Woody Allen: I should be the poster boy for #MeToo movement
Director again denies allegations he molested his daughter when she was 7 years old
Woody Allen says he should be the face of the #MeToo movement in terms of what to do right.
In an interview broadcast Sunday night, Allen said he’s a “big advocate” of #MeToo, and once again denied allegations that he molested Dylan Farrow, his adopted daughter.
“It’s funny, I should be the poster boy for the #MeToo movement because I’ve worked in movies for 50 years, I’ve worked with hundreds of actresses…and not a single one, big ones, famous ones, have ever, ever, suggested any kind of impropriety at all,” he told Argentine journalist Jorge Lanata in New York.
“I’m in principle, and in spirit, completely in favor of their bringing to justice genuine harassers,” Allen said during the interview with Argentina’s Channel 13. “Now, if innocent ones get swept up in there, that’s very sad for the person, it’s unjust, but otherwise, I think it’s a very good thing to expose harassment.”
Farrow in 2014 renewed the claim that Allen had molested her in an attic in 1992 when she was seven years old. Her claim first surfaced in the midst of her parents’ bitter split, when Allen left Mia Farrow for her adoptive daughter from a previous marriage, Soon-Yi Previn, who was 21 years old at the time. Allen, who has long denied the allegations, was investigated for the incident but not charged. Farrow has previously questioned why the #MeToo movement hasn’t ensnared Allen.
Earlier this year, actress Mira Sorvino published a public apology to Farrow, saying she was sorry for “turning a blind eye” to Farrow’s accusations against Allen. She also vowed never to work with him again. Sorvino starred in Allen’s “Mighty Aphrodite.”
Other actors have also distanced themselves from Allen, raising questions about the future of the prolific filmmaker in an industry sensitive to allegations of sexual misconduct in the midst of the #MeToo reckoning.
“What bothers me is that I get linked in with them,” Allen said. “People who have been accused by 20 women, 50 women, 100 women of abuse, and abuse, and abuse, and I, who was only accused by one woman, in a child custody case, which was looked at, and proven to be untrue, I get lumped in with these people.”
The publication of bombshell articles about movie mogul Harvey Weinstein in October triggered a watershed moment that has since felled the careers of dozens of powerful men across a variety of industries. Ronan Farrow, Allen and Mia Farrow’s son, won a Pultizer Prize alongside The New York Times’ Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey for their reporting on allegations against Weinstein of sexual harassment and assault from a multitude of women in Hollywood, going back decades, and that he had secretly paid settlements to keep the claims from becoming public.
