Mia Farrow let go of her anger towards Woody Allen a long time ago.
“I reached a place many years ago where I just don’t care about him,” Farrow, 73, said in an interview in the November issue of Elle.
Farrow and Allen’s adopted daughter, Dylan, accused the now-82-year-old director of sexually abusing her in 1993 when she was just 7 years old. Law enforcement and sexual abuse experts investigated the allegations at the time, the Los Angeles Times reported, and a prosecutor declined to press charges to spare Dylan the trauma of a trial. A judge in the case deemed Allen’s behavior toward his daughter “grossly inappropriate.”
Allen has vehemently denied the allegations and reportedly accused Mia of trying to get revenge on him for leaving her for her then-teenage adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn.
Dylan, now 33, has reiterated her claims against Allen several times, while her brother Ronan has adamantly defended her in the press amid his own coverage of sexual misconduct in Hollywood.
Mia insists her children’s decision to speak out against their father is one they made on their own.
“Both of them wrote their pieces without telling me,” Mia said. “Because for me, it’s the sleeping dog that you don’t want to rouse. But I also understand and deeply respect when my daughter decided she needed to do this.”
She added of her time with Allen, “It’s not all white or black … Otherwise you’d ask yourself what on earth you’re doing with that person for 10 minutes, let alone for 10 years.”
Though Mia didn’t deliberately influence her children to speak out (and feared for them when they did), Ronan has hinted that she may have unconsciously inspired his investigative journalism, which has unearthed decades of sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein.
“[My mother’s] absolutely one of the many women who were the subject of an old-fashioned smearing and blacklisting campaign. None of it would hold up to one iota of scrutiny today,” he said. “‘She’s nuts, she’s jealous’ is an old and thin deflection tactic in child abuse cases. But she was in the crosshairs of that at a time when a certain echelon of a powerful man in Hollywood with the right team of publicists really held all the cards. In retrospect I see the parallels to some of the systems that I’ve reported on.”
Mia also recounted her own experiences with sexual assault and harassment, both in and out of show business.
“Oh, Lordy, I wish there were tapes. The first really awful grope was a very famous head of a studio. I was 17,” she recalled. “I was too embarrassed to even tell my mother.”
In light of Mia’s own experiences with sexual misconduct, as well as the allegations plaguing her ex, she was asked whether she’d work with Roman Polanski, who directed her in her most famous role in “Rosemary’s Baby,” ever again.
The filmmaker was arrested in 1977 for drugging and raping 13-year-old Samantha Geimer at Jack Nicholson‘s home. Polanski pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor but fled to Europe before he could be sentenced.
He remains in self-imposed exile abroad and has been a vocal critic of the #MeToo movement.
“It’s not in the cards, but I don’t think I would,” Mia said, but later quipped of “Rosemary’s Baby,” “I will say, it’s wonderful working with Roman Polanski.”