NEW YORK: Woody Allen’s wife, Soon-Yi Previn, broke a long silence to defend the filmmaker against allegations of sexual abuse brought by his daughter, Dylan, speaking out on the running feud between her mother, Mia Farrow, and her husband.
“What’s happened to Woody is so upsetting, so unjust,” Previn said in a rare interview with New York Magazine.
Mia “has taken advantage of the #MeToo movement and paraded Dylan as a victim. And a whole new generation is hearing about it when they shouldn’t,” she said.
In the article by Daphne Merkin, a longtime friend of Allen’s, Soon-Yi discusses her difficult childhood relations with her adopted mother, portraying her as dismissive and abusive.
“Mia described me as ‘elegant,’” she is quoted as saying. “It was the only positive thing she said about me.”
Now 47 and married for more than 20 years, Soon-Yi was a 21-year-old college freshman in 1991 when she began an affair with Allen.
Farrow, the director’s long-time partner on screen and off, discovered the affair a year later, causing an angry public break that set the rest of the family against Allen and Soon-Yi.
In a television interview in January, Dylan, Allen’s adopted daughter with Farrow, revived accusations that her father molested her in August 1992 when she was seven years old.
In a statement to New York Magazine, Dylan said it was “offensive” of Soon-Yi to assert that she had been pushed to accuse Allen in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
“This only serves to revictimize me,” Dylan said. “Thanks to my mother, I grew up in a wonderful home, filled with love, that she created.”
After the article’s publication, Dylan also tweeted a statement signed by several of Mia Farrow’s biological and adopted children, attesting that their mother has always been “a caring and giving parent.”
“We reject any effort to deflect from Dylan’s allegation by trying to vilify our mom,” it said.
Ronan Farrow, a son of Mia Farrow and Allen who won a Pulitzer prize for investigative articles in the New Yorker that helped propel the #Me Too movement, denounced Merkin’s article as “shameful.”
“I owe everything I am to Mia Farrow,” he tweeted.
“As a brother and a son, I am angry that New York Magazine would participate in this kind of a hit job, written by a longtime friend and admirer of Woody Allen,” he said, adding, “Survivors of abuse deserve better.”
Woody Allen’s wife Soon-Yi weighs in on Mia Farrow
Woody Allen’s wife Soon-Yi weighs in on Mia Farrow
- Mia “has taken advantage of the #MeToo movement and paraded Dylan as a victim. And a whole new generation is hearing about it when they shouldn’t,” Soon-Yi said
- Now 47 and married for more than 20 years, Soon-Yi was a 21-year-old college freshman in 1991 when she began an affair with Allen
Mick Jagger’s fiancee ‘physically attacked’ at exclusive London club
- Melanie Hamrick, 38, dined with a friend before heading to private members’ club Annabel’s in Berkeley Square, Mayfair, where the incident happened
- The author, choreographer and former ballerina has been in a relationship with the 82-year-old Rolling Stones singer since 2014 and they have a 9-year-old son together
LONDON: Melanie Hamrick, Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger’s fiancee, said she was attacked at an elite and exclusive private member’s club in Mayfair, central London.
The 38-year-old said the incident on Tuesday at Annabel’s in Berkeley Square had left her heartbroken and shaken.
In a message posted later that night on Instagram, she wrote: “This is incredibly hard to share, but I was physically attacked at Annabel’s Mayfair tonight.
“I’m so thankful to my friends for protecting me. Two people grabbed me from behind and thank God for the good people who stepped in to help me.
“I’m shaken, sad and heartbroken that people can treat each other this way.”
The message was deleted a few hours after it appeared.
Hamrick has been in a relationship with 82-year-old Jagger since 2014, and she confirmed in April last year that they became engaged about two or three years earlier. They have a son, Deveraux, who was born in 2016.
Hamrick is a choreographer, author and former ballerina who performed with the American Ballet Theatre for 15 years before retiring in 2019.
Before the incident on Tuesday, she had dined with a socialite friend, Emma Thynn, before heading to Annabel’s. Sources at the venue said staff were not notified of an attack. The Metropolitan Police said it had not receive any report of an incident, the Daily Mail newspaper reported.
The incident is believed to have taken place outside of the club. In the past few weeks there has been a series of daytime heists targeting luxury goods stores across London. It is not known if the incident involving Hamrick was related to these.
However, the area around the prestigious Berkeley Square has become one of the worst in London, and even in Europe, for robberies and street crime, the Daily Mail said. Official figures show that people in the area were 30 times more likely to fall victim to crime compared with those in other parts of the city, the newspaper added.
Numbers of thefts and robberies, mainly of mobile phones, have tripled in London over the past four years, with tens of thousands of reported cases, particularly in the upmarket Mayfair and St James’s areas.
Organized criminal gangs have reportedly been targeting high-value luxury brands such as Rolex and Yves Saint Laurent across London. Some visitors have even hired private security while visiting the city.
Last month, the Daily Mail reported that Tom Cruise, 63, had abruptly moved out of his £35 million ($47 million) luxury apartment in One Hyde Park, a high-rise in West London, over safety fears.
