Jon Cryer did not get along with his on-screen rival, Andrew McCarthy, in 1986’s “Pretty in Pink.”
“I thought he was aloof and just a d–k,” Cryer told Page Six in a recent exclusive interview. “We had all kinds of issues.”
“Pretty in Pink” was a teen rom-com starring Molly Ringwald as Andie Walsh, a high school senior; Cryer as Andie’s best friend, Philip F. “Duckie” Dale; and McCarthy as her love interest, Blane McDonnagh.
Cryer, 61, remembered one time Ringwald and McCarthy were goofing off on set while he had a close-up.
“I got really mad at them,” he reminisced. “I found out that the director asked them to do that because he wanted me really mad for the scene. But at the time, I didn’t know.”
What the “Two and a Half Men” alum also didn’t know was that McCarthy was struggling.
“I didn’t know that he was going through; he was battling his own demons and had a fractured family relationship with his dad. And he was already starting to have issues with alcohol,” he explained. “None of this I knew about at the time, so of course he was aloof. He was just trying to keep it together on a really big job.”
In his 2021 memoir, “Brat: An ’80s Story,” McCarthy wrote that he disliked Cryer because he had “a nervous laugh I found irritating.”
The “St. Elmo’s Fire” star, 63, wrote about his alcoholism and drug abuse in his memoir.
A year after “Pretty in Pink” was released, McCarthy wrote that he was “drinking to excess on a nearly daily basis” and also became hooked on cocaine.
On 1987’s “Less Than Zero,” he wrote that his coke habit nearly gave him a heart attack. Before one scene in which he dove into a pool, he snorted coke, and when he splashed into the cold water, his chest “constricted in a way I hope to never feel again.”
Eventually, he entered rehab in 1992 and, as he wrote, “began a life without alcohol or drugs that has continued, day in and day out.”
“Andrew and I have had a lot of communication in the last couple of years,” he revealed.
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The Emmy winner is currently in the off-Broadway revival of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”
He calls it “an incredibly joyful experience,” adding, “It brings so much joy to the audience, it’s just an incredible treat to perform it eight times a week.”
The musical, which also stars Tony nominees Justin Cooley, Lili Cooper and Jasmine Amy Rogers as well as “Glee” alum Kevin McHale, has been extended through to Sept. 6.
