Names and faces

▪ After voicing support for Woody Allen and criticizing cancel culture, Spike Lee apologized Saturday for words he said were “wrong.” In an interview Friday on the New York radio station WOR 710, Lee called Allen “a great, great filmmaker.” “This cancel thing is not just Woody. And I think that when we look back on it, (we’re) gonna see that, short of killing somebody, I don’t if you can just erase somebody like they never existed. Woody’s a friend of mine,” said Lee. “I know he’s going through it right now.” The following day, Lee tweeted an apology. “My words were WRONG,” he wrote. “I do not and will not tolerate sexual harassment, assault or violence. Such treatment causes real damage that can’t be minimized.” Allen has been accused of molesting his daughter Dylan Farrow when she was 7 years old in the early 1990s. Allen has long denied the allegation. Earlier this year, he released a memoir through Arcade Publishing after his original publisher, Hachette Book Group, dropped the book amid widespread criticism. Lee’s latest film, the Vietnam War drama Da 5 Bloods, debuted Friday on Netflix.

▪ A Cook County, Ill., judge on Friday rejected actor Jussie Smollett’s attempt have the criminal charges against him dropped, telling the actor that the new charges against him do not violate his right against double jeopardy. Smollett’s attorneys made the double jeopardy argument after a special prosecutor secured a six-count indictment on charges alleging that he lied to police about a racist and anti-gay attack that police say he staged himself. The new case came months after the county’s state’s attorney’s office abruptly announced it was dropping charges against the actor, angering police and City Hall. Judge James Linn, in his ruling, said the only way double jeopardy would apply is if Smollett was legally punished for what had happened to him since he was charged in connection with the January 2019 incident in downtown Chicago. But Linn determined that the deal in which the state’s attorney’s office agreed to drop charges without requiring Smollett to admit any wrongdoing and Smollett agreed to forfeit his $10,000 bond did not add up to legal punishment. Smollett contends that early on Jan. 29, 2019, he was walking home when two masked men approached him, made racist and homophobic insults, beat him and looped a noose around his neck before fleeing. Weeks later, the story that already received international media attention took a shocking twist when police alleged that Smollett, who is black and openly gay, had paid two black friends $3,500 to help him stage the attack because he was unhappy with his salary as an actor on Empire.

Smollett

Lee