The long-disgraced director Woody Allen is no longer keeping silent. The 84-year-old spoke out about his status in an interview with The Guardian: “I assume that for the rest of my life a large number of people will think I was a predator.”
THE SCANDAL
Allen is of course referencing the 1992 revelation that he was having an affair with his then 21-year-old adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, daughter of his longtime love Mia Farrow. Soon after, accusations that he molested their 7-year-old adopted daughter Dylan Farrow emerged.
Both scandals resurfaced in the #MeToo era, though he was never charged with a crime.
He told the Guardian: “I thought people would see it as laughable rubbish right away and from day one I never really took it seriously. I mean, it’s like being confronted with a story that I murdered six people with a machine gun.”
DENOUNCING
During #MeToo, Greta Gerwig, Rebecca Hall and Colin Firth were among those who denounced him. In his new memoir, Allen claimed that Timothee Chalamet was pressured into denouncing him to improve his chances of winning an Oscar for Call Me By Your Name.
Allen said: “It’s silly. The actors have no idea of the facts and they latch on to some self-serving, public, safe position. Who in the world is not against child molestation? That’s how actors and actresses are, and denouncing me became the fashionable thing to do, like everybody suddenly eating kale.”
He said he’s trying to come to terms with his fate.
“That’s the way it is and all I can do is keep my nose to the grindstone and hope that people will come to their senses at some point. But if not, not,” he said. “There are many injustices in the world far worse than this. So you live with it.”
He also dragged his son Ronan, telling The Telegraph that his work is “shoddy.” He added: “I found him to not be an honest journalist in relation to me at all, but I write that off because, you know, I understand he's loyal to his mother (Mia Farrow),” saying that “now it's come out that his journalism has not been so ethical or honest.”