Piers Morgan: Charlie Sheen is the Che Guevara of Television

Piers Morgan told Charlie Sheen "you're at the top of his game," called him the Che Guevera of television and said there are "two schools of thought on Charlie Sheen's current situation. Half the people Piers talked to thought "Charlie should behave better" because his wild actions reflect badly on CBS and their show, "Two and a Half Men." Piers said: "My view, and I said this to you this morning, for what it's worth ..."

"It's worth a lot, it's worth a lot" Sheen interjected.

"I think that you're entitled to behave how the hell you like," Piers continued, "as long as you don't, in the old-fashioned sense, scare the horses and the children, and you turn up to work on time, and you do your job in a professional way, which clearly the ratings suggest you were. I don't really get what the problem's been here ... but articulate why you think this is completely wrong."

"Well, I mean, I can sort of understand why they felt like they had to intervene when they did," Charlie Sheen replied, "You know, it was -- I think it was a Tuesday -- it was during the week off and things had been a little sideways, I'll admit that. Yeah, I was running and burning it at both ends. I'm not going to say it wasn't happening and I wasn't having a ball and all those around me weren't completely enjoying the show, and yeah, we're on a rocket ship to the moon some nights. But, if you do the crime, you gotta do the time. So, you know, if you're an amateur and you can't show up for work or hit your marks or deliver your dialogue and do comedy when you're sideways, then it's a whole different ballgame, but I am. So that's never been an issue."

Sheen admitted he was late to rehearsal a couple of times, but said he never missed any time from the show that would have cost CBS any money. Sheen said he was told this year that he was too thin and white as opposed to last year, when he was told he was bloated and tan, so "I thought maybe if I could mix thin with tan, then bloated and white would go away." Charlie said he felt that he was "put in a fishbowl" and they were whispering about "his condition" all the time.

"You're a smart businessman," Piers Morgan said and added that Sheen makes a lot of money,

"That doesn't mean I save any," Charlie said, "Whatever -- save, shmave."

Charlie Sheen said that he's "healed really fast" and now feels the network owes him compensation for 8 shows when he appeared ready, willing and able to perform, but "there were no scripts." He also pointed out that he heard threats that advertisers would pull out and asked Piers Morgan if he had heard whether Gillette, Walmart or Target had pulled out. Piers Morgan brought up Hollywood hypocrisy, saying if Sheen was in a rock band, his wild behavior would be encouraged, bringing up Mick Jagger. Maybe he should have brought up Vince Neil who killed someone when he was driving drunk years ago, and just got out of jail last week for drunken driving.

When Piers Morgan asked the actor if he was under the influence of any substances "right now," Sheen produced a drug test showing he was clean, from a day or two before. When asked how long he'd been clean, Sheen said he didn't know "because I'm not being, you know, held hostage by AA anymore."

On regrets, Sheen said he wished he had never started smoking but now has the lungs of a non-smoker. On drugs, he thinks he is the sum total of all his experiences, "win, lose or draw," so he doesn't think he would trade any of it, because "I'm still alive, which is pretty cool."

Piers asked why Sheen has never stopped and thought about sorting himself out properly; if he ever thought if he did "follow their programs, they can work and lots of people would be watching this, saying 'it worked for me.'"

"And then I could have a life like theirs?" Charlie Sheen asked. "I'm gonna pass. ... I'm a winner, and their lives look like they're ruled by losers, just to put it in black and white terms. I don't want their lives ..."

Piers Morgan felt that Charlie appears to be "alarmingly normal." Sheen wishes people would not "offer opinions and judgments about a guy they don't even know." He said his motto is "enjoy every moment." He does not believe he is an addict and went into societal hypocrisy. "It's okay to smoke cigars, just not cigarettes. It's okay to drink tons of vodka but don't go near cocaine ...," Sheen said.

Sheen thinks that a lot of his own life was taken as a basis for "Two and a Half Men." He thinks his lifestyle with two girlfriends he calls "the goddesses" is "b-tchin.'" While being very evasive about his drug use, he admitted "hitting the vodka pretty hard," but insists he has never exposed any of his 5 children to any part of his wild lifestyle or drugs. He said he may have exaggerated when he said he partied more than Keith Richards. "I didn't have my blood all like changed. That's a gnarly move, by the way."

Sheen said his actor friends like Mel Gibson and Sean Penn all support him and don't bother him on the addiction topic. With a few days of sobriety under his belt, like all substance abusers, Sheen seems to feel he has the world by the tail. He feels that everyone overdramatizes his behavior, including his own father, Martin Sheen. He obviously feels addiction is a joke, blithely remarking he was "on crack" during an earlier interview. "Where's Dr. Drew when you need him?" he laughed.

Morgan showed a clip of Drew Pinsky talking about addiction and Sheen dismissed him as a "clown." He thinks Dr. Drew should be ashamed of himself "to have a prognosis about somebody you've never been in the same room with, based on his media image."

He also made a snide remark about reports that CBS might hire John Stamos. If they do that, Sheen said, they "deserve everything that happens later." Directly to Stamos, he said: "Sorry, John, you're a lovely man, but yet you got on me on Howard Stern, bro, and I don't forget anything, you know."

Piers Morgan called Sheen the Che Guevara of television, much to Charlie's approval, but also noted that the actor is "quite sensitive under the brash exterior." Far from it, he came across as arrogant and contemptuous and he did look rather white and thin.

The one thing that clearly emerged to me from this interview is that Charlie Sheen is really his own worst enemy.

Source: Piers Morgan (CNN, 2/28/2011)