‘Bookie’ co-star Charlie Sheen talks redemption, regret over Matthew Perry

In an extensive interview with Deadline, Charlie Sheen talks about his fall from grace from his Two and a Half Men apex, his shot at “redemption” with the new Max dramedy Bookie and how he felt about the death of Matthew Perry.

His Men co-creator Chuck Lorre co-created Bookie and tapped Sheen to play a version of himself in the new show, which “has really helped me not focus so much on what went wrong, or why it went wrong, or how much damage I did, or the pain I caused,” Charlie said, calling it cathartic.

Sheen said of his “Tiger Blood” days, “I wish I could answer really what people ask. What happened? I don’t know. I don’t truly know. Something in my mind shifted.”

Now clean and sober, Sheen reflected on the recent loss of Matthew Perry, who detailed his lifetime struggle with addiction in his memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.

Sheen said when he read about Perry’s death in October, he thought, “[Y]ou could easily be reading about me instead.”

Charlie said of Perry, “I just read his book. About six weeks ago, and I read it in a day,” explaining he couldn’t put it down, “[b]ecause I can relate to it so much of it … A lot of the struggle, a lot of the obsession. When you’re at that fork in the road when there are 76 really good choices, and you go with number 77.”

Sheen said he knew Perry “a little bit … from AA occasionally, and he was lovely.” He added, “I wish I knew him better. I’m not saying I could have influenced some change or helped him in any way, but yeah, I just wish I knew him better.”

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