Javier Bardem Is on Woody Allen’s Side: “I Am Very Shocked by This Sudden Treatment”
Javier Bardem is not joining the wave of actors distancing themselves from Woody Allen. Far from it, actually. The actor, who starred in Allen’s 2008 film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is instead digging in his heels, saying he’s “absolutely not” ashamed that he has worked with the controversial director.
“If there was evidence that Woody Allen was guilty, then yes, I would have stopped working with him, but I have doubts,” Bardem said in a recent interview with Paris Match, according to People.
“I am very shocked by this sudden treatment,” he continued. “Judgments in the states of New York and Connecticut found him innocent. The legal situation today is the same as in 2007.”
Allen has been dogged by controversy for decades. In 2014, his estranged daughter, Dylan Farrow, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times accusing her father of sexually abusing her as a child, echoing claims that were first made public in 1992. Allen has repeatedly denied the allegations, writing his own response letter in the Times.
Farrow, however, has continued beating the drum on the allegations, writing another piece last year about Allen’s alleged behavior and questioning why major stars continue to work with him. “The truth is hard to deny but easy to ignore,” she wrote. “It breaks my heart when women and men I admire work with Allen, then refuse to answer questions about it.”
She also did her first televised interview about the allegations with CBS This Morning in January. “He’s lying, and he’s been lying for so long,” she said. She also gave explicit details about the alleged assault, additionally claiming that Allen “would follow me around. He was always touching me, cuddling me, and if I ever said, you know, like I want to go off by myself, he wouldn’t let me.”
Allen responded to the segment with a lengthy statement: “When this claim was first made more than 25 years ago, it was thoroughly investigated by both the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of the Yale-New Haven Hospital and New York State Child Welfare. They both did so for many months and independently concluded that no molestation had ever taken place. Instead, they found it likely a vulnerable child had been coached to tell the story by her angry mother during a contentious breakup.”
He also added that Farrow’s brother Moses has claimed that Mia Farrow was “relentlessly coaching Dylan, trying to drum into her that her father was a dangerous sexual predator.”
However, in the wake of Harvey Weinstein’s public downfall and the #MeToo movement, numerous stars who have worked with Allen have voiced their support for Farrow. Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Hall have both donated their salaries from Allen’s most recent film to organizations like Time’s Up, while stars like Natalie Portman and Ellen Page have explicitly expressed regret for working with Allen and said that they believe Farrow is telling the truth. Actors like Michael Caine, Colin Firth, and Peter Sarsgaard have declared that they will no longer work with Allen. Bardem, it seems, isn’t interested in joining their ranks.
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