Charlie Sheen almost went off Two and a half Men to show off his two left feet Dancing with the stars.
During the Monday, March 4 edition of her podcast ‘Sex, lies and spray tans’ former DWTS pro Cheryl Burke Sheen’s ex-wife said Denise Richards that she has a surprising history with the actor.
“Fun fact: I danced with Charlie one day,” Burke, 39, told a shocked Richards, 53.
Sheen, 58, and Richards were married from 2002 to 2006.
“Maybe you don’t know,” Burke continued. “So he went and did the show.”
It all started when Burke randomly got a call from Dancing with the stars casting director Deena Katz during the show’s intermission.
“She said, ‘Look, we have a guy with a big name and his team wants you to coach him,’” Burke explained. “I said, ‘Are you sure?’ Because if I’m trying to convince someone to do the show, I might not be the person. Because I hate lying. I just don’t want to lie [about] how the process works.”
Essentially, Burke intended to be extremely candid about the amount of commitment required to enter the competition.
“It’s beautiful, but it’s an awful lot of work,” she said. “I’m not even going to deny that. There is a lot of press, there are a lot of interviews.”
After being told it was Sheen, who had been going through a very public struggle with substance abuse, Burke met with him secretly at the Dancing with the stars rehearsal studio.
“I taught him a few steps,” she noted. “I’ve been sober for almost six years now and I just felt really sorry for him. He seemed so cool. We had so much fun.”
But Sheen immediately became curious about it How the show would be a lot of work.
“He started asking me questions,” Burke continued. “He asked me, ‘How many interviews should we do? Should we start pushing?’ And I told him, ‘Yes, we do.’
In addition to his concerns about the media attack, Burke said Sheen was also critical of his performance on the dance floor.
“He immediately judged himself,” she told Richards. “He said, ‘I’m bad at this.’ I say, ‘No, these are just the first few steps.’ I taught him a waltz or something. To be honest, we talked more than we danced.”
Despite Sheen’s DWTS After a false start, Burke insisted he would be “a great candidate.”
Richards, however, wasn’t so convinced.
“He doesn’t like sports,” she joked. “There’s a lot of physical activity with dancing.”
After all, Richards knows what she’s talking about. The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum appeared in season 8 of Dancing with the stars in 2005 together with partner Maks Chmerkovskiy. They were the second couple to be eliminated.
Even though it didn’t lead to a run at the mirrorball trophy, Burke still looked back fondly on her time with Sheen — and chuckled.
“He was just very sweet, kind and humble,” she remembers. “He was grateful. But as soon as we were done, I knew it was probably going to be a hard ‘no’.”