Sean Penn has never not spoke his mind, and he’s been very vocal about his thoughts on the pandemic. He’s demanded some very hard-line vaccination rules on his sets. And in a recent interview on CNN, he went even further, suggesting that unvaccinated people shouldn’t go see his movies — at least not in a theater — and pointing out that not getting dosed is a danger to others.
The two-time Oscar-winning actor and filmmaker was promoting his new movie Flag Day, which he directed and stars in, along with his daughter Dylan Penn. It’s not one of those films that’s playing in both theaters and on a streamer, which Penn likes.
“I am so grateful that audiences — and yes, we’ll come around to that I would request only vaccinated audiences — have an opportunity to see this theatrically,” Penn said. “It’s rare these days to have something that is exclusively theatrical. Eventually it will stream, and that’s a better time for the unvaccinated to see it, though I think I’ll probably offend them out of that choice.”
He doubled down on his stance. “I do request people who are not vaccinated, don’t go to the cinemas,” he said. “Stay home until you are convinced of these very clearly safe vaccines.”
He also talked about his on-set vaccination rules. “I didn’t want to feel complicit in something that was taking care of one group and not the other,” Penn added. “And I do believe that everyone should get vaccinated. I believe it should be mandatory, like turning your headlights on in the car at night.”
Penn didn’t explicitly call out anti-vaxxers, but he did argue that they’re putting people in harm’s way. “I have some areas of strong belief in the Second Amendment,” Penn said. “But I think that you need to recognize how, you know, with something like this, you can’t go around pointing a gun in somebody’s face, which is what it is when people are unvaccinated.”
In other words, please go get vaxxed, not only so you can see Flag Day but also so, you know, you don’t make other people sick with a highly contagious and possibly fatal disease.
(Via CNN)
