South Beach Sessions - Jon Cryer

Summary

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The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz

South Beach Sessions – Jon Cryer (August 28, 2025)

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Overview

From the Elser Hotel in Downtown Miami, Dan Le Batard sits down with actor Jon Cryer for a candid and wide-ranging conversation. Cryer discusses his showbiz upbringing, formative years, the behind-the-scenes realities of iconic projects like "Pretty in Pink" and "Two and a Half Men," his outlook on rejection and gratitude, and his latest foray into true crime podcasting. The conversation is marked by Le Batard's signature mix of humor and introspective inquiry, and Cryer’s openness and self-deprecating wit.

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Key Themes & Segments

1. Early Life and Showbiz Upbringing

[02:18-08:18]

• Family Legacy: Cryer was “practically born” backstage, raised by parents who were both performers (his mother a writer/composer/playwright and his father a notable actor).
  • Quote: “I had no choice. My parents were performers...I grew up kind of backstage and in it.” (Jon Cryer, [02:59])
• Discovering Family History: Reading a memoir about avant-garde theater revealed to Cryer previously unknown details about his parents' careers and absence from his childhood.
  • Quote: “It is so strange to read a memoir that deals with your parents as people you know.” (Jon Cryer, [03:20])
• First Acting Gig: Cast at 4 years old in a Zest Tabs vitamin commercial due to his mother, overcoming nerves and literal hives on set.
  • Quote: “On the day of the commercial shoot, apparently I broke out in hives...they had to just wait for like 4 hours till my skin cleared.” (Jon Cryer, [07:41])
• Childhood Media Obsession: Grew up absorbed in sitcoms and sketch comedy, especially “MASH,” “Mary Tyler Moore,” “Carol Burnett Show,” and the emergence of “Saturday Night Live.”
  • Quote: “Comedy kind of changed...live television, comedy is coming to live television.” (Jon Cryer, [11:22])

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2. Coming of Age and Finding Confidence

[09:27-12:47]; [23:10-26:34]

• Theater Camp Experience: A pivotal, confidence-building summer at Stagedoor Manor in upstate New York among other aspiring professional performers.
  • Quote: “All of a sudden you had status, and that meant nothing at my school.” (Jon Cryer, [24:20])
• Understanding Career as a Calling: Realized acting was a true pursuit around age 12, environment fostered his sense of belonging and ambition.

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3. Early Career and John Hughes Era

[25:32-33:17]

• John Hughes Connection: Early recognition of Hughes’ talent via National Lampoon and “Sixteen Candles”; failed to get a part in “Sixteen Candles” but landed “Pretty in Pink.”
• Behind the Scenes of Pretty in Pink:
  • Extensive rehearsal process fostered on-screen chemistry but revealed genuine personal tensions, especially with Andrew McCarthy.
    • Quote: “He and I, by the way, have talked many times, and he’s lovely...but I did have fun...with Annie Potts and Jimmy Spader.” (Jon Cryer, [32:40])
  • Cryer credits theater background for his collaborative approach and reflects on how personal issues colored cast dynamics.
• Sudden Fame: Describes the flood of attention, including teenage girls calling his home after “Pretty in Pink” released.

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4. Navigating Success and Setbacks

[11:22-14:53]; [36:11-41:39]; [52:36-58:47]

• Two and a Half Men:
  • Cryer details the mix of gratitude and anxiety during the show’s early years and the unpredictable nature of TV success.
    • Quote: “No, I absolutely enjoyed it while I did it...multi-camera comedies are the best job you can ever have.” (Jon Cryer, [13:05])
  • Charlie Sheen’s desire for recognition, Emmy snubs, and the show’s eventual runaway success.
• Learning from Failure:
  • Highlights “bomb movies” after “Pretty in Pink,” including the troubled productions of “Dudes” and “Superman IV.”
    • Quote: “You have to experience the pain...there is a mourning process that you have to go through.” (Jon Cryer, [36:19])
  • Celebrates unexpected gems like the indie “Big Time Adolescence,” showing that process often trumps prediction.
• Setback to Comeback:
  • Details TV stints that left him “stone cold” career-wise before persistence and strategic auditioning led to “Two and a Half Men.”
  • Weighs opportunities, recounts almost joining “Battlestar Galactica.”

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5. Family Resilience, Rejection, and Choosing Perspective

[14:53-20:52]; [45:17-48:36]

• Mother’s Example:
  • Witnessed at 13 his mother’s devastation and resilience after a career-defining negative New York Times review.
  • Quote: “She was decimated for a day, and then she got up and went back to work...that was a huge lesson for me.” (Jon Cryer, [16:17])
• Perspective on Rejection & Choices:
  • Recounts almost-roles (e.g., Chandler on "Friends" was a simple audition, not a near-miss) and "one that got away" – Mask with Cher.
  • Advocates for gratitude, emotional resilience, and accepting the business's inherent unfairness.

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6. Two and a Half Men: Peak and Fallout

[58:04-64:46]

• Arrival and Chemistry: Immediate sense that the show would succeed after first audition with Charlie Sheen.
  • Quote: “After my first audition with Charlie, I was like, oh, okay, this thing is going to kill.” (Jon Cryer, [58:39])
• Charlie Sheen’s Spiral:
  • Discusses Charlie’s relapse, keeping it together on set, then growing chaos and public spectacle.
  • Quote: “The biggest, most compelling emotion is terror, because I thought he was going to be dead. We all did.” (Jon Cryer, [60:46])
  • Cryer's anger and fear for Sheen’s wellbeing, the difficulty of experiencing a friend's personal decline in the public eye.
• Aftermath and Letting Go:
  • Processed anger, maintains some distance but wishes Sheen the best.
  • Quote: “...there’s no point in maintaining anger about that kind of thing...I don’t know that I’m comfortable being a part of his life, but I do wish him the best.” (Jon Cryer, [64:03])

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7. Who Do You Think You Are? (Family Discovery)

[41:39-45:08]

• Family Roots: Cryer recounts his appearance on the genealogy show, learning of a nine-times great-grandfather—a Scottish rebel exiled to America in colonial days.
  • Quote: “It turned out it was totally a Braveheart situation...an actual Scottish rebel...sold to a company in the Massachusetts colony.” (Jon Cryer, [41:50])
  • Le Batard jokes about ancestors’ disappointment in Cryer’s acting career.
• Parental Support: Parents were supportive but cautious about his plan to pursue acting without a fallback.

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8. Current Projects: True Crime Podcast

[64:52-67:13]

• The Man Who Calculated Death: Cryer's latest venture is hosting a true crime podcast crafted from a friend’s family history—a grandfather who was a Nazi scientist and the mystery of a wartime death.
  • Quote: “It’s a true story...her grandfather was one of Hitler’s most important scientists...a genius, but unfortunately he was working for the Nazis.” (Jon Cryer, [65:12])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On family revelations:
  “It’s so strange to read a memoir that deals with your parents as people you know...so it’s revealing all these things that I had not expected.” (Jon Cryer, [03:20])

• On career uncertainty:
  “There is a part of you as an actor...that’s like, this can end at any moment, because it can.” (Jon Cryer, [12:22])

• On resiliency:
  “You do realize that you can make yourself incredibly miserable if that’s the way you choose to live your life...you can just as easily choose not to.” (Jon Cryer, [13:05])

• On Charlie Sheen’s breakdown:
  “The biggest, most compelling emotion is terror, because I thought he was going to be dead. We all did.” (Jon Cryer, [60:46])

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Recommended Timestamps

• Family history & stage roots: [02:18-08:18]
• Lessons from mother’s career: [14:53-20:52]
• “Pretty in Pink” & John Hughes era: [25:32-33:17]
• TV success + Charlie Sheen dynamics: [58:04-64:46]
• True crime podcast discussion: [64:52-67:13]

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Tone & Style

The conversation is affable and self-aware, with Cryer’s self-deprecation and gratitude blending naturally with Le Batard’s probing, empathetic style. Cryer speaks with warmth, candor, and intelligence, balancing humor with real-life lessons on art, fame, failure, and perspective.

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Summary For New Listeners

If you missed this “South Beach Sessions,” you’ll get a real sense of Jon Cryer not just as a veteran performer, but as a thoughtful and grounded survivor of showbiz’s highs and lows. The episode offers honest stories about growing up backstage, learning resilience from family struggles, the joy and weirdness of fame, the pain of rejection and failure, and the randomness of both career-making moments and life-altering setbacks. Cryer also thoughtfully addresses the complicated legacy of “Two and a Half Men,” his relationship with Charlie Sheen, and his new passion for storytelling via a family-centered true crime podcast.

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Transcript

[Jon Cryer]

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[Jon Cryer]

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[Jon Cryer]

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[Interviewer]

Welcome to South Beach Sessions. We're out on the west coast and we are with someone who's been a TV sitcom star. You were a bit of a child prodigy. Practically born on off Broadway, right? Born off Broadway?

[Jon Cryer]

Now that you mention it, yes. I've rarely been referred to as a prodigy. I tend to think of like Mozart. Okay, so that's my level of prodigy. I'm not quite at Mozart just yet.

[Interviewer]

Okay, fair enough. But knew you were gonna be John Pryor is what I should have said. I'm sorry, I haven't actually said your name.

[Jon Cryer]

There we go.

[Interviewer]

Because you objected immediately to prodigy, you weren't gonn an actor from the very beginning.

[Jon Cryer]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

You had no choice.

[Jon Cryer]

I had no choice. Yeah. No. My parents were performers. My mother's also a writer and composer. And so I grew up kind of backstage and in it, you know, I actually had a recent. Had a weird thing recently.

[Interviewer]

You're a paid professional. I'm gonna put the microphone in front of you. Don't make love to the microphone.

[Jon Cryer]

Okay. So I recently had an odd situation where a friend of mine recommended a memoir of kind of an avant garde producer from the 60s, 70s and 80s, a guy named Albert Poland. It's called Stages is the memoir. And he said, you gotta read this. Cause your parents are all over it. I was like, I'm sorry. And it turns out my parents obviously being very active in off Broadway and some amount of avant garde stuff at the time. It is so strange to read a memoir that deals with your parents as people you know. Cause you don't picture them that way, you know, so it's revealing all these things that I had not, you know, had not expected.

[Interviewer]

What'd you learn?

[Jon Cryer]

Well, the biggest thing I learned was, like, my parents were divorced when I was 4. My dad is David Cryer. He's an actor. Been on Broadway and off Broadway. Ended up doing Phantom of the Opera on tour for 19 years. Well, no, 17 years on tour and then two years more on Broadway. So, I mean, that's how ingrained it is.

[Interviewer]

You had no chance?

[Jon Cryer]

I had no choice. But I always wondered. It's like I have no recollection of him before my parents divorced. Almost none. I have a couple of incidents that I remember, and in reading the book, I now understand why. It's because he had, as a producer and a star, embarked on a huge tour that on and off he was on for approximately four years. And that's why I didn't see him, you know. And obviously, you know, we've gotten to know each other over the years, but that was an. But it was interesting to read this book and suddenly go, oh, there's this big chunk of my life that now makes a lot more sense.

[Interviewer]

What a fascinating read that must have been. How much longer?

[Jon Cryer]

I'm not done. I'm only a third of it the way through. I'm already going, Jesus Christ. So it's wild, but it's been fun.

[Interviewer]

What else did you learn?

[Jon Cryer]

Mostly, well, that my mom. My mom is Gretchen Cryer. She's, as I said, a writer, a playwright and a composer and an actress. And she had. And the author characterizes her as pessimistic but funny, which was never my experience of my mother. My mother was always just unfailingly optimistic, just A part of who she was. And to hear that somebody perceived her completely the opposite was remarkable to me. And I gotta have a talk with her about that. I was like, what was going down when you were hanging with Albert? I don't know.

[Interviewer]

You mentioned incidents before four years old. You have something ingrained there.

[Jon Cryer]

I mean, there's a few things. There's a time when I. I remember I bit him as a joke. I'm using air quotes and that it was one of my first sort of pranks as a human being. And I thought it was hilarious. And he did not. So that's a moment that I recall. But by the way, just in the future, as a prank, it's not a great one. It's not a great one, no.

[Interviewer]

Through a child's eyes, though, where I would. I could.

[Jon Cryer]

Hilarious. Absolutely.

[Interviewer]

I can understand the confusion there. But you are. So you were a child actor. From what age? How early were you on a stage?

[Jon Cryer]

Well, my very first job was I was four years old and was in a commercial for multivitamins called Zestabs. They were basically once Flintstone vitamin. They were basically the antecedent to Flintstones. And once they realized with Zest Tabs that vitamins packed with sugar were very successful in the marketplace, then they came out with Flintstones and then they specifically branded it toward children.

[Interviewer]

You interrupted my introduction of you to say you weren't mozart. And at 4 years old, you were out here selling Zest tabs, poisoning the children with sugar.

[Jon Cryer]

They're poisoning America's children. You know, again, I didn't say that I did it well, which is, I think, what you need to be a prodigy. No, in fact, on the day of the commercial shoot, apparently I broke out in hives that were incredibly visible. And literally the production had to just wait for like 4 hours till my skin cleared.

[Interviewer]

That's the opposite of Mozart.

[Jon Cryer]

Exactly.

[Interviewer]

You were right to correct my introduction, actually.

[Jon Cryer]

You're welcome.

[Interviewer]

Did you actually. Are you being self deprecating or were there actually actual hives? Because I.

[Jon Cryer]

There were 100% actual hives.

[Interviewer]

So you were nervous? Scared.

[Jon Cryer]

I was very nervous. I was very nervous.

[Interviewer]

How much pressure was there in the house?

[Jon Cryer]

None, really. All I had to do was stand there. I didn't even have a line. Basically, my mother had booked the commercial. She was an actress and it was a great gig and she needed to be. The whole theme of the Zest Tabs commercial was. And the kids like them too, because they're packed with sugar. And so she just needed a boy and a girl. To be standing next to her. And she asked my sister and I. And my sister ran screaming from the room. Wanted nothing to do with show business. But I was like, yeah, let's do this. Cause it sounded interesting to me. But of course, my nerves overtook me on the day. The crazy thing was, the girl who was with me in the Thing was named Jennifer. And many, many years later, we were sitting at a play. We were going to see Little Foxes that Elizabeth Taylor was in. And the mom recognizes my mom and says, oh, here's Jennifer. And we were both grown people at that point, but it was lovely to see her again.

[Interviewer]

Teenage icon more acceptable to you?

[Jon Cryer]

Yes. Okay, I'm an icon. You talked me into it.

[Interviewer]

What was the life like between four and Pretty in Pink?

[Jon Cryer]

Not much happened. No, between. Between four. You know, I didn't really try to work, obviously, after that, but I was always fascinated with tv. I loved tv. Absolutely. Just my. It was the bane of my mother's existence that I was just glued to it. I had a little Sony TV that was way. The screen was about three inches by two and a half inches. No, maybe four inches by two and a half inches, black and white. But of course, the thing was probably 12 or 13 pounds.

[Interviewer]

What were you consuming? You were just addicted to it.

[Jon Cryer]

I was addicted to mostly sitcoms. Loved them. Loved sitcoms. Loved all the MASH and Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda and Good Times and All in the Family, all that stuff. And I remember, though, I remember the moment that I thought that my horizons expanded quite a bit, was I was watching Care Burnett show, which I believe was on Saturday nights. I believe. Or was it Sundays? I don't know. And then there was the news, and then there was this weird show that I couldn't tell what the hell they were doing. Cause I didn't know. Like, there was this guy doing a weird voice. And he. He sounded like he was foreign, but you couldn't quite understand him. And then he would play the Mighty Mouse theme and lip sync along to it, and it was hilarious. And I was like, who is this guy? And it turns out the show was Saturday Night Live, you know, and so it was. I remember that moment that comedy kind of changed. And it was really.

[Interviewer]

It was remarkable you happened to be watching at the moment that it changed. Where live television is, comedy is coming to live television. What level of awareness and gratitude did you have while starring for 10 years on America's number one television show that you were now the thing that was in that box in your childhood that you were obsessing over that you were right in the center of its golden age.

[Jon Cryer]

Yeah, it didn't occur to me like that because I was too suspicious by that point. You're always sure that another shoe's gonna drop and this is all gonna go away. It's very. And in the end. And it's funny because about eight seasons in, a certain costar went a little bonkers. So, you know, it's.

[Interviewer]

It's a hell of a run, though.

[Jon Cryer]

It was a hell of a run. And no, I did. I knew how lucky I was.

[Interviewer]

It doesn't sound like it, though. It sounds like you're saying there's always.

[Jon Cryer]

A part of you as an actor that's like this can end at any moment, because it can. But When CBS bought Two and a Half Men and they ordered 13 episodes, which is the normal amount, and then when they gave us the time slot after Everybody Loves Raymond, which at the time was sort of at the height of its popularity, and once they did that, I said, oh, okay. I think, you know, I think this thing is going to.

[Interviewer]

Are you sure or are you lying to me about like sometimes, very often, success doesn't feel like success to the successful because they always crave more, they want more. They think it's gonna. They think it's gonna fail soon. They don't, like, they don't get to enjoy it while they're doing it because they're competitive or whatever the reasons are.

[Jon Cryer]

No, I absolutely enjoyed it while I did it. And situation comedies are like, in front of an audience, multi camera comedies are the best job you can ever have. They're amazing because the hours are normal, they're predictable. If you want to have a family, you can have a family. You have copious amounts of time off. I mean, we would shoot three weeks and a week off every month and then we had all of the summer off. So for actors, they're very sought after jobs because of that. Also, it's just really fun working with the writers and you get a lot of rewrites. That's the hardest part of it. But again, it's incredibly fun because they're figuring out what you can do well and you're giving them the best that you can. So, no, I felt very. No, I knew that it was a great situation and I loved that. And I didn't feel it was interesting because working with Charlie Sheen, you know, he's obviously, you know, he was already a huge star at that point and I found he could be. I remember like the first couple of seasons we didn't get any Emmy nominations, and he would just, you know, quietly seethe about it. I mean, it was sort of jokey. He turned to me at one point, he said, it's all about exclusion and inclusion. And I was like, okay, if that's what it's about. I think he just wanted to be invited to the party, you know, But I found that, you know, that one of the things that, you know, having been in this business Since I was 4, you do realize that you can make yourself incredibly miserable if that's the way you choose to live your life, you know, but you can choose that, and you can just as easily choose not to.

[Interviewer]

Where'd you learn that?

[Jon Cryer]

I suspect from watching my parents. My parents, very early on had been through. You know, had been through tough stuff. And I remember my mother, she was a playwright, and she'd written shows that were. She'd written several off Broadway shows. And. And, you know, you never know how they're gonna be received by the New York critics. You know, the New York Times is like the big one that's like. You know, it's. You know, a lot of artists in New York just hate the New York Times because of the power they wield. It's not necessarily that they're, you know, awful or they, you know, their reviews are not quality or whatever, but I remember my mom had had a couple of hits off Broadway, and then she did this incredibly autobiographical show called I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking it on the Road. And she'd worked so hard on it for years, and it was this part of her, you know, as I said, it was very much about her life. And it opened at the Public Theater and got one of the worst reviews in the New York Times that I had read. I mean, and I remember just my mom just being decimated by it. Just absolutely decimated. And. But she was decimated for a day, and then she got up and went back to work, and the show ended up running for six weeks. Joe Papp, who ran the Public Theater at that time, decided to give it another few weeks, and by the end of that extra four weeks, it was selling out. It ended up moving to off Broadway and running for three years and was the most successful thing my mother did. And, you know, that was a huge lesson for me because I got to see that, you know, that even in something you perceive as just an utter defeat, there's always a little something that can turn these things around.

[Interviewer]

How old were you? And what do you remember of the details of the decimation.

[Jon Cryer]

I was 13 and I. Yeah, 78. So, yeah, 13.

[Interviewer]

It's pretty crushing to have to put something that personal into the world. If you're an artist and just leave yourself splayed open vulnerably for the critic and then have your worst nightmare read whatever she was reading.

[Jon Cryer]

Yeah, it's awful. I mean, people in the theater are always like, you know, screw them. And you know, we always, you know, we always put on a brave face because it's always, the theater is always kind of a silly, It's a ridiculous thing. We're pretending we're grown ups, pretending things. We get that. So on some level we understand this is all ridiculous folly to begin with. But again, as you said, it was an incredibly personal thing for her. So, yeah, I remember her in her bedroom with the blinds drawn and just crying, just crying it out. And that was one of the first times I recall really understanding my mom's vulnerability. You know, when you understand a parent's vulnerability, it's very different.

[Interviewer]

So you'd never seen that from her or.

[Jon Cryer]

No, no, not that, you know, she never cried or anything, but just, just.

[Interviewer]

That the bridge, the link being that clear to a 13 year old between mom cares about this thing and Also.

[Jon Cryer]

I was 13, so I could perceive the context of it a lot more. I understood how much she worked on it. I understood what a big deal it was. And it was for the Public Theater, which in New York is just an institution, just a revered place to work. So I really got it.

[Interviewer]

But again, at 13, what great life wisdom. Excuse me for interrupting you. What great life wisdom to have at 13 years old. I can choose to have a different experience with whatever comes my way. I could choose misery or I can choose a different path. I do have that. For you to say that you've learned it now at 60 and remember it from 13, that's a long time. I'm just beginning to learn that I'm in therapy. I'm not even kidding you when I say, like two months ago, I said to my therapist, some form of, well, what if I just choose to experience this stuff differently than I'm experiencing it? That was two months ago.

[Jon Cryer]

And this is the first thing you've done since this interview.

[Interviewer]

Right now, right here is what I'm doing with that inspiration.

[Jon Cryer]

I'm choosing to enjoy this horrible time. Well, I'm glad, you know, again, because I've been in this industry, which is stupid, this industry is the most ridiculous. Just, you know, I mean, part of what's fun about it is it's just ridiculous. You know, and that was always the sort of the deal, the deal. If you're gonna get into this industry, it's gonna be stupid and it's gonna be unfair. And you can' to be fair. Cause if you do, that will make you insane. And so I've been able to come at things with an enormous amount of positivity and let things go the same way. I've managed to not bring a lot of bitterness into my life. And also in many respects, I've been incredibly lucky. I mean, that I've gotten more than one opportunity to ever be on a TV show, that I've gotten more than one opportunity to ever be in a movie, to be on Broadway. I mean, these are all amazing things. So I, you know, I, you know, it's not hard to be grateful for him.

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[Jon Cryer]

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[Interviewer]

So between four years old and Pretty in Pink, you're just, you know, you're gonna be an actor. This is what you're going to do as a career. It's not gonna be about schooling. It's not gonna be about anything else. This is who I am and I'm this from four years old.

[Jon Cryer]

Well, I didn't really definitively understand it as a career and as a pursuit until I was around 12. I was pretty late and. No, around 12, a friend of mine was going to a theater camp in upstate New York and I was like, okay, I want to do that. And my mom, who was not a wealthy person, had to scrape together. It was a pretty expensive camp as summer camps go. And so she scraped the money together and I went to a place called Stagedoor Manor in upstate New York. And at that point, so many kids in that place were geared toward professional theater. They were thinking, I am, that's. And I just 100% fell into place with that. I was like, yeah, I'm doing that too. And I had also hoped to, you know, I wanted to be an actor, but I also wanted was thinking about being a feature film director. I loved films and stuff like that, but I really loved performing. And that was what seemed to seem to be the place of the most comfort for me.

[Interviewer]

How about confidence in just going through the teen years?

[Jon Cryer]

Oh, my God. Well, okay, first of all, Sejour Manor, there was 40 guys and 230 girls. So first of all, it was much easier for guys to get really good parts, which is unfair and that's the way the business is. And finally turning around, by the way. But it's been 50 years, you know, and it's, you know, much or way way longer than that culturally. But so the guys would get a lot of really great roles. Also, half of the guys Were not straight. So if you were looking to date girls, this was a fish in a barrel situation. So I got so much confidence also because it was a place where weird things were status symbols. Like, if you got that great part, all of a sudden you had status, and that meant nothing at my school.

[Interviewer]

This is the coolest you've ever been.

[Jon Cryer]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

This is indec. Indisputably. This is as handsome and as sexy and as amazing as you've ever been.

[Jon Cryer]

Yep.

[Interviewer]

This is a rocket.

[Jon Cryer]

But it was great. It was an amazing experience. It made me who I am.

[Interviewer]

Did you have any idea. Could you have at that age, an understanding of what John Hughes was or how good he was at what he was doing with Pretty in Pink?

[Jon Cryer]

Sixteen Candles was the first thing of his that I saw. He was a writer for National Lampoon before that. And I recall, and my older friend, the one who had gone to the summer camp before me, he used to get Nash Lampoons from his older brother. And I used to read the National Lampoons because there was some nudity in them. I'm going to be 100% honest here. I think that's.

[Interviewer]

It's important that this is what they come here for, right here. The porn that you found in your comedy magazine, this is the kind of expose that they expect from me.

[Jon Cryer]

Yes, yes. This is gonna be breaking the Internet tomorrow. You're talking Red Nash Lampoon for the Naked ladies, at any rate. But John Hughes had some of his earliest writings published there, and I noticed them. There was a few pieces that I thought were really, really funny. So when Sixteen Candles came out.

[Miller Lite Advertiser]

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[Jon Cryer]

The young actors, everybody was like, wow, this guy's great. And I remember I auditioned for Sixteen Candles. Did not even get close. Did not even get a callback. But when Pretty in Pink came around, obviously I did a little better. But by that time, I had already booked. I was doing Brighton Beach Memoirs on Broadway, the Neil Simon play. So, you know, obviously I'd had a lot more experience.

[Interviewer]

I read that your mother. After that movie came out, all it was, was on her answering machine. Teenage girls calling and giggling because they found your mother somehow.

[Jon Cryer]

Yeah, well, they used to have a thing called the phone book where people listed their names and their phone numbers and it was just there in a big.

[Interviewer]

I remember.

[Jon Cryer]

And people. And my mother was just in there. And by the way, my mother. Until they stopped making phone books, my mother was in the phone book. So, yeah, she got a lot of calls.

[Interviewer]

What can you tell us about that entire experience that people might not know about?

[Jon Cryer]

Which Entire experience.

[Interviewer]

The Pretty in Pink experience.

[Jon Cryer]

Oh. That people might not know. Hmm. Well, you know, movies are high school. Movies are weird because most of the people that make them are out of high school. They're not in it anymore. So for us, it was really important to capture still being in it and really feeling like really bringing some authenticity to it. And they shot in high school around, actually a high school in Hancock park that I just. I drove by on the way to the studio today, as a matter of fact. I was like, oh, we shot there. But what was unusual for Pretty in Pink and still is incredibly rarely done was we had an enormous amount of rehearsal. The director, Howie Deutsch, had us get together and really tried to spend a lot of time just letting us get comfortable with the dynamic. And he really encouraged Molly and I to hang out and, you know, and have a real social shorthand with each other. And he was okay that Andrew and I didn't get along, apparently, according to him. Now, he said, oh, I wanted you guys to hate each other. And I was like, oh, mission accomplished. He said, yeah, part of the reason I cast you guys was that there was always tension between you guys, and that worked for the movie. I was like, oh, you're an evil genius, Howie Deutsch. Or we just ended up hating each other. I don't know. The funny thing was, he's not a bad guy. I found out later that he was going through a lot of really rough stuff at that time.

[Interviewer]

I'm sorry to be smiling. I need to take the smile out of my face.

[Jon Cryer]

Take the smile. Wipe that off your face.

[Interviewer]

I was just smiling about the tent. The idea of. Of the tension being real. Oh, yeah. The idea of, like, you actually hating somebody. I don't. When you walked in here, I'm like, that person's not physically, fundamentally capable of hate.

[Jon Cryer]

Well, listen, mister, you're about to hear me unload. Well, no, the thing about it was I come from the theater, and I don't know if you've. Have you ever been involved in theatrical productions and stuff?

[Interviewer]

I know a lot of people who come from the theater, so I have some fluency in the language.

[Jon Cryer]

Got it. They're fun people. They're the fun people. My son went to college, but even though it was an engineering school, I said, hang out with the theater kids because they're the fun ones.

[Interviewer]

Especially the ones who know that it's silly and ridiculous and what a wonderful way to make a living. And aren't, like, flatulent with self involvement.

[Jon Cryer]

Yes, 100%. So I was used to that feeling in the theater that you get that sort of camaraderie and that trust that you build when you're working with other performers and. And writers and all that stuff. And that wasn't there at all with Andrew, as I said. I later found out that he was already having issues with alcohol. He had a very rough relationship with his dad, that he was going through a very rough period at that time. So in retrospect, I understand why he was remote and he was not looking for. He didn't need a best friend at that point. He didn't need me to be his friend. He was just. He was doing the job, you know, So I. But I took it as what's up his ass. And so I did not get what he was going through at all. And Molly was always a person who didn't feel the need to be an extrovert either. She made real efforts to. She, like, invited me out to. With her friends and stuff and said, hey, come see. I'm seeing a band tonight. Want to come see you. I mean, she made a lot of efforts to make sure we had.

[Interviewer]

Doesn't sound like a lot of fun, though. It's okay. You're not speaking negatively of it. You're just speaking honestly of what the situation was. It doesn't seem like it was the making of it if you're rehearsing all the time and now you're doing it with a couple of people around who. Whom there's not total perfect chemistry of like, you know, we're arm in arm.

[Jon Cryer]

No, I just don't want. I don't want it to. You know, Molly was great. I had issues with Andrew at the time. Absolutely. He and I, by the way, have talked many times, and he's lovely. And he did the Bratz documentary, and we had a great time doing that.

[Interviewer]

I'm not trying to get you to.

[Jon Cryer]

I'm not trying to get you to.

[Interviewer]

Show me the dirty. The dirty underbelly of the making and pretty and pink.

[Jon Cryer]

No, but. But, you know, but I did have fun for. Because I had a great time hanging out with Annie Potts and I had a great time with Jimmy Spader.

[Interviewer]

Please stop yelling at me. Please stop pointing at me.

[Jon Cryer]

I had a great time. You need to understand that fun was had.

[Interviewer]

At any rate, you scandalous journalists trying to gotcha me. As I knew. As I knew you'd try to do. I thought you'd do it with the Charlie Sheen questions. Instead, you're doing it with.

[Jon Cryer]

Pretty impressive. I'm trashing poor Andrew McCarthy. No, I will not trash Andrew McCarthy. We're nipping that in the bud.

[Interviewer]

You're incapable of hating. We've already established that.

[Jon Cryer]

Exactly.

[Interviewer]

So what do you think your career is going to be as you enter this phase, as you're heading into Pretty in Pink? And what do your wildest dreams look like?

[Jon Cryer]

Oh, at that point, Well, I had a good feeling about Pretty in Pink. Cause Breakfast Club had since come out. Breakfast Club came out just after I booked Pretty in Pink. And it was an atom bomb in terms of teenagers in America. And so I thought, oh, okay, this could happen to us too. So I had a good feeling about the thing resonating with people right away. And then after that, I. You know, my vision of my career was I really wanted to do a million different things. I didn't want to just be the funny sidekick. I just wanted to find a bunch of characters that I really enjoyed. And I did that. But interestingly, I had a string of just bomb movies. Just movies that. That. Not in the good sense. They weren't da bomb. They just bombed. And they were all incredible learning experiences. And I met a lot of wonderful people and learned a lot of wonderful things. I mean, here's an example. I did a movie called Dudes with Penelope Spheris. She's a really iconoclastic director. She directed all the. The Decline of Western Civilization documentaries. And she had just done one of them when we did Dudes. And it was a punk rock Western. So I was like, what the hell is this? This is gonna be fun and really interesting. And it was. But the production was horribly troubled. Just weather just ruined us for weeks. And so we were always behind the eight ball and the movie. You can really tell. I mean, we had to recut whole huge chunks and we had to drop sequences. And it was very frustrating. But also, I was just learning how to be a leading man in that. And I. You know, and like I said, it was a great way to make a lot of mistakes. Unfortunately, the movie did not. Did not really work. But like Penelope, the next thing she did was Wayne's World, you know, it was this mega hit, you know, So I, you know, just. Again, it's impossible for me to not feel gratitude because I got to meet and see and learn from amazing people.

[Interviewer]

So you're able in the moment to treat those failures as learning with gratitude, or that's in retrospect.

[Jon Cryer]

You have to experience the pain. You have to. You know, there is a mourning process that you have to go through because everybody had high Hopes you don't get into a movie hoping that it falls apart and doesn't work. I mean, like Superman iv, I did the last Christopher Reeve Superman movie, and it's a mess. You know, they ran out of money before they even finished it. So the movie doesn't even make rational sense in a lot of places. And that makes me really sad. And I did. I had to mourn it. And it was a piece of my childhood because I had loved the original, the movie. It had meant a great deal to me in terms of what movies were and what they could be. And that I was a part of that was amazing. But that I was a part of that, that went down in flames, I did have to reckon with. And for a while, you know, I didn't. Like, I didn't want to talk about it. You know, people bring it up now, and I enjoy talking about it, but it did take me a while to mourn it, and now I sort of. Now that I understand all the background stuff that happened behind the scenes, you know, again, I just learned so much from it.

[Interviewer]

Do you know what it feels like? Have you had the experience with whatever it is the perfect movie set is toward making a perfect movie production so that things are humming along in whatever way they're supposed to hum along. When an actor knows, as they very infrequently do, that they're in the middle of making a good movie. I don't. I've not spoken to many actors who often know they're in the middle of a movie. That for sure will be good.

[Jon Cryer]

That's tough. I felt that way in Pretty in Pink. I felt that way in Hot Shots, which was the first movie I did with Charlie Sheen. But most of the time, those are hard to make.

[Interviewer]

Those. Sometimes you can't tell at all that kind of movie whether they're gonna string together all of the funny correctly is.

[Jon Cryer]

Yeah, you're right. It is to a certain extent. That script was so terrifically sustained in the humor. I mean, it was so funny. And, you know, as you were reading it, it was hilarious that we all did feel who were working on it. We had a great time every day, and we did feel like, okay, the timing of this is great. And then the Gulf War broke out. We were like, oh, okay, maybe the timing wasn't so great, but it didn't stop the movie. The movie ended up still being a huge hit. But I. You know, those were, like, the closest to feeling like. Like, this is gonna work when we're on the set. But, like, I did a movie recently called Big Time Adolescence with Pete Davidson and Sydney Sweeney and Machine Gun Kelly. And it was a no budget thing of a script that I liked, but it was a little kind of off key coming of age thing. And you know, we shot it in Syracuse, New York and they didn't even have money for trailers. I mean literally we would get dressed in. They would rent out somebody's family room in their. And we would get dressed and just, you know, wander over there. And Pete was smoking enormous amounts of pot and you know, and then just commandeering a golf cart and driving around in Syracuse. And yet that one came out and was one of my favorite things I've ever done. It's just this beautiful little perfect teenage movie that, you know, that's what I aspire to. But again, while we were doing it, I had no idea, you know, I'm just gonna show up and do do the best stuff I can do.

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[Jon Cryer]

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[Jon Cryer]

Real relief, ask your doctor about Epglis and visit epglis Lilly.com or call 1-800-LilyRx or 1-800-545-5979.

[Interviewer]

Well, speaking of having no idea, when you do the television show, who do you think you are to find out about your life history, your family life history? What do you learn?

[Jon Cryer]

Oh. Oh, my God. Well, I accepted the gig because Lisa Kudrow, literally, she's the producer on it, she literally just cornered me. I was like, you should do the show. And I'm like, okay, I'll do the show. But if you've ever seen that show, you get great trips on that show. They fly you amazing places. And I was like, hoping that it was like, this is gonna be someplace great, you know, Italy. Let's go for Italy. But I'm not Italian at all. And the only thing they did let me know beforehand was that we were gonna go to Scotland. And I was like, oh, is my family. Is this sort of a Braveheart situation? Was my forefather a fierce warrior? And they flew me to Scotland, and it turned out it was totally a Braveheart situation. My. My nine times great grandfather was an actual Scottish rebel. He was captured. He was sold to a company in the Massachusetts colony. He was shipped as cargo from England to Massachusetts, and he worked for the company for several years. The company went under, so he got freed from his indenture, and he started as a farmer in Massachusetts. And they went through my family, and we remained super duper Scottish, Scottish af, as they say. Just very inbred amongst these Scots that had come to the United States. But they flew me to Scotland. Then they retraced his path from being captured back to England and then sending me across to Boston, where he was brought to begin with, and took me to the place where he worked, where the company worked. I mean, it was just to understand that kind of a journey and realize that my family's been here before America, before the United States was United States.

[Interviewer]

That warrior, though, would weep at what his descendants chose as a career.

[Jon Cryer]

He might. But by the way, I did not say he was a good warrior. He did not. He was captured. He got captured very early on. Apparently, in the particular battle, it was very embarrassing because Oliver Cromwell sent the new model army after him. And they attacked at night, which apparently just wasn't done at the time. You're just not supposed to do that. And so he was taken totally by surprise and captured.

[Interviewer]

You were scared, okay, to say anything bad about Pretty in Pink behind the scenes, and yet you take out one of your forefathers as a bad warrior.

[Jon Cryer]

He was a very good farmer. He was a very good farmer.

[Interviewer]

It doesn't change that he would be ashamed of what you chose to do for a living.

[Jon Cryer]

Yeah, he probably was. It probably would.

[Interviewer]

Was your mother because she didn't exactly support you dropping out of college, right?

[Jon Cryer]

I never went to college. No, it was high school.

[Interviewer]

Okay. Forgiveness. I gave you extra education.

[Jon Cryer]

I know. Nice try, mister.

[Interviewer]

But she wasn't supportive of that or she wanted you to have a plan B.

[Jon Cryer]

Yes, yes, yes. And I didn't actually have to end up dropping out of high school because I didn't actually get my, my first gig until like four weeks before high school ended. So that ended up not being a problem. But yeah, she was always. Both my parents were supportive. They'd come up to the camp to see the shows I was in, stuff like that. But I could tell they were, you know, that there was a deep concern because I was about to enter a business that was deeply unfair and could really hurt can. It has devastated some people if you don't get the emotional equipment to handle.

[Interviewer]

How ridiculous it is and how rejection feels. Right. Do you have that emotional equipment? Yeah. You've developed it?

[Jon Cryer]

Yeah, I'm used to it. I actually, interestingly, in the last 20 or 20 years, I usually get offers instead of being asked to audition for things, but I actually prefer to audition because I'd like to show them how this is going to be. Because I've also had the experience of getting offered a part, taking it and showing up the first day and realizing this may not be a perfect fit. And that's really scary. So I, you know, I don't, you know, I, you know, obviously there's things that I was like, oh, I wish that worked. You know, like a recent thing I auditioned for was Bryan Cranston. When they did all the Way, the LBJ movie, there was a part in it that I really liked. And I went in and, you know, I was all bright eyed and bushy tailed and I just didn't get it, you know, and that's, that's what happens. So you just have to sort of. I've been lucky enough that one of the few good byproducts of having success early is you realize, okay, I've been there, I can achieve this. It's possible. So there is always that sort of certainty that I did it, I did it at one point. I can probably do it again.

[Interviewer]

Helps, too, to have the knowledge that the business is unfair right when you're starting because you come from a show business family. You mentioned Lisa Kudrow. You came close to getting Chandler in Friends.

[Jon Cryer]

No, that's the thing, is that it's a fun story. It's become this big narrative that I could have been Chandler, basically. Unfortunately, what the reality of that narrative is. I auditioned for Chandler, didn't get it. That's boring. That's not a fun narrative. But that is, in fact, what occurred.

[Interviewer]

But you don't know how close you were or weren't. So I can make it close to make my podcast more entertaining.

[Jon Cryer]

Exactly. That makes it a lot more fun.

[Interviewer]

You are just so. You were right there, but you're just saying, no. It was just an audition. I was thinking about it. Are there any.

[Jon Cryer]

There are some extenuating circumstances to it, though, that give it. The reason that it has as a toehold, as a narrative was because I was in London when it happened. I got literally in the middle of the night, Marta Kaufman called me. I was doing a play there and said, will you audition for this tomorrow morning? I was like, it's 3am here in London. Just so you know, there's a time difference. So she faxed me the pages, and the next morning I went in and read. And I don't think I was particularly good, but I did my best because I did love the pages. And they sent the tape to the United States and it got stuck in customs, so they never saw it before they made the thing, however. But the reason is that a friend of mine, one of my counselors from summer camp, ended up becoming a casting director for Warner Brothers, and he was in on that whole process. And he said, no, no, no. They wanted Matthew Perry very early on. They'd worked with him before on some other stuff, and he's a flipping. He was a genius, you know, so, you know, I would have had to have been quite a dark horse to have gotten that.

[Interviewer]

Do you have an almost that stands out, like something that you were close to getting that ended up being. That you really wanted? That ended up being a big thing. And you either could have seen yourself in that or you say, no, that person pretty much crushed it the way that they did it.

[Jon Cryer]

I have a fun story. I was auditioning for two movies at around the same time. I was auditioning for no Small Affair, which was a movie that Columbia was doing. And I auditioned for the Mask movie with Cher. No, not the Mask. Mask with Cher. That was being directed by Peter Bogdanovich. And I was a huge fan of Peter Bogdanovich, but I was very intimidated by him. But he was.

[Interviewer]

God, that movie. You were young, though, like.

[Jon Cryer]

Yeah, I was pretty young, but, you know, it was about a kid. You know, Mask is about a kid, you know, with a very rare disease that deformed his face in particular. And I was auditioning both of those for both of those, and they offered me no Small Affair one day, and I was like, oh, my God, I'm getting offered the lead in a big movie. And. But Peter Bogdanovich's office was calling and saying, no, don't take it, because we want you to meet Cher for Mask. And I was like, yeah, I gotta take the bird in the hand here. And Eric Stoltz ended up auditioning and getting it. And Eric Stoltz is wonderful in that movie. He's fabulous. It's a great movie, and it's a terrific movie. I am sad because it's a. It's a terrific movie, and no Small Affair is an okay movie.

[Interviewer]

But that's also a seminal role, right? It's a very memorable role because there's never been anything like that before since really. That is the biggest deformed star head character that there's been.

[Jon Cryer]

Elephant man, arguably. But they're both terrific movies. But they're both really, really good movies. And so that was the closest to a one that got away situation, because who knows, if I'd met Cher.

[Interviewer]

Sorry, I'm still laughing at myself because of the eloquence involved with deformed head man character and your correction of the Elephant man take us to where it is you are in your life right before Two and a Half Men. What is happening in your life then? And what do you think is going to become of your acting career?

[Jon Cryer]

Well, I had had a spurt of successes. I had had Pretty in Pink, and I had done a bunch of films after that, as I said, that were all troubled in various ways. But then I did Hot Shots, and so I was kind of. I was sort of back a little bit, but then I started doing television, and I had two shows in a row that were on for a season and then canceled. And that's actually worse than doing a pilot that nobody sees that doesn't get picked up. Because when you're on a show and people see you and then they cancel it, the industry gets the perception that the Public just didn't go for you. And that happened to me twice. So suddenly my career was stone cold after that.

[Interviewer]

That's silly though. You would expect more executives, producers. They should know more than that about the industry they're in.

[Jon Cryer]

No, everybody's guessing. Everything seems obvious in hindsight. But while you're making all these decisions, everybody's looking for reasons to say no to things. And that was their reason was he's gotten a couple of big shots and didn't work. And so things got very cold for me. I remember there was a three year stint where I only worked three weeks for the whole three years.

[Interviewer]

Are you agreeing with these people now? He's cold. Is doubt creeping in? Is anything happening?

[Jon Cryer]

Yeah, doubt was creeping in and. Yeah, and money was getting tight for the first time. And I'd always made, I'd always way underspent my, you know, because I got lucky early. I saved, you know, and I'd always, you know, lived beneath my means. But after a long time, you start running really low, you know, and.

[Interviewer]

Oh, so you're wondering, is it over? Or you're.

[Jon Cryer]

Yeah, I'm thinking I am not equipped for any other profession at this point. So I wonder if this will turn around. I still had a basic confidence in myself and I did a weird thing which was we used to have a thing called Pilot Season, which we don't even actually have anymore now that TV is so balkanized. But there was a time when all of the shows were casting at once and it was like a stampede for actors. And agents were nuts at this point because they were all trying to lock down their money for the next year, you know, and so it's a crazy time for actors. And I decided that instead of being picky about things, I was going to audition for everything. Every part that I was vaguely right for. I'm just going to audition because people, people have forgotten what I can do. And so I went out on everything and I was gonna turn. If the part was really wrong or if I didn't like the script in the end, I'd say no. But what I ended up doing was I ended up getting nine offers that year, which is unheard of. And I just kept turning them down because I knew I wasn't actually the right guy or, or the project just wasn't the right thing.

[Interviewer]

But you're also running out of money or not money's getting low or you're thinking about money in ways you haven't had to in a while.

[Jon Cryer]

Yeah, no. When my son was born, I Sprung for a very large house. I bought Kathy Bates house, as a matter of fact. And I was starting to realize, okay, that was a mistake, and I'm gonna have to. Living here is not going to be. Be a possibility. So I was thinking, okay, I have the house to sell. So, you know, I wasn't gonna be destitute.

[Interviewer]

But you're scared. But you're scared.

[Jon Cryer]

And I was scared. And that season, it's one of the few times in show business where what I wanted to do, what I did intentionally worked as I intended, in that turning down on those things made people just was like chum in the water, made excited to see me. And, you know, and so when I. So in the. The last two shows of the season that were casting were Two and a Half Men and Battlestar Galactica. And I went on both of them and got test offers on both of them the same day, and I had to choose one. And because I'd worked with Chuck before and I'd worked with Charlie before, and Jim Burroughs was directing the pilot of Two and a Half Men, I chose Two and a Half Men. But by the way, I loved Battlestar Galactica. I loved that show and would have felt incredibly lucky to be a part of that, but was not meant to be for whatever reason. But that was one of the few times where if I hadn't gotten it, I would have said, this was the dumbest. This is the dumbest tactic ever tried. I should have taken four of those other jobs. But they. But in that particular case, it worked and I got the gig. That was the right thing.

[Interviewer]

Didn't just work. You expected it to be what, Two.

[Jon Cryer]

And a Half Men?

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Jon Cryer]

Well, what I loved about it was that the. I enjoyed the script, but, you know, it's the Odd Couple. It's an Odd Couple script, but with a kid, you know, So I thought in order to not be that, it's really gonna depend on what Charlie and I do. And after my first audition with Charlie, I was like, oh, okay, this thing is gonna kill. This is really gonna roll.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. But kill and be what it was, it still had to have exceeded your expectations.

[Jon Cryer]

Yes, it still. It did.

[Interviewer]

By leaps and bounds.

[Jon Cryer]

Yeah. Because I'd been on sitcoms that I thought were terrific in the past, but that just. Viewers didn't.

[Interviewer]

Number one for how long?

[Jon Cryer]

Oh, I don't know. We only were number one for like two or three seasons. Only.

[Interviewer]

Only.

[Jon Cryer]

Only, you know, we were, you know, because Everybody Loves Raymond was number one when we first started, and it stayed that way. For, you know, we were run for two seasons behind Everybody Loves Raymond, and then obviously it was easier for us once they ended their run.

[Interviewer]

So you have huge chemistry with Charlie. He's clean for how long? How many years are you guys working just effortlessly and well together?

[Jon Cryer]

He had been clean for two years when we started, and he lasted another two years before he and Denise split. And he clearly had started using again.

[Interviewer]

And those four years felt like the whole thing was humming. Everything was going great. You're on top of the world. Feels like success. Enjoy going to work every day.

[Jon Cryer]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

Are you noticing when he's coming into work, oh, he's relapsed like you?

[Jon Cryer]

No, no. He was at work. He was really on top of it. When his marriage fell apart, obviously something was up and we were trying to. Of marriages don't work sometimes. And so I'm not going to say, oh, it's because he's relapsed, because I knew how important his sobriety was to him, so I was hoping that wasn't. Took years before I realized, oh, he's using again. Because he was so functional at work. He was really good at it. And even up until the end when it was getting. When. When he was acting out in public and getting arrested and all that stuff, it was still on the set. He was still pretty much together. I mean, the cracks were showing in the final season, but he still performed when he needed to.

[Interviewer]

Were you mad at him?

[Jon Cryer]

Oh, sure. Oh, sure. The biggest, most compelling emotion is terror, because I thought he was going to be dead. We all did. And that's what we were, you know, every day just waking up to. And the second you open your phone, you're like, is this the day that I'm gonna see that he's gone? You know, and by this time, you know, his dad had performed with us, and, you know, we were close with Brooke and with all, you know, with everybody in his life, with Ramon, his brother, with, you know, I mean, so. So you perceive that it's not just your job that's at stake, it's this person and you feel so friend, someone.

[Interviewer]

You care about, someone you love. Terror.

[Jon Cryer]

Yeah. So we were all really scared. And, yeah, there was some anger because he was on top of the world. The show could have, you know, could have run way longer if he wanted to, you know, and he, you know, there was no reason for us to stop if he, you know, if he could keep it together. But it was interesting because, like, he would find things to be mad at in terms of, like, the Writing or stuff like that. And it was very frustrating because he acted like he had no say in the writing and that the. You know, and the writers were incredibly deferential to him. All he had to do was say, hey, listen, this. You know, this feels kind of shallow. This doesn't really make sense to me. And they would have, you know, jumped over the moon for him, but he just. He wouldn't say anything. It was so weird because he'd complain to me backstage, and then the second we were in rehearsal and we ran through the scene and it got laughs. He would just not say a word. And I was like, but if you don't tell them, they listen to you. You're the star of the show. So it was very frustrating. And I didn't like when he was starting to have his breakdowns. I didn't like the attention that it was bringing to the show. And to me, conversely, because all of a sudden, the paparazzi were coming after me in the street, and I didn't like that at all. So, you know, or, like, he'd go on the Alex Jones show and, you know, talk about, you know, 911 was a setup or whatever, and it's like, okay, you know, that was a fun argument in the makeup room, but, you know, I'm really glad that he really seems to have. Have turned over a new leaf, and, you know, he's still chugging along.

[Interviewer]

Have you found healing and forgiveness from where your anger was? Because you. I mean, technically, you could have kept going for a really long time, and I imagine once he left the show, that you felt the weight of the loss in a way.

[Jon Cryer]

Absolutely.

[Interviewer]

That continuing it could have kept you still angry at him because you're doing a lesser version of the show that you want. Wanted to be doing.

[Jon Cryer]

Yeah. I had some frustration mostly with the sort of Persona he adopted after the show, the tiger blood Persona. Just. I knew it was bullshit, and so hearing him just constantly spewing it was just like, shut up. But so, you know, so, you know, at this point, I am. You know, there's no point in maintaining anger about that kind of thing. And I am happy that he's doing well and he's reached out a couple of times. I don't know that I'm comfortable being a part of his life, but I do wish him the best.

[Interviewer]

Oh, so you haven't. When he reaches out, you don't return?

[Jon Cryer]

I haven't as of yet. You know, maybe there'll be a time when I'm cool with that.

[Interviewer]

I have failed to Mention by way of conclusion here, your new passion for the true crime podcast. This is something that has come consumed America. All true crime podcasts. But yours is the man who calculated death. Your involvement with this project means what to you and why should people find it right now?

[Jon Cryer]

It's an amazing podcast. It's one of the. It's a true story that basically a friend of mine, a friend of my wife's actually, Suzanne Rico is a wonderful journalist. She was an anchor person here on CBS News here in la. And one day we were talking and she casually dropped the. That her grandfather was one of Hitler's most important scientists. And I was like, I'm sorry, you're going to have to back that one up, Suzanne. Turns out Suzanne's grandmother had been killed mysteriously in a bombing at the end of World War II. And the family had always been sure that she was killed in revenge because her husband had created the V1 Buzz Bomb, which was a transformative weapon in World War II. Still, it's the first cruise missile. It absolutely revolutionized warfare. Her grandfather was a genius, but unfortunately he was working for the Nazis. And he was a Nazi.

[Interviewer]

Just casually dropped that.

[Jon Cryer]

Just casually dropped that. So Suzanne had been. For the last few years, her mother had passed away and her mother had left an unfinished memoir. So Suzanne had. Suzanne's mother had asked her to finish it on her behalf. So Suzanne had been researching her family and she had all this on tape. So she made it into an amazing podcast. And so it's a little bit of true crime. Cause she does solve the mystery of how it happened. But it's just an amazing family history. It's incredibly brave. And she made an amazing piece of work.

[Interviewer]

Your family's history could have been brave, but you said that your warrior ancestor wasn't a good warrior.

[Jon Cryer]

That's going to be a different podcast.

[Interviewer]

That he was conquered, that no one knows if he actually knew how to fought a fight in any way. He may have been a coward. John, thank you for the time. I know that you have to leave, otherwise I'd still be asking you questions. Thank you for being with us.

[Jon Cryer]

The pleasure was mine. Thank you.

[Interviewer]

It was mine. It wasn't just yours.

[Jon Cryer]

I disagree.

[Interviewer]

No, I'm keeping the pleasure over here. I've got just as much of the pleasure. Pleasure over here. I win again. That's all that matters. I am the pleasure king.

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