“For the rest of my life people will think I was a predator”
In 1992, Woody Allen was accused of sexually assaulting his young daughter. The allegation turned the film-maker into a pariah, yet he was never charged. Twenty-eight years later, Hadley Freeman hears his side of the story
When Woody Allen was 20, the writer Danny Simon taught him a few rules about comedy, the most important of which was: always trust your own judgement, because external opinion is meaningless. Allen recounts this tale in his recent memoir, Apropos of
Nothing. That this book exists at all is proof that he still adheres to that rule. These days, Allen’s name is mud, a fact made clear by the critics, who wrote their reviews with one hand while holding their noses with the other. The New York Times’s critic wrote: “Volunteering to review [this book], in our moral climate, is akin to volunteering for the 2021 Olympic javelin-catching team.” Another headline was:
“I Read Woody Allen’s Memoir So You Don’t Have To”.
There are a thousand things one could discuss with Allen, now 84: his 70 years in comedy, his 48 movies. But, at this point, there is really only one thing to talk about – and he knows it. “You can ask me anything,” he tells me down the phone from his Manhattan home. 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 28 years. “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”). 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.
The broad outlines of the scandal are now better known than most of his films. In 1992, it emerged that, aged 56, he was having an affair with Soon-Yi Previn, then 21, the adopted daughter of his long-term partner, Mia Farrow. During the acrimonious break-up, Farrow accused him of sexually assaulting their seven-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan. (Allen and Farrow also have an adopted son, Moses, then 14, and a biological son, Satchel, then four, now known as Ronan, the journalist. At this point, Farrow also had six older children of her own, including Soon-Yi.) According to reports at the time, as well as accusing Allen of molesting Dylan, Farrow testified that she thought Allen might be gay and abuse Satchel. “I thought people would see it as laughable rubbish right away and from day one I never really took it seriously,” says Allen. “I mean, it’s like being confronted with a story that I murdered six people with a machine gun.”
Back in the 1990s, it was Allen’s affair with Soon-Yi that was seen as the big scandal. 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. 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.”
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. So the old allegation against Allen has been accorded more power than it ever had, especially among a younger generation. He is now routinely named alongside Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby – men convicted of multiple offences, going back decades. But unlike them, Allen was accused of one instance of molestation – and not only was he not convicted, he wasn’t even charged. Why doesn’t he sue when The New York Times calls him a “monster”? “It doesn’t pay to sue,” he says. “Do I really want to be tabloid fodder and go to court? And do I really care?” Having read the searing detail contained in his memoir, I’d wager he cares quite a lot.
The book is one heck of a read – as funny remembrances jostle up against furious recollections of his breakup with Farrow. He insists the allegation is a “small part of the story”, but it cuts across it like an angry wound: when he describes the events of 1992, you can feel his shock; when he describes the allegation’s recent resurgence, his frustration burns off the page. He writes of “well-meaning citizens, brimming with moral indignation, [taking] a stand on an issue they had absolutely no knowledge of”.
“Denouncing me became the fashionable thing to do – like everybody suddenly eating kale”
In March, when Ronan objected to Hachette publishing the book, Hachette caved in. Actors who worked with Allen after the original scandal but before the change in public mood – including Mira Sorvino, Greta Gerwig and Colin Firth – expressed deep remorse. Those who refuse to do so – such as Larry David, Diane Keaton and Scarlett Johansson – are publicly shamed. I ask how he feels about the actors who denounce him. “It’s silly. The actors have no idea of the facts and latch on to some self-serving, public, safe position. Who in the world is not against child molestation?” he says. “That’s how actors and actresses are, and [denouncing me] became the fashionable thing to do, like everybody suddenly eating kale.” Allen makes sure to include in his book a story about Timothée Chalamet, who stars in Rainy Day: “Timothée afterward publicly stated he regretted working with me. But he swore to my sister he needed to do that as he was up for an Oscar for Call Me By Your
Name, and he and his agent felt he had a better chance of winning if he denounced me.”
“You can give people the testimony by those who worked in the house,” Allen says, referring to the nanny, Monica Thompson, who gave two sworn affidavits saying Mia had tried to coax her into backing the molestation charge, then said: “all the things Farrow is saying about [Allen] are not true”. “You can give them the facts,” he says. “But the facts don’t matter. For some reason, emotionally, it’s important for them to buy into the story.”
These are the facts: after Farrow alleged Allen molested Dylan, doctors examined her and found no physical evidence of abuse. Allen was then investigated by the Yale New Haven hospital’s sexual abuse clinic and New York City’s Child Welfare Administration. The former concluded: “It is our expert opinion that Dylan was not sexually molested by Mr Allen.” The latter, after a 14-month investigation, wrote: “No credible evidence was found that the child named in this report has been abused or maltreated.” Dr John Leventhal, who headed the Yale New Haven report, testified that Dylan’s statements had “a rehearsed quality” and hypothesised that “she was coached or influenced by her mother”. True, the judge in the custody trial, Justice Elliott Wilk, dismissed this, while in 2018 Dylan firmly denied it, saying: “My mother only encouraged me to tell the truth.” But Leventhal’s theory was corroborated by Moses, who wrote that Farrow had “brainwashed” the children, adding: “I was forced to follow [her] script to prove my loyalty.”
It is almost 30 years since Allen was first accused of molestation; by this point, almost everything people think they know about the case is wrong. The belief that Allen had been in therapy for “inappropriate” feelings towards Dylan is a fabrication. People often cite state prosecutor Frank Maco’s statement that he had “probable cause” to charge Allen for child molestation, but chose not to because it would be traumatic for Dylan; they forget Maco also stated there was evidence pointing to “reasonable doubt”. Many cite Wilk’s custody ruling as proof that Allen did something wrong, though it was not a criminal trial. There is no question the ruling is damning about Allen. But Wilk’s main criticism was not of his relationship with Dylan – but with Soon-Yi.
In my many years of debating the Allen case with friends and colleagues, it is usually at this point, when the issues around the original accusation become too byzantine to follow, that people pivot to Soon-Yi. A relationship with a 21-year-old woman is not the same as molesting a seven-year-old girl, but the two scandals have become conflated. “People are confused,” says Allen. “They think Soon-Yi was my adopted daughter, that I lived with Mia [in the same apartment as Soon-Yi], that I was married to Mia – they have all kinds of crazy thoughts.” Yet Soon-Yi was, undeniably, Allen’s partner’s daughter and he had known her since she was a child. Their affair was not a legal crime, but in the eyes of many it was – and is – a moral one. At the time, Soon-Yi was treated as both predator and victim – though she insisted she was neither. Now 49, she has been with Allen for 28 years, married for 23, and raised two daughters, Bechet, 23, and Manzie, 20. Yet their relationship’s longevity, instead of proving its validity, has acted for many as a reminder of Allen’s original transgression.
Is there any part of him that thinks he brought all this on himself? “No, and I’ll tell you why,” he replies. “I realised [the relationship with Soon-Yi] was not usual: one could make criticisms about the rectitude of it; I understood that. But these false accusations that have hurt the psychological life of Ronan and Dylan; I don’t feel for one second I brought that on myself.” In his memoir, Allen recalls the allegation and its fallout with sadness and occasional fury. But, in conversation, he speaks about their effect calmly. “From that perspective, I’m not angry,” he says. “I’m angry that I was deprived of seeing my children grow up and I’m angry at what’s been done to Dylan and Ronan. I haven’t spoken a word to the children in over 25 years and they’ve been raised to think the worst of me. So sure, I was angry about that. But, professionally, I haven’t suffered at all.”
This is demonstrably untrue. Aside from the actors who won’t work with him, Amazon Studios pulled out of a four-movie deal with him (leaving Rainy Day without a US distributor). In the past decade, he has been cut out of documentaries and boycotted by reviewers. He is considered too scandalous even for the Clintons: Hillary’s presidential campaign returned his donation.
Allen is innocent, according to the law and the agencies that investigated him. Dylan and Ronan believe he is guilty – a view that has led some to lobby universities to drop him from film courses, exclude his movies from festivals and talk about him as if he were a criminal. This attitude is immoral unless it is proved he committed a crime – and, 28 years later, no one has been able to pin so much as a parking fine on him. Many point to his movies as evidence of wrongdoing, but it is the height of intellectual laziness to conflate film plots about older men and twentysomething women with child molestation. You may not like Allen’s movies – or his marriage – but people can be unlikeable without being criminal.
There are signs that some people are starting to realise this. Despite the lack of a US release,
Rainy Day is Allen’s most successful film in years. Perhaps the public have simply wearied of a story that has not changed in decades. Perhaps some took the time to read the facts. Allen says several times in our conversation that he is completely fine: he can still make movies, even if they are not shown in his own country, and Bechet and Manzie are, he says, wholly untouched by the scandal, even though they are of the generation that thinks he is Satan. “They’re great, because this has always been a total non-issue in their lives. This is because none of us here make a big deal out of it and it has not impacted them in any negative way whatsoever,” he says, proudly.
This is in sharp contrast to how Moses has described his childhood in the Farrow household: “[Allen’s relationship with SoonYi] was not nearly as devastating to our family as my mother’s insistence on making this betrayal the centre of all our lives from then on.” And this, I suspect, is what lies behind Allen’s outward insistence of fine-ness: he can’t voice whatever rage he feels, because he knows all too well it would hurt those closest to him.
He used to think people would come to see the allegation as false, he says. Now he is starting to accept that many won’t. It will, without question, be mentioned in the first paragraph of his obituary. “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 says. “There are many injustices in the world far worse than this. So you live with it.”
A longer version of this article appeared in The Guardian. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Ltd.
“I’m angry at what’s been done to Dylan and Ronan... they’ve been raised
to think the worst of me”