Woody Allen and Mia Farrow in Hannah and Her Sisters
Oscar winner Woody Allen is now giving his side of the story in response to the recent HBO documentary series “Allen vs. Farrow.” The four part show delved into the accusations made by Mia Farrow three decades ago that her then boyfriend Allen had molested their adopted daughter Dylan Farrow.
The series was decried by many for being one sided. Even though the alleged victim herself, Dylan Farrow, attested to having been sexually assaulted by Woody Allen, the director’s supporters point out that Dylan was only six years old at the time and that her mother had complete control over her during her daughter’s formative years. They say that Mia Farrow could have simply “trained” Dylan to believe these things.
Apparently Woody Allen shares this view of his daughter. In an interview Sunday with “CBS Sunday Morning” he said, “I believe she thinks it. She was a good kid. I do not believe that she’s making it up. I don’t believe she’s lying. I believe she believes that.”
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“It’s so preposterous, and yet the smear has remained,” Allen said of the charges. He lamented that people continue to cling to this; even though, the charges were never prove. “And they still prefer to cling to if not the notion that I molested Dylan,” he said. “The possibility that I molested her. Nothing that I ever did with Dylan in my life could be misconstrued as that.”
“The last thing in the world that anybody wanted was to hurt anybody’s feelings,” Allen said. “What we wanted to do was to eventually make it known that we had a relationship.”
Woody Allen was sure to point out that he has had relationships with adult women. “I would say of the many women I’ve dated in my life, many women, they were all what the police would call appropriate – age appropriate,” he said. “Diane Keaton, Mia Farrow, Louise Lasser, my first wife; until Soon-Yi, which is unusual for me.”
But, Allen added, he never expected to end up in a relationship with a much younger woman, let alone married to her. “If you’d have told me I was going to wind up married, and happily married, to an Asian woman much younger than me,” he explained, “not in show business, I would have said ‘the odds of that are very slim. I don’t think you’re going to be right.’ But that’s what happened.”
Woody Allen stressed that he and Mia Farrow were never in a “full time” relationship. While they were dating, the two kept separate homes and Allen said that he never saw it ending in marriage. This, in part, is why Allen says there was nothing unnatural about his relationship with Soon-Yi. “No, there was never a moment that it wasn’t the most natural thing in the world. No, it didn’t give me pause. The relationship with Soon-Yi was very natural.”
The interview itself, however, was a source of controversy. Woody Allen’s people said that they were misled as to the nature of the interview and that they had no idea that it would be broadcast alongside an interview with Dylan Farrow. A Woody Allen rep said that, “nothing was said about doing a program with cutting back and forth concerning the absurd controversy. It was on that basis that we agreed to do the show. It was only recently we found out that they were incorporating Dylan when it went on paramount.”
