Denise Richards Admits She Was ‘Incredibly Naive’ to Ex Charlie Sheen’s Addiction Struggle When They First Met
Denise Richards is reflecting on her marriage to Charlie Sheen and the extent of his addiction, revealing that she was unaware of the full picture.
Speaking on Bethenny Frankel’s Just B podcast, the former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star, aged 52, admitted that she was “incredibly naive” regarding her ex-husband’s addiction.
Richards mentioned that when she and the Two and a Half Men star first met, he had been “sober for four years.” She never had any doubts about his sobriety and didn’t consider the possibility of a relapse, despite others questioning her concerns.
“For me, there was no doubt,” she explained. “I didn’t know that person. I only knew the person I met, and that was a man who had been sober for four years. I didn’t judge him for his past because I thought, well, his past shaped who he is today. The person I met was very different from the one who had spiraled…”
While many might commend the Scary Movie 3 actress for “taming the bad boy,” Richards admitted that she wouldn’t have pursued a relationship with Sheen if she had met him during the depths of his addiction.
“He was sober and a completely different person, and that’s who I met,” she clarified.
When asked if being with a sober person was ever “boring,” Richards responded by saying she wasn’t a partier and didn’t expect her relationship with Charlie Sheen to be a wild ride.
“It wasn’t boring,” Richards stated. “I wasn’t a partier, and I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh, I just started dating Charlie Sheen, and I’ve read all these crazy stories about him. Why aren’t we doing those things?'”
Despite Sheen’s controversial headlines, Richards admitted that she was unaware of which stories were true. She emphasized that she only knew the person she met.
Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen, aged 53, got married in 2002 but separated in 2005 while Richards was six months pregnant with their daughter, Lola. (Richards is also the mother of 7-year-old Eloise, whom she adopted as a single parent in 2011.)
Their highly publicized divorce escalated when Sheen experienced a relapse with drugs and alcohol, leading to bizarre rants about “tiger’s blood” and “winning” in 2011.
Reflecting on their split in February 2019, Richards described it as “extremely disheartening” and said that she never harbored bitterness about the divorce. She mentioned that the experience changed her but that she’s an optimist and did her best to overcome the challenges.
Sheen eventually achieved sobriety, and during an interview on ITV’s Loose Women in 2019, he confessed that revisiting his downfall felt terrible, describing it as surreal and akin to a form of “alien or demonic possession.”
