Jon Cryer Was Paid a Third of Charlie Sheen's Salary for 'Two and a Half Men'

Jon Cryer called out Two and a Half Men for how they rewarded Charlie Sheen with more money at the peak of his drug addiction.

During the aka Charlie Sheen documentary, which premiered on Wednesday, September 10, Cryer, 60, was asked about the aftermath of Sheen’s first stint in rehab and how it affected their CBS sitcom.

“He’s in the midst of falling apart in every way I can imagine and he’s renegotiating his contract for another year of a show I am supposed to be on too,” Cryer, who played Alan from 2003 to 2015, recalled. “Apparently they had pre-sold a couple of extra seasons of the show. It was worth their while to spend this astonishing amount of money on Charlie.”

Cryer likened the experience to North Korea’s former dictator Kim Jong Il.

“[Kim Jong Il] 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. That is what happened here,” the actor claimed. “[Charlie’s] negotiations went off the charts because his life was falling apart. ”

According to Cryer, he had a different experience, adding, “Me, whose life was pretty good at that time, I got a third of that.”

Two and a Half Men, which aired for 12 seasons, followed two brothers (Sheen and Cryer) living together while raising Alan’s son, Jake (Angus T. Jones), and navigating their very different lifestyles.

In 2010, Sheen, 60, publicly entered a facility amid issues with drugs. He later returned to the show and, that same year, signed a two-year deal for $2 million an episode — which made him the highest-paid TV star in history at the time. Sheen entered rehab again one year later and the show was put on hiatus.

Sheen’s erratic public behavior led him to be replaced by Ashton Kutcher, who played Walden Schmidt. He subsequently slammed the show, creator Chuck Lorre and even Cryer, who declined to publicly address the drama at the time. Sheen has since gotten sober, which was the subject of Netflix’s aka Charlie Sheen.

The two-part documentary allowed those who knew Sheen best over the years to share the unfiltered truth about his lowest moments. Cryer, for his part, admitted he was unsure about participating.

“I worked with Charlie Sheen for eight years and if you wonder what it’s like to work with him for eight years, when I started, I had hair,” he quipped elsewhere in the doc. “I had some trepidation about participating in this, partially because part of the cycle of Charlie’s life has been that he messes up terribly, he hits rock bottom and then he gets things going again.”

Cryer added: “He brings a lot of positivity in his life and that’s when he burns himself out again. He just can’t help but set that house on fire. I didn’t want to be a part of that cycle. I am not here to build him up and I’m not here to tear him down.”

Sheen, meanwhile, recently revealed he hasn’t been in touch with Cryer. “I still owe Johnny a phone call,” he told Entertainment Tonight earlier this month. “I don’t know that that show would ever come back or would ever have a chance at ending properly, but if it did it would be … I would do it more for the fans than for myself, just to put a proper bookend on it.”

Aka Charlie Sheen is streaming now.