Colin Firth Says He Will Not Work with Director Woody Allen Again
Colin Firth is the latest star to publicly denounce Woody Allen, saying he will never work with the director again.
“I wouldn’t work with him again,” Firth said in a statement late Thursday, according to The Guardian.
The actor’s announcement comes the same day Allen’s estranged daughter Dylan Farrow gave her first televised interview about her allegations of sexual abuse against her father.
In 2014, Dylan, 32 – who is one of the star’s three children with ex Mia Farrow — publicly claimed that Allen, now 82, molested her as a child. Allen has long denied the allegations, which first surfaced during his explosive 1992 split from Mia. The director was not charged, though a Connecticut prosecutor said there was probable cause for a criminal case.
Firth appeared in Allen’s film Magic in the Moonlight in 2013, a year before Dylan published her essay.
His son Ronan Farrow also penned an explosive column for the Hollywood Reporter, which addressed the sexual abuse claims and condemned the media for not asking Allen about the allegations and stars for working with him. In response, Allen told The Guardian, “I have no interest in all of that. I find that all tabloid stupidity.”
After Dylan’s interview on Thursday, Allen again denied his daughter’s accusations.
“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,” the director said in a statement. “Instead, they found it likely a vulnerable child had been coached to tell the story by her angry mother during a contentious breakup.”
“Dylan’s older brother Moses has said that he witnessed their mother doing exactly that – relentlessly coaching Dylan, trying to drum into her that her father was a dangerous sexual predator. It seems to have worked – and, sadly, I’m sure Dylan truly believes what she says,” he continued. “But even though the Farrow family is cynically using the opportunity afforded by the Time’s Up movement to repeat this discredited allegation, that doesn’t make it any more true today than it was in the past. I never molested my daughter – as all investigations concluded a quarter of a century ago.”
The controversy surrounding the director is making headlines again after the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment accusations rocked Hollywood. A slew of celebrities have since come out and expressed regret for working with the Annie Hall director.
Earlier on Thursday, recent Golden Globe winner Rachel Brosnahan expressed regret over working with Allen on his 2016 Amazon series Crisis in Six Scenes.
“Look, I had a great experience working on that project,” Brosnahan said during an interview for The Hollywood Reporter‘s ‘Awards Chatter’ podcast. “But I do have to take this opportunity to say that, for me, I have really struggled with the decision to do that project for a long time.”
On Monday, actor Timothée Chalamet pledged to donate his entire salary for his upcoming film directed by Allen, A Rainy Day in New York, to the Time’s Up movement.
The Call Me By Your Name actor, 22, stars in the comedy alongside Jude Law, Elle Fanning and Selena Gomez.
In recent weeks, Greta Gerwig, Rebecca Hall and Mira Sorvino have also denounced the director.
Dylan said she was not angry with actors who have chosen to work with her father but wants them to “acknowledge their complicity.”
She said, “I hope that, you know, especially since so many of them have been vocal advocates of this Me Too and Time’s Up movement that, um, they can acknowledge their complicity and maybe hold themselves accountable to how they have perpetuated this culture of – of silence in their industry.”