Sean Penn
On the first day of the Russian invasion, Penn was in Ukraine filming a documentary about Zelensky – he talks about their bromance and the qualities that inspire him
It’s almost 10 a.m. and Sean Penn doesn’t want to be here. He admits that he made the mistake of sleeping with the curtains closed last night. He switches into acting mode and delivers a comical portrayal of a dazed man being roused from his sleep. Now he longs for daylight.
So we leave Off the Record, a basement bar in Washington’s venerable Hay-Adams Hotel, and head to a room on the third floor. Penn’s publicist hastily pushes room service breakfast out of the way and apologizes for her unmade bed. The 63-year-old actor settles into an armchair by the open window as the sunlight explores light and shadow on his chiseled features. He drinks a bottle of Sprite and happily says, “Whenever you need,” words that are guaranteed to make his scheduler nervous.
Penn is in the nation’s capital to promote “Superpower,” a documentary he co-directed about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the resilience of the Ukrainian people after the Russian invasion. After a screening of the film, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave him a long hug and told him, “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.”
Not everyone is so kind to Hollywood actors who get involved in geopolitical affairs. Celebrity status opens doors and closes minds. Anyone who was around in the 1980s may remember Penn as the man who played stoner and surfer Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, served 33 days in jail for assaulting an extra, and Madonna married and divorced.
Four decades later, his hair is white, but he is still a well-known method actor with Oscars for Mystic River (2003) and Milk (2008). A profile in Variety magazine said that in Superpower there’s “a little too much Sean Penn doing Sean Penn things in a war zone.” Penn anticipates something like this in the film when he parodies an imaginary critic by asking, “Who do you think you are – Walter Cronkite?” Do you have a savior complex?” His answer: “I’m curious… and sometimes I feel that way that I can be helpful.”
He has receipts to prove it. Frustrated with search and rescue efforts in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Penn bought a boat, reached survivors, gave them money and took some of them to the hospital. In 2010, after an earthquake left thousands homeless in Haiti, he built a camp, founded a charity and lived in the country for months.
Today, wearing a dark jacket, blue shirt, blue jeans and white sneakers, Penn is just a three-minute walk from the White House. He counters skepticism about his humanitarian work by resorting to an aphorism: “I dream of a world where chickens can cross the street without their motives being questioned.”
He elaborates: “People are willing to admire actors to a certain extent. But then it will be the cliché: They are all rich. The celebrity versus the actor or the artist, or whatever it is. I don’t have time to defend myself anymore.
“I’ve been to a lot of interesting places and been able to experience them in a unique way because of the access. And also because – even though I have specifically done what falls under journalism – I do not feel committed to a style of journalism that demands more than my talent allows. My talent is that I am interested.
“As much criticism as I received, I archived almost none of it visually. Because I know that’s what I do when I have a camera with me, right? That’s the assumption: ‘Oh, he’s trying to take photos of himself.'”
Penn didn’t originally plan to appear in Superpower, but he failed in his attempt to finance the film. Viewers see him conversing with Zelensky, walking the deserted streets of Kiev on the night of the invasion, and relieving the burden on his security detail (“Can I be blunt? You’re Sean Penn, no one will be responsible for you who died in the night on the front lines”), leaving them behind as he follows Ukrainian soldiers to trenches reminiscent of the Somme.
Penn gives Zelenskiy one of his Oscars and receives the Order of Merit in return. Photo: Presidential Press Service Handout/EPA
Penn, who has made seven trips to Ukraine, emphasizes: “It’s quite difficult to get money for doctors at the moment. [It would’ve been hard to fund] unless I was on camera. You know what? This time I’ll just let anyone who wants to jump in my backpack and see what I see.”
The twist in the actor-activist’s story is that the main subject of his film is an actor-politician. Superpower carefully curates archival clips from Zelensky’s past as a comedy star who played the piano with his penis and played a fictional Ukrainian president in the series Servant of the People. With echoes of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, he demonstrated the power of charisma on screen as he went against the political status quo.
It was this aspect that first intrigued Penn after planned film projects about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi failed to materialize. “On the surface, perhaps the world was moving into a major new phase of populism,” he says of Zelenskiy. “But that’s not what I experienced with him.
“Since 2014, something interactive has happened in this country, where the Ukraine seen from the outside has been reinvented by young people and its young president.”
Was Zelensky’s acting talent important in mobilizing Western opinion and winning the communications war with the Kremlin? “I would say that the artist had a generous heart that wanted to share – which led him to become an artist. The acting stuff is easy. They did it to Reagan.”
Penn lowers his voice and gives film director John Huston a good introduction: “It’s one thing to have an actor in the White House. A completely different bad actor.”
He continues in his own voice: “The Ukrainians have a really good actor in their palace and before he was a good actor, he was a good communicator.” And he was a good communicator because he saw in people what was real existed and what mattered, and he saw it through the lens of one man’s humor and courage. He met this challenge the way Ukrainians met this challenge, in a way that inspires the world. We shouldn’t give up on it. It’s important medicine for all of us right now.”
Due to pandemic-related delays, Penn did not meet Zelenskiy in person until February 23 of last year. Filming on “Superpower” began the following day – the same day Russia launched its invasion. Some Ukrainians interviewed by Penn doubted that Zelensky had the toughness needed to stand up to Vladimir Putin.
Zelenskiy plays a fictional Ukrainian president in the TV comedy Servant of the People, 2019. Photo: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images
But when Penn met Zelenskiy in the presidential palace bunker, he found Prince Hal transformed into Henry V. “It’s like he was born for this moment. It was very moving. There are certainly great, courageous leaders on every continent today – but not with an enemy next door who has nuclear weapons. This is a new paradigm.”
Penn’s admiration for Zelensky – to whom he gave one of his Oscars for the duration of the war – is matched only by his disdain for Putin. “I wouldn’t react to Putin’s death in a natural way other than if he were, say, stripped naked and burned piece by piece by cigarettes and people defecated on him until he had nothing left to eat.” It would be the same. I don’t count him as one of us.”
The West was wary of provoking Putin into a conflict that could lead to World War III and initially responded gradually. But slowly it turned the dial up. As of July this year, the US had provided more than $75 billion in humanitarian, financial and military aid to Ukraine and announced that it would allow European allies to provide American F-16 fighter jets. Penn, who has advocated for the Jets, believes more decisive and comprehensive action is needed.
“I use the word cowardice because I don’t know any other word to describe what happens when we label caution as restraint. Restraint looks like John F. Kennedy withholding military action during the Cuban Missile Crisis – that’s a powerful example of leadership. Caution looks like this: “I’m afraid that if I do the right thing, the bad guys will do something, so let’s do nothing. Or let’s do just enough so that I don’t get more afraid.'”
He added: “The good news is that Ukrainians, both in leadership and on the ground, have not completely lost trust in us. And while one could certainly get lost in the fact that there have been so many unnecessary deaths – and I believe that this war would have been over if decisive action had been taken – I do not believe it is too late, decisive To take action. I’m talking about doing whatever it takes to equip them with everything they need so Russia knows they can play hard too.”
Trump – the Republican Party’s front-runner for the presidential nomination – and a prominent faction of his party are increasingly questioning support for Ukraine, making it another contentious battleground in America’s polarized politics. Meanwhile, what the superpower clearly highlights is the sense of unity and national identity that Ukrainians have developed under the threat of an external enemy.
Penn visits Ukrainian Armed Forces positions near the front lines in the Donetsk region. Photo: AP
As a result, Penn saw his own country with new eyes. “It was like breathing in a different kind of air. I knew we had problems and divisions and that America’s fragile purpose was in grave danger. BB King said he once had to play an A chord for half an hour before he heard it. This was the first time I realized how much we need this unity, this feeling.”
He complains: “We don’t love each other in this country. We don’t like each other in this country. We are nasty to each other. We fear each other and trade courage for cowardice, without realizing that in doing so we are also giving away something that we all need: that we are social animals and want community.
“The data is all over the world: where longevity exists, there also exists community. We experience it ourselves. We know that the times in our lives when we are happy are because there is a moment of community, whether micro or macro.
“With all the horror of 9/11, something felt good, didn’t it? Because we didn’t question each other. We knew what we had in common and that connected us.
Penn flies a large U.S. and a large Ukrainian flag at his home in Malibu, California. “I’m a big supporter of the idea that we start waving our flags again, even if we’re on the left, and we’re not worried about our neighbors thinking we’re suddenly a MAGA hawk – which some are “My friends blame me.”
Ukrainian flags are less visible in the US these days. Attention spans are short and polls show dwindling support for the war effort. Zelenskiy heads to Washington this week to test his star power against the fragility of the moment. Before last Thursday’s screening, Penn confessed to the audience: “As a filmmaker, I would say that you’re always worried that the projector is going to break somehow. I hope that doesn’t happen.”
• Superpower is available to stream on Paramount+
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