In the Netflix documentary aka Charlie Sheen, Director Andrew Renzi (Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?) was able to chronicle the rise and fall of the Two and a Half Men actor by relying on old family films, interviews with pals like Chris Tucker and Sean Penn and an extraordinary chat with Sheen’s former drug dealer Marco.

But the hallmark of the two-parter that dropped Sept. 10 was Renzi’s eye-popping interviews with the actor himself. “I take it very seriously that I’m making something that ultimately creates a legacy piece for somebody,” Renzi tells Deadline. “This is the Charlie Sheen documentary, and there probably can’t be another one. He has been such a privilege to work with because he had no editorial control over this thing, but he’s able to look at it and say, “all right, good, bad, all the things. This is an honest portrait of me that I feel like was representative of my POV, which was what I chose to do.” It’s a nice feeling to be able to walk away and say, okay, he’s good with it. I’m good with it. My hands are clean. ”

Here, Renzi explains how long the doc was in the works, why family members didn’t participate, and how Marco of all people helped Sheen to get off crack.

DEADLINE Give us the origin story. Why Charlie Sheen?

ANDREW RENZI I wanted to enter the celebrity doc conversation through someone who felt more like me, maybe a controversial figure. Maybe somebody who’s not so perfect. Charlie came to mind and I was able to get connected to him. We spent about eight months to a year getting to know each other before we shot a frame of the film. There was a long process of really figuring out whether this was even going to be a good idea. So from start to finish, it was about two years. It took some convincing. I didn’t know Charlie. I knew Charlie through the historical record of the internet, you know what I mean? I certainly didn’t know eight-years-sober Charlie Sheen. And I think that that was an amazing thing to experience. The only Charlie that I’ve ever known is a Charlie who’s sober. That played a big role in us telling this story. I don’t think he would’ve been able to do this eight years ago. So yeah, there was a long process of him understanding what the value of this would be.

DEADLINE How did you come up with the title? 

RENZI Everyone has their own idea of who Charlie is. Everyone has their own idea of what they remember from him or what they want him to be like. I just found that to be a really provocative concept because a lot of this documentary seemed to be him unpacking that himself. And the obvious is that [he was born with the name of] Carlos Estevez. I just find it to be a really interesting detail. It’s like the guy’s not even Charlie Sheen, legally. So who is this guy? It was one of those things I threw down on paper one day and I was like, that’s the one. And no one argued. 

DEADLINE Did you do two parts just so you can use the phrase Part Deux, a callback to Sheen’s 1993 film Hot Shots! Part Deux?

RENZI Listen, if there was three parts, I would’ve done the same thing. There were a lot of iterations with this project. I had a feature at one point in my head. But the two parts were really born out of the fact that I wanted part one to feel like a romanticized version of what drug addiction can look like to a drug addict, like a Hollywood rocket ship … sex, drugs, and rock & roll recreations, almost make it feel sensational to a degree. And then in part two, have it all fall apart, just really peel back what it actually looks like to be in the depths of addiction. The only natural format was two parts.

DEADLINE You started with the Two and a Half Men theme and Jon Cryer saying, “I’m not here to build him up or tear him down.” Why was that your start?

RENZI I think it was important to ground the audience with what, perhaps, is the most iconic thing about Charlie, despite all of the iconography around him. And the disarming nature of someone like Jon Cryer starting this thing felt good to me rather than just launching right into the chaos. I also really love the thematic concept of whether this a good idea. Is this a bad idea for me to be here sitting in front of you telling the story because of the cycle that has been his life? I just found that to be an urgent message for the doc. Is this going to open Pandora’s box again? Or is he truly sober and feeling better and in a different place?

DEADLINE Then you kicked off the anecdote where he actually flew a plane on his honeymoon!

RENZI That to me felt like the most Charlie Sheen in a nutshell that I could have possibly imagined. Here’s a guy who’s just married, on his honeymoon, drunk off his ass, and being given the steering wheel to a plane with 400 people behind him. That sort of power and mind fuck can’t be quantified by anyone else in the world. That is such a specific experience for him to have. It was a power that no one else could experience. If anyone ever had any questions about why a guy didn’t get sober sooner, there’s your answer. You keep getting the fucking plane.

DEADLINE You had a treasure trove of family super 8 footage to draw from.

RENZI It was so cool. His sister was the family archivist and quite literally just had a box of undeveloped film. No one had seen those things. So I got to edit together Charlie Sheen’s directorial efforts at age 8 as though he was doing it. I had hours and hours and hours of dailies that somebody, hopefully, gets to mine again and do something more with. I mean, there’s Sean Penn setting up camera angles for Charlie at age 10. There was a different iteration at one point of this project that dove a lot deeper into Charlie and Chris Penn’s relationship. Everyone’s a little kid at some point. Not everyone’s a little kid though that gets to make super 8 movies because they were on the set of Apocalypse Now.

DEADLINE You didn’t delve into Chris Penn, but you spent some time on Charlie’s friendship with Nicholas Cage. Why?

RENZI I think Nic Cage was a turning point. It was that moment in Charlie’s life where he became a superstar that also was going to march to the beat of his own drum. I think that union, that sort of unholy union, was pretty cool. Not many people knew they had this pocket of time together. It felt like such a fun way for the audience to be like, “well, yeah, if you’re going to become a superstar, who better to party with than Nic Cage?” It just set the tone for a lot of Charlie’s behaviors to come.

DEADLINE It’s extraordinary that you got his old drug dealer Marco to talk. I had many questions about how he cleaned up the crack at the end to help Charlie get sober.

RENZI Apparently it’s just extra baking soda every time. Not to give too much of an infomercial on how to cook crack, but you mix baking soda and cocaine together and you create crack. So he just kept making more and more with baking soda. Eventually there was just no crack, no cocaine in it. Charlie was just smoking baking soda.

DEADLINE I can’t believe you had video of the moment when Charlie found out he was fired from Two and a Half Men.

RENZI One of the guys who was following Charlie around a lot was a paparazzo. Eventually Charlie was like, “listen, you’re jumping out of bushes all the time on me. Just come with me.” And he ended up working for him and being a videographer for him at all times. This guy ended up with Charlie at the worst time of his life. Charlie was like, “oh my God. There was a guy with a camera there the whole time. We got to find the footage.” No one knew if it existed anymore. It turned out to be in a storage unit in Colorado or something, and this guy just handed it over to me and allowed us to use it. 

DEADLINE What was it like to listen to him discuss how his time on Two and a Half Men went up in flames?

RENZI It was a pretty unique experience. It was a little bit of like, “oh my God, was that me?” I think of all the things, having to look back at that moment in his life was the hardest. He really struggled with his behavior, the aggression, the sort of feeling like he was being a bully. He’s not a bully. He’s not that guy. I think it was hard for him to say how he treated Chuck Lorre, how he treated Jon Cryer, how he talked about things on the air, how he came at people. I think that made him feel the ick probably more than anything. I think shame is a thing that will haunt anybody who has experiences they’re not proud of. He didn’t make this documentary as an amends because he’s been living those amends for the past eight years.

DEADLINE Why do you think Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez declined to participate?

RENZI I actually watched the movie with them, so I got to sit next to Martin while he watched. It was one of the most intimidating moments of my life, but it was really just a function of Martin feeling as though Charlie’s message to his father was so present and maybe more available than him sitting for an interview. I don’t know if Martin wanted to sit down with me and relive all of that stuff. He felt like, this is Charlie’s moment to tell his story. You don’t need me. I respected the heck out of that. I mean, that’s a dad who really wants to just look out for his son and himself. And then Emilio, it just felt like he saw this as Charlie’s moment and Charlie was able to finally tell his story the way that he wanted to tell it. None of that ended up being controversial. Everyone was open about the communication. Those guys are minutes from each other, probably seeing each other on a weekly, daily basis. And so it was nice for me to know that it had nothing to do with whatever perceived rift there might be. It was quite the opposite. It was because of the love they all have for each other.

DEADLINE Do you think Charlie can truly explain why he’s an addict? Do you think he’s totally self-aware? 

RENZI My perspective is he is arguably, at least from a public figure perspective, the biggest emblem of an addict that’s still alive. He went as deep as you can go without dying. For the past eight years, he was not only just figuring that out for himself, but not trying to do the thing that he had always done … that’s to re-enter the public conversation, get another role. He truly went away to figure this out. And that’s pretty rare. Eight years is a heck of a stretch for anyone to go and reconcile with those things. So I’d have to say yes. I felt like when I was sitting across from him, I always thought, this is a person who’s honest, who maybe isn’t going to give everybody what they want, but he’s here and he’s present and he’s telling his own truth. That to me is a very specific type of success story.

DEADLINE Did you enjoy talking to him?

RENZI He’s hilarious. For a story that could be this dark, what a gift to be able to recount some of these things, but with a tone that doesn’t need to be wildly investigative and uncomfortable and unsettling. I felt privileged.