Sean Penn: #MeToo activists often embrace ‘stridency and rage’ without ‘nuance’

Actor Sean Penn says it’s time for the #MeToo movement to “slow down” and reject a population of activists who are attracted to “stridency and rage and without nuance.”

Actress Natascha McElhone and the Hollywood star sat down for a “Today” show interview to promote their new Hulu show “The First” on Monday, but it wasn’t long before they were enmeshed in the many sides of #MeToo activism.

“The spirit of much of what has been the #MeToo movement is to divide men and women,” Mr. Penn told NBC’s Natalie Morales.

“Women would say it’s uniting women,” Ms. Morales responded.

“We don’t know what’s a fact in many of the cases,” Mr. Penn told the “Today” show audience. “I don’t want it to be a trend, and I’m very suspicious of a movement that gets glommed onto in great stridency and rage and without nuance. And even when people try to discuss it in a nuanced way, the nuance itself is attacked. I think it’s too black and white. In most things that are very important, it’s really good to just slow down.”

The Oscar-winning actor’s comments come against a political backdrop in which Christine Blasey Ford, a university professor in California, has accused Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, 53, a U.S. Supreme Court nominee, of sexual misconduct while the two were in high school.

All 10 Democratic members of Senate Judiciary Committee have called for a freeze in the nomination process for President Trump’s pick to fill the Supreme Court.