Sean Penn Says He Couldn’t Play Harvey Milk Today. Is He Right About That?
variety.comDaniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic Could Sean Penn make “Milk” today? It’s a question the actor answered himself, in a recent profile by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times. “It could not happen in a time like this,” he said, of his performance as the slain gay politician. “It’s a time of tremendous overreach.
It’s a timid and artless policy toward the human imagination.” Penn is clearly passionate about the Gus Van Sant-directed film, which won him his second Oscar and which, he says, was “the last time I had a good time” on sets more than 15 years after its 2008 release.
He’s part of a class of A-listers from an age where the celebrity class was untouchable, and — like Jerry Seinfeld and Jennifer Aniston — he seems visibly irritated by the shifts in power toward the audience.
In fairness, it is perhaps hard to believe that the precise way “Milk” was cast — with not just Harvey Milk but multiple of his fellow queer activists played by actors who appear to be straight — would play out in the same fashion in 2024. (The recent Showtime series “Fellow Travelers,” like “Milk” a historical drama about the LGBTQ civil-rights struggle, featured as its two leads two out gay actors, Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey.) And yet.
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