Woody Allen Says He'd 'Welcome' Daughter Dylan Farrow 'with Open Arms’ After Molestation Accusations
Woody Allen has a message for his estranged daughter Dylan Farrow even as she denounced his controversial new memoir.
The director’s book, Apropos of Nothing, was published on Monday after being dropped by its original publisher due to backlash. In it, Allen recounts the custody battle with Mia Farrow and rifts in his family following the allegations.
Dylan accused Allen, 84, of molesting her when she was a child — an allegation he has repeatedly denied. In an emotional open letter Dylan sent to The New York Times in 2014 detailing her molestation claim, she wrote, “For as long as I could remember, my father had been doing things to me that I didn’t like.”
“One of the saddest things of my life was that I was deprived of the years of raising Dylan and could only dream about showing her Manhattan and the joys of Paris and Rome,” Allen writes.
Now married to Soon-Yi Previn — Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter — since 1997, Allen writes, “To this day, Soon-Yi and I would welcome Dylan with open arms if she’d ever want to reach out to us as Moses did, but so far that’s still only a dream.”
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Woody Allen
He adds, “Anyhow, you think that was a wise judicial decision, given the options available? I think it was not only deliberately cruel to me, but also catastrophic for Dylan, as you will later see.”
Hachette was originally set to publish Allen’s memoir but dropped it after many of the company’s employees staged walkouts in protest and several prominent figures, including Dylan and Ronan, slammed the publisher for giving him a platform.
Dylan and Ronan also alleged they were never contacted to offer any consultation on the book.
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“Hachette’s publishing of Woody Allen’s memoir is deeply unsettling to me personally and an utter betrayal of my brother whose brave reporting, capitalized on by Hachette, gave voice to numerous survivors of sexual assault by powerful men,” Dylan wrote in a statement.
“For the record, I was never contacted by any fact checkers to verify the information in this memoir, demonstrating an egregious abdication of Hachette’s most basic responsibility,” she added, a reference to her brother’s 2019 book Catch and Kill, which was published by Hachette.
In his own statement, Ronan wrote that he “was disappointed to learn” about the news and claimed that Hachette “concealed the decision from me and its own employees while we were working on Catch and Kill — a book about how powerful men, including Woody Allen, avoid accountability for sexual abuse.”
“The decision to cancel Mr. Allen’s book was a difficult one,” said Hachette in a statement. “We take our relationships with authors very seriously and do not cancel books lightly. We have published and will continue to publish many challenging books.”
Woody Allen
In late 2017, Allen, now 84, faced resurfaced allegations of child molestation by his daughter Dylan, who claimed in a New York Times open letter in 2014 that Allen molested her as a child. Allen has long denied the allegations, which were first reported during his explosive 1992 split from Mia Farrow. The director was not charged, though a Connecticut prosecutor said there was probable cause for a criminal case.
Dylan is the adopted daughter of Allen and Mia Farrow, with whom he also shares adopted son Moses and biological son Ronan. The three children were in the center of a 1993 custody battle in which both sides testified about Allen’s affair with Previn, whom Allen went on to marry in 1997. Farrow was awarded custody of her and Allen’s three children.
