Woody Allen compares denouncing him over molestation claims to eating kale

Woody Allen has addressed those who denounced him over claims of sexual abuse, comparing them to those who eat kale.

The Hollywood director – who has long denied allegations of sexual abuse of his adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow – has spoken about the backlash, saying it is ‘like everybody suddenly eating kale’.

Any big players in tinseltown, including Mira Sorvino, Greta Gerwig, Colin Firth and Rebecca Hall, went on to distance themselves from 84-year-old Allen, after previously working with the Midnight In Paris director.

It emerged in 1992 that the then-57-year-old was having an affair with the adopted daughter of his long term partner Mia Farrow, Soon-Yi Previn, then 21.

During their acrimonious breakup, Farrow then accused Allen of sexually assaulting seven-year-old Dylan.

Speaking on the reaction to the allegations, of which he has never been convicted or charged, he told the Guardian this week: ‘I assume that for the rest of my life a large number of people will think I was a predator.’

He went on, of the actors and filmmakers who have shared their remorse of working with him: ‘It’s silly. The actors have no idea of the facts and they latch on to some self-serving, public, safe position.

‘Who in the world is not against child molestation?

‘That’s how actors and actresses are, and (denouncing me) became the fashionable thing to do, like everybody suddenly eating kale.’

He added: ‘You can give them the facts over and over. But the facts don’t matter. For some reason, emotionally, it’s important for them to buy into the story.’

In 2018, at the height of #MeToo, Dylan said she felt she had been ignored over the sexual assault allegation against her adoptive father.

She told CBS show This Morning: ‘All I can do is speak my truth and hope … that someone will believe me instead of just hearing.’

Allen, who is promoting his new film, A Rainy Day In New York, recently told the Mail On Sunday that he did not care about being shut out of the Hollywood establishment.

He said: ‘You don’t make a movie to win an award. Mozart never composed a symphony thinking about a trophy.’

The director has his supporters, with the likes of Larry David, Diane Keaton, Alec Baldwin, Alan Alda and Scarlett Johansson refusing to denounce Allen.

He went on to claim in his memoir, Apropos Of Nothing, Timothee Chalamet only did so out of pressure to impress in the Oscars race.

‘All three leads in Rainy Day were excellent and a pleasure to work with,’ Allen wrote of Timothee and his co-stars Elle Fanning and Selena Gomez.

He went on: ‘Timothee afterward publicly stated he regretted working with me and was giving the money to charity, but he swore to my sister he needed to do that as he was up for an Oscar for Call Me By Your Name, and he and his agent felt he had a better chance of winning if he denounced me, so he did.’

Chalamet – who hasn’t publicly addressed Allen’s claims – had released a statement on Instagram on 16 January, 2018 announcing he did not want to profit from his work on A Rainy Day In New York, a week before Oscar nominations were released.