on the past events. I felt like if I was given a platform to talk about my life, my decisions, and why things went a certain way, it would quiet a lot of the other stuff out there about me. The plan wasn’t to do them at the same time. They just happened to line up that way. The universe was just like, “Let’s turn this into a one-two punch.” The book, in particular, tells some of the stories differently, and I can tell them in more detail. Also, I wanted to leave something behind. Now you have three choices: you can watch it, read it, or listen to it. Mission accomplished.
Q: How is the book different than the documentary?
I didn’t control the outcome of the documentary and wasn’t a producer on it. The book is different because I had complete autonomy to write it and didn’t work with a ghostwriter. I wrote the whole thing myself because I knew that was the only way to deliver the authentic version.
With the book, it’s different. Whereas I would have five or seven minutes in the chair speaking into a camera for the documentary, I had two weeks to let my own internal dialogue create a story on the page. Some of those stories are going to be a little different, because I would remember things as I was writing, after we’d already shot my interviews for the doc. So it wasn’t like, “Oh, this needs to be different.” It was more like “Oh, shoot, I forgot that piece. I’m just going to add it now.”
But that’s why I don’t want people to feel like because they’ve seen the doc, they don’t need to read the book. I think there’s just a different experience of the same terrain, but through a different lens and medium.
Q: At one point in the documentary, Slash tells you that he had never seen anyone use the amount of drugs you did and live. Was this before that infamous Nikki Sixx overdose or after?
It was connected to that. That’s a story that I talk about in the “Escape from LA” chapter in the book, in more detail. But essentially, on the way to court, I stopped at a house where Slash and Mira Sorvino were. I was still trying to talk them into basically helping me by harboring a fugitive and keep the party running.
He was just like, “Dude, no, man, this is not open for discussion. If you don’t go today, you’re going to die.” So to hear that from anybody is a pretty scary and very deliberate message, but to hear it from Slash puts a lot more mustard on that hot dog.
Q: What was the most challenging part of writing the book?
It was mostly me, myself and I, but I had a terrific, excellent editor, Aimée Bell. I would finish a chapter and send it to her; she would read it, love parts of it, and take notes. One of her notes was to keep going and writing. So there was always that.
The next day, there I am, again, staring at the blank screen. With the self-imposed creative pressure of “They loved the last one, so is this one gonna live up to it?” There were times when I would write for three days — 1000 words — read it back, and literally just throw it in the garbage. I’d think, “We’re better than this. We’ve set a bar. Let’s honor it.” Then it’s also about knowing when to end a book. If it’s about yourself and your story is still being told in real time, how do you know? I would ask Aimée that question, and she would always say, “The book will let you know. The book will tell you.”
I still don’t quite understand what she meant by that. But that’s a good excuse if someone says, “Hey, I feel like it kind of cut off there a little bit abruptly, like ‘The Sopranos’ ending.” I’d say, “Hey, man, I was just listening to what the book told me.”
Q: What was it like to go head-to-head with your dad against Michael Jordan?
It still exists in my memory as a dream. It felt like I was in a dream, doing it, and so remembering it has those fuzzy edges, like you’d see in a cheap movie when they go into a flashback. There was a moment that wasn’t part of the documentary, when, to warm up, Michael challenged the two best players on the varsity team at the high school we were playing at. It was him and me versus the two guys. So before we started, I told him I’d never played on a team. I know baseball inside and out, but I don’t know the mechanics and geometry of basketball.
He said, “Don’t worry about it. Just get the ball and lob it close to the rim, and I’ll take care of the rest.” So literally, he loses his guy, takes off from the free-throw line or somewhere along the baseline, and I would throw something up, just kind of in the vicinity, and he would just windmill it home. It was insane.
Q: What do you think makes sports give us the confidence to persevere in our everyday lives as spectators?
There’s an acknowledgement in my book at the very end of thanking Freddie Freeman for that game one grand slam walk off. I included it because I want people to know that kind of greatness is inspiring and contagious.
It happened at a point where I was stuck in the book, I hit that wall, and I just saw that, and I was like, “Okay, I don’t have to do anything as physically pressure-packed as that to keep going.” It was like a springboard of sorts into just knowing that I have to be called to a higher order because of what I’ve just witnessed.
Q: What sports are you keeping up with?
I keep up with all of them. Baseball is my first and deepest love, and I’ve been a Cincinnati Reds fan my whole life. We got smoked in the first round, but that’s all right. Jim Day, who’s their field reporter and occasional broadcast announcer, will text back and forth. That’s why he’s thanked in the book. We’ll text mid-game, the entire season and our running theme this season, no disrespect to the team, was, ‘If they get in, who are they really going to beat? Are they going to beat Milwaukee, the Cubs, the Dodgers, the Padres?” So we kind of knew it going in. But that said, it’s Terry Francona’s first year at the helm, and he does what they couldn’t do the past five.
Q: After “Two and a Half Men,” you had some die-hard supporters who were egging you on in a way that seemed like they wanted to fuel the spectacle of it all. How do you feel about the state of spectacle in our society today, in celebrity culture?
There’s so much more attention and focus on mental health today, and rightfully so. People need help. I was a guy who, during that tour run, really needed some help. The book gets into a lot of that with just a few more peeks behind those curtains that the doc doesn’t explore. If it hadn’t been such a celebration, it would have been like a rallying cry to get me the help I needed. At the time, they were writing rap songs and folk ballads about me, which fueled me. And, of course, I own my part in that, staying connected to it and not taking a step back. It was a mashup of so many different elements and just so many things that I was trying to process or come to terms with, including the grand state of denial about a lot of things in my life. I don’t know if that same thing could happen again today.
Q: What do you think the last episode of “Two and a Half Men” would look like had you stayed on the show?
Maybe something like, I hand the deed of the house to Alan, and I say, “I have some places to explore,” and I leave. Alan was constantly being thrown out, and every year, there were a couple of episodes where it went down like that. So what if I just left, but left Alan with this incredible gift and opportunity to have a new life with his son on the beach, and let him deal with Rose? Maybe something like that. It’s tough to find that “Friends” ending, where somebody in that grand finale suggests they all get a cup of coffee and then brilliantly, Matthew Perry says, “Okay, where?” Then you’re done and out. I’m sure we could have found something like that, but if there’s ever a reboot, we can lean into that.
Charlie Sheen
When: 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 1.
Where: Morongo Casino Resort & Spa, 49500 Seminole Drive, Cabazon.
Tickets: $89.50-$218.30 at Ticketmaster.com.
Also: 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 16 at Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave, San Diego. Tickets are $76.35-$613.60 via Ticketmaster.com.