Denise Richards says she once made what she called "white trash" sandwiches for women hired by ex-husband Charlie Sheen as part of repeated attempts to keep him alive while he struggled with drug addiction, she recounts in the Netflix documentary aka, Charlie.
Richards, 54, describes scenes of desperation in the second episode of the series, saying friends and people in Sheen’s orbit would call her to check on the actor when he had not been seen for days. "They would call me all the fing time to go there because I can’t get fired. I was your ex-wife, I was already fired," she told Sheen on camera. She recounted pounding on his door after he had been missing from the set of Two and a Half Men for two days and shouting, "Open the f up!" when no one answered.
Richards said she would bring food to Sheen and the women who were at his house. She described a moment when Two and a Half Men co-star Jon Cryer arrived while Richards was preparing sandwiches. Cryer, 60, asked whether she was making sandwiches for the women, prompting Richards to reply that she would not withhold food because of their work. "Well, yeah. What am I gonna say? Sorry, because of what you do for a living, you don’t get one of my white trash mayo, mustard, turkey, cheese, lettuce sandwiches?" she recalled.
The actress, who divorced Sheen in 2006 and shares daughters Sami, 21, and Lola, 20, with him, said the actor often appeared incapacitated during that period. She likened his condition to the dead character in the comedy Weekend at Bernie’s, saying people around him would "prop him up" to sign documents and keep making money from his name.
Richards also described an episode in 2011 when she noticed Sheen was "really sick" and pushed him to get tested for HIV. Sheen publicly disclosed his HIV-positive status in 2015 and has since said that he felt "kind of f--king relieved" upon learning the diagnosis because it was treatable; he has reported that his viral load is now undetectable.
Sheen married Brooke Mueller in 2008 and the couple welcomed twins Bob and Max in March 2009. Both parents later relapsed, and Richards has said she took temporary custody of the twins for about a year when they were four due to concerns about Mueller’s ability to care for them. Sheen and Richards separated in 2010, and the two have described an on-again, off-again relationship since their divorce.
The Netflix series revisits decades of Sheen’s career and personal life, including his struggles with substance use and tumultuous relationships. Richards and Sheen have since reconciled to a degree: both attended the Los Angeles premiere of aka, Charlie on Sept. 3, and Sheen has appeared on Richards’s reality show Denise Richards and Her Wild Things.
The documentary’s second episode combines Richards’s first-person recollections with archival footage and interviews. Her account underscores the extent to which friends, family and co-workers were drawn into managing the actor’s public and private crises during the height of his addiction.