Yahoo Movies Gina Gershon defends continuing to work with Woody Allen: 'He's a genius'
The shrinking pool of actors willing to work with Woody Allen still includes Gina Gershon and Wallace Shawn.
The two star in the director's latest film, Rifkin's Festival (opening in U.S. theaters Friday), and continue to defend their decision to do so, even as many in Hollywood have vowed to stop working with Allen. The 86-year-old filmmaker has largely become persona non grata in the industry amid renewed scrutiny of Dylan Farrow's longstanding sexual assault allegation against him, an accusation Allen has consistently denied. (He has never been charged with a crime, though a Connecticut prosecutor said there was probable cause for a criminal case.) Farrow, Allen's adopted daughter, has repeatedly accused him of molesting her when she was 7 years old.
Gershon and Shawn spoke about the controversy in an interview on Chicago's WGN News this week, with the actress stating that "it serves no one" to prevent Allen from working.
Asked point-blank why she wanted to work with Allen, Gershon said, "Because he's a genius. It serves no one to keep great artists from working, even the alleged victims, right? It makes me a little sad that that's how you lead this whole talk, talking about all that controversy instead of talking about what an incredible artist he is. For me as an actress, he's been inspiring me ever since I can remember. So I was really thrilled to work with him."
Shawn went further, saying he has "familiarized" himself with the allegation against Allen and believes "what Dylan says happened didn't actually happen."
"I feel that Woody Allen is an innocent man," he continued. "It's an injustice that we're even talking about this, although of course if someone makes such a serious accusation, it's got to be examined and thought about… Everyone, of course, has their strange personal life, and when people are famous, everybody thinks that they can speculate about it. Most of your listeners and viewers have strange things in their background."
At this point, Gershon interrupted Shawn, adding that Allen's situation is a "family matter" and "not really any of our businesses."
The allegation against the filmmaker first emerged in 1992 but resurfaced in the wake of the #MeToo movement, which later led to a widespread denunciation of Allen. (Amazon Studios backed out of a multi-film deal with the filmmaker and shelved his completed film A Rainy Day in New York amid the renewed controversy.) Last year the HBO docuseries Allen v. Farrow examined the allegation, its backdrop, and its fallout, including Allen's separation from Dylan's adoptive mother Mia Farrow and his subsequent marriage to Soon-Yi Previn, another of Farrow's adopted daughters.
Tony Barson/FilmMagic Woody Allen
In the WGN interview, Gershon added that the case was "not an easy question" to discuss within a brief window of time.
"In this world that we're living in right now, it's a little bit tricky to even talk about it, because things are pulled apart and put on social media and clickbait, and no one is safe. It's sad," she said. "And that's the world we're living in right now. I always thought in this country you're innocent until proven guilty, because if the opposite were true, we'd all be canceled, basically. That's how I feel. It's a weird time in the world."
Rifkin's Festival, which was filmed in 2019, also stars Christoph Waltz, Elena Anaya, Louis Garrel, and Richard Kind, and follows an elderly film critic and professor (Shawn) who accompanies his publicist wife (Gershon) to a film festival in Spain. You can watch the full WGN interview, which ends without discussing the movie, above.
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