How Denise Richards told daughters about Charlie Sheen being HIV positive: ‘It was everywhere’

Denise Richards was forced to tell her daughters Sami, 21, and Lola, 19, that their father, Charlie Sheen, is HIV positive after he unexpectedly made the reveal on the “Today” show in 2015.

“It was everywhere,” Richards, 54, told host Jana Kramer on Monday’s episode of the “Whine Down” podcast. 

“I think I picked them up early from school that day because I didn’t want kids at school to tell them.”

Richards added she was “kind of upset with Charlie” because he “didn’t warn” her beforehand. 

“I wish he gave me a heads up, like, ‘Hey, I’m doing it today,’” she recalled. 

The “Starship Troopers” actress further admitted it was “hard to explain” to her daughters what their famous dad’s medical diagnosis meant. However, it was the only time she ever had to share such serious information with them.   

Overall, the “RHOBH” personality has attempted to protect her girls from Sheen’s public scandals. 

“There’s been a few things that I’ve had to have conversations with [them], but for the most part, I really tried to shelter them from a lot of stuff,” she said. 

Richards and the “Spin City” actor, 59, tied the knot in June 2002 and parted ways in 2006. 

Richards said their tumultuous relationship, the dynamics of which often play out in public, isn’t always as rosy as she’d like it to be. 

“I’m friendly with Charlie,” she said. 

“I wish we were friends and that we could talk all the time and be able to be there really for each other with our girls. But it’s just not the relationship we have.” 

Sheen agreed in a 2023 interview that while their co-parenting relationship stops short of being overly familiar, the former couple is “absolutely friendly.” 

“We went through so much s–t together that I don’t think either one of us has any energy left to be divisive,” he told People at the time. 

The brunette beauty, who currently stars in Bravo’s “Denise Richards & Her Wild Things,” recently shared that her ex-husband had a tendency toward jealousy. 

During the March 26 episode of the reality show, she explained that she “did not speak to” ex-boyfriend Patrick Muldoon, with whom she has enjoyed a decades-long friendship, during her marriage to Sheen. 

“It was hard because I didn’t want to lose him as a ‘friend’ friend. But, towards the end of the marriage, I talked to him all the time about him,” she said, explaining that Sheen had a “hard time” with her friendship with the “Melrose Place” actor. 

Sheen went on to marry Brooke Mueller in 2008, but they parted ways three years later. Richards tied the knot with husband Aaron Phypers in 2018.