‘aka Charlie Sheen’ Director Tells All About Netflix Doc

Before filming a frame of aka Charlie Sheen, director Andrew Renzi (Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?) spent “about a year” with his famous — and infamous — subject.

“I needed to know, ‘Is this a guy that I want to make a movie about?’ Renzi told The Hollywood Reporter. “He needed to know, ‘Is this a good idea for me? Do I want to do this?’”

As it turns out, the answer to both questions was yes. Over those preproduction bonding months, Renzi says he learned two things about Charlie Sheen: 1) He is definitely sober this time, and 2) There was a lot to talk about.

One of their talking points was the reveal that Sheen had sex with men in his drug-fueled days. In your traditional celebrity documentary — especially one focused on a known Lothario like Sheen — that might be a standalone bombshell reveal. With Sheen, it was just that part of the interview.

“Him talking about his sexuality for the first time is not even that crazy because [his life story] is all so crazy,” Renzi said.

Renzi rounded up a number of Sheen associates, including his Two & a Half Men co-star Jon Cryer, Sheen’s longtime friend and fellow actor Sean Penn, one drug dealer and a couple of ex-wives (including Denise Richards), and went to work. Sheen’s dad Martin Sheen and his brother Emilio Estevez declined to participate, but the support of both are felt in the film.

There is a lot to unpack in telling the life story of Charlie Sheen — it’s just too bad for Renzi and Netflix that Sheen’s own memoir, The Book of Sheen, came out one day before their documentary. THR talked about all of that and more in a lengthy video call with Renzi; read the Q&A below.

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The topic of celebrity oversight in documentaries is an important one. Did Charlie or his team have any say in terms of editorial?

Zero. Charlie has no team, first of all, which is fun. Charlie’s team is Charlie. Potentially, one of the things I needed — and I think he needed, too, that is probably very rare in the celebrity documentary thing, which could be looked at as a good or a bad thing — is that we spent about a year together before we filmed anything for this movie.

Part of the thing that I wanted to accomplish with this was to not have it feel like some spur-of-the-moment [interview]. Like, “I read this about you, so I’m going to ask you about this right now.” That wasn’t the vibe. I wanted to make something that was comprehensive to a life that you could literally grab one headline out of 50 million headlines and make an entire movie about. There was always this understanding that I was stepping into a bit of shit doing this, and that it was going to be impossible to please people who come in with preconceived notions, or people who come in purely loving him or purely hating him — and that was what I loved about it.

How did you pare down the “50 million headlines” for a two-part doc? I went into this hoping to see more about my faves, like Hot Shots! and Wall Street, but with an expansive career and an overabundance of personal issues to cover, you really had to pick your deep dives.

Another thing I learned about Charlie throughout this process is that everybody has their own idea about what they want from him. “Contrition” is a big word that comes up. Well, maybe he’s not the most contrite guy in the world. We went so far with things because he is who he is. Like, him talking about his sexuality for the first time is not even that crazy because [his life story] is all so crazy. It was this negotiation I constantly made with myself to say, “What do I care about the world experiencing when they watch this thing?” And hopefully that lands. It might not for some, [but maybe] for others.

Did you ask Charlie how he personally identifies his sexuality? I don’t even know if that’s an appropriate question to expect an answer to in 2025…

I did ask that question. I asked it myself because I was curious, and his answer was less important to me than his answer about the [bigger picture]. There’s no identification in that way. It’s almost like a question that to him is obnoxious, because it’s like, “That’s not who I am.” He says it on camera, he didn’t close the chapter on that, but it’s something that he has had to reconcile with for a very long time that is intertwined with his drug use and not intertwined with his drug use now that he’s been sober for a long time. I think that, to him, there is 100 percent no label that he could even apply to it responsibly. And that feels kind of 2025. Who woulda thunk Charlie Sheen would be, in this moment, one of the more representative people?

Did you believe everything Charlie told you? Do you believe him to be fully sober?

Oh yeah, 100 percent. The one thing I can say about Charlie because of everything that you saw in the film — and also everything that I knew off-camera and everything that I experienced with him — is that honesty is not something I grappled with. The things I knew, the things he told me, the things that ultimately I decided didn’t have a place in the film but felt so revealing — I never grappled with honesty. He’s sober. For sure.

Charlie’s famous actor dad Martin Sheen and his famous actor brother Emilio Estevez declined to do the film. How close were they to doing it? Was it a total non-starter?

No, no. I watched the documentary sitting next to Martin. I was, like, sitting next to the president of the United States, watching one of the earlier cuts of this film…

If only he was the president of the United States…

(Laughs.) It was the fucking scariest thing ever. Here’s this guy I’m sitting next to when we’re, like, going through all of this [salacious] stuff. I think we were close in not only the idea that they would participate, but also close in the decision as to why they didn’t. There was never a moment for me where I felt, like, “Oh my God, I’ve lost the person I needed!” It was always this thing where I understood where Martin was coming from.

My perspective on it was that he wanted his son to have his moment to tell his story, and didn’t feel like he needed to add to all of the stuff that he lived throughout. I had a way to put him into the story that he felt was almost better, [so] sitting for an interview wasn’t necessary. And Emilio felt sort of the same.

You did, however, score Charlie’s drug dealer. Are there any potential legal repercussions for some of the things he admitted to doing?

Nah. At least from my perspective there aren’t.

Well, is he still dealing?

I think it would be crazy if he was still in the game and still sat down [for an interview]. The reason why he sat down, and the reason why I felt like it was really valuable to the story, is not just because he’s the guy that was dealing drugs to Charlie, but he played a wild part in [Sheen’s] sobriety. That’s a ‘90s movie… the drug dealer gets the guy sober. I thought that that was the craziest, most interesting detail.

Also, the smallest little detail that meant so much to me is that Marco is living in the only house that Charlie Sheen owns. Don’t quote me as “the only one” because it probably isn’t true, but I know that Marco is sitting in a home that Charlie Sheen bought, and it’s one of the only relics of a time when Charlie was on top of the world.

How is Charlie doing financially these days? Is he wealthy?

You’d have to ask him. I think he would be super comfortable answering that question by saying he was more wealthy at one point, without a doubt. The amount of money he ended up going through when he was making the amount of money that he was making is staggering, and I think he would speak to that. But I don’t have too much insight into his bank account. I know he just wrote a blockbuster book, so I’m sure he’s doing alright. But I think the last 10 years has been a lesson in a different type of living for him.

Your documentary came out one day after that “blockbuster book.” Does that annoy you, that in theory the release spoiled some of your reveals, or that your doc is now in some ways a marketing tool for the book?

I’ve had to reconcile with so many new experiences with this documentary that I’d be lying if I said I didn’t grapple with all of those things. But the only thing I can hang my hat on, or say that I loved, is that Charlie was writing this book on a parallel path with me making this doc. Charlie did the interviews for the doc before he wrote the book, so it felt like he became the best version [of himself] for the film because he had this creative outlet all his own. I’m so grateful for that. I was reading pages of the book to understand him more, and he was supporting me with things that just popped into his head that he remembered because he was writing the book. I will never pretend to know what the marketing vehicles of these things need to be just simply because, I don’t fucking know.

The only thing that was hard to sit with was, books have longer-lead press than a Netflix doc. So a lot of the things that I felt ownership of in the doc came out [in the press before the documentary debuted]. But that’s just me for 20 minutes [feeling sorry for myself]. And then 100 million people watch it, you’re just like, “OK, well, that’s cool.” So it’s just the natural emotions of the process, but I don’t have any resentment.

I’m a New Jersey guy, so certainly no shade to diners here, but why did you pick a diner as your setting for the hero interview?

That’s always a really interesting part of the process at the beginning to say, “Where do you do this?” There’s only so much originality you can have with an interview. As someone who’s a filmmaker, you’re constantly trying to figure out how to be original with those things. I wanted the diner to feel as though Charlie Sheen was sitting across from you and telling you a story. And there’s no more disarming place than a diner and a cup of coffee. There’s obviously also the sobriety component. I think people associate sobriety with the diner and cup of coffee, and it’s a guy there at night who is not going to be drinking, I love the romance of that. Practically speaking, there was also just the need to find a place— I do marathon interviews, we do 10 hours straight. We just go for it. I needed to find a place that felt comfortable where I could sit with him three feet away for 10 hours, where he could sit there and not want to kill himself.

Why, toward the end of the film when you discuss his sexuality, did you clear your crew from the room?

I decided to use [my voice] in the doc because it adds a little urgency — even if it might come across as a performative component. But frankly, it was purely a practical decision that I was going to have to edit this movie for a year, and this man was going to say things that his parents didn’t even know. So I needed him to feel safe that there wasn’t going to be a group of people sitting around that he didn’t know, who were going to be sitting on this information for the next year of his life — just purely for his mental health. Just being like, “I did this thing in this space, and now I’m stressed out for the next year while this guy goes and edits this?” So I actually did it as a protection for him to feel like he actually could talk about these things.

One of the other things that’s really surprising to me about the story of Charlie Sheen is that everybody remembers different things. There’s a lot of people who didn’t even remember that he’s HIV positive. There’s sort of this grab bag of things that I wanted to protect him about. I didn’t want him to feel like he was saying things that he maybe didn’t want to say.

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aka Charlie Sheen is now streaming on Netflix.