LOS ANGELES, June 5: Veteran filmmaker Woody Allen believes he should be the “poster boy” for the #MeToo movement because no female actors have accused him of inappropriate behaviour.
In a new interview with Argentinian news outlet Periodismo Para Todos, the director, who was accused in 2014 by his estranged adopted daughter Dylan Farrow of sexual abuse, said he is a “big advocate of the #MeToo movement” because it brings abusers in Hollywood to justice.
“I should be the poster boy for the Me Too movement. Because I have worked in movies for 50 years. I’ve worked with hundreds of actresses and not a single one — big ones, famous ones, ones starting out — have ever ever suggested any kind of impropriety at all. I’ve always had a wonderful record with them,” Allen said.
Dylan has publicly alleged for years that the filmmaker sexually abused her as a child, which he has repeatedly denied. In the interview, Allen also said that “any situation where anyone is accused of something unjustly, this is a sad thing.”
“This is something that has been thoroughly looked at 25 years ago by all the authorities and everybody came to the conclusion that it was untrue. And that was the end and I’ve gone on with my life. For it to come back now, it’s a terrible thing to accuse a person of. I’m a man with a family and my own children. So of course it’s upsetting,” he added.
The claims resurfaced after the Weinstein scandal broke, in October. Since then, dozens of actors who previously worked with Allen – including Colin Firth, Rachel Brosnahan, Timothee Chalamet, Mira Sorvino and many more – have denounced the director and pledged not to work with him again.
Allen said that it is painful for him to get compared to abusers like Weinstein.
“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.” (PTI)
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