Sean Penn has criticised the Academy Awards for not allowing Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to speak at the 2022 Oscars ceremony, adding that Will Smith’s infamous slap would not have happened if Zelenskiy had appeared.
In an interview with Variety about Penn’s Ukraine-invasion documentary Superpower (which he co-directed with Aaron Kaufman), Penn said: “The Oscars producer thought: ‘Oh, [Zelenskiy is] not light-hearted enough.’ Well, guess what you got instead? Will Smith!”
Penn added: “I don’t know Will Smith. I met him once. He seemed very nice when I met him … So why the fuck did you just spit on yourself and everybody else with this stupid fucking thing? Why did I go to fucking jail for what you just did? And you’re still sitting there? Why are you guys standing and applauding his worst moment as a person?
“This fucking bullshit wouldn’t have happened with Zelenskiy. Will Smith would never have left that chair to be part of stupid violence. It never would have happened.”
Zelenskiy’s request to address the Oscar ceremony was reportedly turned down twice, in 2023 as well as 2022, with suggestions that Oscars producer Will Packer had expressed concern over allowing Zelenskiy airtime as everyone affected by the conflict is white, and conflicts involving people of colour do not get the same attention from Hollywood.
Having threatened to melt down his own Oscars if Zelenskiy was refused, Penn instead presented one of his statuettes to Ukraine’s president as a “symbolic” loan until the conflict was over.
In his criticism of Smith’s “worst moment as a person”, Penn referred to his jail sentence after he was convicted in 1987 for reckless driving and punching an extra on the set of the movie Colors. According to a newspaper report at the time, Penn “pummelled movie extra Jeffrey Klein, 32, during a break in the filming of Colors at Venice Beach … Penn objected to Klein’s photographing him and actor Robert Duvall, and swore and spat at him. When Klein spat back, Penn punched him in the face several times with a closed fist and had to be pulled off him and restrained by members of the crew and cast.”
Penn’s Superpower, which is shortly to be released on the Paramount+ streaming service, originated before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a documentary about Zelenskiy’s improbable rise to political power after his previous career as a TV comedian. The actor was photographed in Kyiv at a presidential briefing on the same day Russian forces attacked, later becoming one of the leading advocates for the west’s military support for Ukraine. In February, at Superpower’s world premiere at the Berlin film festival, Penn said that Americans “are having to take on board a level of shame for not having scaled up sooner with the weapons”.
