Scarlett Johansson Defends Woody Allen

Scarlett Johansson has worked with Woody Allen on films like Match Point, Scoop, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. And now she is defending the director, who has been accused of molestation in the early 1990s by his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow.

In a new cover story for The Hollywood Reporter, Johansson was asked for her feelings on the controversial director, who has strenuously denied the allegations. “How do I feel about Woody Allen? I love Woody,” she told the magazine. “I believe him, and I would work with him anytime.”

“I see Woody whenever I can, and I have had a lot of conversations with him about it,” she continued. “I have been very direct with him, and he’s very direct with me. He maintains his innocence, and I believe him.”

“It’s hard because it’s a time where people are very fired up, and understandably,” she said, commenting on the #MeToo movement. “Things needed to be stirred up, and so people have a lot of passion and a lot of strong feelings and are angry, and rightfully so. It’s an intense time.”

Allegations against Allen were initially reported in 1992, during his highly contentious divorce from actress Mia Farrow (Allen had had an affair with Farrow’s then-21-year-old adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, to whom he is currently married). Prosecutors at the time concluded that there was not enough evidence to charge the director with a crime. But in 2014, Dylan published an open letter in the New York Times, again asserting that Allen had molested her when she was seven years old.

In a 2017 CBS interview, Dylan said that she “loved my father. I respected him. He was my hero. And that doesn’t obviously take away from what he did. But it does make the betrayal and the hurt that much more intense.”