Actor Sean Penn has some choice words for Hollywood.
The “Mystic River” star on Tuesday criticized the industry’s response to controversial biopic “The Apprentice,” which focuses on the life of GOP President-elect Donald Trump and faced a monthslong struggle to find U.S. distribution.
“It’s kind of jaw-dropping how afraid this ‘business of mavericks’ is when they get a great film like that with great, great acting,” Penn reportedlysaid at the Marrakech Film Festival in Morocco. “They, too, can be as afraid as a piddly little Republican congressman.”
Earlier this year, Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign had threatened legal action over what it called “election interference” on behalf of the “Apprentice” filmmakers, heighteningquestions about the movie’s ability to find distribution despite its warm reception from critics and audiences.
“The Apprentice,” which follows the rise of a young Trump (Sebastian Stan) under the unscrupulous tutelage of political fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), was saved when Briarcliff Entertainment swooped in to distribute it.
Penn on Tuesday also slammed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, saying he doesn’t “get very excited” for the Academy Awards unless a film he likes is honored.
The two-time Oscar winner said “the academy have exercised really extraordinary cowardice when it comes to being part of the bigger world of expression,” while also “limiting the imagination and being very limiting of different cultural expressions.”
Those remarks echoed comments Penn had made Sunday at the Marrakech Film Festival, when he lamented that there is a global “demand for diversity, but not diversity of behavior and not diversity of opinion or language. I would just encourage everybody to be as politically incorrect as their heart desires.”
