For many people, the high water mark for Sean Penn’s career is his role as Harvey Milk in the acclaimed drama, “Milk.” That film earned Penn his second Oscar and the film went on to earn eight total Academy Award nominations. But when you fast forward 16 years and look back at the choice to make the film with Penn in the lead role of a gay activist and trailblazing politician, there is a bit of a pause. For many, it’s clear a gay man should have probably been given that role. But that sort of thinking really frustrates Penn.
Speaking in a recent interview with The New York Times, Sean Penn was asked about his role “Milk.” Specifically, he was asked if he thought he would be able to play that role in 2024.
“No. It could not happen in a time like this,” Penn said. “It’s a time of tremendous overreach. It’s a timid and artless policy toward the human imagination.”
As mentioned, his role in “Milk,” at the time, was applauded for how he was perceived as courageous to play a gay character. However, times have changed, as they do, and there’s more of an emphasis on diversity and inclusion. What wasn’t being said back in 2008 is how studios wouldn’t greenlight a movie if it had a gay lead. Or how LGBTQ actors were passed up for straight people on a regular basis. Now that things like that are spoken about regularly, it’s clear we have seen a bit of backlash when a gay role is occupied by a straight person because that’s the only way a studio will feel the pressure to hire more gay actors.
All that to say, people aren’t mad that Sean Penn took a role back in 2008 and won an Oscar for it. People are upset that a gay actor was likely never in the running for that role. Because of the backlash nowadays, the idea is that maybe we’ll see more gay people in lead roles. But we see plenty of the older generation of actors take it more as censorship or some sort of cancel culture thing, when it’s really not like that at all.
If you want to see Sean Penn in a new role, he’s in the film “Daddio,” which arrives in theaters this Friday.