Ilast week, 30 Rock actor Alec Baldwin spoke in defense of Woody Allen after the premiere of Allen v. Farrow, a four-part documentary examining the claim that the famous filmmaker had sexually molested his 7-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, in the attic of his Connecticut country house on August 4, 1992.
“Who needs courts or the rule of law when we have a trial by the media?” Baldwin wrote on Twitter, next to an article about the documentary.
Baldwin’s review was sent to his hundreds of thousands of followers the day after the premiere, so it looks like SNLTrump decided to judge the entire series after just watching the first episode. As a whole, Allen v. Farrow it includes not only the testimony of Dylan, Mia and Ronan Farrow, but also interviews with neighbors, family friends, city and state officials and a treasure trove of documents never seen before, as well as audio recordings of calls between Woody and Mia.
Its filmmakers, Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, were more than a little surprised by the “media judgment” claim.
“Wow. How can he say that? He hasn’t seen it all yet,” Ziering told The Daily Beast. “I think the media trial has taken place over the past three decades, Alec. Let’s see who was tried and convicted. He should a) watch the series and b) look at the role that the media played in spreading lies instead of truths, in not doing any fact checking, in criticizing someone and condemning them [Mia Farrow] without any diligence over three decades, and then talk to us about the trial by the media. “
The third episode of Allen v. Farrow, premiering on Sunday night, in fact focuses on how Allen turned the media into a weapon against Farrow in the wake of Dylan’s allegation of sexual abuse against Allen. Immediately after the news that Allen was being investigated by the police, he gave a press conference at The Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, where he proclaimed his love for Farrow’s college-age daughter Soon-Yi and accused Farrow of making up the allegation of abuse. sexual for revenge – although Farrow took Dylan to a pediatrician to discuss the allegation, and the pediatrician independently reported to the police.
Following the presser, Allen did cover story interviews with TIME, Newsweek, and People, and also sat down for an interview with 60 minutes. Mia Farrow says she wanted to keep the matter private for the sake of her children and did not give interviews at the time. Because of his stance, Allen’s narrative apparently took over the media and, by extension, public awareness, classifying Farrow as a scorned, vindictive woman.
“She chose to protect her family rather than divulge 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 just agitate the media even more, and it was already having as traumatic an effect on her family as it was, that she felt that the best thing for her family was to say nothing ”, explains Dick. “So she chose to protect her family rather than divulge the story.”
“I would like to raise an important point for Alec Baldwin: if you watch the series, it is Woody Allen who went public with the story. It wasn’t Mia, ”adds Ziering. “It was Woody Allen who called the first press conference. It was Woody Allen who managed to be the cover of TIME and Newsweek, and agreed with a 60 minutes interview. This is the first time that Mia has spoken at length to the camera on this subject. “
Then again, Baldwin is not exactly the poster boy for the #MeToo movement. In 2017, he left Twitter briefly after criticizing one of Harvey Weinstein’s alleged rape victims, Rose McGowan, for reaching a financial deal with him. Baldwin also complained to Megyn Kelly that the #MeToo movement targeted innocent men and joked that he could not say whether to touch his wife, Hilaria Baldwin – who is not Spanish – was now “inappropriate”. (There was also his infamous appearance in the documentary of good friend James Toback talking to Roman Polanski on board a yacht.)
Another character who enters the fray 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 custody trial of his children (another of his previous clients: Harvey Weinstein). This week, Abramowitz was hired by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo amid an investigation into his alleged cover-up of deaths in COVID nursing homes, as well as three counts of sexual harassment against him, two from former advisers.
When I mentioned the news from Cuomo to Dick and Ziering, they couldn’t help but laugh.
“Oh dear. I don’t think he saw the show,” says Ziering. “I don’t think those episodes aired yet, so he wouldn’t know – and neither would Elkan.”
“There seems to be a list of the usual suspects who travel in these types of cases,” she adds. “They know the manual.”
As for Baldwin, on Wednesday night he announced that he was leaving Twitter once again, calling it a place where “all the idiots in the United States and beyond go to get their advanced degrees in idiocy”.
The Daily Beast will have additional conversations with Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering immediately after Episodes 3 and 4 of Allen v. Farrow.