Woody Allen Says He Was ‘Lucky’ Because He Was Older When #MeToo Happened

Boy, did Woody Allen get a bum deal, says Bill Maher. 

On this week’s Club Random podcast, Maher lamented how liberals and the left orchestrated a witch hunt for Allen — a Democrat, mind you! — during the #MeToo era. While Allen survived scandal in the 1990s, the #MeToo movement reignited scorn for the director starting around 2017.

But Allen insists he’s a fortunate guy, all things considered. “I was lucky because, you know, that could be ruinous,” he explained. “When everything happened, I was much older. I had done 45 movies already. I had made enough money so I could retire for life comfortably. You know, I was thinking, ‘I only want to make a few more movies, and then I would like to start to write books and plays.’ And so it happened to me at a time when it was no problem.”

But if the backlash had hit Allen when he was a young filmmaker? “If it had happened when I was 25 or 30…” 

A younger Allen was beset by scandal in the early 1990s when he began a relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and musician Andre Previn. Allen was Farrow’s long-time partner when he started his relationship with Soon-Yi. There were also allegations of abuse from Farrow’s adopted daughter, Dylan. 

“That was a giant scandal,” Maher said. “What people forget maybe is that for years after that, you were golden.”

“I didn’t have any practical problems from it,” Allen agreed. That’s true — nine Allen films were nominated for Oscars after the allegations, with Cate Blanchett winning an Academy Award for Blue Jasmine as recently as 2014. 

“Any A-list star, if they got a call, ‘Woody Allen wants you in his movie,’ they would all do it for very little money, you know?” Maher marveled. “It was just a super prestigious thing.” 

“It amused me,” said Allen, “because, as a practical thing, it was not hurtful to me.”

While his career was mostly unaffected for decades, Allen was still disillusioned by the justice system. “You’re in a courtroom, and people are perjuring themselves, one after the other,” he explained. “And you think, ‘Well, isn’t this against the law?’ But you find out that it isn’t exactly what you think. Yes, it’s against the law technically, but nobody does anything about it.”

Despite Allen’s problems with the proceedings centering around abuse allegations, separate investigations by the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of Yale-New Haven Hospital and the New York Child Welfare Agency of the State Department of Social Services determined that allegations of sexual abuse were unfounded. 

Because of his financial resources, Allen said, “I found the whole thing an interesting and amusing experience in many ways.”