Bill Maher Blasts ‘Bunch of Pussies’ Who Regret Working With Woody Allen
Bill Maher decided to just absolutely go for it — it being defending Woody Allen to the hilt and calling Dylan Farrow’s accusations that the filmmaker sexually abused her when she was seven “very improbable.”
Maher delivered his full-throated defense during an interview with Katie Couric on his Club Random podcast. The conversation had turned to that specter of “cancel culture,” and Couric mentioned an article about the challenges of separating the art from the artist with regard to Allen and his new movie, Coup de Chance (a French film that’s gotten a limited release in the U.S.).
Rather than follow Couric into that murky, intellectually challenging gray area, Maher went straight to: “I don’t think he committed that crime.”
In casting doubt on Farrow, her mother, Allen’s ex-wife Mia Farrow, Maher said, “The other party had motivation and [was] vindictive.” That skepticism spread to the 2021 documentary, Allen v. Farrow, which Maher suggested could not be trusted because it was “all from her point of view.” (Allen’s denials were included via excerpts from the audiobook of his 2020 memoir, Apropos of Nothing; he also called the film a “hatchet job.”)
While Farrow’s allegations are the most well-known, other women, like Stacey Nelkin and Babi Christina Engelhardt, have said they dated Allen when they were teenagers. It was also alleged in Allen v. Farrow that he started his relationship with his eventual wife, Soon-Yi Previn (Mia Farrow’s adoptive daughter), when she was in high school. And Mariel Hemingway, who played Tracy, the 17-year-old girlfriend of Allen’s character Isaac, in 1979’s Manhattan, has claimed that the filmmaker tried to get her to come with him to Paris when she was 17.
Even still, Maher staked his defense of Allen on his belief that: “A 57-year-old man didn’t suddenly become a child molester in the middle of a divorce proceeding and a custody battle in a house full of adults in broad daylight.”
Couric did try to push back, arguing there were a lot of “pretty sketchy and damning” details in the documentary, like Allen’s alleged predilection for having his girlfriends “dress up in little anklets and Mary Janes and baby doll dresses.” Maher replied: “Do you think he’s the first guy who wanted his girlfriend to dress in anklets and baby doll [dresses]? That’s what we grew up on, that’s what we find sexy… that doesn’t make you a pervert.”
Last but not least, Maher expressed his distaste for the various actors who’ve decided not to work with Allen anymore or expressed regrets for working with them in the past: “What a bunch of pussies!”