When news broke that controversial figure Woody Allen would be releasing a personal memoir titled Apropos of Nothing, it was immediately met with deserved push back. Among those outraged is Dylan Farrow, Allen’s daughter who is reportedly discussed at length in the work.
Farrow, who is estranged from the film director, shared that she is particularly disturbed by the decision to publish Allen’s book for a number of very personal, very obvious reasons. In the 1990s, the 34-year-old accused Allen of molesting her as a child (a claim that he has vehemently denied), speaking publicly about the abuse for the first time in 2014.
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The memoir is set to be released by Grand Central Publishing, which ironically happens to be a sector of Hatchette — the same publishing company that put out her brother Ronan’s book Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators just last year. Catch and Kill followed Ronan’s fierce reporting of the laundry list of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual crimes against women in the past few decades.
Coupled with Ronan's very vocal stance against Allen, the fact that his book was dedicated to exposing one of the most notorious sexual predators in Hollywood makes Hatchette’s decision to add the famed director to its roster even more troubling.
“Hatchette’s publishing of Woody Allen’s memoir is deeply upsetting to me personally and an utter betrayal to my brother whose brave reporting, capitalized on by Hatchette, gave voice to numerous survivors of sexual assault by powerful men,” Farrow shared on Twitter.
My statement on the disappointing and, frankly shocking, news from @HachetteUS today. pic.twitter.com/h0zuAi0T7l
— Dylan Farrow (@RealDylanFarrow) March 3, 2020
She also clarified that no one from Allen’s team had approached her to inform her that she would be in his book or asked to verify what the director had written in the memoir. Meanwhile, said Farrow, she had been grilled endlessly when she shared her story — a clear example of abusers being given the benefit of the doubt.
“This provides yet another example of the profound privilege that power, money, and notoriety affords,” Farrow continued.
Refinery29 has reached out to Hatchette for comment but did not hear back at time of publishing.
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