In the days before social media, Sean Penn and Madonna were a fixture in the tabloids with reports of startling alleged violence emerging about their brief marriage from 1985 to 1989 – but at least one of those stories was true, as he says, a SWAT team raided the their house!
Before people doubted everything they read online, the tradition of stars was to doubt everything seen on the covers and pages of all those tabloids at the supermarket checkout. That’s one thing Sean Penn It is Madonna definitely knew a lot about it, as they were common presences there.
As the world’s biggest pop star in the 1980s, Madonna was sure to be front and center as often as possible. So when she married Sean Penn in 1985, their union became tabloid fodder, with all kinds of disturbing stories about what went on in their marital home spreading around.
Getty Photos
Madonna Admits Abuse and Bullying in Powerful Billboard Ladies of the Year Awards Win
See story
At a time when it was not so easy to fact-check something seen, many of these rumors gained traction and became “truths” in the minds of possibly hundreds of thousands of people. And several stories became legend – even when they weren’t essentially true – like the one that claimed Penn hit Madonna with a baseball bat. In another, he “tied her up like a turkey.”
As with most celebrities of the time, none of them deigned to respond to the wild and sometimes unfounded accusations that were thrown at them. Movie stardom was a very different experience back then. However, now, there’s a chance for Sean Penn to set the record straight about “someone I really like.”
Although the marriage ended just four years after it began, Penn said New York times that he and the pop icon were able to land in a really good place. “It seems like it’s much quicker to restore a friendship after a divorce if there are no children involved,” he said.
Penn went through an analogous post-divorce journey with Robin Wrightwith whom he shares two children, Dylan Frances, 33, and Hopper Jack, 30. Penn and Wright got together shortly after his marriage to Madonna ended and were married from 1996 to 2010.
“Robin and I took a lot of time. There was a lot of drama,” Penn said of their improved relationship after the divorce. “It is much more necessary to restore it if there are children involved, but there is no simple swing, right?”
Getty
Robin Wright explains these current images of her with ex-husband Sean Penn
See story
When talking about some of those rumors about his allegedly tumultuous marriage to Madonna, Penn said he didn’t even know what some of them meant, like the one where he allegedly “tied her up like a turkey.”
“I didn’t know what ‘tied up’ meant,” Penn told the Times. Another story came to surprise him in a later relationship, with Penn sharing that after a “beautiful night” together, he found her the next morning “looking like I had killed her dog.” She then asked about the rumor of hitting Madonna in the head with a baseball bat.
“’I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about,” Penn admitted. “Now I feel like it’s honest to say that I’m not the most important man on this planet. But when I hit Mike Tyson in the head with a baseball bat, he went to the hospital.”
YouTube
Lourdes Leon pays tribute to Madonna’s ‘Frozen’ in new music video
See story
In the years since the divorce, Madonna has also walked back those persistent rumors of marital violence. In 2015, she testified that he never abused her in support of his $10 million defamation lawsuit against Lee Daniels, creator of Empire. The deal was eventually resolved, with Daniels publicly apologizing.
After Empire star Terrance Howard admitted that he slapped his wife in front of their children, Daniels jumped to his star’s defense saying that at least he had never done what “Marlon Brando or Sean Penn” did. In her statement supporting her ex, Madonna not only denied physical violence, but specifically cited the “tied up” and baseball bat stories.
“While we certainly had some heated arguments during our marriage, Sean never hit me, “tied me up” or physically assaulted me, and any report to the contrary is completely outrageous, malicious, reckless and false,” she stated, as famously The daily mail.
But with all the stories that were categorically false, according to all parties involved, Penn admitted that there was some truth to it. A SWAT team raided her home in response to at least one argument after Madonna called them involved over weapons in the house.
According to Penn, they broke windows, breaking into the house and placing him “in handcuffs.” According to Penn, he said he wouldn’t be back, but “was going to finish my breakfast. The next thing I knew, windows were being damaged throughout the house and they went in.