How Much Charlie Sheen Really Made For Every Episode Of Two And A Half Men

The series may've been called "Two and a Half Men," but its creatives only really prioritized one of the "Men." Indeed, Charlie Sheen was the biggest name on the show, and both he and his character, Charlie Harper, seemed crucial to its success. In Netflix's documentary "aka Charlie Sheen," Jon Cryer (who played Charlie's struggling divorced brother, Alan) recalled how, at the height of the series' popularity, Sheen made three times as much as him. As he explained:

"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."

How much is "a third," exactly? Well, as news outlets reported at the time, Sheen managed to negotiate himself $1.9 million per episode in his eighth and final season on the show, while Cryer earned $620,000. (With season 8 spanning 16 episodes, this meant Sheen was paid over $30 million that year.) These numbers represent the absolute height of Sheen's earnings; reports of his salary from earlier in the series' run placed him around $1.2 million per episode, which is still high.

Sheen's salary implied that the executives behind the show considered him to be irreplaceable, but that did not turn out to be the case. After his behind-the-scenes struggles became too disruptive for the series' production, Sheen was fired and his character died off-screen. How'd the show kill him? Well, Charlie's long-time stalker Rose (Melanie Lynskey) was implied to have shoved him into an oncoming train. (Ah, classic Rose!) None of the surviving characters attempted to seek justice for Charlie's death either, as they all begrudgingly admitted he had it coming. The whole thing felt like the series giving Sheen one final middle finger before moving on.

"Two and a Half Men" subsequently replaced Sheen with Ashton Kutcher as a different character, and the results were ... okay. Fans generally agree that the Sheen era of the series was superior, but Kutcher's run performed well enough ratings-wise to keep the show going another four seasons.

Sheen's salary on "Two and a Half Men" feels like the dark version of the main cast salaries on "Friends." On the hit 1990s show, the six primary stars decided to negotiate as a team, demanding equal salaries for all of them. They started out making $22,500 per episode in season 1, but by season 9, they were each earning $1 million an episode. This was less than what Sheen was making, even adjusting for inflation, but it was more equal between the series' leads. And because there were six main cast members, the "Friends" cast was technically asking a lot more from the network overall.

It's worth noting, of course, that "Friends" was a bigger hit than "Two and a Half Men," never dropping below an average of 20 million viewers throughout its entire run. "Friends" has also turned out to have a cultural staying power that "Two and a Half Men" has never quite achieved, and the show is still going strong on Netflix and other platforms even 30 years after it premiered. This is all to reiterate what Cryer himself has already known for some time: Charlie Sheen was overpaid. 

But while Cryer may not have loved making a third of Sheen's salary despite doing an equal amount of the work, he still made it clear in his "aka Charlie Sheen" interview that he doesn't hate the guy. As he explained:

"I worked with Charlie Sheen for eight years. And if you wonder what it's like to work with Charlie Sheen for eight years, when I started I had hair. I had some trepidation about participating in this, partially because part of the cycle of Charlie Sheen's life has been that he messes up terribly, he hits rock bottom, and then he gets things going again. And he brings a lot of positivity in his life, and that's when he burns himself out again. He just can't help but set that house on fire, and I didn't want to be a part of that cycle."