Denise Richards admitted she repeatedly “sheltered” her two daughters from the truth about their dad Charlie Sheen’s many scandals.
“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,” the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” alum, 54, said.
“I lied, and I said, ‘Dad had to work.’”
Richards, who shares daughters Sami, now 21, and Lola, now 19, with the “Spin City” star, 59, also confessed to “protecting” him on Monday’s episode of the “Sibling Revelry with Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson” podcast.
“Some of the things were so outrageously bad where I’m like, ‘I can’t say that,’” the “Wild Things” star said. “So I did lie, and I sugar-coated, and I protected him.”
In fact, Richards divulged that Sami and Lola have since taken her to task for omitting information about their famous father.
“I actually sheltered the kids almost to a point where, now as they’re getting older, they’re discovering things,” the “Drop Dead Gorgeous” said, “and they were at first getting upset with me, like, ‘Why didn’t you tell me this?’”
The Bravo personality recalled when Sheen attempted to call his daughters from jail on Christmas day in 2009 – after an alleged altercation with his then-wife, Brooke Mueller.
“I didn’t say, ‘Your dad just got f—–g arrested, and he’s in jail so come say ‘Merry Christmas’ right now,'” she said, noting that the girls “were busy playing with their toys.”
“They’re like, ‘We’ll talk to Dad later,’” she remembered. “I go, ‘I think Dad’s gonna be a little busy later.’”
Richards’ new admissions about Sheen come just a week after she revealed how hard it was to explain his HIV positive diagnosis to their daughters following his unexpected reveal on the “Today” show in 2015.
“I think I picked them up early from school that day because I didn’t want kids at school to tell them,” she said during the March 31 episode of the “Whine Down” podcast, noting that the news was “everywhere.”
Even today, Sheen’s chaotic personal life continues to affect his relationship with his daughters, as Sami recently confessed she didn’t want to spend time with him after not speaking for several months.
“I would rather do literally anything else than go to lunch with my father,” she said during the April 1 episode of “Denise Richards & Her Wild Things.”
“It goes in very big chunks with him. I think for the first 13 years of my life it was pretty bad, and then we were OK for a couple years, and now it’s just like, OK,” the OnlyFans model said of her complicated relationship with Sheen.
Lola, however, feels differently. “My life is way more enjoyable when [my dad and I] have a relationship because if not, it’s like, I hate having that feeling of not talking,” she told Us Weekly in March.
“Obviously, we go through ups and downs sometimes, but our relationship is good.”
Sheen and Richards married in 2002, but parted ways in 2006.
Richards, who went on to adopt daughter Eloise, 13, as a single mom, is currently married to Aaron Phypers.
