Woody Allen blasts HBO docuseries ‘Allen v. Farrow’ as ‘hatchet job’
Woody Allen on Sunday slammed the new HBO documentary series about the sexual abuse allegations against him as a “hatchet job” that was “riddled with falsehoods.”
The decades-old accusations that Allen molested Dylan Farrow when she was a child are “categorically false,” the 85-year-old director and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, 50, said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Multiple agencies investigated them at the time and found that, whatever Dylan Farrow may have been led to believe, absolutely no abuse had ever taken place,” the statement said.
The couple broke their silence about “Allen v. Farrow” shortly after the first of four episodes in the docuseries aired.
The series paints a damning picture of the Oscar-winner, delving into the allegation from Mia Farrow’s daughter Dylan that he sexually assaulted her in the family attic in 1992 when she was seven years old. Allen was Mia’s partner during Dylan’s young childhood.
In the docuseries, Dylan, now 35, speaks of the alleged abuse and a never-before-released home video shot by Mia shows a 7-year-old Dylan telling her mother that Allen touched her in the attic at the family’s Connecticut farmhouse in the summer of 1992.
Mia is heard asking Dylan what happened in the clip.
“We went into your room, and we went into the attic. Then he started telling me weird things. Then secret he went into the attic [inaudible] went behind me and touched my privates,” Dylan says, according to Mediaite.
Mia then asks Dylan where Allen touched her, and she points to her vaginal area.
“Well, when I was in the attic, he said, ‘Do not move. I have to do this.’ But I wiggled my bum, to see what he was doing, he said, ‘Don’t move, I have to do this! So if you stay still, then um…we can go to Paris,” Dylan says in the video.
Dylan also recalls this memory in the docuseries, saying, “We were in the TV room, and he reached behind me and he touched my butt. And then he told me to come up to the attic with him. I remember laying there on my stomach and my back was to him, so I couldn’t see what was going on.”
“I felt trapped. He was saying things like, ‘We’re gonna’ go to Paris together. You’re gonna’ be in all my movies.’ Then he sexually assaulted me. And I remember just focusing on my brother’s train set. And then… he just stopped. He was done. And we just went downstairs,” Dylan added.
It’s said in the docuseries that Mia even told Moses, her oldest adopted son, to keep an eye on Allen to make sure he didn’t do anything inappropriate, according to the Daily Mail.
Allen, an Academy Award-winning director, and his wife accused filmmakers Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick of having “no interest in the truth” and of “collaborating with the Farrows and their enablers.”
The couple said they were only approached by the documentarians two months ago “and given only a matter of days ‘to respond.’”
“Of course, they declined to do so,” the pair’s statement said.
The couple also insinuated that HBO may have been biased, due to its business relationship with Allen’s estranged son, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow, who signed a multi-film production deal with the network in 2018.
“It is sadly unsurprising that the network to air this is HBO – which has a standing production deal and business relationship with Ronan Farrow,” the statement said.
“While this shoddy hit piece may gain attention, it does not change the facts.”
