Denise Richards opened up to Matt Lauer about her life since her divorce from ex-husband Charlie Sheen on ‘The Today Show‘ Tuesday while there to promote her new book, “The Real Girl Next Door.” Richards said that although she tried to shield daughters Sam and Lola from the media coverage about Sheen, they still heard about it.
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Per Herald Sun:
“I did have to have a conversation with them about addiction and got a book to read to them because I was just lying to them so much and covering up and telling lies, and it was just getting too confusing,” Richards said during an interview on American television. “It’s too early [for them to understand]. I told them enough for them to make sense of things that were going on.”
Richards also adds that when she met Sheen he was clean and sober and she didn’t realize the extent of his addiction. Sheen’s lifestyle has made parenting a challenge for Richards, and after dancing around their substance abuse issues with Sam and Lola, she decided to buy them a children’s book about addictions to help explain what he is going through.
When asked about the moment when she knew her marriage with Sheen was over, she hesitates and says she wanted to touch more on the feelings that go along with divorce, not the details. Richards says she also addresses her relationship with Richie Sambora and her mother’s illness in the book. Lauer says the book is not a Sheen-basher and says at one point, “You said, ‘This is not the man I married. This is the man I divorced.’”
Richards responds, “The man I fell in love with is very compassionate, humble, has a wonderful heart and the behavior that a lot of us saw in the last six months is not the person I met and fell in love with.”
Despite Sheen’s public meltdown over the past year, Richards is hopeful of Sheen’s future as well as her own, claiming she still cares very much for him. As for her relationship with her ex-husband, who – ironically – is set to star in a new sitcom about anger management, she says they are doing good and are constantly in touch with one another.
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Images Via: WENN