"It got unwieldy the other night when my tweet master put my phone number on the Internet," Charlie Sheen says. "Wow. I got 498 texts in 31 minutes. And I got 220 phone calls."
The actor stands surrounded by reporters as he prepares his return to television after his firing from "Two and a Half Men" and concurrent media meltdown last year.
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It's Sunday night, and he is taking any and all questions at a Fox party for the Television Critics Association winter press tour. The moment encapsalates the way people have hung on his words in the last year -- and the sometimes violent emotions he's stirred.
"There's one text that was really mean and I called the guy," Sheen says. "Yeah, I did. It was really mean. He said he hoped I died of cancer and all this shit. I said 'Hey man, it's Charlie Sheen. Talk to me.' Click. Then I called him back three times. … I was pissed at that guy. He was somewhere in like Delaware."
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For all the press he's done, Charlie Sheen rarely talks to so many reporters at once. His wide-ranging Q&A session Sunday marks the beginning of his promotion for FX's upcoming "Anger Management" (with executive producer Bruce Helford, above), in which he will play a therapist -- also named Charlie -- whose life is messier than the lives of his patients. The supporting characters include his wife and 13-year-old daughter, as well as patients who include prison inmates. It begins casting next week.
Sheen talked about why his new show won't have "poo poo jokes" like "Two and a Half Men" did, his work in the upcoming Roman Coppola film "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III," and even Ashton Kutcher's personal life. He also talked about what he's learned since his "Two and a Half Men" firing and the media tour that led some to question his sanity.
Here's our transcription of some of the questions Sheen answered. (He brushed off questions about his past drug and alcohol use.) Sheen kept his answers short, because there were a lot of questions.
Reporter: What did you learn from the last year?
Sheen: It was a radical example of stick with what you know.
Have you seen the new "Two and a Half Men"?
It's like a new show.
Do you think it's funny?
I think parts of it are funny, yeah.
Would you do anything differently with everything that happened with "Two and a Half Men"?
I would have been a little less vocal... that's about it though.
What's it like to lose $2 million an episode for "Two and a Half Men"?
I went from making $2 million a week to making $1,700 a week on Roman's film, and I was never happier.
