Transcript: Actor Charlie Sheen’s Interview on The Tucker Carlson Show

I don’t know. I don’t know. They are finding downside, you know, in long term use. To HGH.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: To human growth hormone. You know, I believe that. Yeah. If it’s going to, if it’s going to make things grow, then if you got, you know, if you got a tumor or something that’s been lurking, it can bring that thing into, you know, some larger form. Yeah, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Men with prostate cancer have typically have their testosterone reduced medically.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Gotcha.

TUCKER CARLSON: Because it feeds the tumor, so. That makes sense.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah.

A Brief Detour: Dr. Bronner’s and Southern California

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t use shaving cream or fluoride toothpaste, so it’s like, not my world. But I’m interested.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Have you tried the toothpaste from Wellness?

TUCKER CARLSON: No, I used the Dr. Bronner’s.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, we grew up on Dr. Bronner’s.

TUCKER CARLSON: So did I. That’s why I use it.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, we ate his chips and everything.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, it was the Southern California thing in the 70s, remember?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Healthy Hunza?

TUCKER CARLSON: No, but I just, you know, you use the Castile soap with all the weird sayings on the side. “We are one.” It was like a hangout from the hippie era.

CHARLIE SHEEN: That’s the stuff my mom bought us. Exactly.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. That’s exactly how I grew up.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: And I still use this day.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Oh, really?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, I do. Wow. I no longer use Dr. Zogs Surf Wax. Remember that? “Best for your stick.”

CHARLIE SHEEN: That’s right.

TUCKER CARLSON: That probably doesn’t exist, but. So you got better, you got sober after that. How long did it take from that interview? Till sobriety.

The Dark Period and Recovery

CHARLIE SHEEN: So that was 2011.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yep.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, no, it got pretty dark after that. Even though I did another, somehow managed to do another TV show. Still in the middle of all that, you know, I mean, I was able to pull it back and present, you know, nicely enough, you know, at least walk into a room and.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, actually, can I just go back to. Sure. One of the things I loved about that interview was the hostility that you so clearly had. I mean, it just was obvious toward like the whole class of people who profit from the creatives in Los Angeles.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: And, you know, the agents, the managers, just that whole constellation of people. And you clearly were at war with them. And yet the way the system is set up even now, you were telling me at breakfast, like, it’s necessary. Like you can’t really work without participating in that system. So how did you fix those relationships?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Time. Just over time and, and just, you know, working on myself and, and, yeah. And those relationships can only be fixed if both parties are still in the game.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: You know, so I think that helped. But the stuff I talk about in the book about that time was that it was that tour that really was ill advised, you know, then that was not my idea and I’m still not sure how I allowed myself to get talked into it, you know?

Yeah, everybody blames Mark Berg, but it wasn’t Mark’s. It really wasn’t Mark’s brainchild. It was like Live Nation. They watched all of that and like they’re, through their filter, they saw that as taking that on the road.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, we got to get this man into expensive hotel rooms.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yes. In front of a crowd full of paying customers.

The Disastrous Tour

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it’s not even about the performance. It’s about the experience of being on the road, which anyone who’s ever done it can tell you. I mean, there’s a reason so many performers wind up with these really tragic personal lives, which is like, being on the road is not good for you at all.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, no, it was especially really not good for me.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, on a good day, it’s not good for a good person. Yeah, but an addicted person is just going to like, so what, what happened? What was it?

CHARLIE SHEEN: It was 21 cities in like 31 days with no act. With no act. But Jeff Ross did come in and rescue a good portion of it. So that was.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did they call Jeff like midway through?

CHARLIE SHEEN: And they called him, like right after the second show. Yeah, I mean, we bombed right out of the gate.

TUCKER CARLSON: So what was that like?

CHARLIE SHEEN: It was awful. It was awful because I did, you.

TUCKER CARLSON: Know that it was bad when it was happening.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, it was an absolute train wreck. It was a complete bed. No, it’s fine.

TUCKER CARLSON: And sorry to laugh at your.

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, I’ll take it. Because there’s a thing I talk about in the book that, you know, the Hemingway’s, you know, to become a man. You know, his list.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

CHARLIE SHEEN: You got to fight a bull. You got to have a son and plant a tree. Yeah, right. He left out being booed off stage in Detroit on opening night. Yeah, it was. We didn’t make it. We didn’t make it to the second act.

TUCKER CARLSON: Wow.

The Detroit Disaster and Creative Breakthrough

CHARLIE SHEEN: And then Simon Rex, you know, he is an actor and he’d done some rapping and he had this one song that I really dug, and so he was going to perform it. I was getting pelted with stuff like, not food, but like programs and shoes and whatever anybody could throw. And he was in the wings, and so I started motioning him out.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re actually on stage.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Oh, yeah, yeah. And it’s turning violent. We are like on the verge of bedlam. And so I wave him out and I switch places with him. I’m done. It’s over.

And he tried to do his song and they went harder on him. And then he told me afterwards, he said, “Dude, you completely overlooked the fact that you brought a white rapper out on stage in Detroit who wasn’t Eminem and expected the crowd to be satisfied.”

TUCKER CARLSON: We’re skipping over the key part, which is what did you do to make the crowd so mad?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Stuck to the script. There was absolute dogshit. This thing that I built back home, thinking, “Yeah, and then we’ll do this, then we’ll do that, and then the girls will come out” and just all this stuff that I was imagining would be crowd pleasing stuff, but they just literally wanted me on stage just screaming those dumb slogans.

TUCKER CARLSON: They wanted more tiger blood.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, they wanted more seven gram rocks. They wanted more Adonis DNA. And what I finally explained in the book is that none of that, the biggest irony in this whole thing, none of that stuff was my original material. I didn’t cook all that stuff up. It came from a phone call from a baseball player like, three days before I sat down for the interview.

TUCKER CARLSON: Pep talk, like in some dugout.

The Brian Wilson Connection

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, there’s a guy named Brian Wilson. He used to pitch for the Giants. They called him the Beard, right? Great ball player, super dude. And I was watching a highlight package of him one night, and there was something about his magnetism, his presence, all of it, right? And I told my friend Tony Todd, I said, “Get him on the phone. I want to speak to that man.”

And the next day I was on the phone with him, and I think it was before the season started. And he just volunteered. He said, “Hey, it’s a pleasure to talk to you, man.” And it was already known that the trainer left the tracks with my show and the beef with Chuck and all that stuff was already in play.

So he says to me, “You know, we’re not like other people. We’re different, man. We got tiger blood running through our veins. We got a substrate of Adonis DNA that doesn’t allow guys like us to ever lose because we’re always winning, right?” This is all him giving me this material.

So he’s probably thinking, “Cool, man. That’s going to make him feel better, at least for today. And maybe he’ll make some progress with this other mess, right?” And then the interview comes around, and there was something that she did say. Not no part of it was her fault.

TUCKER CARLSON: It was the ABC lady.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Andrea Canning. And so she made a crack to the two gals that I had shacked up with, right? And then she tried to continue onto her next question. And I was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You owe them an apology.” And she was like, “Okay, my bad. I apologize. I’m sorry.” I’m like, “Thank you.”

And so then she tried to continue the interview. And I started grinding on it. I wouldn’t let it go, even though she apologized, and we should have just moved past it, and we didn’t. And so that’s when the whole thing just came out. I suddenly felt like I’m going to be delivering another interview and checking every box that they want, and I’m supposed to show remorse, and I’m supposed to show all those things that you sit down and do that interview and deliver.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, that was the point of the interview, right? That was set up because you have to go through this ritual, right?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, I think that’s what they were expecting. I think I might have agreed to it on those terms. And yeah, I flipped the script sort of midway through, and then I had all of his material, and it was just kind of like, it was there, man. It was on standby. It was kind of on a loop, just looking for the right venue, and there it was, and it all just flew out. And that’s what started that whole thing.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did he call you? Did he see it? The ball player?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Oh, yeah. He was probably like, “Oh, my God, what have I done? What have I done? I gave my best stuff to the wrong guy or the most right guy ever.”

TUCKER CARLSON: I felt, maybe I’m shallow, but I felt like you created a kind of art. I felt like that was like a performance piece.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I did think, no, that’s awesome. Thank you.

TUCKER CARLSON: And most lines are other people’s lines, so there’s no shame in that.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Thank you. Okay, good. Yeah. And for years, I didn’t want to lasso him into the craziness. So I always kept him out of it. I kept Brian out of it, which I felt was the right thing to do. And then over time, I did start admitting that, yeah, that wasn’t my material. It didn’t come up with any of that stuff originally. And then with the book and this tour, I’ve just said, yeah, it was Brian. It was that guy.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you still talk to him?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, I spoke to him about a year ago because we asked him to be in the documentary, and he said he was going to do it and then he just changed his mind, didn’t want to. And that’s fine. He doesn’t have to revisit it. I kind of do. And I was telling stories in the doc where I was already anticipating them cutting to him for his side of it, so it would have made sense if he was there, but no, there’s no love lost at all about that.

The Need for Vigor

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. Again, totally pro sobriety. On the other hand, it’s just nice to see vigor in a man, in a world filled with men without vigor. I’ll take a little craziness.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I just wrote that word to somebody yesterday. Vigor.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, it’s much needed.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, no, somebody wrote something to me, “Hey, this thing? Or did you guys do this something, something.” And I was sitting there like four minutes and I finally wrote back “with vigor.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, exactly. So we need a little Teddy Roosevelt. And I saw a little cocaine infused Teddy Roosevelt in that interview. So you go on tour. Live Nation decides, “Hey, we can profit from this.”

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Not to impute low motives to Live Nation.

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, of course not.

Jeff Ross to the Rescue

TUCKER CARLSON: And so you bomb the first two nights. So then they called Jeff Ross, the Roastmaster General, to come in and save you. Which not stupid, actually. Did he do a good job?

CHARLIE SHEEN: He did a great job. But what surprised me is that the set that he rolled out with, he showed up in a hazmat suit, like he was there to clean up a radioactive spill. Which he kind of was. And the crowd loved it and his jokes were terrific. And I’m like, “Wow.”

And then I just figured he would be, then we get to the next city and he would come out with a different set, and he didn’t. He just stuck to the ones he had assembled and built and they already killed. And he figured that the next city hadn’t heard them yet, but everything was in the paper.

TUCKER CARLSON: There’s no Internet or something.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Right. Yeah. And he just stayed with it. And then one night he couldn’t make it. So do you know who Chuck Zito is?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. So Chuck was helping me with security during the tour and I said, “Chuck, I think it’s going to be funny if you come out and just take the podium and say, ‘Jeff Ross couldn’t make it tonight. So I have his material and I’m just going to go through them one by one.'” And he did. And it bombed. It bombed.

TUCKER CARLSON: Your security guy read Jeff Ross’s set?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, yeah. Wearing his leather jacket and the whole thing. Not Jeff’s jacket, Chuck’s.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s like so meta actually. I would have enjoyed that.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, I did enjoy it.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s kind of high concept.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I was on stage, backing up. Yeah, so Chuck Zito filled in for Jeff Ross.

The Aftermath and Rewrite

TUCKER CARLSON: So when you get off stage the first two nights when you bomb and people are throwing things at you, giving you the old Islamic shoe treatment, what do your people say when you get back? They’re like, “Good job, Charlie”?

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, they were like, “Okay, we really have to sit down and figure out if there’s any way, like what it’s going to cost you to issue all of those refunds.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Refunds.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Actually the second, it was really just the first night. I was wrong about that because something did happen between Detroit and Chicago.

TUCKER CARLSON: Something usually does.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Right between those two cities. Especially on a tour bus.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: So I said, “Okay, everything that we had planned, just leave it right where it belongs. In the toilet, where it wound up in the sewer, in the gutter. We are scrapping everything.” And they said, “Okay, all right, good start. Shane, you’re reading the room, man.” And was it the shoes? Yeah, partly. It was that last high heel.

And I said, “I think I have a fix.” They were like, “Well, do you want to share it?” I’m like, “No, I don’t have it yet. So I’m going to ride the tour bus. I’m not going to fly. I’m going to take the bus from Detroit to Chicago by myself. And I just need a notepad and two pens.”

And I did. And I just rewrote the entire show alone on that trip, knowing that it was do or die, because I knew that tour was also the child support tour.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, yeah, yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Because Warner’s just hanging on to all my dough. They were keeping my dough hostage because I’d violated all the morals clauses and I acted in bad faith, and therefore they didn’t have to pay me what they owed me. You know, I was like, “Well, hold on a minute.” Anyway, they ultimately had to. But I had to sue them to get my scratch. Yeah. How about that? So I couldn’t.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m not surprised.

CHARLIE SHEEN: So anyway, so I did go on that thing. There were some noble motives behind it or motivation, rather, just to have some dough to keep everybody housed and fed.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. Because you have a big tribe.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Big enough.

TUCKER CARLSON: Bigger than average.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Bigger than average. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean that as a compliment.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Thank you. And plenty of room at any stage of it, at any table that we sit down at.

TUCKER CARLSON: Beautiful.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Thank you. And so we get to Chicago, and so I go there in the morning, and they’re like, “What are you doing here? The talent never shows up until five minutes for sound check or whatever.” And I said, “I just need to see the theater. I need to feel the building.” They’re like, “Okay.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Where were you playing in Chicago? Do you remember?

CHARLIE SHEEN: I couldn’t tell you at gunpoint.

TUCKER CARLSON: Chicago theater, probably.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was nice. It was vintage.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, that’s right. Yep.

The Chicago Show Rescue

CHARLIE SHEEN: So I basically decided that it was just going to be with a moderator.

TUCKER CARLSON: Smart.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. And I said, “I just need two chairs just facing each other, just behind the curtain.” And I wrote this letter, and I’m sure it’s on video somewhere. And one of the chairs just behind the curtain so I could walk out first, deliver this love letter to Chicago about what happened in Detroit.

And the whole thing was a mislead about, “I’ve fought in the jungles of Vietnam. I’ve been through the hellscape of the volcanoes,” just this whole mythological thing where it felt like… And then the whole thing kind of ends with, “And that was just opening night in Detroit.” And then the whole place went nuts, and I knew I had them. And then the curtains parted and we sat in the chairs and we just talked about everything.

TUCKER CARLSON: How did it play?

CHARLIE SHEEN: It played great. And then everybody, all the Live Nation guys and the agent types and everybody that was around, they were like, “You rescued the show, man. Good for you. You rescued the show.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, sincerely, good for you.

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, it was cool. And so we went with that. And then that kind of petered out because it wasn’t at the energy level that everyone was expecting.

TUCKER CARLSON: Because you weren’t pivoting against disaster.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Exactly. Yeah. And then that’s when they brought Jeff in, because they’re like, “Okay, we got our bearings. Let’s ramp it up.” But in a sensible way, I think.

TUCKER CARLSON: What did you think of working live like that?

CHARLIE SHEEN: It was exciting. Yeah, it was exciting. And I made the decision to start entering from the back of the auditorium.

TUCKER CARLSON: Not from backstage, but from the audience side, from the exit door?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, yeah. Just… I don’t know why. It was just cool. Just everybody was expecting me there and I would run up the aisle high fiving everyone, just to break it up, just to keep it… I don’t know. Yeah, no, it was a trip. I’ve seen the shows that you’ve done.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. No, I love it. I hope that that whole form continues whether I can participate in it or not, because I think it’s important for people to be physically present with each other.

CHARLIE SHEEN: You seem really comfortable in those situations.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I like people.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: I like to smell people. Yeah. I don’t… That’s my main problem with the Internet. I think it just disaggregates people from actual people. There’s no… It’s like there’s a person there, but everyone’s sort of reduced to his dumbest opinion or most provocative opinion. I’m not against those, obviously, but I think that’s not the whole story about people.

And it’s just… I just like people. It’s good to be with people. I like physical contact. I hate the COVID era because of its lack of physical contact. I just… I mean, these are not groundbreaking ideas, but I just like being with people. What’s the point otherwise?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah.

The Warner Bros Intervention

TUCKER CARLSON: So how much were you partying on tour?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Not really. See that. And I covered that in the book also, is that they sent the head of the network, Les Moonves, to my house with the Warner jet, fueled up and idling on the runway to take me to rehab.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right after the ABC interview.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yes. And I said, “I appreciate it. It’s also not lost on me that this is the first time that the jet’s ever been made available to me during the whole run of Two and a Half Men. Was to put me in rehab. That’s fine.” And I said, “But I’m going to do this at home. I’m going to do this at home.”

And then the look on his face was… man, it felt… he was saddened. He actually felt for me. I could see that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Good for him.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. And it had nothing to do with commerce. And I write that in the book.

TUCKER CARLSON: Good.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I also describe him as a good dude and a gangster. No one’s yelled at me yet about that. Because we’re supposed to keep him parked in the cornfield.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. I mean, I think the assumption is in this business and especially in your part of the business, you got to be pretty tough character to get to the top.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t think non-gangsters run big entertainment organizations.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Or they never have. Thank you. Yeah, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Not an insult. I’m not judging.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Sure.

TUCKER CARLSON: But yeah, no, I think it requires that. So you never went to rehab?

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, I did a rehab at home.

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s that?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Not a rehab. Not a rehab.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, there was a rehab with cocaine?

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, there was no dope. There was no drugs.

TUCKER CARLSON: There was no…

CHARLIE SHEEN: Actually, yeah, there was girls. Yeah, there was girls and testosterone cream. That’s the one thing I didn’t quit. And that was probably the one thing I probably should have stayed on the coke and gotten off the cream. Can you imagine a doctor recommending that?

The Testosterone Revelation

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve never heard that before. So you think the testosterone cream used at 40x recommended doses was worse for you than the cocaine?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Well, yeah, I think it was doing more damage to my psychological state. Yeah, because the coke is kind of predictable. You know what you’re going to… you know how it’s going to… how you’re going to behave in certain situations. Yeah. And that other stuff was just like it was a trip to the outer limits.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, but the really angry part of the Outer Limits, the testier part, the more edgy part. Yeah, more than cocaine.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s the most interesting thing I’ve heard today.

CHARLIE SHEEN: The day’s young.

TUCKER CARLSON: So did anybody… Wow, that’s… I’ll think about that. Did anyone ever say to you, “You know, it’s good to get off the narcotics but testosterone cream, when slathered in the amounts you’re slathering is pretty heavy”? Did anyone ever say that to you?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yes, but a couple months before that. Do you know Nick Cassavetes? He’s a director. He’s a writer. He’s an old friend of mine. He’s the son of John Cassavetes. Yeah. Nick directed and wrote The Notebook.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Everybody’s favorite romantic comedy, right? It’s not a romantic comedy. It’s a love story. So sorry, Nick. Call this film a comedy. You might want to cut that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, you laughed and cried. Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: You laughed and cried. Yeah. So we were in Palm Springs, and I don’t know at what stage in that whole thing, that whole time it was. But he did say, “Hey, man, I noticed that you’re using a lot. You know, they recommended the size of a dime and you had five silver dollars in your hand.” Yeah. And he said, “You just think about cutting back a little bit.” And I was like, “You got it, man. Thank you. Good advice. I appreciate it.” Just ignored it.

So, yeah, but you mean in the moment, in that thing, while it was going on, did anybody say… Yeah, I didn’t really broadcast what I was doing.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t think people would think to look for that exactly.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Exactly.

TUCKER CARLSON: Testosterone cream. I mean, I didn’t even really know that was a thing, but if I had known it was a thing, I wouldn’t really think about it. I think the crack is the problem turned out. So when you… Was it hard to stop using the illegal stuff?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yes and no. I missed it just physically for a week. But I wasn’t on any opiates, so the coke detox is pretty quick. But it’s the other stuff gave me the energy and just the different mindset to just not even think about what my body was feeling.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: So then, because you asked how long… So then that… But when I came back from the tour is when I went dark.

TUCKER CARLSON: Interesting.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Went dark and stayed dark. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Usually it’s the other way around. I know when people are on the road.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. No, I just wanted to finish it. I just wanted to honor that commitment. As crazy as that commitment was, I knew there were a lot of consequences I didn’t want to deal with had I not done every city, every leg.

TUCKER CARLSON: Got to do your job.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, yeah. So.

TUCKER CARLSON: And you’re pretty work oriented anyway, right?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, yeah, I have that gear.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: You know, me too.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s important.

The Dark Period After the Tour

CHARLIE SHEEN: It is, yeah. But it was after that, I think the come down from it just finally like landing and sitting with the damage I’d done to myself and my career and how that affects my family, you know. Yeah. I just had to close the blinds, turn off the phone and get back into the hard stuff, you know.

TUCKER CARLSON: How long did that last?

CHARLIE SHEEN: About three months. Four. Four months? I think. Maybe longer. Maybe six-ish.

TUCKER CARLSON: But not six years.

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, no. Because then a couple other things happen as a result of that dark place, you know. But as far as finally putting it down for real, it was December 12, 2017.

The Turning Point

TUCKER CARLSON: So how – I guess my core question is how? And I’m asking this not for prurient reasons, but to inspire others. Like, how did you do that? Because I do think there are a ton of people who want to do that, but keep failing.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I just – my body was really starting to send the kind of messages that you either pay attention to or you die from.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: You know, I’d never had the shakes before.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yep.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I’d never had the DTs before.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, did you get the DTs?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. And just from – not from being off of anything for a week. Just from like going to bed drunk and then waking up and not being able to function until I got a few pops in me just to realign my compass.

TUCKER CARLSON: Steady. Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. So that was one. And then.

TUCKER CARLSON: How scary are the DTs?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Terrifying. Yeah, terrifying.

TUCKER CARLSON: People die from that.

CHARLIE SHEEN: They do, yeah. And I, for the longest time I thought Nicolas Cage’s portrayal in “Leaving Las Vegas” – I thought it was over the top. I’m like, “That’s an exaggerated example of it.” And no, he nailed it like spot on. Just the thing about you can’t take a drink because you’ll break a tooth. Yeah. And then a couple days later you’re puking blood. So your body is saying, “Hey man, we have this built in warning system. These flashing red lights for a reason,” you know.

The Reality of Addiction

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s interesting is, you know, I think people imagine that the delirium tremens are like something that 80-year-old winos get. Right. But you weren’t that old and you’d had a job the whole time.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Sure.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. So you’re functioning, actually, and you still got them.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: It gets you faster than you realize.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Oh, yeah, yeah. And then you’re the example of that. You’re the character in that story. You promised, you made a sacred vow to yourself that you would never star in that story. You know, it’s just like, good. So there’s a lot of self loathing. There’s a lot.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course, yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: But then, you know, I have an athletic background and I’m competitive. And so it was about a challenge of, “Okay, it’s me against this thing. How tough are we? You know, how much tiger blood is really running through these veins, you know, the Adonis substrate.”

Yes. And so, yeah, and there’s a really nice moment in the book. There was a thing with my daughter, Sam, you know, in a car one day. It isn’t like this grand event where I got in a shootout with the cops and hijacked a blimp and wound up – just a blimp. You know what I’m saying?

TUCKER CARLSON: Like, if you could hijack a blimp, I’d be impressed.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, me too. Yeah, that’s a box I’ve never checked, but it’s not a bucket list moment. That’s good news for the blimp industry, right?

The Moment of Decision

CHARLIE SHEEN: And it was just this really personal, very soulful, painful moment with my daughter that just made me realize in that moment it was time. Because there’s a theme in the book about talkers and doers, you know, and it was time to, as I say in the book – there was nothing left to say. It was time to shut the fuck up and get busy doing.

And then that night and the next day, took a few Valium, had a few beers, and then the next morning decided, “We’re done. We’re done for real.” And it just happened to be Cassandra’s birthday, my oldest daughter. It’s just timed out like that cosmically. You know, there’s themes and tones in the book about that kind of stuff where certain circles close when they’re supposed to, you know, and certain things align because they have to. You know, everything’s about timing because that’s just the way it is sometimes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. It’s pre-written.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Or feels that way anyway. Sometimes. What, so what was that like? So it’s one thing to decide. Lots of people decide.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: Everyone struggling with addiction has made many decisions on Sunday morning. “I got to shut this down.”

CHARLIE SHEEN: Sure.

TUCKER CARLSON: But then you don’t. Right. Because it’s awful. So was it awful?

CHARLIE SHEEN: No.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, it was – I mean, it was a little shaky for a week, but I knew that I had enough experience with start, stop, start, stop for a bunch of years. So I knew what that path in front of me was going to look like. But it was a really short path.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. I knew it wasn’t going to be a long walk into the end of the forest. No, it was like from here to that park bench right over there. Wow. Yeah. And I just rewrote – I wouldn’t commit to the same stories I’d been told to worship for so long. I said, “I’m going to rewrite everything about this.”

Breaking Away from AA

TUCKER CARLSON: What were the stories you’ve been told to worship?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Just the stuff in the rooms of AA that – you’ve been to AA before? Yeah, a combined 21 years.

TUCKER CARLSON: What?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. So it isn’t a guy that just did a few meetings and went, “Ah, it doesn’t work for me.” It was a guy that really committed to it and did the steps like a bunch of times.

TUCKER CARLSON: You did?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I sponsored people. I was deep into it, but it never felt like it was celebrating the victories. It was always making everybody – just in my experience, making me rather be prepared for impending doom, for the ultimate disaster, that I was always on a collision course with that as long as you’ve got some disease on board that is ultimately going to control your behavior.

I couldn’t subscribe to that any longer. I couldn’t do it because add to that that subsequently, you know, I have a legitimate disease on board that is life threatening. And you know, I take medicine every day and it’s not life threatening. It’s as manageable as diabetes. Right? Yes, but the doctor said, “If you don’t take this medicine, you’ll die.” And that’s not something – there’s no other version of that conversation, you know, that is undebatable. Right. So you just follow that protocol and stay alive and live a happy, healthy, fulfilling life, right?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: But AA says, “You got some disease on board. If you don’t go to these meetings every day or make that a part of your regular curriculum, you know, then what’s in you will kill you.” So I took the pills, I’m alive, didn’t go to a single meeting and I’m coming up on eight years.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s amazing.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Well, I’m just a rare example of a guy that understands the physiological reality of a disease you can see under a freaking microscope versus one that I think was born out of necessity to keep people aligned through fear. You know. And I’m going to get yelled at by a lot of people, but it’s all in the book.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s interesting. I didn’t get so worth AA either and I always felt like I wanted to deemphasize that part of me. Like why would I want to marinate in ugly things? Don’t want to stay positive and forward looking. I like the AA meetings I’ve been to have brought other people to really. I like the honesty and camaraderie of it. But I do think you’re making a point that’s impossible to ignore. You don’t want to focus on – it’s not healthy to focus on the downside all the time.

The Problem with Constant Focus on Failure

CHARLIE SHEEN: No. And that’s what you’re reminded of. And it’s drilled in anytime you step in, you know, and then if their slogan is “keep coming back,” that implies that you’re going to be coming back because something else has taken control. And it’s what they call a “no fault disease.”

TUCKER CARLSON: What does that mean?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Just that it went bad again and it’s not my fault.

TUCKER CARLSON: You know, I always felt it was my – all my problems have all been my fault. 100% my fault.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Likewise. Likewise. Thank you. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Otherwise it’s like nothing to apologize for. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, I never felt celebrated there. I always felt there was just like this weird air of suspicion and expectation, you know? Yeah. I don’t miss it. I don’t miss it.

And you know, I didn’t put down the bottle to then close all the bars or convince others that this has to be their path as well. I didn’t – it’s not. You know, I got a guy I quit drinking to live in the real world.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Happily and successfully, you know.

TUCKER CARLSON: I agree with you on that.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: There’s a bar right behind you that I’ve never touched. But I like bars. I do too hate drunkenness, but I love bars. Sorry.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. No. There’s an energy in a bar you can’t find anywhere else.

TUCKER CARLSON: I totally agree.

The Decline of Social Gathering Places

TUCKER CARLSON: And in fact, the decline in bars in the United States mirrors a kind of societal collapse where no one is with anyone else. I mean, again, I’m a sober person. I don’t like, I don’t drink. I would never drink. I hate alcohol. However, I love the idea of people getting together and laughing and telling vulgar jokes and hugging each other in sloppy ways. That’s a bar. I like that.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Or to watch the big game.

TUCKER CARLSON: 100 percent.

TUCKER CARLSON: And that’s actually died. People have gotten less sober, but at the same time, everyone’s on something. But there are no bars. Nobody goes to the bar.

CHARLIE SHEEN: That’s gone away.

TUCKER CARLSON: I think so. I mean, I’m a little bit cut off, but it does feel that way.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Interesting.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, do you know people who go to the bar? Do you know anyone who picks up members of the opposite sex in a bar?

CHARLIE SHEEN: No one has shared a story like that in recent memory.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Interesting.

TUCKER CARLSON: So I’m not endorsing bar hookups or whatever, but as compared to what? I don’t know. It’s just important for people to be together. That’s all I’m saying.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I agree.

TUCKER CARLSON: And that was a place for them to do it, which I always liked.

Perspectives on Alcoholics Anonymous

CHARLIE SHEEN: But I have to add that anyone that’s doing AA successfully, and it’s a part of their life, and it’s the reason that they can have the life that was given back to them or that they reclaimed, then absolutely.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, of course. Wonderful. So many people. I completely agree with that. I mean, I’m always talking up AA. Though I don’t, I’m not an AA guy, but I think you’re making an important point, which is you don’t want alcohol to be the center of your life when you’re addicted to it. And the goal is to make it not the center of your life.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s how I’ve always felt. I don’t want to think about alcohol, actually.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I don’t either. I don’t either. Yeah, I thought about it a lot while I was drinking. And I don’t like this idea that you have to identify as an alcoholic.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I agree.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And it’s like, how is someone still an alcoholic that hasn’t had a drink in 20 years?

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. I’d much rather be identified as a father or something that matters to me. Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: There was a guy in one of our private groups, and I can’t say who. Super famous, great dude. And he would identify. They go around the room. “Hi, Dave, alcoholic. Charlie, alcoholic.” And if it would get to him, “I am so and so human being.” And he refused.

And they were like, “Well, that’s not how we do it here, man.” He’s like, “You’re not allowed to be a human being here?” “No, of course you are, but it’s important you identify with your disease.” And he’s like, “No, first and foremost, I’m here on Earth because I’m a human being. And in this room, I’m a human being. And I’m here to address some issues that I have. But I’m not going to just reduce myself to a label.” And I was like, that guy. Yeah, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did he stay sober?

CHARLIE SHEEN: I think so, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Wow.

TUCKER CARLSON: An AA meeting in Hollywood must be wild.

CHARLIE SHEEN: It’s awful.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why?

CHARLIE SHEEN: It’s awful because it’s not just about that. And that second A is just, they honor that as little as possible.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, is that true?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, no, it’s “Hey, I heard you were at the Sundowners meeting at fifth and Broadway or whatever.” It’s like, “Yeah, but I went there because we’re supposed to be anonymous.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Second A.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. And yeah, there’s a lot of people that want to give you a script, actually. Or want to hit on your girlfriend or just creepy stuff that you’re not going to get at home alone watching a ball game.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, that’s kind of distressing.

CHARLIE SHEEN: There was an element there that was just, never felt just skeevy at times. And there were other meetings that were like, “Okay, all right, this makes sense. Cool. I like these people.” And then at some point it turns. At some point it turns. And that’s just my experience.

Support During Dark Times

TUCKER CARLSON: Wow. So you said when you did that interview, lots of people judged you, lots of people scolded you. And you go on a tour and you bomb the first night. People judging and scolding you. Who were the people who were kind to you throughout all of the dark moments that you had?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Family.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re close to your family.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. My ex-wives.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Oh, yeah, yeah. They were very supportive.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

TUCKER CARLSON: How’d you do that?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Because I have kids with both of them, except for my first wife, Donna, but with Brooke and Denise. Yeah. So we decided early on, after the splits that our stuff is incidental, it’s secondary. It’s about the kids. We have to have a children first North Star.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Well, lots of people set that goal.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And I’m saying, yeah, it would run through peaks and valleys, but when it’s good and is good today. No, they’re really supportive.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

TUCKER CARLSON: The whole time.

CHARLIE SHEEN: 80 percent of the time.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s amazing.

CHARLIE SHEEN: 70 percent of the time. Yeah. I’ll take it. I’ll take it.

TUCKER CARLSON: So. But you’re, and your family was kind to you the whole way.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, yeah. They, a guy with my kind of history and not so much a chronic relapser, but a guy that would get some time and then just blow it all up.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: It’s the trust thing that you can’t get back in a day or a week, a month. And so when I, what I decided to do was not make the big announcement, not say, “I’ve quit drinking, everybody, and I’m really.” Here we go again. Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And I was just going to just do it. And then as soon as someone made a comment about, “Hey, you’re looking, you look clear, you look content.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: As soon as I started hearing stuff like that, I would then volunteer the changes I’d made. Called a soft launch.

TUCKER CARLSON: I like that. I like that.

TUCKER CARLSON: You don’t do the media tour. You just start doing it.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And much more effective.

TUCKER CARLSON: Much more. Dials down the pressure a little bit. Do you think, were people like your work peers supportive or nice to you? I guess that’s what I mean.

CHARLIE SHEEN: You mean like former work peers?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. People outside your family who you know.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, absolutely.

TUCKER CARLSON: So there were loyal people. Yes, that’s what I’m asking.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Because I didn’t really, haven’t had the big job in this time, which is fine. Which is actually probably better, which is good that I had all this time to gain some perspective and just work on myself and be a responsible, available father to all these kids and grandkids.

TUCKER CARLSON: How many kids you have?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Five and three grandkids.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s amazing.

CHARLIE SHEEN: It’s pretty cool. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re a biblical patriarch.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Thank you. How about that?

The Entertainment Industry’s Mixed Incentives

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m always wondering about the studios, the manager, the agent, even the accountant, the lawyer, all the people around actors and in related businesses. And they have kind of a mixed incentive. They want to keep you working. Sort of like the athlete who gets the Novocaine rather than the surgery because he’s got to play the game. Do you feel like any of them actually try to help or they just kind of want to keep the money coming?

CHARLIE SHEEN: In that extreme example that I lived through, I think there was a want to help from specific individuals. I don’t think they knew how or that I was reachable enough to receive it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: So I think they had to kind of decide, weighing the pros and the cons, is he going to be, at least if he goes back to work, is that enough of a full time thing with distractions and responsibilities that will be deterrent enough, or have we sent him just back into the lion’s den just covered in fresh blood?

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

CHARLIE SHEEN: So, yeah, I probably, I don’t think I was ready to go back to work on Anger Management on the show about a year after the whole Two and a Half Men disaster.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And I don’t think that was advisable. However, it still comes down to me giving that final yes, “Yeah, I’ll do this.” So do I have to own that part?

Supernatural Threads and Faith

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, yeah. You said there were threads throughout this whole experience, times, the timing of certain events that made you think there was a supernatural quality here. I mean, how would you identify that? Is that God? What is that?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, it’s interesting. I got asked this with Bill Maher just last week.

TUCKER CARLSON: Bill Maher asked you about God?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. He did, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really? What world is this? What is happening?

CHARLIE SHEEN: I don’t know.

TUCKER CARLSON: Bill Maher is asking about God. We are in a brand new age.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. No, and I wasn’t happy with my answer.

TUCKER CARLSON: All right, well, now you have a chance to.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Now have a chance to. Yeah, most days I don’t know what else to call it. That’s what I should have said in that moment. Most days I don’t have a better word or anything else for it exactly that. And just my, whatever my interpretation of that is. But yeah, it just kind of caught me off guard and yeah, I should have just leaned right into it and I did a little bit of a tap dance. It’s kind of weird.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, we’re about the same age. Didn’t grow up in a world where people talked about God at all. Right, right.

Faith and Spirituality

CHARLIE SHEEN: Did you know, well, my dad devout Catholic growing up and rather than that, he always let us know that that was his personal journey and we were welcome to climb on board, but it wasn’t anything that he was going to mandate.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And so we did have exposure to it in our house our entire life.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Yeah. And it never.

TUCKER CARLSON: What did you think?

CHARLIE SHEEN: I didn’t. I saw some goodness with it. I saw other stuff I didn’t want to align with.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yep.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And yeah, it’s. I was talking to Lexi just yesterday. Some days I’m all in. I’m like, okay, then, sure. Well, can I describe it better? Do I have a better prediction? Yeah, no. There’s other days I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t know. So people will read the book and there’s not a chance they say, “oh, that guy’s an atheist.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

CHARLIE SHEEN: But there is a chance I go, “oh, he’s curious. He doesn’t quite. He hasn’t fully figured it out.”

TUCKER CARLSON: So you’re God curious, you would say.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, sure. Yeah. And I don’t think that’s me just wanting to say that in your presence. That’s me having time to.

TUCKER CARLSON: My presence.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Well, because, right. Just.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t know. I mean, I’m hardly an authority on the subject. No.

CHARLIE SHEEN: When I understand what it means to you.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s come to me now. Yeah. I mean, again, things are changing so fast, and I don’t have the answers to most questions, but I definitely have become convinced that God’s real, for sure.

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, that’s inspiring to see that level of acceptance.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, don’t you feel it kind of?

CHARLIE SHEEN: I do. I do, but there’s still a part of me that just still wants to be a science snob.

TUCKER CARLSON: I get it.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Because for the longest time.

TUCKER CARLSON: My whole life. Yeah. I mean, I was always pro things about it I like. But I mean, I don’t think I would ever say in public I know God’s real, because that’s freaky. And also, there are cultural connotations attached that are just different from the culture that I grew up in, completely different.

So it just found it sounded kind of phony or not really like me or whatever. But then things changed so much in the world, and I saw all this stuff that blew my mind, and I was like, “wow. God is real. I can’t believe this.” And then when you say it, you’re like, “actually, that’s not crazy. Everyone’s always thought that. I was embarrassed to say that.”

So then once I do think that once you say it, something in you changes. That’s been my experience. Not that I have a ton of experience or would feel qualified to give advice to anyone. I certainly don’t, but yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I don’t want to get there and be wrong.

TUCKER CARLSON: You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, you don’t.

CHARLIE SHEEN: There’s the thing is the thing, but isn’t there some aren’t you allowed to wait till the last minute?

TUCKER CARLSON: I think once, it’s just it’s kind of like a lot of things. You arrive in a place and you’re like, “yeah, wait, I’ve always known this.”

CHARLIE SHEEN: Interesting.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve always.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Interesting.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve always felt this. And it’s totally what I thought.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: You do occasionally feel that way about things, of course. Yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, I’m not controlling any part of all this.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

CHARLIE SHEEN: That I know for a fact.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. So and it doesn’t have the feeling of randomness, does it?

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, no. There’s too many signs. Nothing’s a coincidence.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Just, it’s everything’s connected.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly. And people are connected.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. And how do you explain deja vu?

Science vs. Religion

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, you kind of can’t. And then you realize that actually, the real religious nuts are the science snobs.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Interesting.

TUCKER CARLSON: Who are sort of desperately backfilling against the evidence, like, “well, what does that mean?” Shut up. They’re just so desperate to cling to something that is just absurd. I’m not saying that the physical world can’t be measured in a lab. Of course it can. Right. And I’m grateful for that. And I’m grateful for its byproducts, automobiles and penicillin.

But I’m not against science. But the idea that science explains everything is itself a religion, and really kind of the dumbest religion ever concocted.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Interesting.

TUCKER CARLSON: And the people who espouse it know that it’s dumb. And that’s why they’re so brittle and so given to lecturing you about it. There’s no Mormon missionary who’s ever been judgier or more persistent than Tony Fauci. “Trust the science.” Wow. Does any Christian ever say that? “Trust the religion?”

CHARLIE SHEEN: Not that I’ve ever heard.

TUCKER CARLSON: Or I’ll hurt you?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: The science religious wackos believe in conversion by the sword. “Do what we say or we’ll hurt you.”

CHARLIE SHEEN: Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s not a religion I want to be anywhere near.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Me neither.

TUCKER CARLSON: No.

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, that’s bad. Doesn’t sound loving.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, it doesn’t.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Doesn’t sound forgiving.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, it sounds dangerous, actually.

CHARLIE SHEEN: It does.

TUCKER CARLSON: Sounds kind of like Al Qaeda a little bit. So I just think and it’s sad because who acts like that? Only people who know they’re wrong act like that.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Interesting.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Right?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Yeah. There’s actually a line in the book that I don’t know where I read this or heard this, but somebody smarter than me described science as an ongoing historical series of corrected mistakes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly.

CHARLIE SHEEN: How about that?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. Yeah. It’s just kind of institutional. It’s a method for satisfying curiosity and understanding the physical world. And I’m totally for that. Completely for that. But at its heart is skepticism and an acknowledgement that you don’t know the answers to the most obvious questions. And so keep trying to find the answers.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Sure.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m 100% in favor of all of that, of course, but what it’s become is the medieval church. Brittle, rigid, punitive, stupid, laughable. And the second you describe it with no emotion, any normal person’s like, “well, that’s insane. I don’t be part of that.” Right, right.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And but I’m not going to try to solve the unsolvable.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And I’m fine being completely mystified by it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s the beginning of wisdom. Right.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Because you’re admitting you’re not all knowing.

CHARLIE SHEEN: No. Yeah. And yeah, for sure. Not all knowing.

Meeting Alex Jones and Questioning Official Stories

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, speaking of mysteries, how did you wind up knowing Alex Jones?

CHARLIE SHEEN: I wind up knowing Alex Jones. He it was his early videos, it was his early documentaries. It was the stuff he produced himself, on VHS.

TUCKER CARLSON: How could you have seen that?

CHARLIE SHEEN: How did I see it originally?

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re in Los Angeles making movies.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s wild.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I’ve always been a guy that needs to peek behind the curtain. I’ve always been a guy that’s done my own research. Always been a guy that just never always satisfied with the official story about anything good. And I create fiction for a living.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I’m pretty good at spotting it.

TUCKER CARLSON: I just want to pause on that. “I create fiction for a living. I’m pretty good at spotting it.” Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: It’s a good quote, right?

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s a great quote.

CHARLIE SHEEN: It’s true.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Thank you. Thank you. And so dad played both Kennedys.

TUCKER CARLSON: What.

CHARLIE SHEEN: When we were growing up, so we had access to JFK stuff that wasn’t in the public sphere. Documentaries and unedited Zapruder stuff. And so we were raised to take a deeper dive, look at things just with a more polished through a more polished lens, or skeptical lens.

And so yeah, I be it JFK or 9/11 or Oklahoma City or Columbine, we just did 9/11 doc.

9/11 Questions Begin

TUCKER CARLSON: And it was an amazing experience for me to be involved in this because I not only bought the 9/11 story, I was very resistant to anyone who questioned it because it felt disrespectful or desecrating the grave. I don’t know why I had that incredibly embarrassing, not at all noble reaction to people’s honest questions about 9/11.

So it took me a long time to want to rethink it. And then once you do, you realize it’s just a tissue of lies. At what point did you start asking questions about it?

CHARLIE SHEEN: 2004, 2005. Whenever Loose Change dropped. Yeah, that was the first. Well, no, actually, on the day.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really.

CHARLIE SHEEN: On the day. Yeah. There were things Emilio and I had because everybody rushed to Malibu. We were in the city. I was in a high rise. I didn’t know how far this thing reached, everybody just had to get back to the folks house. Let’s reassemble at base camp.

And Emilio and I were out on the deck and I said, “there’s something about the way that building came down. I’m just, I don’t know.” And by that point, we had seen different angles of it, and it was really there was a lot of content to digest, horrific content, might I add. And we just yeah. And then I just thought, nah. Because that would entail, of course.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

CHARLIE SHEEN: All of these things.

TUCKER CARLSON: You just shut it down in your.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. We talked each other out of it. Because that would entail.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s interesting, though, that two guys in the business of manufacturing images would focus on an image and say that or something about that.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: Weird.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Right. And so I kind of just let it, I let it just didn’t go near it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And then it led to what? It led to the whole world was different. The whole world was different.

TUCKER CARLSON: Never returned to what it was.

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, it really hasn’t. Now there’s pre and there’s post.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And then I watched that documentary. I’d been a fan of Alex’s early stuff, and that’s just him.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you knew who he was before 9/11.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah.

The Pentagon and Building 7 Questions

TUCKER CARLSON: How did I… he’s my friend. I would mean no disrespect. I love him. He’s coming, sure, in a month. But I’d never heard of Alex Jones on 9/11. And I was in the news business. I don’t know. How would you have heard of him? That’s amazing.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Just, you know, spending time in those research channels, just in that part of those subjects.

TUCKER CARLSON: You know, it’s interesting that you… so you have long felt like you want to look at other sources of information?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Of course, yeah. I’ve always done my own research. Always. And then do you know other people.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you know other people around 9/11 who already were thinking like this, like maybe reality as presented to us is not entirely real?

CHARLIE SHEEN: People would believe things only so far.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And so I would back off and I say, “You know what? We’re just going to focus on two things with just two things. And if you can explain those, I’ll submit to the official story. I’ll just say, all right, fine. However you say it had to play out, I’m in.”

TUCKER CARLSON: But explain these anomalies.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Building 7 and the Pentagon. Yeah, just help me out there. You know, I’ve got to believe that the Pentagon is the most protected and documented, you know, video protected, surveilled building in the history of the known universe.

TUCKER CARLSON: Turns out not.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Well, I’m saying, I think we just…

TUCKER CARLSON: Have one video from the parking…

CHARLIE SHEEN: Parking kiosk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that’s the thing. And then…

TUCKER CARLSON: That is weird.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, yeah. And then Building 7. It just… You can’t, you just can’t watch that and say that is the result of a fire that burned for five hours on two floors. You can’t sell that to me. And you know that for years that was always met with “that is disrespecting the victims.” And I’m like, I don’t… Okay, how is that disrespecting the fallen heroes? How if you’re just looking for the truth behind what is clearly not what… How it was explained clearly. I mean, a three year old could look at that and know, you know, that looked like that hotel in Vegas that we watched them bring down intentionally. You know, so that’s how I met Alex. Was reaching out.

TUCKER CARLSON: Trust your eyes. You’ve always trusted your own perceptions.

CBS’s Damage Control Strategy

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, and… But I did this in the middle of Two and a Half Men at its peak. Decided to be vocal about 9/11 network on the studio. They were like, “Oh my gosh, there’s actually a commercial.” Because one of the advantages we had with that show promotionally was the NFL because we were a Monday show. All of Sunday, all the CBS football games on Sunday were just, you know, every 20 minutes it’s a commercial for us. And that is like a built in thing to keep the ratings, the momentum in the eyes and all of it. Yeah. And it was great. Best tool you could possibly have.

So they made a commercial like a promo. And it’s probably on YouTube somewhere. Someone out there is going to find it. And it opens with “Charlie has a lot of questions.” And then my character would be, “Hey, Alan, you know, where’d you hide the beer? Hey mom, where’d I leave my car?” Charlie’s really curious. “Hey, yeah, you know, is that a silk bra or is that polyester?” Whatever. Like actual lines from the show to support Charlie’s curiosity. Charlie Harper, right. Yeah, but Charlie in the world, like going into places that on a corporate level with the giant hit show your lead actor is not supposed to be doing.

So they tried to make it kind of like, “Hey, he’s doing these things. But don’t worry, he’s still in our world doing them.” You know, they just… it was kind of a brilliant piece of propaganda if you think about it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really? I was just thinking that it’s a jujitsu move. You take the energy and you pull it in your direction.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Right? Yeah. And I remember watching it and I was flattered that they like put all that energy into this thing that I’m sure was upsetting a lot of people and I never saw it again.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did they ever say anything to you directly about your questions about 9/11?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Kind of, but not really. Things like “maybe it’s not the best time to be doing this kind of research, kid. Maybe, you know, take a little pause for the cause.” Yeah, it was… And yeah, they… but they didn’t like, you know, show up at my house.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Like they did for, you know, going crazy on dope or testosterone. But yeah, they were nervous and so… and I did pull it back. I did organize a symposium in LA though, at the three day event called “A Weekend of Truth.” Alex Jones is the key speaker in the middle of Two and a Half Men.

TUCKER CARLSON: Seriously?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, I did. Yeah. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you feel that your job was at risk by doing that?

CHARLIE SHEEN: I thought the other stuff was more important than my job.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, no, I… it just…

TUCKER CARLSON: How many lead actors on hit shows put anything above their job?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Cult of one?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. None. None.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Well, dad… my dad has at times gone heavily against the grain in the face of, you know, the same type of pressure. Yes, but yeah, no, that was… And then when Alex and I got together and you know, I sent him that email that I told you about. Yeah, yeah. And my last line was “zero hour’s upon us.”

Meeting Alex Jones

TUCKER CARLSON: So just for people who weren’t at breakfast here that you saw something he did and you just emailed him cold.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I did. I said, “Hi Alex, I’m a fan for years. Perhaps you’ve heard of me. My name is Charlie Sheen. I said we have to talk. Zero hour’s upon us.” And he called in ten minutes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Amazing.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: And then flew out to see you.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, yeah. And then we thought, “Okay, let’s build a secret weapon. Let’s do something that like, is unique and, and, and you know, let’s do something within the media. Let’s use the media to try to…” I guess this would have been ’07, ’08.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

“20 Minutes with the President”

CHARLIE SHEEN: So we got together and we wrote this piece called “20 Minutes with the President.” And what it was, it was a fictional retelling of this 20 minutes that I was granted by Obama. And it was me sitting down with him, asking him 20 questions about 9/11 and asking him that based on these irrefutable bullet points that if he would consider activating, you know, reopening a new 9/11 Commission. And we put it online and this was…

TUCKER CARLSON: You didn’t actually get 20 minutes of Obama?

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, it was all made up. It was all made up. But the research that Alex and I dug into that we… Because, you know, we could have been 100. It could have been “100 Questions with the President.” And we drilled down into the 20 things that were really bulletproof. Really bulletproof.

And so we published it online and we let it kind of marinate for about 20 minutes before we added the following: “Has not taken… It didn’t actually take place, but we’re hoping one day that it could or that it might.” And so we did let kind of the hysteria build a little bit that people thought, “Holy hell, man, did Sheen and Obama… This thing actually happened.” And because we didn’t want to prejudice it with it being a work of fiction from the start. And it was a little bit of a manipulation. But so what?

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, did anyone from the Obama White House reach out to you?

CHARLIE SHEEN: There’s a guy. He was the deputy press secretary. His name is Bill… Burton. Yes. Yeah, he called me.

TUCKER CARLSON: I got the memory.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Well done.

TUCKER CARLSON: Thank you.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Because I knew his name was the same two initials. Yeah. He called me and I said, “How’s it…” “Hey, thank you.” He’s like, “Yeah, that thing that you and your buddy wrote, that meeting you’re looking for. Never going to happen.” Those were his words. “Never going to happen.” I said, “Well, that’s a shame, because it really should.” He said, “Okay, all right, good luck to you. Have a nice day.” It was like a 14 second phone call. Yeah. But anyway, so… Yeah.

Media Silence and Name-Calling

And I guess… And then Alex said, “Look, when this thing goes out, they’re not going to debate any of it because we…” You know, we told it was Bill O’Reilly, it was Geraldo Rivera. We said, “We’ll sit down and debate you just on these 20 things.” And nobody bit. And Alex said, “Look, they’re just going to call you…”

TUCKER CARLSON: Nobody bit.

CHARLIE SHEEN: No. Nobody, Nobody. Nobody took the challenge.

TUCKER CARLSON: And you’re at the height of the show’s popularity.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Nobody took the debate challenge.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re one of the most famous actors in the world, and you’re offering talk show hosts the opportunity to be on their show.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: To talk about something that is really interesting and controversial. And they say no.

CHARLIE SHEEN: They said no. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: What do you think now? What do you think that is, Charlie Sheen? That’s a little weird. It’s a little weird having been in the talk show business, I can promise you.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, it was.

TUCKER CARLSON: You should have called me, man. I would have done it in a second.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, well, I probably scolded you for…

TUCKER CARLSON: Your ridiculous questions, but I still would have done it.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Right? Yeah. “Are disrespecting the memory of the victims?” Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: How dare we. Finding out why they were murdered is disrespect?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Wow.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, I know. It’s insane. And I’m… I always force myself to admit that I had these views because I want to be less judgmental toward other people. And reminding yourself what an asshole you are is a really good way to be less judgmental, but also because it’s like it’s a feature of human nature that we don’t want to know the truth about things, actually.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Interesting.

TUCKER CARLSON: Don’t you think that’s true? Well, it’s clearly not true for you, but it has been true for me. I don’t want to know. I want to know that…

CHARLIE SHEEN: What do we then do with that information?

TUCKER CARLSON: Trust me, I’m not defending that attitude at all. I’m ashamed that I had it, but I just think it’s more common. And I think of myself as like one of the most open minded people I know. I mean, I am very, very open minded. I’ll entertain any possibility because I’ve seen so much that you cannot entertain any possibility.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: But if I have felt that way, that means that it’s probably just how people are built. And you have to convince them that they should know what’s true, that the truth does matter.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Actually, it does. It does. But Alex said, “They’re just going to paint you as crazy.” Of course, but… And I said, “Really? That’s like, they can’t get more creative than that?” He says, “No, they’re just going to call you crazy.” And smash cut to like a week later. And it was literally… it was Bill O’Reilly and it was Geraldo and they just dismissed me in one sentence. “Well, Charlie Sheen’s obviously crazy.” No, yeah, yeah. Someone can find that clip, I’m sure.

TUCKER CARLSON: Handmaidens to power. Wow. That is…

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, that is. But then I saw Bill O’Reilly outside of Dr. Oz one day. I saw him in the parking lot. He was just over there. I guess he was the second guest or he’d already come out or something. And I started walking right up to him. He’s kind of a big dude, right?

TUCKER CARLSON: He’s huge.

Meeting Alex Jones

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. He said, “He’s not going to punch me, are you?” I said, “No, I’m not stupid. I don’t want to get my ass kicked.” He’s like, “Whoa.” I says, “I came over to give you a handshake. Someone shake your hand.” He was like, “Oh, oh, okay. Well, good to meet you.” I said, “Nice to meet you.” And he’s like, “Yeah, sorry about the dubs.” I said, “I don’t care. I don’t care. You know, I get it. Showbiz.” That’s what I said to him. “It’s showbiz.”

TUCKER CARLSON: What did he say?

CHARLIE SHEEN: He laughed. And then we both went in and had a pretty good episode with us, so. But it was a trip. He was like. He was on his heels a little bit.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. He’s not as comfortable with human contact. Yeah. That’s pretty disgraceful on all of our parts. And I wouldn’t have. I don’t think I would have called you crazy because objectively, it’s not crazy to ask about why the greatest tragedy in American history happened.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I didn’t think it was.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s not.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And it’s still not.

TUCKER CARLSON: Shutting people down for asking sincere questions is, you know, very hard to defend, I think.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Well. But anyway, that. That’s the Alex Jones kind of origin story, you know.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s amazing.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I just wish I could tell you where I actually acquired the videos. And it had to have been online, like mail order stuff.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you really cared.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Yeah. And he just. The stuff that I’d seen, he just was a guy that was just on the constant hunt for. For the truth and just, you know, for the right reasons.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Not to exploit it, but to expose it and share it and do something about it.

Alex Jones’ Vindication

TUCKER CARLSON: I think that’s all noble. And I. And I think that of him, you know, And I think, by the way, he’s been vindicated by time. I think. I don’t think quite as many people mock Alex Jones as crazy anymore at all. They can’t. No, that’s exactly right. He called 9/11. Really? Did you call 9/11?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, I did. No, I didn’t.

TUCKER CARLSON: Nobody did.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Nobody did.

TUCKER CARLSON: Alex Jones. So right there we know that he’s worth taking seriously. In fact, it’s worth asking, how did you do that? I’ve asked him many times. Never gotten a straight answer. But we know for a fact he did. It’s documented. So that’s incredible.

CHARLIE SHEEN: My dad spent some time with him.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Because we asked dad to read the President role because we wrote it like a play. When it gets to the thing about the actual conversation that we have and we wanted to hear it out loud to see if it sounded like legit exchanges of. Of dialogue. And he was currently playing the President. Right. So he and I played the scene and both had big shows at the same time. Yeah. On. On the same lot. We’d visit each other, like at lunch. Not often. Not often because we were both super busy. But yeah, they overlapped by, I think, two seasons, maybe. What lot three. Warner. Yeah, the Warner brothers lot. Yeah.

And then, so dad spent some time with Alex and anytime he’d leave the room, dad was like, “I don’t know, man. I think, I think this guy’s ex CIA. I think he’s too smart. He knows everything. I think he’s, I think he’s got a background that it’s like this thing.” Yeah. Which was him complimenting Alex.

Hollywood’s Reaction to 9/11 Questions

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, and it’s the way that people talk now. It was not the way people talk then. So that’s just, that’s interesting. I mean, now that just sounds like Twitter. But then people took things at face value, right? I mean, do you remember? Well, obviously you were in a different world. So how did other people in Hollywood react to the. So, so you’re at Nobu and Malibu and you say, “I don’t really understand how Tower 7 came down.” What do people say?

CHARLIE SHEEN: It’s not, it’s, it’s, there’s more resistance to it than alignment. Yeah, yeah. Not, not, not, not so much anymore. But at the time, in that moment when, you know, I was like the lone voice out there, at least in my industry, but it was a lot of support from, you know, architects for Truth, pilots for Truth, all of those.

TUCKER CARLSON: Various associates, actual experts.

CHARLIE SHEEN: You mean those guys? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Documentary That Changed Everything

TUCKER CARLSON: So you’re just reminding me, how did this interview get started set up in the first place? I totally forgot about this. Like, you wound up at this table this morning because. Why?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Because I saw a promo on, somewhere on, online, not even on YouTube, that Sean Stone had directed a six part documentary called “All the President’s Men.” And the only place that it could be viewed was on your platform.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And so I signed up and I watched it all. Six episodes in one day.

TUCKER CARLSON: Wow.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. And, and, and had to sit down and have a conversation with myself about just everything that. Well, it goes back, it just, it was, it was a gear I was familiar with because it was, it was, it was a, it was a downshift that made sense.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Because it goes back to a guy that does his own research.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And I hadn’t for so long. I hadn’t done my own research for so long. And, you know, I, I, I decided that when the second Trump victory. Right. That I was not going to allow myself to feel how I felt during the first one. I just wasn’t going to do it because it just wasn’t, it wasn’t healthy for me. It wasn’t, it didn’t, it didn’t. No, no part of my life got Better. Feeling like that every single day and being told who I was supposed to despise and why I was supposed to despise them, you know. And you were on that list.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And I was on the despised list. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s. And so, you know, apologies, I’m.

TUCKER CARLSON: But I’ve been so despised for so long. The sting is gone.

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, but I watched that documentary and it just. I. Now I was armed with some fresh data.

Sean Stone Connection

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you know Sean Stone?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, I’ve known him since Wall Street. He plays Michael Douglas’s tiny child in the movie.

TUCKER CARLSON: No way.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yes. I’ve known him since he was a child and then I reconnected with him as an adult and we had talked about a project here or there. He would write a script and send it to me. I’m like a good guy. He’s a great guy.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Really smart.

TUCKER CARLSON: He texted. Oh, I know, I know, it’s strange.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. And so I, you know, I would read a script that he wrote and say, “It’s. It’s not for me, but it’s really good,” you know, and then I didn’t talk to him for a while and then saw that he’d done this and, and done it brilliantly. And so it just, it created a desire to, to just, you know, embark on what I can describe as an experiment. An experiment. You’re just changing the channel. Just, you know, stop listening to the chorus of, of nonsense that, you know, in the, in the. Another thing that, that Twilight Zone that I was stuck in for and it’s just so dumb. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Funny thing is that Sean did that series. We, we didn’t produce for him at all. He came to us with the series. I think I’m actually in the series.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: So he came to my house and I, you know, sat for it and everything. And I like Sean a lot. I really like his. I know his dad and I. And I admire his dad. I do agree with him on everything, but like, I think he’s an honest guy and I think he’s a brave guy and he’s, by the way, earned the right to have his opinions as far as I’m concerned, having dropped out of Yale to serve in the infantry during Vietnam. And like, he’s a good man, Oliver is, anyway, but he, I don’t think he could get it aired anywhere. That’s the crazy.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Interesting. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Things have changed so much, Right, that the level of open mindedness in the world that he grew up in is just gone. There’s just no open mindedness it’s like, “Here’s the story. Deviate from it, we’ll kill you.” Right. It’s like. It’s crazy rigid. Do you feel that?

The Experiment of Independent Research

CHARLIE SHEEN: I do. I do. Yeah. But it, it just really. It brought me to a place to, to continue with research.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Into. Into some of these subjects, you know, and, and, and to, as I said, change the channel, you know, and, and, and, you know, like most experiments, the, the, the. The results are constantly evolving. Yeah, Right. But, but so far, I’m, I’m. I’m pretty happy with those results.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s kind of wild who you wind up talking to and agreeing with.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Isn’t it?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, also, if you’re. If you’re told to feel a certain way about someone because of this specific set of examples or reasons or whatever, and then you decide one day you’re. You’re going to investigate on your own.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And, and then you. You come to something that is the, the exact opposite of how you were told to feel.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Because you decided to, I don’t know, be autonomous maybe.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And just exercise.

TUCKER CARLSON: Live as a free man.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, there’s that part. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And so it’s been quite liberating, the.

The Gap Between Perception and Reality

TUCKER CARLSON: Distance between what you’re told someone is and what you discover when you spend time with the person. It’s really vast. I had that experience with Oliver Stone. I’ll be honest. I mean, I always thought Oliver Stone was a kook, a conspiracy nut. I was told to believe that. I accepted it uncritically. Years later, I wind up at Oliver Stone’s house in Los Angeles alone, just me and Oliver Stone about something specific. And I’m like, “I can’t believe I’m in Oliver Stone’s house.” Like, wow. You know what I mean? I’m sure you’ve had this feeling.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Sure.

TUCKER CARLSON: Maybe you have it right now.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I’m having it right now. I am so sorry.

TUCKER CARLSON: And I’m like.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And have been for the last hour. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: So I’m like, midway through this conversation with Oliver Stone, and I’m like, “Oliver Stone is a really nice man, a courtly man, very smart, and has thought through everything that he’s saying. And by the way, I agree with everything I’ve heard him say. I don’t agree with the things I’ve heard said about him.” Right. Like, those are bad.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Sure.

TUCKER CARLSON: But what he’s actually saying to me, I’m like, “I completely agree with you. And also, you’re a decent person.” And so I’m like, “Why did I” And then I really felt misled, I guess, is what I’m trying to say.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: I had been lied to. And that’s not the only case where I’ve been lied to and where I uncritically accepted those lies. And so then you feel stung by that. Like, “What, you lied to me because you didn’t want me to have this conversation?” I don’t know who I’m referring to when I say you, but, like, sure. The media environment that I grew up in and that my views were formed in was dishonest. Really dishonest. And probably intentionally so, and probably part of the design was to prevent me from ever talking to people with whom I might share common ground, because that would be a threat to the people lying to me.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Of course. Yeah, yeah. No, you’re. You’re. You’re. You’re telling my story too well.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s just I wouldn’t have had this experience if it weren’t for my job, where, you know, the one upside is I can talk to a lot of people. You know, you could have people’s phone numbers. You can call them.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Sure.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why is he calling me? Okay, I’ll take the call. Like, you have the chance to actually meet people that you hear about. But I think for most people who have normal jobs, like, how would they ever wind up at Oliver Stone’s house? They wouldn’t. No. Right.

So they would never know that they. Not only that he’s a good guy and worth listening to, but also that they’ve been lied to. They have no idea, because they’re never going to get out within a thousand yards of Oliver Stone or whatever.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Right. Right. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: So the deception is really subtle and incredibly effective.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Sure. But it’s what it’s taught me is just to go. Just to, you know, trust. Going back to basics.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And not until I have an experience with a person that, you know, that I can’t rely on the opinions of others because of, you know, just how, you know, however they’ve chosen to see the world.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Or experience the world.

The Moscow Experience

TUCKER CARLSON: You got to spend the weekend in Moscow. That will make you as angry as you’ve ever been because. Not because I’ve got Russia. I’m not moving to Moscow. I don’t want to move to Moscow. I want to live in my country. I don’t love Russia.

For some weird reason, I was angry because I was like, this is nothing like I thought it was. I’ve never been here. It’s very hard to get there. You’re not going to go there by accident. You have to really try to get there. Probably won’t even succeed. I did succeed, and I learned, like, oh, my gosh, they’ve been lying about this.

And so then I tried to say, you know, we’ve been lied to. About what? It’s actually like. You can make your own judgments with the politics from Putin and or Ukraine or whatever. It’s totally up to you. Decide what you think about that. But the physical reality of that city is undeniable to anyone who walks through it. And so I say this, and it’s like, “shut up, Putin stooge.”

CHARLIE SHEEN: I was like, no, no, no, no.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m not defending Putin. Or maybe, you know, whatever. It’s nothing to do with Putin. Look at the city. This is insane. And you lied about it, and I’m mad at you. Shut up. It’s like, that will blow your mind. Don’t go there.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Okay.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Because you don’t. You don’t need the aggravation.

Charlie’s 1994 Moscow Trip

CHARLIE SHEEN: Okay. No, no, no. No trips planned there anytime soon. I was there in ’94.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh. When it was tough, right?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Yeah. And we shot. It was bad. I mean, not the worst film, but it should have been a great film. And it wasn’t. It was a disappointment. It’s called Terminal Velocity. It was a skydiving thing with Nastassja Kinski and whatever.

TUCKER CARLSON: What was she like?

CHARLIE SHEEN: She was pretty cool. She was pretty cool. Yeah. She’s sexy and fun and what happened to her? I think she’s still around, right? I mean, I don’t know. I think she was dating Quincy Jones at the time.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And so their relationship was a little bit bristly, you know?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: So she’d be on the phone with him in her trailer, and then.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And then she’d come out of the set and at times, you know, was still carrying the tail end of that conversation into the scene. But I had a terrific time working with her. I hope she’s doing well.

But so we went there just for, like, four days, or. It was myself, Chris McDonald. Yeah. Anyway, and I get to the airport, and Chris and I are just on the way there. I mean, how long’s that flight? Fourteen.

TUCKER CARLSON: Quite long.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. Yeah. We’re hammered. And I’m in the airport, and there’s a guy, before I can even, like, find my bags, who’s up in my face screaming, “taxi. Taxi. Taxi. Taxi.” Right. And I don’t need a taxi. I know there’s a car waiting for me. I don’t speak Russian, you know, And I’m like, “I’m fine. I’m fine.” No, no, no. He’s like, “taxi. Taxi. Taxi.” And I’m just. At some point, it somehow got to “fuck off.” Right?

TUCKER CARLSON: I bet pretty quickly.

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, it did about two minutes. I was trying to be patient. But I did say “fuck off” out loud, but it wasn’t like “fuck off.” It was just, “fuck.” You know, “fuck off, man.” I just kind of threw it to the clouds. And I guess “fuck off” there means something a lot different than it means where I come from. And the guy lost his fucking mind.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s pretty tough here, too, I would say, even in English, right?

CHARLIE SHEEN: But he started repeating it. “Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off.” And he tried to go out. He tried to get to me. And so whoever was with us had to get between the two of us and, like, keep this guy from, like, really doing some damage, you know, at the airport. At the airport, yeah.

So I. After that, I only saw the hotel and I saw the set where we shot and my trailer. That was it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I was like, okay, this is. The rules are a lot different.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, ’94 was kind of a famously low ebb, I think, for Russia.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, that’s my Russian air force experience.

TUCKER CARLSON: Lots of killings.

CHARLIE SHEEN: So you were.

The Charlie Kirk Tragedy

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re on a media tour for the book and the doc, and you were doing Rogan last week when Charlie Kirk was murdered.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: You were actually in the middle of the interview.

CHARLIE SHEEN: We were, yeah. Yeah. And, like, we just had the bathroom break. I said to Joe, I said, “is it cool? Can we pause so I can hit the hat?” And he says, “yeah, we can wrap it up pretty soon.” And I said, “well, let’s just cover. Let’s just do a couple more minutes at the end. Just cover one more thing, and then we can wrap it up.” He’s like, “you got it.”

And then so the producer pauses, and as soon as we’re clear, he says, “Joe, there’s breaking news, and it’s really bad, and it’s everywhere, and it’s really bad.” And Joe’s. No, he says, “Joe, don’t look at your phone.” And Joe’s like, “tell me he’s breaking news really bad.” And Joe says, “what’s going on?” And he says, “Charlie Kirk’s been shot, and he’s clinging to life,” and it was just. It was. Suddenly everything was different, you know, for all the wrong reasons. It was just awful. Awful.

And then we like, thirty seconds later, we go out into the lobby and one of his security guys says to Joe, “he just died. Charlie’s dead.” And then it’s what went from bad to just. It’s as awful as it could have been, you know, and it was, I hate to say it felt surreal.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, it always does.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I don’t want to be disrespectful.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s not disrespectful. That’s the experience that every person has when something that shocking happens together.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And then we couldn’t really get the details. Then we went, we finally wound up in the bathroom and Joe said, “we need to talk about this on the air.” And I said, “yes, we do.” And so we came back on and then I guess what they’ve been playing a lot is us coming out of that moment.

And for me, it was that it was. I immediately went to fatherless children, husbandless widow. And it was just that. That part of it breaks my heart. Yeah. You know, and it’s just. And for what? And for what? You know, I mean, I’ve been as mad and as in complete disagreement, just the absolute total, you know, nuclear frustration with people and have never thought like, “well, now this is, this has to be the next logical step. This is the thing that I now must do because of how they’ve made me feel with their words.”

It’s just that’s where we’ve arrived. That’s where we’re at. You know, if that’s the case, we can’t stay here. No, we can’t. And what his wife said at his memorial, pretty powerful, you know, is if you thought you were going to silence him with that, “this will be my cries. My tears will be the battle cry.” Yes, that you’ll hear around the world. And she’s not wrong.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, she’s not.

CHARLIE SHEEN: That happened in the first hour.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: You know, but, yeah, you just take the politics out of it. Take it and take all of it out of it. And it’s a father.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

CHARLIE SHEEN: That, you know, that loved his children and his family and his wife and just, you know, and was committed to the things that he, you know, was so passionate about. And all he asked people to do was, you know, just, just debate me, you know, and he set the example of showing up that prepared, you know, and challenging others to be equally as prepared, you know, and even if they weren’t. Even if they stumbled or fumbled or didn’t. Couldn’t get their thoughts or, you know, didn’t look the part or whatever.

He never demeaned, he never belittled, he never criticized. He didn’t do any of that stuff. He wasn’t there to make fun of people. He was there to inspire. He was there to, you know, maybe just create, just even just the tiniest little spark of something for someone to maybe feel something a different way. And that cost him his life.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really. You don’t want to live in that country where that happens. I mean.

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, and it does. You know, it makes people that are in the, you know, that have to be in the public for their professions. You know, it’s like, do you know, I’m sure a lot of people are feeling that there may be a little more censorship. Personal censorship. Yeah. Like, “whoa, that’s what the deep end looks like now. I think I better just stay in the kiddie pool for a minute.”

TUCKER CARLSON: There’s no question.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: And like everything else bad, it divides people from each other. So all of a sudden, you know, people don’t want to be near each other. You know, it causes physical separation.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: Which is a hell. It’s what we do to prisoners.

CHARLIE SHEEN: It’s what we do to prisoners. Interesting.

TUCKER CARLSON: I think.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: You don’t want to be shut in alone. No, that’s the worst thing. And this just divides. It makes people suspicious, makes them hate their neighbor. Everything about it is evil. And I think it’s just important to say that.

Non-Alcoholic Beer Discussion

All right, so I want to end. I never do this, but I just really believe in it. I want to end on a product testing moment.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Amazing.

TUCKER CARLSON: I want to do that because as noted, I don’t drink. And I’m happy with that. And I’ve discovered a product called Athletic Non-alcoholic beer, which has convinced me that non-alcoholic beer can be amazing.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I discovered the same product, Athletic, so I just.

TUCKER CARLSON: There was such a stigma, you know, twenty-three years sober, I never had a non-alcoholic beer because I’m straight. And then they sent me this and I was like, “wow, that’s incredible.” Just the taste. So now I’m like all about non-alcoholic.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Sure.

TUCKER CARLSON: The greatest thing ever. And it doesn’t make you as fat as other things that I like actually turns out. Right.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Right. Yeah, for sure. Not. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: And so you have a non-alcoholic beer.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I do, I do. And I’m not a smart spokesperson for this. I’m a co-founder and a consumer, I assume. Yes. Yeah. Because you know, quitting, you know, booze eight years ago that, that, you know, I said always love beer. Still like beer. And you know, tried like, like you did pretty much all the non-alcoholic that were out there. And I’m not here to, on any.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of them, but they taste like urine.

Charlie Sheen’s Non-Alcoholic Beer Venture

CHARLIE SHEEN: A lot of them. Not that I would know, but the good ones are good. They’re not for me, they’re not great. And I thought, well, how can I affect this? How can I make this better not just for myself, but for the world at large?

And so I aligned with Silent Spirits with Ryan Perry, who’s the gentleman that was with me today. Great guy with our brewery partner is Harpoon out of Boston.

TUCKER CARLSON: Wow.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And our distribution is zero proof. But unlike just being invited into a finished product and being the pitch man, which would be the normal thing for a celebrity to do or, sorry, an actor. I’ve been working on this as long and as passionately as I have with the book and the doc.

And it was interesting because kind of the mantra in my house with my kids and excited about the things I was doing, it was always book, doc, beer, book, doc, beer. These three things were happening at the same time and we’re evolving at the same pace. And then we didn’t realize until this tour actually started that we got to a place where we can start taking orders like first week of October and shipping through E Commerce a couple weeks after that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Because it has no ethanol, you can ship it.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Exactly, yes. And this is something that I was in on the development of this and in on every stage of building the recipe. And I’m not a beer expert. I’m an expert on what I like and what I know to be the different levels of quality. And they were really relying on me as not just a co founder, but a consumer.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And there’s another thing that’s kind of cool. During this eight years, the amount of people that I’ll see at a restaurant or a ball game or just on the street, they’ll come up and say, “Man, I always wanted to have a drink with you. And I’m glad that you’re sober, but I’m sad that we can’t do that.” Now we can.

TUCKER CARLSON: I Love that.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Now we can have a drink together.

Tasting the Wild AF Beer

TUCKER CARLSON: I feel that way. And so I’m going to taste it. Don’t mind. This is wild af. I guess you can fill in the acronym as you so desire. Alcohol free, or whatever that might stand for. All right, now you can tell I’ve been off my game a little bit because I totally screwed up the head. There’s going to be some foam slurping at the beginning. That’s all right.

CHARLIE SHEEN: That’s all right.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m barely German, so. That’s great.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Thank you.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s excellent.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Thank you.

TUCKER CARLSON: That just tastes like beer.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Well, it is beer. It’s actual beer, just without the alcohol.

TUCKER CARLSON: So what you realize when you have it is that. And I drank beer in the morning for years and really enjoyed it, but it was the alcohol that I was looking for, but it was also the alcohol that made it not that great.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Right, right.

TUCKER CARLSON: So when you take the alcohol out, the hops really come to the fore. And hops are just an amazing plant, kind of astringent. I think they’re relative of cannabis, actually, which I don’t smoke, but still, aren’t they hops related to marijuana?

Well, whatever it is, they have this really flowery, interesting taste that’s a little bit biting, that offsets the inherent sweetness of the malt. But they’re kind of overwhelmed by the ethanol in a normal beer. But they come out in this. Do you feel that?

CHARLIE SHEEN: I do, I do. And it’s a craft lager.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: And what I. The model that I was urging, not to get deep into the science of it, but please do. Well, I don’t have the. I don’t know the science.

TUCKER CARLSON: Just make it up.

CHARLIE SHEEN: No, I was like, you know.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re using nuclear technology for the first time ever in the brewer process.

CHARLIE SHEEN: That’s what we’re doing. Yeah. No, it’s just what’s a great beer that is commonly served at a ball game. And I want something that not mirrors that obviously eclipses. That is more. It feels a little more full.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: A little fuller, and real.

TUCKER CARLSON: Not thin, watery. Should we give it the spaniel test? What is it?

CHARLIE SHEEN: Well, I. Oh, the spaniel test.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m just going to let them. I’ve got my spaniels. Come here. And I’m going to let them. Okay, so.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Oh, God.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, it didn’t. Is that a pass or a fail?

TUCKER CARLSON: No, no, that’s a full pass. Now, this is a legit grouse dog.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Okay?

TUCKER CARLSON: We went yesterday. She’s got an amazing nose. And if this dog doesn’t like something, it’s immediately obvious. Oh, no, she liked it.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Okay, good.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m not going to have any, because God knows where that tongue has been.

The Wild Thing Connection

CHARLIE SHEEN: And also, there’s obviously a tie in with Wild Thing. That’s why the badge is the profile of that character, which is kind of cool, but wild can also be connected to how people perceived me for so long.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why did they perceive you that way, do you think?

CHARLIE SHEEN: I mean.

TUCKER CARLSON: Just a little Charlie Sheen joke there for a minute.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah. The universe of evidence, perhaps. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Was fairly overwhelming. There wasn’t much debate about that.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, it’s alcohol free.

TUCKER CARLSON: So when you drink this in the morning, you feel no guilt at all?

CHARLIE SHEEN: None. None.

TUCKER CARLSON: Because I got to be honest, I legit enjoyed beer in the morning. I mean, it’s just a. I did, too. Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I did too, for sure.

TUCKER CARLSON: And of course, I haven’t done that in a long time, but this is a way to get your breakfast beer in with no downside.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Exactly. And I started drinking it. And all I had to work with for the longest time was the prototypes, but they would send it to me as it kept evolving, and I was drinking it during workouts.

TUCKER CARLSON: What were the other people present thinking, I wonder. There’s Charlie Sheen. He’s drinking beer during a workout. It does seem like a tiger blood thing.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I was just working out in my bedroom alone.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

CHARLIE SHEEN: It wasn’t in a gym, but I heard somewhere years ago that the German weightlifters used to chug beer, of course. To get all the carbs and stay.

TUCKER CARLSON: Schwarzenegger did. I mean.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Oh, he did okay.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. That famous movie of him from the 70s. He’s drinking a giant dining in.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Pumping iron. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So I just do it on a rower. Drinking, actually. On a rower. Yeah. On an erg thing, when you. On a row. Not while I’m actually holding the can and rowing. But I would pause and have some pops.

TUCKER CARLSON: Would you ever shoot bedroom video of that and put it online.

CHARLIE SHEEN: I mean, I try to shoot a little bedroom video as possible.

TUCKER CARLSON: This is the new Charlie Sheen.

CHARLIE SHEEN: But no, I think people are going to really respond to this.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I already have.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Oh, good.

TUCKER CARLSON: So has my dog. So, anyway, Charlie Sheen, thank you for taking all this time.

CHARLIE SHEEN: This is amazing.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s been great.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Yeah, no, it’s an honor to be here.

TUCKER CARLSON: Thank you. It’s an honor to have you. Thank you very much.

CHARLIE SHEEN: Awesome.

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