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RELATED LINKS

• Mr. Cryer in Parade magazine
• Two and a Half Men
• Mr. Cryer's bio

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Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Jon Cryer back to this program. The talented actor stars on one of the most popular shows on television, "Two and a Half Men." This fall the show will take over the coveted time slot vacated by Ray Romano. "Everybody Loves Raymond". Well, at least we used to. Monday nights at 9:00. Go take that slot. Here now a scene from "Two and a Half Men."

Man: So did you lovebirds meet?

Charlie: Uh, um...

Alan: Funny you should ask. We were at the Coffee Bean...you know the one in Larchmont Village where the pastries are to die for? Anyway, we both ordered a soy latte, and when the first one came up we both reached for it and our hands touched.

Man: Oh, that is so romantic.

Alan: Yeah. It was one of those moments that seems to go on forever.

Charlie: Like this one.

Alan: Are you starting?

Charlie: No.

Alan: Because I swear to God I will walk out that door and get in a cab.

Tavis: Jon, how you doing, man?

Jon Cryer: Very well. Very well.

Tavis: Nice to see you again.

Cryer: Thank you. Thank you.

Tavis: I love the show.

Cryer: Oh, good.

Tavis: It's funny, funny, funny stuff. Are you feeling any heat? Feeling any pressure with taking over Ray's spot?

Cryer: No, it's great. For the actors it's great. It's the writers who are just losing their bowels. But they do that anyway. At any rate, no, it's great. They're very excited and very jazzed about the opportunities for next season. I don't know where it's going, mind you. They don't tell me. Literally I walked in and they were, like, covering up the board., you know. They don't want me to see in the writer's office. So, you know, that's fine.

Tavis: As an actor, though, when you know you're taking over this slot--I mean, you guys ain't done bad, don't get me wrong, so it isn't like there's that much difference between you and Ray in the beginning. You guys are a hit show. But you don't feel any--I mean, the pressure that the media is putting on you guys, like can they live up to what Ray Romano did, you don't feel any of this? You're not bothered at all?

Cryer: You can't. You can't function in that kind of thing. The show is going to be what it is. We're just going to keep doing what we were doing before that was working. The same crap. I think I'm going to write that on the board in the writer's office. The same crap. That's what we want this year, underline it three times. No, it's working. There's no reason to mess with it, and we're just going to keep on doing it.

Tavis: This kid on the show, his real name is what, Agnes?

Cryer: Yes, his name is Agnes.

Tavis: Agnes T. Jones.

Cryer: No, Angus, actually.

Tavis: Is it Angus?

Cryer: It's Angus.

Tavis: Angus? OK, I said Agnes.

Cryer: I'm going to tell him that.

Tavis: No, please don't tell him I said that. I guess he won't be coming on my show. "Till you get my name right, Travis! Travis, I am not coming on your show." Anyway, Mr. Jones, do you all--you and Charlie specifically ever wonder or concern yourself with how much exposure this kid is getting and whether or not--I mean I don't want this kid to be a child star that we're reading about in the "Enquirer" in five or ten years.

Cryer: Yeah, knocking off convenience stores. No. What we're doing is, we're training him how to do that now. So that he can do it at a real young age, and get over that phase. No, you know, he's a very ground kid, and his mom is on the set with him all the time. And the nice thing about having Charlie Sheen on your set is, you know, there's a guy who's made a lot of mistakes in his life.

Tavis: Yeah.

Cryer: And, you know, when Charlie Sheen tells you, you know, steer clear of the drugs--

Tavis: Charlie knows.

Cryer: He knows. And so that's great. And he's an incredibly professional kid. So, hopefully we're not messing him up for life.

Tavis: Who knows? Only time will tell. We'll see. Speaking of time, the last time you were here or since the last time you were here, did I read somewhere that you, like, broke two of your teeth?

Cryer: Yes.

Tavis: I've been looking at your mouth while you were talking trying to see something. I didn't want to be too obvious.

Cryer: I look good now thanks to a SWAT team of tactical dentists who went in there just, you know, with all their dental instruments blazing.

Tavis: So what happened?

Cryer: What happened was two things happened at once, basically. I was in Florida doing another talk show. They put me up in a lovely hotel. It had a great pool. It wasn't, however, a very deep pool, which I discovered when I tried to dive underneath my son and just bashed one tooth. Broke the first tooth doing that. Got a temporary thing on to do the talk show the next day, went to New York, and while the temp was still in, my son was eating an ice cream sandwich. He took a big chomping bite out of it. He's 5. He handed it to me and he said hold this for me, daddy. And I said OK, I'm going to eat it now. I took a bite and realized that the rest of the ice cream sandwich was frozen in liquid oxygen and then this other tooth went pop and it popped right off. So for the day I pretended to be British, and that sort of worked actually. Brits are not famous for their dental hygiene. But then again, the technicians came in and did a just magnificent job. I'm the bionic man now.

Tavis: Give us that shot now. Look at how pretty they are now. Oh, yes. That's why I couldn't tell. I kept looking, like, his teeth don't look like they were broke to me.

Cryer: No. No. It's an elaborate illusion.

Tavis: All right. I'm trying to catch up with you and all your activities since you were last here. You are also--who was here the other night? Cedric the Entertainer was here the other night. Cedric did a bit at the White House Correspondents dinner.

Cryer: He did. He killed. He was great.

Tavis: I understand you were there as well.

Cryer: I was.

Tavis: I'm going to throw three names out at you. I understand you had interesting meetings that night.

Cryer: Well, I had...yeah.

Tavis: Let me throw some names at you. You tell me the stories. So we all know that Mr. Wolfowitz was at the Defense Department, now runs the World Bank.

Cryer: Yes. Congratulations, Mr. Wolfowitz.

Tavis: Congratulations, I think. Maybe.

Cryer: Well, we'll see how he does.

Tavis: Time will tell on that one, too.

Cryer: Give him a minute.

Tavis: In any event, you met Mr. Wolfowitz. What was that like?

Cryer: Well, a guy who worked in the Defense Department or a Defense contractor was taking a picture of me and his wife, just, you know, smiling, not doing anything in particular, and he said, "Ooh, there's Paul Wolfowitz." I said, "Oh, you know what, I'm very curious to meet Mr. Wolfowitz." He brought me over, and what I didn't realize I was doing was completely ruining--he was about to get this gorgeous woman's number and I just walked right over. "Mr. Wolfowitz, very nice to meet you." And I realized, oh, no, I've blown what would have been--

Tavis: So the head of the World Bank was getting his mack on, and you walked right into the middle of it.

Cryer: Yes, I blew it. But he was still shockingly polite even though he was clearly keeping the anger in. At any rate, but he was very nice. Posed for a picture. I told him congratulations on the miraculous confirmation considering the level of--

Tavis: Well, you set me up so nicely to say--although I'm not going to say it--you set me up so nicely to say that since Wolfowitz has screwed us so many times, it was not so wrong for you to step--but I'm not going to say that. I'm going to keep that in. Yes. Keep all that in. All right. So you met Tucker Carlson, who was doing a show here on PBS. Mr. Bow Tie.

Cryer: Mr. Bow Tie and I got him to take off his bow tie.

Tavis: No!

Cryer: You know how I did it?

Tavis: He took off his bow tie for you?

Cryer: Well, I used my masculine wiles. No, we were at a party and it was incredibly hot and I said, "Dude, take off your bow tie," and so he took it off. That's how that worked. I'm very good. I'm very persuasive.

Tavis: I heard that you were, like, sitting at a table or near table with three Als.

Cryer: Yes. What happened was, I kept hearing the quote all night that politics is show business for ugly people, which is rude, I think, because there are some very attractive people in politics. Paul Wolfowitz, a hottie. Let's face it.

Tavis: Before you go further, I'm thinking when you say Paul Wolfowitz is a hottie, I'm thinking of the scene in Michael Moore's film when he's standing on the White House lawn licking his comb to comb his hair.

Cryer: That's not fair. That's not fair! We've all had moments where we've had to use secretions of some kind just to be presentable. The man was about to be on television. We've all done the last-minute, "Oh, gee, there's some sort of snot artifact in my nose."

Tavis: I have never licked my comb to rub it through my hair. I'm sorry.

Cryer: OK. Well, it's a different issue.

Tavis: All right. Back to the Als.

Cryer: We're white people. Give us a little break here!

Tavis: All right. A comb licked would not get through my hair anyway, so that's another issue. I said it, you didn't. Go ahead.

Cryer: So at any rate, I was at a buffet, and again, it's a very collegial atmosphere there. It's very different. Ron Silver was talking about it. He had spoken at the Republican convention, and he's been a die-hard Democrat for a long time, and he lost friends over that because he, you know, crossed the line to speak at the Republican convention. So, you know, he's paid a personal price for this. Meanwhile, he went to a dinner, there was Howard Dean sitting next to George Stephanopoulos sitting next to Karl Rove having a great time, slapping backs and laughing and joking.

Tavis: You know why? Because they're white people. Y'all can do that.

Cryer: Yes, that is a secret thing amongst us white people.

Tavis: No matter what party affiliation you are, you're still white people.

Cryer: Yes, we're nice to each other. So true. But he was, like, come on, you know, you people, I'm losing friends over this stuff, and you guys can't be nice to each other? And it was funny, because I went to a buffet the next day after the thing and there sitting at a table was Al Haig...

Tavis: Al Haig.

Cryer: Al Franken sitting next to him...

Tavis: Al Franken.

Cryer: And Al Sharpton. And I had to take a picture of that.

Tavis: I'll bet you took a picture of that.

Cryer: Yes, I did.

Tavis: Al Haig, Al Franken, and Al Sharpton.

Cryer: I couldn't get them all in the same shot because my phone is crappy. My phone camera.

Tavis: So is mine. We both have to upgrade. I don't know that "Two and a Half Men" would ever have any concerns about this, but you been following this FCC stuff?

Cryer: Oh, yes.

Tavis: We've got a new head of the FCC.

Cryer: Yes. Kevin Martin. I had put out the word during the course of the White House Correspondents dinner, because Congress is currently considering upping the fines that the FCC can levy for indecency infractions. It's going from, like, from $30,000 to up to half a million possibly, and it can be levied on actors, on anybody involved in the production, which I think is kind of ridiculous. I don't know that Americans are really ready to let their government actually censor on a daily basis what they're going to see. At any rate, I had put out the word at the White House Correspondents dinner that I wanted to meet Kevin Martin and that I had a bone to pick with him and somehow through a bizarre Washington game of telephone, it became "Jon Cryer is totally going to kick your ass." So I meet him at the Bloomberg party and he turns around and he's like "Oh, you wanted to talk to me?" And he looks like he's 12, and he's lovely. He's actually--there's all kinds of, you know, oh, he's a right wing religious fanatic, and he's not. He's a reasonable guy. Lovely wife, by the way. I met them and had a conversation with them. But he was telling me that it went from approximately like, you know, 800 complaints a month, because of the Internet and political action groups, they now get about eight million complaints a month about indecency. And I feel like the FCC has better things to do than to sort through eight million emails. Obviously the country is still reeling from Janet Jackson's boob, and someday with lots of money, I think we can overcome it.

Tavis: On that note, I'm going to get out of here. "Two and a Half Men" taking over Ray Romano's slot on CBS this fall. Jon, nice to see you.

Cryer: Hold it together, Tavis. Hold it together.

Tavis: Thanks for watching. Keep the faith.