Charlie Sheen probably isn’t the first person most of us would turn to if we needed life advice, but he was exactly who Nic Cage needed to hear from when he came into conflict with a producer on his new Prime Video series Spider Noir.

Cage told an audience at an FYC event for his new superhero series that, despite over 45 years in the business and over 100 film credits, he felt unsure of himself on the Spider-Noir set because he had never starred in a television series before. 

Before Cage sat down for Spider-Noir’s first read-through in front of Amazon executives, a producer pulled him aside and criticized the  1930s-style accent he used for his character, Ben Reilly.

“So we're about to do this big read-through, all of us,” Cage told the audience. “And Dan, one of the producers on their shows, says, ‘Now listen, make sure you don't mumble when you go to that read-through.’ I was like, "What's the big deal here? Why is this so intense? I've been to read-throughs a million times with movies.”

The comment rattled Cage, who had never led a TV series before. Unsure how to manage the situation, Cage called an old friend for advice, Charlie Sheen.

While the scandalous Sheen may seem like an unlikely person to turn to in a jam, he and Cage are much more than just kiss-kiss, love you, mean it, Hollywood ‘friends’. 

The pair go back to the most debaucherous days of the hard-partying, no-cellphones, no-limits Sunset Strip 80s, when the two young stars were rich, famous and out of control.

In his memoir, The Book of Sheen, the Wall Street star wrote that he and Cage led a notorious, hard-partying group known as J-5, saying,  “We stumbled through night after madhatted night like some mobile Mardi Gras looking for the next guardrail to barrel through.” 

Ultimately, the two were so out of control that Sheen’s parents staged an intervention and sent him to the first of many rehabs in 1990.

So when you’ve seen the type of things these two saw together, you trust a man like he’s your old war buddy. 

Forty years after they first terrorized Hollywood nightclubs together, Cage and Sheen remain close, and the Spider-Noir star knew who to call when he faced a problem on his show (full video here).

“So I called my old friend who did a lot of television, Mr. Charlie Sheen,” Cage said. “And I said, well, I was just told we're doing the big read-through. ‘Oh, no, Nick, that's the hardest part, man. That's the hardest part, man.’ I go, ‘Well, so what's the problem?’ And he said, well, the producer said to me, don't mumble. And he said, 'I'm sorry. Who told you not to mumble?' I said, 'I know. I think his name's Dan.' 'I'm sorry. Is his last name Sony?' No. Well, then tell him to fuck off!”

Cage said he read the entire script as if he were Humphrey Bogart, and Amazon greenlit the show, so clearly, at least in this case, listening to Sheen was a good idea. 

But Cage would never have made it that far if his son hadn’t shown him what may be the greatest television show of the 21st century (full video here).  

“My then-teenage son sat me down to watch Breaking Bad,” Cage told the audience. “I had not been watching any television. And I was, for whatever reason, maybe a snob or whatever it was, I said, "No, I am just going to make movies." 

But his son persisted, and eventually Cage sat down to watch the show's entire five-season run and became entranced by 

“And I thought, "Oh wow, wait a minute. This is long form. There is time here to develop a character within eight episodes that I would never have the time to do in a feature film." 

Cage added that watching Breaking Bad made him realize how he could explore a TV character in much greater depth than he could on a film set, and he decided to leap to the small screen.  

So it's worth noting that without Charlie Sheen and Walter White, we wouldn’t have Spider-Noir.

The entire eight-episode first season of Spider-Noir is currently available on Prime Video.