On Monday’s episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, Dylan Farrow sat down with the daytime host to chat about her new book and HBO’s recent documentary series Allen vs. Farrow. Barrymore wasted no time addressing the elephant in the room: her own work with Farrow’s adoptive father, director Woody Allen, whom Farrow has accused of sexually abusing her as a child.
“I worked with Woody Allen,” the host said. “I did a film with him in 1996 called Everyone Says I Love You. And…there was no higher career calling card than to work with Woody Allen. And then I had children, and it changed me, because I realized that I was one of the people who was basically gaslit into not looking at a narrative beyond what I was being told.”
Fighting back tears, Farrow thanked Barrymore for her honesty. “It’s easy for me to say, like, ‘Of course you shouldn’t work with him, you know? He’s a jerk. He’s a monster.’ But I just find it incredibly brave and incredibly generous that…that you would say to me that my story, what I went through, was important enough to you to reconsider that.”
Barrymore joins a growing number of actors who have recently expressed regret for working with Allen in the years since Farrow’s mother, actor Mia Farrow, spoke out about the allegations. Since 2017, Evan Rachel Wood, Mira Sorvina, Natalie Portman, Colin Firth, and others have all issued statements supporting Farrow, while Griffin Newman, Rebecca Hall, and Timothée Chalamet all announced that they would donate the money they made working on Allen’s 2018 film A Rainy Day in New York to charity.
Meanwhile, others like Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, and Kate Winslet have equivocated when asked about Farrow’s claims, deferring to the fact that Allen has never been convicted of a crime. Plenty more have defended Allen: Scarlett Johansson, Larry David, Spike Lee, Diane Keaton, Alec Baldwin, and others have all expressed their support for the director, often painting him as the victim of so-called “cancel culture.”
If you have experienced sexual violence and are in need of crisis support, please call the RAINN Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
