A spokesperson for Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi Previn has called the HBO docuseries ‘Allen V. Farrow’ a “shoddy hit piece” and called it a “false” portrayal of facts that claim the filmmaker sexual molested his daughter Dylan Farrow when she was a child.
A spokesperson for Allen and Previn issued a statement to Deadline to present their side of the story, even as critics laud the work that has gone into the docuseries by Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick. Interestingly, the makers stated that Allen and Previn were approached to present their case on camera for the series but never responded.
“These documentarians had no interest in the truth. Instead, they spent years surreptitiously collaborating with the Farrows and their enablers to put together a hatchet job riddled with falsehoods,” the spokesperson told Deadline, adding: “Woody and Soon-Yi were approached less than two months ago and given only a matter of days ‘to respond.’ Of course, they declined to do so.”
The spokesperson further stated: “As has been known for decades, these allegations are categorically false. 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. It is sadly unsurprising that the network to air this is HBO — which has a standing production deal and business relationship with Ronan Farrow. While this shoddy hit piece may gain attention, it does not change the facts.”
Ziering and Dick had also reached out to Moses Farrow to be a part of the documentary, who has spoken out in the past about his mother Mia Farrow’s caustic upbringing, but the makers said they never heard back as well.
Even as the docuseries draws support, some critics have questioned Ziering and Dick’s one-sided focus on ‘Allen V. Farrow’, which only presents the stories by Dylan Farrow and her sibling, Ronan Farrow, while largely ignoring the fact that two of the adopted Farrow children had died by suicide or that Mia’s brother John Charles Viller-Farrow is a convicted child molester.
However, for years, Dylan Farrow has maintained that it was Allen who groomed and abused her when she was seven years old.
“I told the truth to the authorities then, and I have been telling it, unaltered, for more than 20 years,” she wrote in a 2017 op-ed for The Times.
“Allen’s pattern of inappropriate behaviour — putting his thumb in my mouth, climbing into bed with me in his underwear, constant grooming and touching — was witnessed by friends and family members,” she wrote.
