Cheryl Burke and Charlie Sheen. Getty Images (2)
Charlie Sheen nearly went from Two and a Half Men to showing off his two left feet on Dancing With the Stars.
During the Monday, March 4, edition of her podcast “Sex, Lies and Spray Tans,” former DWTS pro Cheryl Burke told Sheen’s ex-wife Denise Richards that she has a surprising history with the actor.
“Fun fact: I danced with Charlie for 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 was going to do the show.”
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It all started when Burke randomly got a call from Dancing With the Stars casting director Deena Katz during the show’s hiatus.
“She was like, ‘Look, we have someone who is a huge name and his team wants you to train 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 is.”
In essence, Burke planned to be extremely candid about the amount of commitment necessary to join the competition.
“It’s beautiful, but it’s freakin’ a lot of work,” she said. “I’m not even going to deny that. There’s a lot of press, there’s a lot of interviews.”
After being told it was Sheen, who had gone through some very public struggles with substance abuse, Burke met him in secret at the Dancing With the Stars rehearsal studio.
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“I taught him a few steps,” she noted. “I’m sober now for almost six years and I just had a lot of compassion for him. He seemed so cool. We had so much fun.”
But Sheen became immediately inquisitive about just how much work the show would be.
“He started asking me questions,” Burke continued. “He asked me, ‘How many interviews do we have to do? Do we have to go and do press?’ And I told him, ‘Yeah, we do.’”
In addition to his concerns about the media onslaught, Burke said Sheen was critical of his performance on the dance floor, as well.
“He judged himself right away,” she told Richards. “He was like, ‘I suck at this.’ I’m like, ‘No, this is just the first few steps.’ I taught him a waltz or something. We talked more than we danced, to be honest.”
Despite Sheen’s DWTS false start, Burke insisted he would be “a great candidate.”
Richards, however, wasn’t so convinced.
“He doesn’t like to work out,” 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 on season 8 of Dancing With the Stars in 2005 alongside partner Maks Chmerkovskiy. They were the second couple eliminated.
Even though it didn’t lead to a run at the mirrorball trophy, Burke still looked back on her time with Sheen fondly — and a chuckle.
“He was just really sweet and kind and humble,” she reminisced. “He was grateful. But I knew as soon as we were finished that it was probably going to be a hard ‘no.’”