VIDEO: Denise Richards Tells Oprah - "Charlie Called Me Collect From Jail Christmas Day"
Jan. 26 2010, Published 10:05 a.m. ET
Denise Richards opened up on Oprah during an interview which aired Tuesday, covering a lot of topics including what her relationship with ex-husband Charlie Sheen is like now, how his recent Christmas arrest has affected the family and her former relationship with Richie Sambora.
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"Charlie and I are in a great place right now," Richards said at the beginning of the interview to Winfrey's surprise. The actress later went into detail about the process the couple went through to get from battling exes to devoted parents including seeing a mediator. This past year they even shared an early New Year's Eve dinner together with their daughters Sam and Lola and Richards' dad.
"I can't control what Charlie does," she said near the end of the show when pushed to go into detail about Sheen's issues. "Keep my girls safe, that is my goal."
Richards told Winfrey that she had to tell their daughters about his arrest after their eldest daughter was asked about it by a kindergarten classmate. Richards also revealed that Sheen had called her collect from prison.
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"I got a call on Christmas- a collect call from Charlie," she said about how she learned about his Aspen arrest. Sheen told her that he and Brooke Mueller had "gotten into a fight" but didn't want to say more because the prison was recording their conversation. Sheen has said that he "didn't want the day to go by without him saying 'Merry Christmas' to the girls." He promised to call Richards once he was released, a promise he followed through with.
Richards also addressed her former relationship with Richie Sambora and the humiliation that came with being called a husband stealer. By the time she and Sambora became an item, Richards claims her friendship with his ex-wife Heather Locklear was already done.
"Richie was single, I was single. We were both going through a divorce," Richards explained. "We leaned on each other...we both had parents who had died during that time."
While reserved about the more harrowing details of their marriage and breakup, Richards did say that Sheen had pushed her and was verbally abusive- behavior he didn't display before they got married.
"I knew about his past and I thought it was in the past," she explained, pointing out how she was impressed at the time that he had been three years sober.
As for Sheen's current state of affairs, Richards refrained from gloating and left it at: "It's sad, this is a sad situation."
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Photo in Video: WireImage
