It is my distinct displeasure to inform you that Woody Allen will be talking, in a public forum, at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time on June 28. The talking will take the form of an Instagram Live interview with controversy-prone actor Alec Baldwin, raising large and vexing questions like … why? Why interview Allen when we already know he’s probably going to position himself as the victim of a baseless witch hunt? And then, if Allen must be interviewed, why recruit Baldwin to do it? Is he not busy enough navigating his own share of recent personal upheavals (an ongoing criminal investigation into his apparently accidental but nonetheless fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust, for example, plus the related civil suit)?
Baldwin does not seem to think so; as far as I can tell, he is the architect of this ill-advised enterprise. “I love you, Woody,” he hiss-whispers in a video announcement posted on Sunday. “Instagram, I’m with Woody.”
Just so you know what you’re getting up front, Baldwin and Allen are old friends. Baldwin has previously suggested that Allen’s adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, had made up her sexual-abuse allegations against the director — whom she says molested her as a young child — in order to destroy him. (Allen denies abusing her.) He has also called her story “unfair” and “sad” and, in characteristic Alec Baldwin fashion, would now like to let the haters know that their criticism carries no weight here. “Let me preface this by stating that I have ZERO INTEREST in anyone’s judgments and sanctimonious posts here,” he captioned his IG video. “I am OBVIOUSLY someone who has my own set of beliefs and COULD NOT CARE LESS about anyone else’s speculation. If you believe that a trial should be conducted by way of an HBO documentary, that’s your issue.”
Baldwin is almost certainly referring to Allen v. Farrow, a four-part docuseries that landed on the network in February 2021. While harrowing, it didn’t actually cover much new ground. Dylan’s account has remained the same since 1992, when she says the assault occurred. She wrote about it in a 2014 New York Times op-ed and has spoken of it in interviews. Based on that timeline, it is neither fair nor accurate to say that Allen’s “trial” by public opinion came as a result of the HBO doc (it has been ongoing for years despite Allen’s cadre of celebrity supporters), but then Baldwin COULD NOT CARE LESS about my opinion — nor I about his! I too have ZERO INTEREST in (what I anticipate will be) sanctimonious posts about cancel culture and censorship, particularly if they are issued from a famous actor’s 2.4 million-follower platform. Weird how that one works, no?
