A Sedated Sean Penn Chain-Smoked on Colbert Last Night

"You’ve inherited a little bit of the Ambien."

Sean Penn on Colbert's "Late Show." (CBS/YouTube)

Sean Penn on Colbert's "Late Show." (CBS/YouTube)

By Diana Crandall

Stephen Colbert clearly got the memo before actor Sean Penn appeared on The Late Show Monday night — but the rest of us didn’t.

“I thought you might,” Colbert cracked as Penn lit a cigarette, pulling an ashtray from behind his desk for the Oscar winner.

“You’ve inherited a little bit of the Ambien I had to take to get to sleep after a red-eye last night,” Penn admitted.

“Jimmy Carter is my guest on Friday. He’s 93. Let’s see if you can bring more energy to this interview than Jimmy Carter is gonna bring on Friday.”

The disheveled Penn continued to chain-smoke throughout the interview, discussing the new novel he wrote as well as his planned departure from acting.

“The greatest thing that an actor can bring to the party is to play well with others — it’s the collaboration — and I increasingly don’t play well with others,” he said between puffs. “And so it becomes less enjoyable, because I love that process when I love it, but I’m not loving it anymore and that’s really why I finally came around to writing a novel because I didn’t have collaborators. I was never disappointed with me.”

Take a look at the clips below.

Exit mobile version