The troubled television star Charlie Sheen says he has been blackmailed for millions of dollars by people he trusted with the news that he is HIV-positive.
In a nervous interview with Matt Lauer on the US version of the Today Show earlier today, Sheen – who was once the highest paid actor on TV, earning more than $40 million for his performance on Two And A Half Men – said: “I am here today to admit that I am in fact HIV positive.”
He said the diagnosis had been “hard to absorb” and he trusted people with the news and so began “a deluge of blackmail and extortion … a circus of deceit.”
Sheen said he decided to speak publicly because he wanted to put a stop “to this onslaught, this barrage of attacks” and “shakedowns.”
While he did not name his tormentors, he said that a prostitute who visited him at home had taken photographs of his medication on her iPhone and threatened to sell them to the tabloids unless he paid up.
Sheen said that he paid other people “into the millions” to stay quiet about the diagnosis.
When Matt Lauer asked whether he was still paying some of these people. Mr. Sheen said, “Not after today, I’m not.”
He added: “I think I release myself from this prison today.”
“I trusted them and they were deep in my inner circle, and I thought they could be helpful,” he said. Instead, “my trust turned to their treason.”
Mr. Sheen said he had known about the diagnosis for about four years and at first thought that he had a brain tumor.
Sheen has acknowledged extensive drug use and promiscuity. His personal life became an issue in 2011, after CBS was forced to shut down production of “Two and a Half Men.”
Rumours are swirling that some women demanded money only after being told that he had knowingly exposed them to the risk of HIV, but Sheen insisted it was “impossible” that he knowingly transmitted the virus to others, although he did admit to having unprotected sex with two people since his diagnosis.
His doctor Robert Huizenga, who also appeared on the show, said Sheen “contracted the HIV virus. He was immediately put on treatment, which have suppressed the virus, to the point that he is absolutely healthy.”
He said the virus was “undetectable” in Sheen’s blood.
“He is healthy. He does not have AIDS,” he said.
He added: “Individuals who are optimally treated, who responsibly use protection, have an incredibly rare incidence of passing on the virus.. It’s a very, very low number.”
Sheen said he had been taking his medication “every day.”
But his doctor said: “We are petrified about Charlie. We are so anxious that if he is overly depressed or abusing substances, he will forget these medications.”
Sheen said: “I have not. Never once.”
But people were “threatening to tell the world.”
“I trusted them,” he said, adding: “I was so depressed by the diagnosis. I was doing a lot of drugs. I was drinking way too much. I was making bad decisions.”
Asked if he was relieved to be free of his secret, Sheen said: “More than I thought possible.”
Watch the footage in full here.
