S5 EP2: Sean Penn on dining with Jack Nicholson and Putin, run-ins with the paparazzi, and his relationship with Zelenskyy

31:11And his discipline with it, the excellence that he was demanding was really influential and exciting. You think some actors don't take it as a noble profession? Oh, yeah. And some of them have every right to not because some don't have very noble talents or interest in what they're doing it for. Right, maybe, or products, whatever, projects that they've been recruited for, maybe more because it drives the algorithm, you know what I mean? Or do you think you can bring art to anything? Well, look, it took me a long time to start... I'm a real Luddite, and so I would have been intimidated for years to try to believe I could understand how to access a streamer.

32:07The word streaming, I didn't understand it. I knew that I stopped thinking movie posters were interesting as soon as they had a computer code on them. All the technology was putting me off. But anyway, I got over that enough where now I will watch things. I'll even be a binge watcher on some stuff. There are some things that are on television that are so excellent. The actors are brilliant. On the level with anything, you know, that came out of the great cinema of the 70s, really on that level, you're not finding it too often in the movie theaters, but you can find it if you pick your spots. Anything specific?

32:55So I was sort of compelled to watch someone who's a fan of Euphoria. And it's very talented. And people are so dark in ways that I didn't understand what we were getting out of it. And then I watched. And I got to what it's going to be, Episode 5, Season 2. And from there to the end, I think it would be snobby and unwise to say it's not every bit as good as Long Day's Journey and Tonight. There's genius stuff happening. So this stuff, I don't know how they do it. I don't know how these guys do these very long form things. It's not, you know, it's something I think I have a lot of skills to apply to it.

33:49But the actor's great. Yeah, so, but, you know, just picking one out. There's also this one. Do you know about this show, Normal People? The Sally Rooney novel with Paul Meskel? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And Daisy Edgar-Jones. Great. That was terrific. Yeah. So simple in one way. Yeah. Simple love story. It's not like particularly pegged to now. You know what I mean? It's not like social media is a big thing in it. or it's just a love story kind of between a jock and a geek, a complicated nerd woman. I don't remember. That's a bit reductive, is it? Sensitive jock. But enough about Elon Musk. Yeah, and they're both so good in it.

34:35Have you met Musk? Perfect. Have you met Musk? Have you met Elon Musk? That's me driving. Look behind me. There he is. People in Radio Land were looking at a photo on the wall of Sean's man cave, human cave. So you were tight with him for a while? No, I wouldn't, no, no. I've met him on several occasions, chatted with him on some occasions. One time I went and he generously showed me a lot about their space project and talked for several hours about that. And that's about the totality of how I know him. Did you feel you got a read of him? Here's where I put him. What the ultimate value of his existence on Earth is going to be or not be, I'm not going to be alive to know, right?

35:31Cures to cancer, his role in AI, all of these things are going way bigger and faster than I can pretend to conceive. And so I just don't think about him that much as an individual. I see him more as a lot of destructive energy and a lot of stuff that may end up being very productive for other generations. I think you're probably not on social media that much. one theory is that he kind of got poisoned by the internet right like he got so saturated in twitter which became x that um he kind of almost self-brainwashed in some respect you know i think it's fair to say that If you are a prematurely balding teenager, white, in apartheid South Africa, who has no social skills.

36:34Right. Not to mention the parental stuff. There's also the narcissism issue that goes through the family. But these are the guys we've got. um we were uh we were talking about you you were talking about coming up people actors who give themselves uh completely to the work learning the craft i read a quote where you said that you want you were looking for something that you could give yourself a hundred percent to right well i think that we create yourself to i i grew up in a funny time in america in the sense that But we were direct lineage to people who served. Now, in that case, it was the military, right?

37:25My father in World War II and so on. He was a pilot, right? He was an aviator. He was a gunner and a bombardier. And then we, you know, as a kid, I'm growing up, and draft is a really bad word, right? So there was nothing demanding, either culturally or legally, my generation to serve anything. So I think that without that, I was left to my own immature pursuits. and I wanted something to connect the individual that I was and was becoming with the group need, right? And to feel like you could be part of something bigger. And I ultimately did find that in movies in a way. You'd grown up, you were in the San Fernando Valley And then as a child, your parents moved to Malibu, right?

38:34And your dad, he'd been a director. Your mum was an actor. And reading about your upbringing, you know, you've spoke only ever lovingly and respectfully about your parents. Nevertheless, there was also a quote of yours I read where you said, I'm damaged. and in the New Yorker profile there was some guy, a friend of yours, who was speculating on the idea that your mum had been quite hard on you and that you may be carrying some of that with you. Is there anything in that? No. Here's what I'm carrying with me. My mum and I were equally hard on each other. Never for two days in a row. People loved her and they feared her.

39:27You know, she was unfiltered, opinionated. It was like that. You know, if anything, she was the first one that just thought her kids did everything great. Right. So she wasn't like hard on me in that sense that I hear from kids. I was very lucky that way. Very encouraging parents. But my mother. Because there's a whole quote about how when you did your first performance. Well, this is, but see, I always appreciated that about her because if it wasn't meaning, if it was meaningful, it usually is because I agreed with her on something that she suggested. When I didn't agree with her, I was able to be what my friends were, which is kind of, as long as they were 10 feet away, they thought it was, she was a character really.

40:15In fact, my older brother and I, and we felt that my mother would have loved this, but we understand that a gravestone is an appreciation that is shared by friends and relatives at large. We wanted to put, you know, mother, wife, all that stuff. We wanted this gravestone to say a piece of work. Because she was. She was, so yes, when I was, I did my first play, her first words after the show, that was terrible. And then told me I really have to go to college and have something to fall back on. But you appreciated that. Yeah, I just, because I, you know, I don't know, because of the other ways, my parents clearly had allowed me to have a real sense of confidence.

41:10And I just thought, well, she's wrong. I've had to, over the years, I've done a fair amount of time sitting across from a shrink. And for the first, let me say, 20 years of such opportunities, it was always compulsory, either by a court or by a wife or something like that. And I just didn't see the value in it. And I always felt smarter than the person I was talking to. And then later in life, I found some very intelligent people that were helpful in certain things that I was dealing with and so on. And so I went back through it, and I realized that one of the things that's baffled most of them, they've all looked for, it's a big thing, this trauma thing, right?

42:08In fact, I would say that similar, like the Me Too movement, it was the Me Too industry. The actual things are very real things. And so we attach trauma to too many things, I think, and should save them for the ones that really are there. But anyway, they were always looking for trauma in my childhood. and they'll even define it by capital t and little t and it's just nothing attached to my parents like that now dude have i had trauma yeah i made it all myself after the age of 21 um the trouble that you've got into specifically it felt like in the this is going back 80 in the 80s with you know Well, he had a reputation for punching photographers.

43:05That became sort of the tabloid shorthand for a bit. Well, they were there for the ones that were photographers with cameras, so those were recorded. It wasn't just photographers. I want to dig one up. OK, here we go. There was a few good profiles of you. The Rolling Stone one was pretty funny. That was from 96. Penn has had his share of run-ins with the police. In Macau in 1986, during the shooting of Shanghai Surprise, he was arrested for helping to deter an intruding paparazzo by hanging him by his ankles from the ninth floor balcony of his hotel room. Penn subsequently broke out of the jail where he was being held on the charges of attempted murder and escaped the country by jet foil.

43:49Yeah, did not hang him by his ankles. We were not going to throw him over the balcony. and he wanted to stop what was happening. Initially, we didn't know it was a camera that he was holding. He jumped out. He was in a corridor. There were two security guys walking myself and a friend of mine up through this hotel. We were ahead of them, and there was a door here, and they had, presentationally, the hotel had two doors to this room they were giving me, very nice room. But we're walking, and there was a door just opposite that, And just as I'm starting to see this open door, somebody jumps out and they have something.

44:31So we did both grab him and we charged him right through the room to the balcony that was also presentationally open. It was very conveniently a beeline and cutting him off here, bending him over. And by that time I had seen, well, let's say within the first second and a half, I noticed it was a camera. And I was actually telling this other guy, you know, it's just, it's a camera. It's a camera. Like, we should let him go. But we never had a chance to pull him back before the security guys came and pulled us back. So they said that it was, yeah, attempted murder. And so they put us in literally, you know, Barney Fife's jail.

45:13I'm looking around this cell. I'm thinking, okay, this is, wait, is there anybody out there? There were people that knew we were there because I was working on a thing, but that could be ours. Do I get a phone call? Do I get anything? Then we noticed that when they left, they only had one guy. Like if you go to a village on a Sunday, anywhere in the world, and there's a little police huddle, there's one guy. And this guy was not youthful. and the knob that locks the gate, I could see it actually had grinder facing. At some point, they lost a key or something and they ground through it, meaning it was open.

45:58All you had to do is give it a little push. And we knew because it wasn't far to this hotel, it was just one road that had taken us from the jet foil launch to the hotel in the first place. so even though we were, I mean I just stepped foot in Macau I didn't know anything, but I knew how to get to the jet foil so we just bolted and then we went to the Kowloons when we got to Hong Kong Did the cop not come after you? Didn't look back, we just bolted and ran straight to the jet foil What is a jet foil? It's those float boats that take you back and forth to Hong Kong It was Shanghai Surprise, we said that You were in it with Madonna, right?

46:45We have to, because that might have been my greatest crime. The one they didn't get. The movie itself. But it will damage you if you see it. It got terrible reviews, didn't it? It deserved worse.

47:02So, and then ultimately it was the gangsters that negotiated the thing. I don't think anybody in government had anything to say about it. What was your most serious case? that you caught over the years? Well, that would have been if it had gone on. Attempted murder. Yeah. You did 33 days in jail? 34, yeah, yeah. It was a 60-day sentence, and you'd get a good day for a good day, and if you have any infractions, that's another day. So I had four infractions over the 30 days, and got 34 days. But let's see. I guess, you know, it's just dumb fights and things like that. Was that the punching of a photographer?

47:45No. It was actually yes and no. It was a bad month. I was on a movie set, and I got into a scuffle with an extra. Now, that case I was likely to beat because he had some damage, but he was big. And I was not. What was it over? He was secretly taking pictures in the frame while we're in the middle of a take. And I went to interact with him. It got nasty, and then it became something else. And I went out to dinner the night before I'm going before the judge. And I got into a fight, and I used a chair. I uh there's no excuse for this I mean I I hit him and he he he went down I grabbed the chair and when I grabbed the chair and hit him again when he was down that was assault with a deadly weapon so that's the worst charge and so guess what same judge so now we said okay I'm going to jail I know I know I know so we just had to make the best deal we could and uh that was 60 days and And cut it down to 34.

49:10Did you just, did you go to a dark place? Has that happened often? Was that like, what is that all about? Immaturity. Some kind of bravado behavior.

49:28Tied in with some justice seeking, you know, and kind of misplaced sense of how that works.

49:37But, you know, I never deserved to hit anybody, but a lot of the guys that got hit deserved to get hit. I did feel that. And by the way, I have to make it very clear. Even then, I lost a lot more of these engagements than I was successful in, successful to the point of going to jail. And I also, you know, I do think that the average person would see it a little differently. This is, again, not excusing anything, but take the, like with the paparazzi, for example, you know, if you take the camera out of their hand and you just close your eyes and you just think of, pick a person that you can imagine that you don't want in your life.

50:31and they follow you everywhere and they're looking through your windows at your house all day, every day. And the police won't do anything about it, can't do anything about it because they're on public property and God forbid you're on public property. What do you do? Well, I mean, at some point I might kill them. I'll do anything to stop it. So I did feel a little of that at that time.

51:02You know, I'm not going to live life this way with this person attached to me. I bet it didn't help, though, did it? It's not like, or would they? Would they give you a wider berth once it was clear that you might combust? I think it probably added bad, bad shit to the culture. By doing that, it gave them more, you know, added to the idea you can go provoke people like this idiot. And that was the narrative. Sean Penn explodes at the paparazzi again today. You know, I mean, I'm probably partially responsible for this explosion that led to all this extreme creepy fascination with famous people and things like that.

51:39And so, yeah, no, it didn't do. No good came of it, for sure. Do you think you were slightly caught in the backwash of the obsession with Madonna as well? That's part of it, right? Oh, well, that's most of what got the amount of attention that was happening. I mean, my life was much simpler before that, but when we met, she had never gone on tour. You know, she was at the beginning of the whole thing. Would it be 82? Like a Virgin was 83, I think. The song had come out in the video, so she was, you know, but it wasn't like it got. But she became a lightning rod of attention and I was there. How did you meet?

52:31A friend of mine was a PA on a music video she was doing like four blocks away from where I was staying in town at that time. I was staying at a friend's house developing a movie and we would work on the script during the day and then we'd have lunch because MTV was a big thing at that time. We would put on MTV. So I was familiar with her from that. And then this friend of mine is down the street making another video that she's doing and says, oh, come down. Madonna wants to meet you. Yeah, and then, yeah. So we met there. You just skipped a track? Well, the only thing, you know, I don't, like, Like, you know, if I have a cute story to tell about somebody, I'm still telling a story they are here to permit me to tell, you know.

53:33It becomes kiss and tell after that. I don't want to go there. Did you see the documentary they made about her? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know about that. Yep. And then they ask her, like, who's the love of your life? Do you remember that? Yeah. I remember that. You remember what she said? I do. I remember what she said. She's very sweet. Look, she's been a good friend for a lot of years. It didn't take us long to realize that we had mistaken a good first date for a wedding partner. And it didn't take us long to recover after we got divorced, maybe a year in a friendship. you know so

54:17I have a lot of fond memories of it it's not all jail and there's a lot of alcohol she'd be fairly accusing me of that how's your energy? you okay to keep going a little bit? my energy's fine I feel like we slightly we got Zelensky somewhat on pause but I also wanted to ask about I mean there's a lot of things to touch on but El Chapo notorious what do they narco, what do they call them? Narco trafficker El Chapo Guzman Kingpin And you spent some face time with him I looked at the interview it's still on there's a video of an interview with him on YouTube Yeah That's I guess part of it right? So I had hoped to do an interview with him.

55:16That's what I went there to do. For Rolling Stone? Yeah. I have to counter some of the criticisms that came. Now, it is true that I am verbose with these pieces. They're long. And if you don't like the writing style, it's long and you don't like it. But an example would be that we thought we were outsmarting people to be able to go down there without being known or anything. I had said in the article, and I always thought that no matter what we did, and we were using burner phones and everything, I'm talking about the little group that was going to go, there's a trail on this stuff. You know, when it comes to that guy, even if you want to make the argument that for whatever nefarious reasons, governments were not wanting to grab him at given times, they sure as hell wanted to know where he was and who was talking to him and why.

56:19So we should say that he was on the lam, right? He'd escaped from, he'd been apprehended having been the head of a cartel. Which cartel was it? Sinaloa. And then they got him and then he was sprung from jail. so by the time you catch up with him, he's an escapee living in a hideout somewhere, right? He was living out in the jungle, yeah. The shit that those cartels got up to was unreal, right? I mean, the level of almost pornographic violence, decapitations. I wouldn't use the word almost. Yeah. Horrific acts of terroristic violence, mass beheadings. And what was your curiosity about him? And what was leading you to want to make?

57:02If I had an agenda, it would have been to try to understand how you get this way and what's the solution here. Is there one? There's not been a lot of front page news about these problems. And I do understand that because I understand Mexico's reaction to this thing that happened when I went down there. Because having worked in Haiti, you do understand the incredible importance of foreign investment. And, of course, Mexico had figured out how to not have all the focus be on that at that time because they're trying to represent security for businesses that are coming in. Okay, I get that. But I also noticed that this situation isn't changing.

57:54It's getting worse. And so I had a fluke thing happen that I knew somebody that could get me with him. I said I wanted to do that. And these other people wanted to make a movie about him. I didn't want to do that. So I was going to write this piece for Rolling Stone with hopes of an interview. but there wasn't an interview. What happened is it went down. Takes us forever to get there. And there he is. And it was kind of later at night, and they had set up like a picnic table and put some string lights up, had some local peasants cooking some food, and we sat and ate and drank and talked. And it went on for about eight hours.

58:47And most of the conversation I had with him was I was being asked to chime in about their movie idea. You know, because he wasn't very interested in me. He was interested in this woman that was with us. A director? No, no. She was an actress, and she was going to take advantage of this opportunity to make a movie about him. So all of this was what was kind of in the mix. And told him what I wanted to do. He says, I just met you. I don't know you. Any signs of recognition of you? No, he'd been told who I was. I think he'd gone along with anything she wanted to do. And so she vouched for me. But I didn't know in what ways.

59:36So ultimately, the girl finally got him to go on tape. he answered some of the questions a little bit. He answers all of them very blandly. But most of them he didn't answer. Okay. The ones on the video he answers. Yeah, because they've decided which ones he's going to. Okay, something they didn't put to him. It's just he and one of his guys. The questions are pretty good. Well, it became a story, you know, of, okay, this is the supply side now, whatever, and so on. That was the whole deal. That's what it was. I don't want to take up too much of your time. Maybe it's worth circling back because, you know, one of the striking things is, you know, you're a gifted actor.

1:00:28You've been referred to numerous times as maybe the most gifted actor of your generation. Just going to let that sink in. In American, English-speaking movies, that's sometimes said about me as some others. It's appreciated. Who else is up there with you? Who would you regard as your peers at that level? You start out in taps, Tom Cruise. Do you keep up with Tom? I don't keep up with him, but I have a very friendly relationship with him when I see him. Does he ever talk to you about Scientology? No. Uh-uh. Never has. No. You're not supposed to. You're supposed to. It's an axiom that you don't really preach it.

1:01:09You say, oh, you should read the books. Yeah. I have a sense that those who go through that celebrity center have a very different experience with Scientology than the rank and file. I think that's true. I think it's pretty nice. It's like flying first class. It's hard to go back. And maybe you haven't seen outside that bubble. But about Tom Cruise, when we're talking about acting, he is a guy who pursues excellence on a very high level. Now, I understand certain kinds of movies, people appreciate more than other kinds of movies, and this and this, you know. But this is a very good actor who's also an extraordinarily committed craftsman.

1:01:56Those movies don't get made on that level, whether you love them or they're not your cup of tea. They don't get made on that level without somebody extraordinary behind it. He's the common link between too many of them for it not to be him. It's not an accident. It's no accident, yeah. uh but he's also he's probably you know he everyone talks he does his own stunts he does his own stunts he's probably the best stunt man in the movie world he's probably the you know when it comes to the amount of skills he has and what he can do with them and maybe the most experienced in things because he's they're choreographing things for him to do that nobody's ever been able to afford to put another stunt man to the test on so he's probably advanced the whole you know that whole thing he's pretty amazing yeah apologies to the stunt people out there listening for sean saying that tom cruise is better than all of you i they i would like to think they probably celebrate a guy like that he you know just it makes the the whole genre that that is the most demanding of those skills uh you know create more jobs i'm sure he's had some very good training from exceptional stunt people as well but you know this whole thing about like the best actors in the world and although they it's like i was saying earlier i think i'm seeing the or who do i consider a peer peer i i i'm seeing performances i mean some young actors where i don't feel like i feel like i should quit and become an accountant they're so good you know and and go on who chalamet i i haven't i haven't seen that movie yet which one there's so many um oh i i actually haven't seen his movies yet the dylan one you know i haven't seen it yet you're speaking as the voice of bob dylan you because you read his audio book didn't you yeah i think i'm about to do the second one actually what is he got a new one yeah chronicles two have you read it no i wait until i record it really yeah i'd like it's such a good book right the first one i loved it i think it's terrific yeah i read it i didn't listen to you maybe i should listen to your version well you already know the material so i think you move on there's other things to do but uh warren beatty speaks about this very much smarter than i can but you know there's no really such thing as a movie star anymore right that's that's kind of it's it's just this gigantic library here i'll give you an example game of thrones of course i know about game of thrones i know it was huge success so they tell me i just didn't see it and me neither so you need to see it's like dragons i don't we will wench on the morrow it's not my mom but But meanwhile, I was at a function and some people from Game of Thrones there, and it's like Beatlemania.

1:04:42From that, now that's a very big section of the library because that's a big, big successful thing. But it's still, it's like people are hanging out in their sections of the library, whereas we all used to be in the same library and see what was special to everybody. And, you know, I have a romantic memory of that. But it's moved on since then. There won't be, you know, you're not going to have a Warren Beatty, right? It's not going to happen. That's old man talk, I think. I'm an old man now, so that's okay. I think for the youngsters, Chalamet is their Beatty. May Chalamet be your Beatty is an old Irish blessing.

1:05:23I think here's the thing. I saw an interview with him, and he said that the only thing he knew about Bob Dylan was that he was an American icon before he did this thing, which made me think, well, of course, that actually makes some sense. You're a young person. There's all this information coming at you from everywhere. And all I really know about him is he's an American icon. Tim DeGio, right? I don't know. I don't have the relationship to it like a movie star. You're probably right. It's probably an old man's conversation that also probably has to do with a certain level of reclusiveness that has me living 23 and a half hours a day in this room.

1:06:07So, yeah. DiCaprio? Well, that's before they stopped the movie star. I think the movie star manufacturer ran out around Jennifer Lawrence time or something. She was the last. She was probably the last movie star, yeah. Woody Allen? Woody Allen, yes, Annabelle Woody Allen. You made a great movie with him. Samantha Morton was the female lead friend of the pod she's very talented would you work with him again? do you think he's got a bad rap? I'd work with him in a heartbeat if it was the right thing do I think he has a bad rap? look with these things I don't I don't know anyone well enough to say 100 % this didn't happen, that didn't happen or something.

1:07:01And God forbid you're wrong and there's a victim involved in something, right? But boy, I find the stuff that I know about and I haven't read everything, the stories are mostly told by people that I wouldn't trust with a dime. It just seems so heavily weighted in that way.

1:07:35You're talking generally, right, or not specifically about Woody Allen? But with the Woody Allen situation. Because it was mainly his estranged daughter? Well, yes, daughter, but also son. Ronan Farrow the journalist well you gave him that title not me but yes Ronan Farrow was that a little just clarification I think he's quite respected writes for the New Yorker uh huh and I I understand that yeah but look okay let's put it this way I am not aware, and maybe I'm just an ignoramus. That's a possibility. I am not aware of any clinical psychologist or psychiatrist or anyone I've ever heard talk or spoken to around the subject of pedophilia that in 80 years of life, there's accusations of it happening only once.

1:08:59I'm not aware of that. And when people try to associate what were his, let's say, much younger girlfriends,

1:09:11right or wrong is not the conversation here, but post-puberty consensual stuff is, to me, a different conversation. And it has its, you know... Post-puberty, age of consent, we should, yeah. All of those things. An adult woman. You know, yeah. And so I just think that whatever is the worst of people's suspicions about him, And, you know, just check them with the facts separate from the moment and the movement and all who benefited from that. Like, just let's just take a second. That's all I'm saying. But I don't I, you know, I see he's not proven guilty. So I take him as innocence and I would work with him in a heartbeat.

1:10:07um do you fall out of i'm trying to kind of get it if there's a unified field theory of sean penn and his work right uh acting directing writing but also humanitarianism fundraising advocacy documentary work um it's hard to really wrap your arms around the whole of it you know in a sense, what I do sense is that one feeds the other and that from time to time you need to stop acting, either you fall out of love with it or you need to touch grass. How would you put it?

1:10:42There was a period of time where I was really miserable acting. Maybe I could say from after Milk and before Daddio, So that's like 15 years that it was just miserable, and it took me a long time to identify why, because I'd like to think it was just this project or that producer or that problem thing. But I found myself sometimes working with really good people and still being miserable. And so I just thought maybe I shouldn't do this anymore if I can afford it.

1:11:25And then I'll do a job that pays a lot here or there and not put too much of my life into that now. And also getting older, you sort of feel like you're allowed to retire sort of if you want. But your thing about when you milk, obviously terrific movie, you won an Oscar for it. But then when you talk about falling out of love with it, did you figure out what it was? Was it taking too much out of you? Like, is it that it's emotionally draining or you felt you were on autopilot or something else? It just wasn't. I wasn't being, in other words, just because something is smart and populated well by cast and crew.

1:12:10Doesn't mean you should do it. I knew this in some way intellectually before, but I really came to understand now that. it's got to be something that I am really immediately engaged in, like is part of my world today, what my questions are, what I needed to be like directing has been for me, where it, of course, the script is exactly what I'm interested in right now. I wrote it right now. So that's why I want to do it. As an actor, you don't have as many opportunities where something comes to you, like those two movies I just got gifted with, in both cases, they were very present subjects in my imagination.

1:12:53And so if I'm not doing that, my dream day, I get up 5 o 'clock in the morning, maybe. I get my coffee, feed the dogs, and I start a wood project. And I'll go till 1 o 'clock in the morning, and then do it all again. Carpentry? Yeah. Do you still drink? Yeah, I love it. Do you? Yeah. On weeknights? Does that include Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday? Yeah. What's your tipple of choice? Vodka tonic, solid drink. If you take me to a wedding and the bride is begging me to have a glass of champagne, I'll say I'll drink with you, but not that. It just makes life simpler. I know what I drink.

1:13:38I know the effect it has. I know what my pace is, and I'm good. On the odd night, I'll do a whiskey, but it's pretty much, but don't tell the bride. Like you say, when you do the whiskey, you can do the champagne. No, I don't like the peer pressure of, you know, hey, have a shot of tequila. Never. Never? No. I always say it's a delivery system for ice because I'm a big ice chewer. You probably see the smoking. In fact, the only reason I'm smoking so much is because this is even worse to be like doing in front of a camera toothpick things but i'm pretty you know so i like to chew ice and ice tastes great when it's glazed in vodka and tonic the smoking hasn't caught up with you well look i was beating the shit out of myself about smoking at a certain point right just just like I've got to quit.

1:14:35I can't be a slave to this thing anymore. And, you know, it's bad for you. It's going to do this and that. But I would always have that calculation that finally really landed for me, which is that notwithstanding heart disease, save that for the next time, cancer is that it takes nitro and glycerin to make cancer. And so that could be any of these carcinogens or whatever. The other one that's consistent is stress. I was rereading some Bukowski about two years ago. And I found this line. It's a pretty famous line of his, but I hadn't thought of it for a long, long time. I never related it this way.

1:15:27and it's find something you love and let it kill you. And, you know, I know that they're not good for you, but I don't have stress about it and I love it. I love smoking. And I'm not saying it has no effect on somebody else. You know, your kids are worried about you because you smoke. That's an effect on somebody. But if booze isn't making me want to go out and punch somebody, which it doesn't anymore,

1:15:58or if I'm not inclined to get behind the wheel of a car or to carry a loaded firearm when I'm drinking, then I'm not doing any, you know, I feel fine about it. I mean, I could keep going, but how long have we gone for? Quite a while, right? I feel like... I'm sorry that I go on. I know I go on a lot of tangents. No, no, the tangents are part of what's fun. Okay.

1:16:43I'm back. Thank you for listening or watching. That was a lot of fun. What a thrill to go up into the mountaintop, well, hilltop redoubt of a Hollywood acting legend. I felt very privileged. And I felt like we could have gone for another couple of hours, crack open some of the ambers, right, kick back, and just what happens, happens, right? What happens at Sean Penn's house stays at Sean Penn's house. That's one of our mottos. The upcoming film, which we talked about, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean, is one battle after another. It's due out later this year.

1:17:23And just to say, I don't smoke. I've had a few cigarettes in my life. It was quite nice to be around smoking again. I think he normally doesn't smoke that much, but that he likes to have something to fiddle with, and normally he uses toothpicks. This is what he told me at the end of the conversation. But since he couldn't use toothpicks, I think because maybe it was a sound issue or it was some issue. He didn't want to be on camera. He didn't want to be on. That's Millie, my producer. Welcome to the chat. He didn't want to be on camera picking his teeth, so he smoked a bit more than usual. Regular listeners will notice I've had, well, I had another pop at Game of Thrones, which came up last week with Bella Ramsey.

1:18:07I'm dialing up the feud. George RR Martin, you're on notice. Things no one ever said. We need Tolkien, but with more sex. Right. Who said that? No one, ever. I do like Merlin. You've ever seen Merlin? That's on iPlayer. That's a nice programme. Nice. Is that my new brand? Why can't things be more nice? Merlin, which has Bradley James, Colin Morgan and others, it was about 10 years ago. You can watch that with the whole family. There's no wenching in that. There's no wenching like, come on, on the morrow we will wench. And they don't talk fake medieval English either. They just say things like, Hi Merlin, are you feeling all right?

1:18:52Yeah, they just sound normal. They didn't speak like in weird medieval English. In medieval times, they spoke Middle English, which was actually a different language. Yes, I do speak a little Middle English. I've got parts of Chaucer memorised. Did you know that? How much do you want me to do? A bit more.

1:19:27Can George R. R. Martin do that?

1:19:34If you were playing bingo at home, you can check off Woody Allen, also Trump. you can't put in well Mel Gibson he should probably be on the bingo card blacking up wasn't on there it's a shame we didn't bring up I am Sam which was when Sean played someone with a significant disability because that's a bit like blacking up in a way in the sense that it's actors taking on attributes like that they that they don't have which you could say is acting, but all of this has become very contentious. And I don't know that you'd... I don't know, I think there's questions being asked now about how appropriate it is to play someone with a disability.

1:20:19Playing a gay man in milk. And as Millie points out, playing a gay man in milk. And playing a milkman in gay. Not many people saw that. People were offended that someone with no experience in the lactation business was taking on the role of a milkman. Why it was called Gay is a strange question. It was the name of the milkman, Marvin Gaye. That's good stuff. OK, I think that's it. Oh, yes, credits. The producer was Millie Chu. The assistant producer was Maisie Williams. The production manager was Francesca Bassett. And the executive producer was Aaron Fellows. The music in this series was by Miguel de Oliveira.

1:21:08This is a Mindhouse production for Spotify.