Sean Penn Tells CNN Covid Vaccinations Should Be As Mandatory As ‘Turning On Your Headlights’ At Night

Actor Sean Penn told CNN’s Michael Smerconish that Covid-19 vaccinations should be mandatory, and compared being unvaccinated to “pointing a gun in somebody’s face.”

Penn, a vocal proponent of Covid vaccines, had held off on working on the TV series Gaslit until the entire cast and crew were vaccinated.

According to Penn, NBCUniversal had a “zone” for actors and crew members who would be in close proximity to the cast — they were required to be vaccinated. However, that mandate did not apply to crew members who were not working closely to the cast.

“Actors are protected, but if a stagehand is working alongside a stagehand who is not protected then they can get sick,” Penn said Saturday. “I didn’t want to feel complicit in something that was just taking care of one group and not the other.”

He continued: “And I do believe that everyone should get vaccinated. I believe it should be mandatory, like turning your headlights on in the car at night. But obviously, that’s not going to happen tomorrow.”

Penn added that he will go back to Gaslit once he “can assure 100% of the crew has gotten vaccinated.”

“I mean, I’m a great respecter of individual liberties,” Smerconish later noted. “But this is not a seat belt. If you choose not to wear a seat belt, I wish you’d wear a seat belt. You’re going to add to my insurance premiums if you get effed up in an accident. But this is different. This is you running the risk of contaminating everybody else in society.”

Penn responded that he has “some areas of strong belief in the Second Amendment,” but went on to compare being unvaccinated to pointing a gun in someone’s face.

“With something like this, you can’t go around pointing a gun in somebody’s face, which is what it is when people are unvaccinated.”

Watch above, via CNN.