Woody Allen To Argentine TV: I Should Be “Poster Boy” For #MeToo Movement

Woody Allen To Argentine TV: I Should Be “Poster Boy” For #MeToo Movement

In an interview with Argentine TV news show Periodismo Para Todos, Woody Allen said he should be seen as the “poster boy” of the #MeToo movement given how few complaints have surfaced from actresses he has worked with.

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“I’m a big advocate of the #MeToo movement,” he said. “I feel when they find people who harass innocent women and men, it’s a good thing that they’re exposing them. But you know I, I should be the poster boy for the #MeToo movement. Because I have worked in movies for 50 years. I’ve worked with hundreds of actresses and not a single one — big ones, famous ones, ones starting out — have ever ever suggested any kind of impropriety at all. I’ve always had a wonderful record with them.”

Allen said he is troubled by the fact that some of the men who were accused are actually innocent.

“I think in any situation where anyone is accused of someone unjustly, this is a sad thing. I think everybody would agree with that,” he said. “Everyone wants justice to be done. If there is something like the #MeToo movement now, you root for them, you want them to bring to justice these terrible harassers, these people who do all these terrible things. And I think that’s a good thing.”

The interview featured questions in Spanish but Allen’s answers were all in English.

The broad sweep of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, which coalesced around the accusations from dozens of women against Harvey Weinstein unfairly puts men on equal footing regardless of the details, Allen said. “What bothers me is that I get linked with them,” he said. “People who have been accused by 20 women, 50 women, 100 women of abuse and abuse and abuse— and I, who was only accused by one woman in a child custody case which was looked at and proven to be untrue, I get lumped in with these people.”

Asked about Dylan Farrow’s allegations of sexual abuse, which have resurfaced this year, Allen said it was a “terrible” development. “I mean this is just so crazy,” he said. “This is something that has been thoroughly looked at 25 years ago by all the authorities and everybody came to the conclusion that it was untrue. And that was the end and I’ve gone on with my life. For it to come back now, it’s a terrible thing to accuse a person of. I’m a man with a family and my own children. So of course it’s upsetting.”

Quartz had the first English-language report about the interview.