LIn the past week, 30 Rock Actor Alec Baldwin spoke out in defense of Woody Allen after the HBO premiere of Allen vs. Farrow, a four-part documentary series examining the allegation that the celebrated filmmaker had sexually abused his 7-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, in the attic of his Connecticut country home on August 4, 1992.
“Who needs courts or the rule of law when we have a trial by the media?” Baldwin wrote on Twitter, along with an article about the documentary.
Baldwin’s review was sent out to his hundreds of thousands of followers the day after the premiere, so it appears that SNLTrump decided to pass judgment on the entire series after watching only its first episode. Like an everything, Allen vs. Farrow includes not only testimony from Dylan, Mia, and Ronan Farrow, but also interviews with neighbors, family friends, city and state officials, and a trove of never-before-seen documents, as well as audio recordings of phone calls between Woody and Mia.
Its filmmakers, Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, were more than a little surprised by the “media trial” charge.
“Wow. How can you say that? You haven’t seen it all yet,” Ziering tells The Daily Beast. “I think the media trial happened over the last three decades, Alec. Let’s see who was tried and convicted. ) watch the series; and b) observe the role that the media played in spreading deception instead of the truths, by not verifying the facts, by criticizing someone and condemning them. [Mia Farrow] without any due diligence for three decades, and then talk to us about the trial by the media. “
The third episode of Allen vs. Farrow, which premiered this Sunday night, in fact focuses on how Allen used the media as a weapon against Farrow in the wake of Dylan’s sexual abuse allegation against Allen. Immediately following 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 college daughter, Soon-Yi, and accused Farrow of fabricating the complaint. of revenge sexual abuse – Although Farrow had taken Dylan to a pediatrician to discuss the charge, and the pediatrician independently reported it to the police.
Following the press, Allen covered interviews from the story with TIME, Newsweek, Y 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 grant interviews at the time. Due to her stance, Allen’s narrative apparently took hold of the media and, by extension, the public consciousness, portraying Farrow as a despised vindictive woman.
“She chose to protect her family rather than release 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, the media would become even more agitated, and it was already having such a traumatic effect on her family. , that he felt that the best thing for his family was not to say anything ”, explains Dick. “So he chose to protect his family rather than spread the story.”
“I would like to raise a point again with Alec Baldwin: if you watch the series, it’s Woody Allen who made the story public. It wasn’t Mia, ”Ziering adds. “It was Woody Allen who called the first press conference. It was Woody Allen who got on the covers of TIME Y Newsweek, and agreed to a 60 minutes interview. This is the first time Mia has spoken extensively on camera on this topic. “
On the other hand, Baldwin is not exactly the model for the #MeToo movement. 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 targeting innocent men and joked that he couldn’t even tell if touching his non-Spanish wife, Hilaria Baldwin, was now “inappropriate.” (There was also his infamous appearance in the documentary of his good friend James Toback hanging out with Roman Polanski aboard a yacht.)
Another character who enters the fray in episode 3 of Allen vs. Farrow is the longtime filmmaker’s attorney, Elkan Abramowitz, who represented Allen at the time of the abuse allegation and subsequent custody trial for the children (another of his former clients: Harvey Weinstein). Just this week, Abramowitz was detained by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo amid an investigation into his alleged cover-up of COVID nursing home deaths, as well as three sexual harassment allegations against him, two from former aides. .
When I mentioned the news from Cuomo to Dick and Ziering, they couldn’t help but laugh.
“Oh dear. I guess he hasn’t seen the show,” says Ziering. “I don’t think those episodes have aired yet, so he wouldn’t know, and neither would Elkan.”
“There seems to be a list of common suspects who traffic in these types of cases,” he adds. “They know the playbook.”
As for Baldwin, on Wednesday night he announced that he was leaving Twitter once again, calling it a place where “all the assholes in America and beyond go to get their advanced degrees in asshole.”
The Daily Beast will hold additional conversations with Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering immediately following episodes 3 and 4 of Allen vs. Farrow.