Just returned from the Cannes Film Festival where he presented his feature film in competition Flag Day in which he played alongside his daughter Dylan, Sean Penn draws a red line in Hollywood. According to the American magazine Deadline from Thursday, July 22, he issued an ultimatum to producers: his participation in all cinematographic or audiovisual shoots will now be conditional on the entire team being vaccinated against covid. Otherwise the American actor and director will refuse to set foot on the set.
This is the script that Sean Penn faces for the filming of the series. Gaslit on Watergate directed by Matt Ross and produced by NBCUniversal. He clearly threatens not to return to the set in Burbank, California to play the title role of John Mitchell, the Attorney General of the United States under the presidency of Richard Nixon, with Julia Roberts, who plays his wife Martha.
With the outbreak of the Delta variant in Los Angeles, the city has again imposed the wearing of the mask indoors and according to Sean Penn, the vaccine should be mandatory for everyone on set. Not just the actors and a handful of technicians. He is also ready to put his hand in his pocket and offers to cover all the costs of vaccination through his own non-profit organization Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE), initially created in 2010 after the earthquake. land in Haiti to help populations. CORE has also invested in the fight against Covid 19 in the United States and since the start of the pandemic has funded more than 5.3 million tests and 1.7 million vaccines.
What legal capacities?
In the Gaslight studio, NBCUniversal currently only enforces a mandatory vaccination in Zone A, where actors perform without masks. This protocol applies to actors and teams who work just in contact with them. According to the American magazine, Sean Penn wants to expand this vaccination scope not to embarrass the studios or for his own health since he is already vaccinated, but to prevent unvaccinated people from jeopardizing an entire plateau .
This first actor and star director to openly ask for a strengthening of the sanitary measures of the shootings, will he move the lines in Hollywood? NBCUniversal is for its part directly involved in negotiations between unions and major studios on the compulsory nature of the vaccine. But the new protocols approved earlier this week only give growers “The possibility of making the vaccine compulsory for teams and actors in zone A”. According to Deadline, NBCUniversal would not have the legal capacity to impose more vaccines on the set, except to modify the agreement reached with the unions. But if Sean Penn doesn’t return, it will delay production, potentially costing a small fortune.
