Charlie Sheen is addressing the reason that his famous father, Martin Sheen, declined to participate in his Netflix docuseries.
Released in two parts in September, aka Charlie Sheen centered on the Two and a Half Men star as he reflected on the ups and downs of his career and life in the spotlight with archival footage and documentary interviews under the direction of Andrew Renzi.
However, 85-year-old Martin was notably missing from the project, along with Charlie’s eldest brother, Emilio Estevez, despite Charlie describing the docuseries as a “love letter to his dad” during press ahead of the release.
Charlie, 60, opened up more about his father’s decision not to to be involved in his docuseries in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Tuesday.
“Dad had such a specific reaction to it,” Charlie recalled. “He said, ‘You don’t need me. You don’t need the me of today. You’ve got the really interesting, handsome me. That’s how I want to be in the doc.’”
The docuseries used footage from movies including Wall Street (1987) and Cadence (1990), which Martin and Charlie starred in together. It also featured Super 8 home video footage of Charlie and Estevez’s childhood in 1970s Malibu as their father rose to fame for his roles in hit movies like Badlands (1973) and Apocalypse Now (1979).
Renzi told THR he even tried to convince Martin and Estevez to participate in the project by bringing them a rough cut of “Part One” of the docuseries. He said both of the actors praised the project, but still declined.
The filmmaker previously said in a Netflix release that Martin and Estevez were in favor of the docuseries, but that they wanted to leave the spotlight to Charlie.
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“They wanted to let Charlie have this moment,” Renzi said in September. “I sat down with them to watch the movie, and they are fully supportive of it and love it. They are all very close.”
Renzi further said on Netflix’s You Can’t Make This Up podcast: “From my perspective…Martin, as a father, didn’t want to just have some guy sit across from him and make him relive all of those moments, [which] he feels are behind him now. That’s something I really respected.”
Instead of having his father and brother participate, Renzi had Sean Penn serve as the “anchor” interview throughout the docuseries. Speaking of Penn’s reaction to the finished product, Renzi told THR: “Sean Penn sent me a text and said, ‘You have made something that I have never seen before.
“‘It’s as unique and one-of-a-kind as Charlie Sheen is.’”