It looks like Sean Penn will be smelting his Oscars after all.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn’t participate in Sunday’s Academy Awards broadcast after some, including actor Penn, advocated for him to be given a platform to discuss the crisis in his country amid Russia’s invasion.
Zelenskyy is a former actor and comedian who became Ukraine’s president in 2019.
Penn, who founded the relief effort nonprofit CORE, recently told CNN in an interview from Poland that he’d be outraged if Zelenskyy wasn’t asked to take part in the Oscars.
“If it comes back to it, when I return, I will smelt mine in public,” Penn said of his two Academy Award trophies.
“I pray that’s not what’s happened. I pray there have not been arrogant people who consider themselves representatives of the greater good in my industry that have not decided to check in with leadership in Ukraine. So I’m just going to hope that that’s not what’s happened and I hope that everybody walks out if it is.”
Penn, 61, won best actor at the Oscars for “Mystic River” in 2004 and “Milk” in 2009.
Oscars co-host Amy Schumer said on “The Drew Barrymore Show” last week that she advocated for Zelenskyy to be given a chance to speak during the ceremony.
“There are so many eyes on the Oscars,” Schumer told host Drew Barrymore. “I’m not afraid to go there, but it’s not me producing the Oscars.”
