This year’s Academy Awards promise to be more chaotic than usual, which is saying something. There’s been brouhaha over atypical host choices and awards that won’t be televised live. There’s also the matter of how they’ll deal with the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Co-host Amy Schumer has tried to get Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to take time out of defending his nation to make an appearance. And if that doesn’t happen, there’s one Oscar-winner who will be peeved.
As per Deadline, Sean Penn — who’s been nominated five times and won twice, for Mystic River and Milk — has given the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences an ultimatum: get Zelensky on the Oscars or else he will publicly destroy his two trophies.
ICYMI: Actor Sean Penn says the Oscars should be boycotted if the ceremony’s planners have decided against having Zelensky on the program. pic.twitter.com/4LI2YIiKcD
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) March 26, 2022
“If it turns out to be what is happening, I would encourage everyone involved, though it may be their moment, and I understand that, to celebrate their films, it is so much more importantly their moment to shine, and to protest and to boycott that Academy Awards. I myself, if it comes back to it, when I return, I will smelt mine in public,” Penn told CNN’s Jim Acosta. “I pray that’s not what happened. I pray there have not been arrogant people who consider themselves representatives of the greater good who have decided not to check in with leadership in Ukraine. So I’m going to hope that’s not what happened, and I hope everyone walks out if it is.”
Penn has always been one of the more political figures in Hollywood, and he’s currently in Ukraine, shooting a documentary for Vice. He even met with Zelensky last week. It’s been over a month since Ukraine was invaded by Russia, who have not been faring well, to put it mildly.
(Via Deadline)