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Woody Allen responds after son Ronan Farrow blasts him, media over sexual assault claim

In an essay for The Hollywood Reporter, Ronan Farrow lashed out at father Woody Allen and the media over sexual assault claims involving Allen.
/ Source: TODAY

Ronan Farrow targeted his estranged father Woody Allen and the media's coverage of sexual assault claims against the Oscar-winning director in a scathing essay released on the opening day of the Cannes Film Festival.

In the essay for The Hollywood Reporter, Farrow, who contributes stories to TODAY, revisited claims by his sister, Dylan, that Allen, 80, sexually assaulted her when she was a girl in 1992.

"I believe my sister,'' Farrow, 28, wrote. "This was always true as a brother who trusted her, and, even at five years old, was troubled by our father's strange behavior around her: climbing into her bed in the middle of the night, forcing her to suck his thumb — behavior that had prompted him to enter into therapy focused on his inappropriate conduct with children prior to the allegations."

Allen has never been charged with a crime and has vehemently denied the allegations.

He responded to Farrow's editorial in talking with a group of reporters in Cannes on Thursday.

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"I never read anything about me, these interviews I do, anything,” Allen said, according to Variety. “I said everything I had to say about that whole issue in The New York Times. I have moved so far past it. I never think about it. I work. I said I was never going to comment on it again."

"I said everything I have to say about it," he added.

Farrow, a former MSNBC host, also ripped the media for not asking Allen about the allegations during press for the Cannes Film Festival, where the director's latest film, "Cafe Society," premiered Wednesday.

Farrow even slammed The Hollywood Reporter itself for not raising the subject during a Q & A for a cover story on Allen a week earlier.

"To me it is a sterling example of how not to talk about sexual assault,'' he wrote. "Dylan's allegations are never raised in the interview and receive only a parenthetical mention — an inaccurate reference to charges being 'dropped.' THR later issued a correction: 'not pursued.'''

"(Allen) has not been rejected by the Hollywood community and is largely embraced as an artist,'' Hollywood Reporter Chief Creative Officer and President Janice Min told TODAY's Joe Fryer.

"It's an annual Cannes issue we do - for him to front the cover was not strange or out of character."

A Connecticut prosecutor said in 1993 that "probable cause exists" to prosecute Allen but chose not to go forward because of the "obvious risk of future traumatization of the fragile child witness."

Several of the stars of his films have been asked about the allegations over the years, including Kristen Stewart, the star of "Cafe Society."

Stewart said she discussed the allegations with co-star Jesse Eisenberg after being cast in the movie.

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"I was like, ‘What do you think? We don’t know any of these people involved. I can personalize situations, which would be very wrong,'" Stewart told Variety.

"If we were persecuted for the amount of (expletive) that’s been said about us that’s not true, our lives would be over. The experience of making the movie was so outside of that, it was fruitful for the two of us to go on with it.”

In addition to Farrow's column, Allen found himself as the subject of a rape joke from the master of ceremonies during the opening of the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday.

The jab came only minutes after Allen received a standing ovation for "Cafe Society."

"You have shot many films in Europe," French comedian Laurent Lafitte said. "While you have not even been sentenced for rape in the U.S."

In response to Lafitte's joke, Allen told Variety, “I am completely in favor of comedians making any jokes they want."

“I am a non-judgmental or (non)-censorship person on jokes. I’m a comic myself and I feel they should be free to make whatever jokes they want.”

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