![]() Do I really want to be tabloid fodder for two years and go to court? And do I really care?” he says. Why doesn’t he sue when the New York Times calls him a “monster” alongside Epstein and Weinstein? All of them were accused of attacking multiple victims their pattern of predatory behaviour spanned their lifetime. Allen was accused of one instance of molestation and not only was he not convicted, but he was never even charged photos of him in court with Farrow are from their custody battle over their children, not from a criminal trial. I covered the Weinstein and Cosby cases, as well as many other stories about high-profile men either convicted or accused of sexual offences: Michael Jackson, R Kelly, Jimmy Savile, Jeffrey Epstein, Larry Nassar. ![]() He is now routinely named – by journalists, the Farrows and the public – alongside Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, both of whom are convicted of multiple offences, their crimes going back decades. So the old allegation against Allen has been accorded more power than it ever had, especially among a generation that was barely born in the 90s. There is a much greater awareness today of the prevalence of sexual abuse than there was in 1992 and the public is increasingly fearful of being on the wrong side of history to question any woman’s story is, in the eyes of many, to be a rape apologist. ![]() In a 2016 article in the Hollywood Reporter, Ronan castigated the media for giving a free pass to Allen, just because he had never been convicted: “It is not an excuse for the press to silence victims, to never interrogate allegations.” (He did not reply to a request for comment.) In 2014, Dylan wrote in the New York Times: “Woody Allen is a living testament to the way society fails the survivors of sexual abuse and assault.”. But, in the past decade, since Dylan and Ronan have spoken out publicly against their father, and Soon-Yi and Moses have defended him, attention has focused on the molestation charge. “I mean, it’s like being confronted with a story that I murdered six people with a machine gun.” (A source close to the Farrow family now denies Farrow feared Allen was gay or would molest Satchel, adding: “We will not be responding to ad hominem attacks on Ms Farrow or her children to support Mr Allen’s book sales or attempts to rewrite history.”)īack in the 90s, it was Allen’s affair with Soon-Yi that was considered the big scandal. “I thought people would see it as laughable rubbish right away and from day one I never really took it seriously,” says Allen. Photograph: The Life Picture Collection/Getty Images At this point, Farrow also had six older children of her own, including Soon-Yi.) According to contemporaneous news reports, as well as accusing Allen of molesting Dylan, Farrow testified that she thought Allen might be gay and abuse Satchel.Īllen with Soon-Yi Previn around the time their relationship became public. (Allen and Farrow also have an adopted son, Moses, then 14, and a biological son, Satchel, then four, now known as Ronan, the journalist. During the inevitably acrimonious breakup, Farrow accused him of sexually assaulting their seven-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan. In 1992, it emerged that, aged 57, he was having an affair with Soon-Yi Previn, then 21, the adopted daughter of his long-term partner, Mia Farrow. The broad outlines of the scandal are now better known than most of his films. He has already finished his 49th and, if it were not for the coronavirus, he would be making his 50th this summer. He also knows there is nothing he can do about it: “Anything I say sounds self-serving and defensive, so it’s best if I just go my way and work,” he says. “I assume that for the rest of my life a large number of people will think I was a predator,” he says in his still distinctive Brooklyn accent (“pred-ah-tah”). So, even though our interview is supposed to be about his latest film, A Rainy Day in New York, we spend the hour talking about the scandal that has overshadowed his career for the past 25 years and, for many, obscured it. “You can ask me anything,” he tells me down the phone from his home in (of course) Manhattan. But, at this point, there is really only one thing to discuss – and he knows it. There are a thousand things one could discuss with Allen: his 70 years in comedy, his 55 years of making movies.
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