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Back in the 1990s,Rosie O’Donnellmade it abundantly clear toWoody Allenshe had no desire to appear in one of his movies.
While she was a guest onThe Howard Stern ShowSept. 12, the 60-year-old actress, comedian and former talk show host revealed she rejected two offers to work with the now-86-year-old Oscar-winner, who has long faced accusations of sexual abuse.
His team didn’t get the hint, she continued: “They called back and said, ‘He really wants you to do it. He’d like to talk to you about it.’ I said, ‘I’m not doing it. I’m not working for him or with him and being associated with him.’ "
O’Donnell also said that Allen “had a lot of people under his spell,” but she wasn’t one of them.Sweet and Lowdown, starring Sean Penn, Uma Thurman and Samantha Morton, was made without O’Donnell’s participation.
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Allen was first accused of sexually abusing his daughterDylan Farrowduring his explosive 1992 split from longtime partnerMia Farrow, now 77. Allen has denied allegations of abuse and was never charged with a crime, though a Connecticut prosecutor said there was probable cause for a criminal case.
O’Donnell has been outspoken about the situation for more than two decades. In her 1995 HBO special, O’Donnell lambasted Allen, who split from Farrow after the actress discovered nude photos of her adopted daughter,Soon-Yi Previn, who was in her early 20s at the time, in Allen’s apartment.
“Can you believe the nerve of this guy? Showing up in public with his lover-slash-daughter,” O’Donnell said. “Incest, Woody. It’s a word. Look it up. Pedophile. What a concept. Ever hear of it?” (Allen and Previn wed in 1997 and have two adopted daughters.)
Dylan Farrow’s accusations against Allen resurfaced in 2014 when she penned aNew York Timespiece detailing her ordeal. Days later, O’Donnell returned toThe Viewfollowing her 2006-07 stint co-hosting the daytime talk show. During the Hot Topics segment, she said, “I firmly believe Dylan and I believe Mia.”
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After Barbara Walters defended theAnnieHalldirector as a good father at the time, O’Donnell countered, “You can never really know what’s going on in a house.”
O’Donnell’s public stance against Allen led to a friendship with Mia, she told Stern. “She heard that story [about rejecting the chance to work with Allen] and she called me to see if it was true and I said, ‘Oh yes, it’s true.’ And she started to cry and said, ‘Even my closest friends didn’t stick behind me during this and that here you did your HBO special and now you did this. I’m forever in your debt.’ "
Allen recently defended himself in a 2020 interview that was released on Paramount+ last year, calling the accusations “preposterous.” He said, “They still prefer to cling to if not the notion that I molested Dylan, the possibility that I molested her. Nothing that I ever did with Dylan in my life could be misconstrued as that.”
source: people.com
