Woody Allen Update: Susan Sarandon Backs Sexual Assault Claims, Thinks He’s Guilty
Woody Allen continued to face resentment on Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival, as Susan Sarandon blasted him for allegedly sexually assaulting a child.
People reports that Sarandon, 69, opened up about her feelings toward Allen, 80, while sitting beside her Thelma & Louise co-star Geena Davis, during the Variety and Kering’s Women in Motion talk show.
Susan Sarandon is not a fan of Woody Allen: "I think he sexually assaulted a child and I don't think that's right." pic.twitter.com/1gkkC8rL25
— Variety (@Variety) May 15, 2016
“I think he sexually assaulted a child and I don’t think that’s right. I have nothing good to say about him. I don’t want to go there.”
Sarandon’s comments come just days after Allen’s son Ronan Farrow published a damning essay about his father, calling out Hollywood for allowing Woody to continue on in the film industry, despite allegations that the director sexually molested his own step-daughter, Dylan Farrow, while she was a child living in his home in Connecticut.
Entitled, “My Father, Woody Allen, and the Danger of Questions Unasked,” Farrow’s essay compared his father to Bill Cosby, who’s accused of sexually assaulting numerous women.
“Some reporters have drawn connections between the press’ grudging evolution on Cosby and a painful chapter in my own family’s history. It was shortly before the Cosby story exploded anew that my sister Dylan Farrow wrote about her own experiences — alleging that our father, Woody Allen, had “groomed” her with inappropriate touching as a young girl and sexually assaulted her when she was 7 years old.”
Woody Allen’s publicist proves Ronan Farrow 100 percent right about access journalism: https://t.co/Bg58iRVxRh pic.twitter.com/Rl2AMqX29B
— Slate (@Slate) May 15, 2016
Prior to Sarandon’s comments, Allen was already facing scrutiny and backlash when he became the butt of a joke at the Cannes Film Festival, when French comedian and actor Laurent Lafitte introduced Allen during the open night of his new film, Café Society.
“It’s very nice that you’ve been shooting so many movies in Europe, even if you are not being convicted for rape in the US.”
Lafitte later said that he had no idea Allen was accused of sexual assault and that his comments were intended as a joke about Roman Polanski, a film director who pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor in 1977. Polanski fled to Europe before he was sentenced.
“When I wrote this joke, it was more a joke about Europe and why one of the greatest American directors spent years in Europe, [while Allen] didn’t have to because he wasn’t accused of rape in his own country, compared to Roman Polanski.”
Regardless, the sting of the joke remained, and although Allen said he wasn’t offended by Lafitte, speculation about Allen has sparked a fierce uproar online. While many support Allen and claim the rumors against him are all baseless, other people, specifically people who’ve been through sexual assault themselves, feel that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Allen has always denied the allegations brought forward by his step-daughter, and he reportedly accused his former wife, actress Mia Farrow, of “brainwashing” her children. In 2014, Dylan Farrow wrote her own piece, published by The New York Times, in which she detailed the alleged abuse that she claimed went on for years. She also wrote that her mother declined to press charges against Allen although the State of Connecticut found probable cause that the allegations were true. Dylan Farrow admitted to feeling shame and guilt for numerous years, and deathly afraid of being touched by men.
Woody Allen has never been criminally-charged with sexual assault or molestation.
[Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images]
