Sean Penn: #MeToo claims baseless

Los Angeles – Two-time Oscar winner Sean Penn has sparked controversy with his latest comments about the #MeToo movement, saying in an interview aired yesterday that he was “very suspicious” of a campaign that had divided men and women.

Penn, who appeared on NBC’s Today programme to promote his television debut on Hulu’s The First, said the popular debate was “too black and white” and had been at times too quick to pass judgment on the accused. “Well, we don’t know what’s a fact in many of the cases,” he said.

“The spirit of much of what has been the #MeToo movement is to divide men and women.”

Penn, 58, said the campaign had been “largely shouldered by a kind of receptacle of the salacious”.

When asked to expand on that idea, Penn said he had doubts about a movement he described as “really a series of many individual accusers, victims, accusations – some of which are unfounded”.

His remarks nevertheless generated a near-immediate backlash on Twitter.