Denise Richards “sheltered” her daughters from Charlie Sheen‘s scandals growing up.
The former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star shares two daughters – Sami, 21, and Lola, 19 – with the actor, who she was married to from 2002 to 2006.
On the Sibling Revelry with Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson podcast, Richards shared the lengths she went to to “protect” her kids’ relationship with their dad.
Listen to the audio above.
“If I was at a school performance and he was supposed to show up and I get a call, ‘Something happened sideways, hospital, whatever.’ I’m not going to tell the kids the truth,” she explained.
“I told them I lied and I said, ‘Dad had to work.'”
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During the episode, Richards recalled one instance in 2009 where Sheen was arrested on Christmas after his wife at the time Brooke Mueller accused him of assault.
Sheen had called from jail to wish his daughters a ‘Merry Christmas’.
“They’re like, ‘We’ll talk to Dad later.’ I go, ‘I think Dad’s gonna be a little busy later.'”
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“I didn’t say, your dad just got f—ing arrested and he’s in jail so come say ‘Merry Christmas’ right now.”
Later in the episode the star said, “Some of the things were so outrageously bad where I’m like, ‘I can’t say that’. So I did lie, and I sugar-coated, and I protected him.”
Richard said she “wanted to protect their relationship” with their dad.
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The reality TV star said there was a time she “didn’t know if he was gonna live” and didn’t want her daughters to get to know Sheen from what they would read about him.
“I wanted it to be their experience and their relationship.”
She also “didn’t want to put on them my feelings because that’s not fair to them and their relationship with him.”
Earlier in the episode Richards told the hosts she “sheltered the kids almost to a point of where now as they’re getting older, they’re discovering things and they were at first getting upset with me, like, ‘Why didn’t you tell me this?'”
Richards has since remarried, tying the knot with Aaron Phypers in 2018.
She adopted third daughter, Eloise Joni Richards, in 2011.
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