Art that imitates life.
Jon Cryer had a difficult time getting along with his on-screen rival Andrew McCarthy in 1986’s Pretty in Pink.
“I thought he was aloof and just an ad-k,” Cryer told Page Six in a recent exclusive interview. “We had all kinds of problems.”
“Pretty in Pink” was a romantic comedy for teens starring Molly Ringwald as high school senior Andy Walsh. Cryer plays Andy’s best friend Philip F. “Ducky” Dale. And McCarthy plays her lover, Blane McDonagh.
Cryer, 61, recalled a time when Ringwald and McCarthy were goofing around during a close-up on set.
“I was really angry at them,” he recalled. “I found out that the director asked them to do it because he really wanted to make me angry in this scene, but I didn’t know that at the time.”
What “Two and a Half Men” alums didn’t know was that McCarthy was suffering.
“I didn’t know he was in this situation. He was battling his own demons, his family relationship with his father was cracking, and he was already starting to have problems with alcohol,” he explained. “Of course he was aloof because he didn’t know any of that at the time. He was just trying to put together a really big deal.”
Apparently the feeling was mutual.
Mr. McCarthy wrote in his 2021 memoir, “Brat: Stories from the ’80s,” that he disliked Mr. Cryer because his “nervous laugh was irritating.”
The St. Elmo’s Fire star, 63, wrote about his alcoholism and drug abuse in his memoir.
A year after “Pretty in Pink” was released, McCarthy wrote that she “drank to excess almost every day” and also became addicted to cocaine.
In 1987’s “Less Than Zero,” he wrote that his coke habit nearly gave him a heart attack. Before the scene where he jumps into the pool, he snorted a coke and when he splashed into the cold water, his chest “tightened up in a way I never wanted to feel again.”
Eventually, he entered a rehab facility in 1992, and, as he writes, “a life without alcohol and drugs began and continued day in and day out.”
Cryer said things are much different now.
“Andrew and I have had a lot of communication over the last few years,” he revealed.
The Emmy Award winner is currently starring in the Off-Broadway revival of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”
He called it an “incredibly fun experience,” adding: “It brings so much joy to the audience. To be able to do it eight times a week is just incredible fun.”
The musical, which also stars Tony Award nominee Justin Cooley, Lily Cooper, Jasmine Amy Rodgers and “Glee” alumnus Kevin McHale, has been extended to Sept. 6.
