In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on Wednesday, Woody Allen has yet again waxed paternal about his marriage to wife (and former sort-of-adopted-daughter) Soon-Yi Previn. Spoiler alert: the entire interview is all kinds of creepy and condescending.
A bit of background: In 1992, Allen's relationship with actress and activist Mia Farrow crumbled under the revelation that he had had an affair with her 21-year-old adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn. Previn and Allen were married in 1997. More recently, in February of 2014, his adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow published a letter accusing Allen of sexually assaulting her when she was a child. The original accusations of this abuse in 1993 were "part of a sensational story about the celebrity split between Allen and his girlfriend, Mia Farrow," according to letter's introduction by Nicholas Kristof.
Allen continued to make movies throughout both scandals, and his career and reputation have remained largely unscathed. In his most recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, in anticipation of the premiere of his new film, "Cafe Society," Allen was asked about how his wife has changed him. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was quick to outline the ways in which he has changed her:
Oh, well, one of the great experiences of my life has been my wife. She had a very, very difficult upbringing in Korea: She was an orphan on the streets, living out of trash cans and starving as a 6-year-old. And she was picked up and put in an orphanage. And so I've been able to really make her life better. I provided her with enormous opportunities, and she has sparked to them. She's educated herself and has tons of friends and children and got a college degree and went to graduate school, and she has traveled all over with me now. She's very sophisticated and has been to all the great capitals of Europe. She has just become a different person. So the contributions I've made to her life have given me more pleasure than all my films.
Ignoring the fact that it was actually Mia Farrow who had adopted Soon-Yi with her then-husband André Previn -- Allen did not heroically rescue her from Seoul's trash cans as he implies -- the interview serves as a reminder of the eerie role that Allen has played in the lives of his female family members.
The Hollywood Reporter's Stephen Galloway asked Allen twice more how Previn had changed him, before Allen finally answered: "Changed me? I don't know if you could say she changed me... I might be the same person I was when I was 20."
Read the whole interview here.
H/T Jezebel
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