Jon Cryer Reveals Shocking ‘Two and a Half Men’ Pay Discrepancy Between Him & Charlie Sheen

Dan Clarendon September 13, 2025, 10:33 am

Jon Cryer and Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men — Greg Gayne/ CBS/Courtesy: Everett Collection

Two and a Half Men star Charlie Sheen got even more than two and a half times what costar Jon Cryer got for the hit CBS sitcom. In fact, Cryer says his salary was just a third of Sheen’s.

Cryer discusses the pay discrepancy in the new Netflix documentary aka Charlie Sheen, as he recounts his costar’s contentious time on Two and a Half Men.

“He’s in the midst of falling apart in every way that I can imagine, and he’s renegotiating his contract for another year of a show that I’m supposed to be on, too,” Cryer says in the doc, per Deadline. “The dictator of North Korea was a guy named Kim Jong Il. He acted crazy all the time and thus got enormous amounts of aid from countries who were so scared of him that they would shovel money at him. Well, that’s what happened here. [Sheen’s] negotiations went off the charts because his life was falling apart. Me, whose life was pretty good at that time, I got a third of that.”

Cryer also revealed that CBS “pre-sold a couple extra seasons of the show,” so the network felt the need to “spend this astonishing amount of money on Charlie.”

Jon Cryer as Alan Harper and Charlie Sheen as Charlie Harper on 'Two and a Half Men'

Greg Gayne/CBS/Courtesy: Everett Collection

Because of that “astonishing” salary for Sheen, Cryer was still making good money, even though he was earning two-thirds less. Forbes reports that Sheen renegotiated his Two and a Half Men contract in 2010, shortly before the 2011 substance-abuse struggle that ended his time on the sitcom. And he was earning about $1.3 million per episode in upfront, plus approximately $600,000 in back-end syndication fees, totaling around $1.9 million for every 22-minute installment. And Cryer was earning about $620,000 per episode as of 2013, according to The Hollywood Reporter .

What Happened to Charlie Sheen on ‘Two and a Half Men’: A Look Back 10 Years Later

While they were still costarring on the show, Sheen played hedonistic bachelor Charlie Harper, while Cryer played brother Alan Harper, who moves himself and his son, Jake (Angus T. Jones), in with Charlie following his divorce. Following Sheen’s exit in Season 8, Ashton Kutcher joined the cast and played billionaire Walden Schmidt, Alan’s new roommate, for the last four seasons.

After seeing Cryer’s interview in aka Charlie Sheen, Sheen expressed interest in reconnecting with his onscreen brother. But Cryer said on The View last year he wouldn’t want to join Sheen in a Two and a Half Men reboot.

“I love him, I wish him the best, I hope he should live in good health for the rest of his life, but I don’t know if I want to get in business with him for any length of time,” Cryer said at the time.