Viewers Lash Out at Sean Penn

Sean Penn appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Monday, where he admitted to being on Ambien and then lit a cigarette.

Penn told Colbert, as he lit up: “You’ve inherited a little of the Ambien I had to take to get to sleep after a red-eye last night.”

• Penn appeared on the show nominally to plug the first novel he penned, titled Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff: A Novel. While there, he explained he turned to writing because “I increasingly don’t play well with others.”
• Penn added that he fell in love with acting initially because everyone would “go into a movie theater in the dark with strangers [and watch] something that would last forever. And now there’s so much content. I can’t keep track with it and nothing seems special.”
• But fans were more interested in the fact that Penn lit up at all. Critics point out that TV banned cigarette commercials years ago because of the health hazards associated with the habit, and that movies, shows and media in general avoid showing characters smoking. Plus, it’s banned indoors in New York.
• “Why the heck is Sean Penn smoking during his @StephenAtHome interview?” one person tweeted, while another pointed out it’s “illegal.”
• Penn, for one, defended his habit as “job security for oncologists.”
• Oh, and ICYMI, on Marc Maron‘s podcast, he had this to say about ex-wife Robin Wright: “We don’t have a lot of conversation. We don’t not get along. We have very separate relationships with our kids at this point and it seems to work better that way because they are making their own decisions. And as it turned out, she and I did not share the same ethical views on parenting, including the continuing parenting of adult children.”