Sean Penn on the LA wildfires, his fears for America and filming in Kyiv while the bombs rained down

Political correctness drives me out of my effing tree. It's just so quota-based every year. It glares and bores me. Good evening, members. Thank you so much for coming for the second event of this term. Today, it's my honor to introduce to you Sean Penn, actor, director, and humanitarian. He is the winner of two Academy Awards and a Golden Globe. Beyond his work, Sean has been a relentless advocate for humanitarian causes, founding core to aid disasters all around the world. Please join me in welcoming Sean Penn to this historical chamber. Sean, thank you so much for joining us. It's an absolute honor to host you here at the Oxford Union. I wanted to start quickly with what is happening in LA, very devastating. As someone who is familiar and close to the area, as a founder of the core, your organization has been doing a lot of relief work. How do you see the rebuilding process? First, let me say hello, leaders of tomorrow. How are we going to be? Great. I was really asking, is mankind going to make it because it's on your shoulders? Yes. Humankind, I should say. And forgive the dress, it's not an affectation, but a series of logistical challenges that I had today. Good question. So, obviously, this is historic proportions, this fire. I visited the fire zone on a couple of occasions. It is reminiscent of Hiroshima. Virtually everything gone and so much of where it found itself. I think that we're on what's going to be a very long road to recovery. Some of the issues, there are two significant fires, the Altadena and the Palisades. The Palisades in particular was, let's say, a prime location for sort of from middle class-ish to wealthier people with children. And so I think that in terms of how people are going to take caution and how much trust there will be in what's announced relative to the toxicity of this zone and for how long may affect choices that are made. Whether or not there are going to be regulations that build in green spaces and house hardening against fire remains to be seen because I know there's a lot of political pressure to be able to rebuild quickly from both sides, from the leadership side as well as from the resident side. But a lot of these other questions have yet to really sink in. Right now, for CORE, our immediate response is cash assistance and being able to identify the most vulnerable, we need that. A lot of these applications, for example, the FEMA applications require social security numbers and then it's identifying those because they're undocumented or other reasons don't have those and find ways to assist them as well. This is going to be a learning curve for everyone. There are inspections that are needed before and right now they're still in a kind of a deceased search and so they don't want, let's say, a lot of heavy equipment coming in yet. Our prayer and thoughts are with the people of LA and we hope that there is a recovery and on our memberships and CORE is an organization that was founded by Sean. Please do visit and see in whatever way you can support. I want to move to, you have been, there's no one way to define you beyond acting. You cover so many things, you're a humanitarian, you're interested in journalism and you've been part of a lot of current affairs and one aspect is the Ukraine-Russia war you have been covering. You were filming Superpower just before the Russian invasion and then the trajectory of the documentary changed. It would be interesting to find out, like, why did you want to do this project and how did things change and what did you saw at the time that was unfolding in Ukraine? Well, there was my producing partner on this, Billy Smith. He and I had a couple of false starts in making some documentaries. We had initially started about five years after what's referred to as the Arab Spring. We remembered that, and Syria had become extremely engaged and we thought it was interesting looking back five years earlier that virtually all of the pundits, most of the journalists and even, you know, from heads of state to etc. There was the belief that Assad would fall within 30 days. And now we were five years later and we thought we'd make a documentary about how did that happen. And I started to make trips into Syria. I met Assad and felt initially that I would have greater access than what I needed. There are documentarians for whom, whatever that challenge is, would be much better at, let's say, pursuing whichever story came up. But for me, if I believed I had any value added, I felt I was able to create trust with people and because of this sort of way that people respond to actors they've seen in movies, there's a sort of will to a familiarity. And out of that then, you know, I'll be trustworthy as long as what you have to offer is to be trusted. But I wanted a lot of access that was initially promised and of course eventually eroded. And so I didn't make that film. Then we also had a false start when we went to Turkey. We were going to do a piece on Khashoggi. And when I met with his fiancée, she was a very powerful presence and it became clear to me that she was going to be the focus of it. But then I found that there was another filmmaker there and I wouldn't have an exclusive on it. And so that wasn't what I wanted to do either. And so having kind of taken on these serious world stories or pursued them, my partner came to me and he said, you know, I've been in contact with someone who was a very close friend of Zelensky for a long time. Now, mind you, I knew very little about Ukraine. I talk about this in the film and I know that most Americans knew that the president had been a comedian and that there had been a very bad phone call with our president. And I thought, well, it would be interesting to do a kind of the whimsical story of this comedian who played a schoolteacher who became president in a very successful television comedy to becoming the president of Ukraine and learning about Ukraine while documenting that. So this was long before the Russian buildup. It was pre-COVID. And so then we were planning to go see him, excuse me, and COVID happened and shutdowns happened. And of course, as difficult as it was to travel or to be with people, to be with a head of state, there's another layer of security issues, health security issues for that head of state that would have required whatever amount of time, quarantine and so on. It just made it untenable. But we did meet over Zoom. And what I said to him was, you know, I don't want you to say yes electronically. I'd like to come and meet you without any cameras. And if we come out of that meeting and you feel like you can talk to me in a way you might not talk to a journalist of a different breed, let's do it. So by the time we were able to do all of this, it ended up being November. November 2021. And then we went in November and in November there was a sort of crisis at the presidential palace in Kyiv. The intelligence agencies had identified and set up a sting operation on all those Wagner operators that had been involved in the downing of the airplane years earlier. And then that information leaked and it was said that it had leaked out of somewhere in the presidential office. And so they were not able to meet with the filmmakers doing the whimsical tale at that time. Also, the buildup had started to be in the news a bit. We decided to make use of the time. We went to Mariupol, met with troops there, and then went into the city and met musicians and all kinds of people and did a lot of documenting of that part of the trip. And then by the time we were able to set up another date to be able to meet with him, and usually that would require sort of making a week period because with a head of state you never know what's going to happen. And so we went and we went about, I don't know, I think it would be, but by the time, we were there about five days by the time he was able to meet with us. And it ended up being on the 23rd, the eve of the attack. And so that meeting went very well. Of course, by that point it was becoming clear that something was going to happen at some point. And so we made an appointment to start shooting the following day. We went back to the hotel and got our camera gear lined up, our sound gear lined up the following day. And some of us tried to get a couple of hours sleep and then the rockets started to come in and it was game on. And then I remember, you know, that he, the office called us in the morning. It started, the assault started at night and in the morning we got a call that he was going to honor the commitment to the CMS. And so we were taken to what at that time was a secret location. Now it's known that it was the bunker underneath the palace. And we were there for many, many hours. And so while there, because getting from hotel to there, of course by that time it was a ghost town. There was a lot of discussion about Chechen kill squads coming after him directly and so on. So there was nothing on the street. And so then we got to the palace, then we were taken down to this thing. And then we were, once we got underneath, we didn't know what was going on with the war. We went in and we did know that Kiev was meant to be totally encircled within 12 to 72 hours. And so that was a very odd experience to just not have, because you have no cell phone, nobody's telling you anything. And then he shows up and we had what was I believe his only interview on that day, other than speaking to the press at large. And we continued, now we had a different story. It wasn't the whimsical tale anymore. And it was a very surreal experience. And I remember by the time we got out, night had fallen. We were told not to use our vehicles to get back to the hotel because the lights would be a target for rockets and so on. So we had this walk which was kind of a, I was grateful for it. Because you're in the blackout and hearing the silence and I realized just, I was trying to identify my state of mind. And it was nothing but heartbreak. Because the day before, I find when I tell this story, I tell it the same way every time. But it is simple. I felt the day before, whether it's here in the UK or the United States, whatever this means that's common to all of us, they were us. They were going to the same movies, having the same coffees. It was so familiar. And then they're in this incredible horror show. And yeah, it went from there. And then we made a total of eight trips to the UK. No, I think it's been a great documentary and also quite an ordeal for yourself. The war has continued since then. You know President Zelensky, he also visited us two years ago over here. You have somehow indirectly met President Putin as well. You also know about the last presidency of President Trump. How do you see this unfolding? Do you think there is an end goal? Will there be negotiations, knowing President Zelensky? And how do you see now that Trump has come to power? I would like to be wrong about my greater concerns. How can I answer this responsibly, I guess? I think that as an American, where I pay my taxes, I would like, from that point of view, I'm very concerned that America is in a part of the spin cycle that has thrown dignity and loyalty to the aspiration aside. And that the people have been done a great disservice by their mainstream news media outlets that have morphed into a sort of editorial of entertainment. And that it's not serious minded. And so they've got themselves distracted by this sort of internal division. And we see it even with the fires in Los Angeles. I've never known this to happen in the United States where you didn't feel an overwhelming unity that was built by these travesties. And instead we're feeling the play on the division even stronger. So I think that whatever successes I hope for Ukraine, whatever Ukraine chooses for itself, that it has some, I know it's got the backup heart, but I hope it has some backup resources because I don't trust my country's support right now. So talking about resources, and this is the final question I want to ask on this, and I want to move on to a separate area. Talking about resources, just along the time when the war in the UK unfolded, we saw the atrocities in Gaza and in the same time, but a very different response, especially from the West and Western media. How do you compare the responses into the cost of human life both being the same but the responses being different? I don't know if I can speak to that. I can speak to it, I guess, myself as an individual. The issues in Israel and Gaza have never been freely spoken about with the nuance that they deserve. In fact, it's an issue that I've found over the years, one could be like-minded in conversations of political, in every other way. You suddenly come up against a wall of absoluteness. So there is that. If you look at the response in the United States to what happened in Ukraine initially, I think there was every opportunity to begin to turn around the division in the United States all told, as well as to much more fully support Ukraine. The initial response, it didn't matter if they were on the far right, the far left or anywhere in between, they were flying Ukrainian flags. And that got torn apart from the inside from within leadership and I do think significantly led by the culture that has been cultivated by and from which he is birthed, Donald Trump. Well, his inauguration is today, so in the next four years, we'll see how things unfold in his administration. I want to move on to your career in acting and filming. You have an incredible career. You have told stories about love, loss and survival. What drives you to explore the complexities of human conditions in the characters that you have played? What goes behind your thoughts and emotions? I'm sure there are many aspiring artists who love to know about processes that go through and how are you able to play such complex characters? Well, I'm not going to accuse myself of doing that, but I'll try to answer your question. You know, in a certain simple way, from the point at which I got lucky enough to be largely able to choose what I did, to a degree, or at least of what I did, they came with choices I was given that are not typical. It usually came down to the first ten pages. As it turns out, the things that engage me first are that I'm not disturbed by inauthenticity. So if I'm reading the first ten pages and they're plagued with inauthentic conventions of film, then I don't read past the ten pages. So it's not so much a design. There is something that you kind of find yourself, less consciously, I think, than unconsciously. But at a certain point, you find that with the opportunities you've been given, you find yourself building what should be a kind of... I do like this idea of a body of work. And of course it's interrupted by what I'll call mistakes. But overall, there becomes a kind of theme. And part of the reason that happens, I think, is because as a young actor, you have an off... You can go anywhere. And it's not going to diminish your life. It's going to enhance it. Go anywhere in terms of where you go emotionally with characters, what the nature of the characters' dilemmas are, what they want, what they strive for, what the overall narrative represents. But as you get... You put in a few years. I shouldn't say you. I generalize it. It's different for everyone. But for me, there came a time where I was... I'd get very excited by something because I recognized it. And I would take the job. And I would now be staring at a cottage cheese ceiling in some hotel somewhere, making the film. And it's not two or three days of this is cool to be able to share this presence that I knew, that excited me about it. But now you're realizing I've chosen something that I've already done and I'm not interested in. It's not urgently my interest right now. And I think that what... Maybe what will clarify what I mean by that better is that it wasn't until I directed my first movie that the difference wasn't I was acting or directing. The difference was I was very specifically writing about, making a film about something that represented the actual questions that were on my mind in my life separate from movies at that time. And where the movie itself was going to be searching for the answer to that question. And I wasn't going to know it until I got to the end of it. If I was going to know it. And I loved that. And once that happened, the other became of less interest. But hopefully it represents a kind of shape of what I call a body of work. So is there a genre that you have still not explored that you would like to? Or are there any other genres that you hate? Like anytime an agent comes to you and you say I just cannot do it. I think the genre I would like to explore or aspire to explore... I just saw this film. I suppose it's been released in the UK. Emilia Perez. And I thought, you know, I want to see movies I haven't seen before. And that's what this director with that film brought. And so, you know, sure, I'd love to believe I could be part of that sort of thing. So I believe there's... Are you shooting a film at the moment with DiCaprio? At least the internet is telling that... Yeah, and I just had a really fortunate kind of gift of an experience with Leo and Nisio Del Toro. And we did a Paul Thomas Anderson movie that I'm sworn not to speak about in any details. But I will say that I had an extraordinary time doing that. That hit the spot. And I believe it will be released in August this year. I think that's what they were talking about. We'll wait until it's out. So no inside information before. Coming around, again, you have a lot of views on many things and quite rightly so. And one of the areas that you often criticize is the Academy. You criticize the Academy for cowardice, limiting the different expression, taking account of diversity of the films and expression that's out there in the world. Why do you think that's the case for Academy? How do you think there is any change that they will come in? Or it will be as they are? You know, I can't pretend to know all that the Academy does. But because of having been associated with some films and things that if you get nominated or you win an Academy Award, you can join the Academy. I think just out of laziness, I never did. And so I don't get the screeners. Which I probably should do that application at some point. But what I do notice is what they don't do. And what they don't do is have any backbone at all. And a former student here, Stephen Fry, spoke beautifully about, I think, what's behind that in his closing argument at the Munk Debate. And it is interesting that one would hope, I guess it's a sort of idealistic, because of being a movie lover and making my living in film, I guess I've always wanted to believe that the Academy somehow represented what films at best can celebrate. And so when I had contacted them, with an offer from President Zelensky shortly after the invasion, to speak to the Academy and to everyone watching their award show that year, and made it clear he didn't want to make this, but he wasn't going to be talking about President Biden, he wasn't going to be talking about former President Trump, he wasn't going to be talking about President Obama, that which, in a single person, not only as an individual, but as he represented this incredibly courageous country at large. That's a filmmaker. And he wanted to thank everyone for their support at that time, and talk about the big medicine that film can be and the value of film. And they traded that for a bitch slap from Will Smith to Chris Rock, serves them right. And I just thought that along with their history with the blacklist and the way that they cowered at the time and never made the kind of apologies that should have been made or taken accountability before they gave their stuff, I would have been fine with him getting a Lifetime Achievement Award. He was a big mouth who broke people's lives and was in a position not to. But he made great movies and I'm okay with them giving it, had they acknowledged. And their history of that continues. And their sort of political correctness drives me out of my effing tree. It's just so quota-based every year. It glares and bores me. Do you think that will change? Trump has appointed ambassadors to Hollywood and there's a whole rhetoric against the Trump administration. How do you think that will change? Yeah. Look, clown shows can do great damage but I'm not very interested in them. I don't... I think that you know, the people of America and everywhere else where it's taking place are going to have to let their pendulum swing and figure out when they want to jump and high side it and weigh it towards something reasonable.