Llast week, 30 Rock actor Alec Baldwin spoke out in defense of Woody Allen after the HBO premiere of Allen v. Farrow, a four-part document investigating the allegation that the celebrated filmmaker sexually molested his 7-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, in the attic of their Connecticut country house on August 6, 1992.
“Who needs courtrooms or jurisprudence when we hear through the media?” Baldwin wrote on Twitter, along with an article about the documentary.
Baldwin’s critique was sent to his hundreds of thousands of followers the day after the premiere, so it seems that SNL‘s Trump decided to judge the entire series after first watching his first episode. As a whole, Allen v. Farrow contains not only testimony from Dylan, Mia and Ronan Farrow, but also interviews with neighbors, family friends, city and government officials, and a series of documents never seen before – as well as audio recordings of phone calls between Woody and Mia.
His filmmakers, Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, were more than a little surprised by the allegation about ‘trial by the media’.
“Wow. How can he say that? He has not seen the whole thing yet,” Ziering told The Daily Beast. “I think the trial by the media has taken place over the last three decades, Alec. Let’s see who is trial. He must a) watch the series, and b) look at the role that the media has played in spreading twist instead of truths, by not doing any fact-checking, to upset someone and convict her. [Mia Farrow] without any thorough investigation over three decades, and then talk to us about trial by the media. ”
The third episode of Allen v. Farrow, which premiered this Sunday night, indeed focuses on how Allen made the media anti-Farrow weapon in the wake of Dylan’s assault on Allen. Immediately after the news that Allen was being investigated by the police, he held a press conference at The Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, where he proclaimed his love for Farrow’s daughter Soon-Yi on campus and accused Farrow of claiming the molestation claim. boiled out of revenge. —Although Farrow brought Dylan to a pediatrician to discuss the allegation, and the pediatrician reported it to the police independently.
Following the press release, Allen did story interviews with TIME, Newsweek, en People, and also sat down for an interview with 60 minutes. Mia Farrow says she wanted to keep the case private for the sake of her children and did not allow interviews. Because of her attitude, Allen’s narrative apparently took hold in the media, and in general the public consciousness, which scolded Farrow as a vengeful woman.
‘She chose to protect her family rather than take out the story.”
‘Woody’s story was so prominent in part because Mia chose not to speak to the media, because she knew that if she did, it would only arouse the media even more, and it had such a traumatic effect on had her family as it was, that she felt the best thing for her family to say nothing, ”Dick explains. “That’s why she chose to protect her family rather than take out the story.”
‘I would like to return a point to Alec Baldwin: if you watch the series, it’s Woody Allen who became acquainted with the story. It was not Mia, ”adds Ziering. ‘It was Woody Allen who convened the first press conference. It was Woody Allen who put himself on the cover of TIME and Newsweek, and agreed to a 60 minutes maintenance. This is the first time Mia has ever talked on camera about this issue. ”
Baldwin is not exactly the poster kid for the #MeToo movement. Back in 2017, he briefly left Twitter after criticizing one of Harvey Weinstein’s alleged rape victims, Rose McGowan, for reaching a financial settlement with him. Baldwin also complained to Megyn Kelly that the #MeToo movement was aimed at innocent men and joked that he could not even say whether his wife, Hilaria Baldwin – who is not Spanish – was now “inappropriate”. (There was also his infamous appearance in good friend James Toback’s documentary with Roman Polanski aboard a yacht.)
Another character fighting the battle in Episode 3 of Allen v. Farrow is the filmmaker’s longtime lawyer, Elkan Abramowitz, who represented Allen at the time of the allegation of abuse and the subsequent trial on child custody (another of his former clients: Harvey Weinstein). Abramowitz was arrested just this week by New York government Andrew Cuomo amid an investigation into his alleged cover-up of COVID deaths in the nursing home, as well as three allegations against him, two of former assistants.
When I mentioned the Cuomo news to Dick and Ziering, they could not help but laugh.
‘Oh, honey. I think he has not seen the series yet, ”Ziering offered. “I do not think those episodes have been broadcast yet, so he would not know – and neither would Elkan.”
“There seems to be a list of ordinary suspects who are in such cases,” she adds. “They know the playbook.”
As for Baldwin, he announced Wednesday night that he would stop using Twitter again, calling it a place where “all the hole holes in the United States and beyond go to get their advanced degrees in madness.”
The Daily Beast is having additional talks with Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering immediately after episodes 3 and 4 of Allen v. Farrow.