Jon Cryer Interview on the Final Season of Two and a Half Men

JON CRYER ON “TWO AND A HALF MEN”

Cryer speaks about season 12 of Two and a Half Men, his upcoming tell-all, and what’s next for his 30-year career

CBS’ comedy Two and a Half Men has embarked on its twelfth and final season. Created by Chuck Lorre, the series initially was about sad-sack divorced dad Alan Harper, played by Jon Cryer, who along with his young son Jake (Angus T. Jones), moves in with his successful, promiscuous brother Charlie, played by Charlie Sheen.

Back when the series started, nobody could have predicted that Jon Cryer would be the only one of the original MEN remaining by the time it ended. Sheen famously left the show in 2011 and Jones stopped being a series regular in 2012. Ashton Kutcher joined MEN in 2011 as tech billionaire Walden Schmidt, who buys Charlie’s house and winds up inviting Alan to live with him. This season, vehemently heterosexual Alan and Walden get married to one another in order to be able to adopt and raise a child together.

Cryer has an acting career that has spanned stage, film and television for the past thirty years. He made his feature film debut in 1984’s No Small Affair; two years later, he entered the annals of American pop culture with his performance as Duckie in Pretty In Pink and costarred in the Top Gun parody Hot Shots!Cryer also wrote and starred in 1995’s romantic big-screen comedy The Pompatus of Love. Prior to Two and A Half Men, the New York-born Cryer was a series regular in The Famous Teddy Z (in the title role), Partners, Getting Personal and The Trouble with Normal. His latest feature role, the romantic comedy Struck By Lightning, was released at the end of October.

When CBS throws a party on the grounds of West Hollywood’s Pacific Design Center for the Television Critics Association, Jon Cryer is there, happy to talk about his last year on Two and a Half Men.

Cryer says he had no idea, back in 2003 when Two and a Half Men premiered, that the series would last so long, let along that it would go through so many permutations. “If I’d ever thought that I’d end up married to another man on the show, no, I did not see that coming, I’ll be honest. But who could have foreseen where this thing went and the weird journey it’s been? It’s been ninety-seven percent fun,” he laughs, referring indirectly to the show’s offscreen hiccups, “and I’ve made a lot of great friends and honestly, it’s been an honor just to go through the gates of Warner Brothers every day for work, so it’s bittersweet, but I’m glad that I’m going to get to do something else at some point – hopefully.” He laughs again. “I guess I’m making a big assumption.”

Does Jon Cryer have a favorite episode or scene from the twelve years? “Oh, that’s a toughie,” he replies. He does, however, have some answers. “Very early in the show, Alan had a breakdown in a bookstore. He was having a breakdown because he realized that he’d never get to read all the books, he’d never have enough time in his life to read all the books that have ever been written, and Charlie suggested, ‘Well, if you put a book by the toilet …’ I said, ‘There’s just not enough bowel movements in my life to read all those books!’ That was one of my favorite moments. And we did an episode a couple years ago where Alan finally gets Lyndsey [Courtney Thorne-Smith] to have a threesome with him, but the only person that she’ll have in the threesome is Ashton’s character, so that was one of my favorite episodes that we ever did. So it’s been quite a ride.”

Two years ago, Jon Cryer took a day to work on the Web series Husbands, playing a reporter who inadvertently causes married couple Cheeks (Brad Bell) and Brady (Sean Hemeon) to contemplate their roles within the relationship. “That was a pleasure,” Cryer says of his work on the award-winning comedy. “[Husbands director/producer] Jeff Greenstein, who produced and wrote on Getting Personal and Partners that I did and Will and Grace, he just said, ‘Hey, would you do something quick?’ I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ And the scripts [by Bell and Jane Espenson] are so funny. But that’s the only Web series I’ve done that I can remember.”

With so many stories, does Cryer think he might want to write a book about his life? Funny that this should be mentioned. “I happen to be writing one right as we speak. It’s called So That Happened [due out April 2015], and it’s basically just the more surreal experiences I’ve had in this business over thirty years and it’s been a blast, although I realized how much stuff I forget. Because it’s been thirty years, so there’s huge amounts of it that I just sort of vaguely remember, and I didn’t keep a journal, so I’m trying to call people and reconnect. I had lunch with Howie Deutsch, the guy who directed Pretty in Pink, recently, because it’s kind of fun to talk about this stuff and go over it. So it’s been an interesting experience.”

Apart from writing his book, does Cryer know what he wants to do when Two and a Half Men wraps? “I do not know,” he replies. “I’m sort of just waiting for the right thing. And I figure that’ll take as long as it takes. If it’s something that’s right away, great; if it’s something that takes five years, fine. But it’s so rare that you get a bunch of people that something feels cohesive and good that I’m going to try to wait it out and wait for the right circumstances.”

Given how many humiliations and failures Alan has endured throughout the twelve years of Two and a Half Men, would Cryer like to see his character go out with a win?

Jon Cryer laughs. “I don’t know, because it would be so out of character for something to go well for him. We’ll see. I know that they’re going to try and bring some fun characters back, What’s fun is the idea they have for the final season, that Alan and Walden get married in order to have a kid – it’s such an insane, big idea that I know we’re going to have a lot of fun with it, and it seems big enough that it’s worthy of a final season. It’s nice to go out with something fun and ridiculous, so I’m looking forward to it.”

By Abbie Bernstein