★Woody Allen Addresses Dylan Farrow’s Sexual Abuse Allegations in Rare Interview★

Woody Allen Addresses Dylan Farrow’s Sexual Abuse Allegations in Rare Interview

Allen restated his innocence during a sit-down interview on "CBS Sunday Morning."
Woody Allen has spoken out about Dylan Farrow’s allegations against him of sexual assault when she was seven years old, once again restating his innocence of the accusations. Allen has maintained that innocence for nearly 30 years since the controversy erupted in 1992. During a rare sit-down interview that was recorded back in July of 2020, Allen opened up about the allegations on “CBS Sunday Morning.” The interview, which is followed by Gayle King’s 2018 conversation with Dylan Farrow, is currently available to stream on Paramount+.

“There was no logic to it, on the face of it. Why would a guy who’s 57 years old and never was accused of anything in my life, I’m suddenly gonna drive up in the middle of a contentious custody fight at Mia’s country home? On the surface I didn’t think it required any investigation,” said Allen, articulating the point he similarly made in his memoir “Apropos of Nothing,” published last year.

It’s “preposterous, but the smear has remained,” Allen said of the allegations. “They still prefer to cling to, if not the notion that I molested Dylan, the possibility that I molested her. Nothing I ever did with Dylan in her life could be misconstrued as that.”

The alleged incident was recently re-explored in the HBO documentary “Allen v. Farrow,” featuring new testimony from Dylan, Ronan, and Mia Farrow, among others. The “CBS Sunday Morning” special was shot well before the documentary aired. Allen, who did not provide testimony in the docu-series, said that the CBS taping was his first on-camera American interview in 30 years.

“I believe she thinks it,” Allen said of Dylan. “She was a good kid, and I believe she thinks it. I do not believe that she’s making it up, I don’t believe she’s lying. I believe she believes that.”

Allen also addressed his relationship and marriage to Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn. “The last thing in the world that anybody wanted was to hurt anybody’s feelings,” Allen said of the discovery of their relationship, which sparked a wildly public, bitter breakup between him and Mia Farrow. “What we wanted to do was to eventually make it known that we had a relationship.”

He added that there was “never a moment that it wasn’t the most natural thing in the world … it didn’t give me pause, because the relationship with Soon-Yi was very gradual. It wasn’t like I went out with her one night and kissed her.”

Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.

THIS ARTICLE IS RELATED TO: Film and tagged Dylan Farrow, Mia Farrow, Woody Allen

In a never-before-seen interview, Woody Allen says allegations that he molested his now-estranged daughter Dylan Farrow are "so preposterous," although he does believe that she thinks the sexual abuse happened.

The 85-year-old Oscar-winning director, who has long denied the claims, made his comments to CBS Sunday Morning in July 2020 in what the network says marks his first in-depth television interview in nearly three decades. The sit-down was released on ViacomCBS' Paramount+ streaming platform on Sunday, March 28, two weeks after the conclusion of the HBO miniseries Allen v. Farrow, which centered around the molestation allegations.

"It's so preposterous and yet the smear has remained," Woody told CBS Sunday Morning. "And they still prefer to cling to, if not the notion that I molested Dylan, the possibility that I molested her. Nothing that I ever did with Dylan in my life could be misconstrued as that."

Allen v. Farrow featured interviews with Dylan, now 35, and her mom, Woody's estranged partner Mia Farrow. The sexual assault allegations made by then-7-year-old Dylan were brought to light as part of a 1992 custody battle. In 2013, Dylan went public with the claims in comments made to Vanity Fair, and detailed her accusations against her estranged father again in a 2014 New York Times essay, a 2017 Los Angeles Times op-ed and in a 2018 CBS This Morning interview.