Sean Penn and Dylan Penn aren’t holding back on set just because they’re family. The Oscar-winning actor, 61, and his 30-year-old actress daughter appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Thursday night, where they detailed a “two-hour standoff” they had while filming the upcoming drama Flag Day, which is directed by Sean, who also co-stars alongside his daughter.
When Colbert asked Dylan if she and her father had ever gotten into “loggerheads” over his notes while directing the film, Dylan answered, “We had one major — I think it was a two-hour — standoff about a note he had.” When Colbert questioned, “Two hours over one note?” Dylan explained the tiff sparked about whether or not she could wear mascara. “He won,” she added.
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Colbert told Dylan that fight sounded like one “a father usually has with a daughter when she’s 12,” continuing to ask, “Did you guys so someplace private to have this fight, or was it just a knockdown, drag-out in front of the crew?” Dylan and Sean confirmed they hashed everything out in public. “It was, once it was clear that she was making the wrong decision, I just went and sat down,” Sean explained. “And then the silence was one the crew had to live with for two hours while the Penns figured it out.”
Flag Day, adapted from Jennifer Vogle’s 2004 memoir, Flim-Flam Man, follows a young journalist, played by Dylan, and her relationship with her father, played by Sean, who is a con man. The film also stars Katheryn Winnick and Sean’s son, Hopper Jack Penn, and premieres in theaters Aug. 20. Dylan previously told PEOPLE earlier this month that working so closely with her father on the movie was a therapeutic experience.
For me, it was equal to doing family therapy in a room full of strangers,” she said. “I’ve done family therapy, but I’ve never done it with a crew that I didn’t know.” Dylan said she decided to work with her father after getting advice from her mother, actress Robin Wright. “She very simply said, ‘I’ve never worked with a better director than your dad. It was the most amazing experience I’ve ever had as an actor,’” Dylan said. “So I trusted that.”
