Allen v. Farrow (2021) s01e01 Episode Script

Plaza Hotel, New York City
August 18th, 1992
Thank you for coming.
Over the years you all know
that I've been reluctant
to speak with the press
and have assiduously
avoided publicity.
But because of all the rumors
and innuendos
I feel that I have to make
a statement.
First, I'm greatly saddened
that sources close to Mia Farrow
have released to the public allegations
instigated by her
of child abuse on my part.
There's so much misinformation.
There's so much obfuscation
and so many lies.
I've been subjected
to every kind of doubt,
and every kind of scrutiny,
and every kind of humiliation over this.
In the last 20 years
he was able to just run amok,
while I was growing up.
And I was coping with this
through sleepless nights
and panic attacks
because of one man.
For the longest time I've been
trying to set the record straight.
No matter what you think you know
it's just the tip of the iceberg.
This is a story of two
of the biggest stars in the world.
The father is Woody Allen,
writer, director, actor.
The mother is Mia Farrow,
his frequent co-star,
and the mother of his three children,
two of them adopted.
Woody and Mia
have been together for 12 years
but never married
and kept separate residences.
She reportedly has a video
of their adopted daughter Dylan
explaining how Allen molested her.
Allen denies child abuse,
but freely admits
he's in love with another of Farrow's
daughters, 21-year-old Soon-Yi.
Allen said the newest allegations
are the bizarre concoctions
of a woman scorned.
Miss Farrow's only concern
have been exclusively
the protection of her children.
ALLEN V. FARROW
Episode 1
CONNECTICU
These are the ones
that my mom made me
and then other stuff full
of a bunch of other - other stuff.
There's us going to the set.
"You came to work with me each day.
I am making Radio Days."
Some pictures are
pulled out.
We do what we have to do.
You can see the pictures
have been strategically cropped.
I think in a lot of ways
I've come to understand
my feelings better as an adult
than I did as a child.
At the root of it
what I was really feeling
was that I had let down
the little girl that I was before
when I couldn't speak about it.
I wish that I had been stronger,
that I hadn't crumpled
so much under the pressure.
I need to in a way prove to myself
that I can face it,
which is probably why I feel
so strongly about coming forward now.
Dylan, what do you want to be
when you grow up?
I want to be
DYLAN FARROW
Age 6
Okay. And what do you hope
to do this summer?
How would you like
your summer to go?
I want to go swimming.
- Is that your favorite thing to do?
- Yeah.
Great!
Anything else you'd like to say?
- I love you!
- I love you, too.
It was an amazing childhood.
I grew up
in a place filled with books,
and toys, and everything
I could possibly want.
Blow them all out, sweetie.
As a little kid
I couldn't really understand
in what ways
we were actually different.
There were some things that I thought,
this must be how it is in every family.
And then there are
some things that I thought,
this is definitely unique
to my family.
And part of that
was having so many siblings.
I loved having a big family.
There was madness,
but there was a method.
You know, for the most part
we got along.
Occasionally my mom would kind
of swoop in with some damage control.
She was everywhere at once.
She could be picking up LEGOS
one second,
and then the next
she'd be on a movie set.
We really were a Hollywood family.
I was always stumbling around on set.
To me that was the equivalent
of going to your parents' office.
I remember going on incredible trips
in private planes
and traveling the world
with my family.
I have very fond memories
of us all swimming in the pool
at the most posh hotel.
It was idyllic most of the time,
and he was a big part of that.
Here comes Johnny Weissmuller.
Tell mommy what you said.
What did she say?
What did you say, Dylan?
- He's legs are funny.
- No, "That some daddies"
Some daddies are handsome
in their bathing suits
and some are funny.
Which category
do you think she has me in?
My daddy.
I'm with my daddy.
It's really hard to sort of examine
the good times and the bad times
completely independently.
This is somebody that I loved
more than anybody else.
And it's taken me a long time
to sort of reconcile
that you can love somebody
and be afraid of them.
CONNECTICU
I made this doll's house
when I was waiting for Dylan.
I actually made it,
every shingle and the floors.
And I went to different places
that had doll furniture,
and I decorated all the interior.
I really went all out here.
It's a home within a home.
I've lived here in this house
for 40 years.
So much has happened here
that's hard to talk about.
But it's still a place
of happiness and love.
I haven't spoken publicly about him
for decades.
But that's the great regret of my life,
that I wasn't perceptive enough.
It's my fault.
I brought this guy into our family.
There's nothing I can do
to take that away.
I get why people can't believe it,
because who on earth
could believe that of Woody Allen?
I couldn't believe it.
I couldn't believe it!
Everybody admired Woody so much,
you know, loved him.
And I did, too.
My next guest
is a writer, a director,
a very skillful amateur musician,
a philosopher, a comedian.
Will you welcome please
Mr. Woody Allen?
Woody Allen
is one of the most prominent
American film directors
and writers.
He's made a film every year
for about four decades.
Woody Allen's success
was pretty meteoric.
A lot of his films
were instant classics.
And then he's something
of a legend unto himself.
They say you're not a New Yorker
until you encounter Woody Allen.
Woody was such a dominant cultural
figure, particularly in New York.
He was so highly regarded.
He didn't even have to maybe submit
his film scripts for approval.
You know, this was Woody.
Take the Money and Run (1969)
I was a fan of Woody Allen
well before I was a film critic.
One of the first films
I remember seeing and loving
when I was a kid was Sleeper.
And I thought it was just so funny.
He's created this adorable persona
that's the sort of small, weak man.
He makes neuroses hilarious.
He's sort of anything other than
the classic Hollywood leading man.
He's not this kind of buff guy
on a horse. He reads a lot of books
And he freaks out about things a lot,
and that's who he is.
- How much is this stuff?
- That's about $2000 an ounce.
- God!
- Really?
The Woody Allen film I love
the most is probably Annie Hall,
and the reason is that I thought
Annie was a great character,
a great female character,
which is still something
that's hard to see in the movies.
And when I watched it I saw something
aspirational there,
something that I wanted to be.
- You play very well.
- Yeah? So do you!
God, what a dumb thing
to say, right?
I mean, you say it, "You play well,"
and then right away
I have to say, "You play well."
God, Annie!
I grew up feeling really close
to Woody Allen.
He was always to me,
my whole life, extremely appealing.
I felt that he represented me,
a very weird way for a little girl
to feel about a middle-aged filmmaker.
So he has a way of inhabiting
something very human
that's extremely relatable.
I've got the classic symptoms
of a brain tumor.
Two months ago you thought
you had a malignant melanoma.
There's a lot of, like,
kind of mortifying self-disclosures
that make you feel warmly
towards him and root for him.
He's a great cultivator
of sympathy, right?
Like, showing your underbelly
to the audience,
apparently, is a great way
to earn their allegiance forever.
This morning I was so happy.
I don't know what went wrong.
You were miserable this morning.
We got bad reviews, terrible ratings,
the sponsors are furious.
No, I was happy
but I just didn't realize I was happy.
He makes you think about that part
of yourself that's unsure and neurotic,
and you don't hate it quite as
quite so much,
because it's being framed
so appealingly by him.
But shouldn't I stop making movies
and do something that counts,
like helping blind people or becoming
a missionary or something?
So he does know
what great personal art can do.
He shows something
that's uncomfortable in himself
and then you feel less alone.
New York City, 1979
In 1979
I was living in New York City.
I was in a Broadway play
for about a year with Anthony Perkins.
One night Michael Caine, an old friend,
came to see the play.
And he said afterwards - he said,
"Come on, let us take you
out to Elaine's Restaurant."
And I'm, like,
"No, thank you."
Because I liked to get home
before the audience even left,
so I could get up early
and take my kids to school and stuff.
"I'm meeting Mick Jagger there
and it's going to be so fun."
I thought, you know,
maybe it would be fun.
We passed Woody Allen's table
and he introduced me to Woody Allen,
who said a nice thing or two.
And I was pretty excited that
he even knew who I was, you know?
In passing at Elaine's
she came in with Michael Caine,
passed my table, we said hello,
she got seated elsewhere,
and I lunged back
into my tortellini.
And then I got an invitation
for Woody Allen's New Year's Eve party.
He invited everyone on Broadway,
all the people from the sports world;
thousands of amazing people would go
to Woody Allen's New Year's Eve party.
And in among the giddy multitude
was Mia with some friends,
Sondheim I believe,
and Mia's pretty sister Stephanie.
Again, Mia and I
exchanged pleasant hellos,
and then made casual suggestion
that would eventually
change the lives of many people.
I said, "If you're free one day
let's have lunch."
At that point in my life
it was all work and all the kids.
The children and I
had moved in with my mom
because my husband Andre
and I split up.
I had three sons with Andre,
twins Mathew and Sascha,
and my baby son Fletcher.
And we had adopted
Lark and Daisy,
and then we ended up adopting
an older child, Soon-Yi.
When Andre left the family
she'd only been with us for a year.
And then after the divorce
I adopted Moses on my own.
Even though
I had a wonderful family,
I assumed that nobody would ever want
to date anyone with seven children.
And so I had just
put that out of my mind.
And then one day I got a phone call
from Woody Allen's secretary
inviting me to have lunch with him.
So I went and we talked.
We talked about music,
we talked about books.
And I was completely intrigued.
She turned out to be bright,
beautiful, she could act,
could draw,
had an ear for music.
I found myself beginning an affair
with a beautiful movie star
who could not have been nicer, sweeter,
more attentive to my needs.
He showed me his New York,
took me to the top of buildings
where there'd be a fantastic view.
He took me to little nooks
and crannies of New York City
that I had never seen before.
It was exciting
and I slowly fell in love with him.
She was not demanding,
better-informed than me,
more cultivated, appropriately
libidinous, charming to my friends,
and best of all,
living directly across Central Park.
We discovered that we could,
and we did,
we'd turn our lights on and off
at each other just to
It was a way to say, "I love you."
And I would sometimes hang a towel,
a big red towel, out of the window,
like, "Love you huge."
Everything about that time
was romantic.
But I had seven children,
and he didn't want to meet them at all.
And he said,
"Look, I have zero interest in kids."
So I thought about that,
and I thought, you know,
still, in my free time as an adult
it's wonderful to have a boyfriend.
And then I'll still be able to,
you know, be with my kids.
And I thought
I could make this work.
I have a picture in my mind
of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow
surrounded these days by pets,
and children, and homes, domestic life,
which is a very long way
away from the Woody Allen of old.
Has there been a dramatic change?
No, because Mia and I live
we don't live together.
She is surrounded by kids and pets,
and I live by myself across the park.
And we see each other quite frequently,
but no, I'm still - I'm still as I was.
I do play with the kids all the time,
but then I never have to be there
when the diapers are changed
or anything really awful happens.
I wanted the children to be able
to get out of the city.
I felt it was important for all of us.
And after a long dispiriting hunt
I found this house.
- What are you going to have?
- Can I have an ice cream?
You can't have that until you had lunch.
What are you going to have for lunch?
- Toast.
- No, you have to have a sandwich.
- Ma, can I have an ice cream?
- Have you had lunch?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
Ma, I had lunch.
Can I have some ice cream?
What kind do you want?
No!
- Hi there.
- Hi.
This house
was a wonderful thing for us.
And Woody did come to visit us
in the summer.
He started spending more time
with the kids.
And he gradually warmed to them,
and he was sweet to them,
you know, nice to them.
He was the person I loved,
and as such they loved him, too.
He very much was a father-figure.
I had my actual father,
but he was not around day-to-day
and Woody very much functioned
in that capacity.
He would have meals with us, we'd fish
in the pond together up in Connecticut.
I would get up in the morning
and he would be there,
waiting for the kids to wake up.
We would go to his house
on the weekends,
spend the night when my mom
would spend the weekend with him.
In the back of his apartment
he made bunk beds and stuff for us,
little living area for us to live in
so we'd feel comfortable going there
while my mom was there.
Her children were well-mannered
and polite.
I got along with all of them, although
I did find Soon-Yi a tad sullen.
I took a particular liking
to Moses,
a small Korean kid
with black-rimmed glasses.
On Friday can I go to Woody's
if he doesn't have any plans?
Yeah, sure.
I will check with him.
Moses fell in love with Woody
and wanted a dad so badly.
big and loud.
- Ready?
- Yeah.
You dirty rat!
Higher voice!
You dirty rat!
You get it?
It was about that time that she told me
rather than adopt another child
she'd really like
to be pregnant again.
I looked over my shoulder to see who
she was talking to, but she meant me.
I said, "Would you ever want
to have a child together?"
But he said,
"Yeah, I would not object to that."
"But you have to understand
I have zero interest in a kid,
so you would be entirely responsible
financially and in every way."
I said, "Absolutely."
Mia assured me
I could participate in rearing
a new child to any extent I cared to.
If I wanted to be a hands-on father,
great, if not, she'd raise it,
and I would be the same free soul
I'd always been.
And after some years of trying to have
a baby and not conceiving a child,
I asked how he would feel
about adopting a child.
And he said if I wanted to do that,
that it wouldn't ruin the relationship
but he wanted nothing to do with it.
And I thought, well, that's fair.
He knew the kind of children
that I adopted,
they were all from different countries
with different needs.
And he said, "I might be more kindly
disposed if it was a little blonde girl."
I thought if he cares about that
I should try to find a little girl
like that,
and then maybe he'll love her.
I eventually ended up with a little
blonde girl, and that was baby Dylan.
I was indifferent to the enterprise,
caught up in moviemaking.
Still I figured
if it made Mia happy, fine.
But that's not quite
how it worked out.
I quickly found
this tiny baby girl adorable,
and found myself more and more
holding her, playing with her,
completely falling in love with her,
delighted to be a father.
He began to be enchanted by her,
and I was absolutely thrilled.
It was more than a relief,
I was over-the-moon happy.
You getting more messy?
Mia was a real role model.
She loved playing with them,
and doing the LEGO, and the blocks,
and all that kind of stuff.
Mia and I, we were
at school together, high school.
We were young.
When she bought a country house
it was in Bridgewater,
and I already lived in Washington,
which is ten, fifteen minutes apart.
And we also had children
the same ages.
My son John
is the same age as Dylan.
In the summertime she had this big,
beautiful lake behind the house,
and the children all swam
and played together.
And she had this big
new video camera,
and she was always videotaping
the children.
We had gone away
and lived in Japan for a short time,
and when I came back,
John and Dylan were about 2, 2.5,
and that's when I saw this incredible
intensity that Woody had for Dylan.
She left a teddy bear somewhere
on one of these European trips,
and he paid for a first-class ticket
to have the teddy bear
flown to the next country
so that she would have it that night.
Once Dylan had her heart
set on the ruby red slippers
Dorothy wore in the Wizard of OZ.
I stayed up until midnight having
the custom department of my movie
make her a pair
so I could leave them on her bed
and she could discover them
when she woke up in the morning.
I remember we had taken the children
for a walk in Central Park.
And the kids were up
on this play structure.
All of a sudden the limo pulled up
and Woody jumps out.
And he runs up to the play structure,
follows Dylan up and down,
and through the tunnels,
and down the slide.
And I remember thinking,
"I've never seen anybody act
like this with a child before,
and I really hope it's a good thing
what's happening."
I adored Dylan
and spend as much time with her
as possible from her infancy on.
I played with her,
bought her endless toys,
dolls, stuffed animals,
My Little Ponies.
In those days FAO Schwarz
was a kids' paradise,
and they used to let me in early
before it opened.
And then one day Mia
announced she was pregnant.
You're soon to become a father,
for which congratulations.
Thank you.
Do you hope that he or she is going
to be a chip off the old Woody?
I hope it's a she.
That would be very important to me.
Woody kept saying to me,
"I hope it's a girl."
And then when we found out it
wasn't a girl he was disappointed.
Satchel was born
on the 19th of December.
It had been a difficult birth.
It was a cesarean
but I had lost so much blood.
I think he had never been around
a newborn
or a woman who had given birth.
He thought I wanted to be next
to the baby and not next to Dylan.
But I wanted
to be next to both of them.
So he would take Dylan away
and I would be crying, saying,
"Please don't take her away."
Mia was delirious with Satchel.
She monopolized his time,
and short of me forcing the issue,
he was rarely available.
Mia had little parenting time left
to spend on Moses and Dylan,
or any of the other kids.
I remember him taking me
out of the room away from her a lot,
even when I wanted to stay,
and sort of very slowly
instilling the idea in my head
that she was more Satchel's parent;
he was more my parent.
I was daddy's girl, you know?
I was told
that she didn't want me around,
or that she didn't have time for me,
or that she was too busy.
I'm going to turn around
so I get the light this way.
Dylan has done some artwork
all over her arms and face.
Let me see, kids.
You look so great!
I just think you just look like Alice.
Can I see the white rabbit?
Oh Mr. Rabbit.
And there he is, the white rabbit.
Dylan and I were really close.
We hung out nonstop all the time,
because we were really close in age.
We would tell each other everything
through our whole childhoods.
We were pretty inseparable.
Sometimes he would literally
follow me around and be, like,
"Dylan, can I play with you?"
And most of the time
I'd be, like, "No, go away."
He's a very stubborn,
persistent type of guy,
so I would always wind up
playing with him.
I'm going to go out to the market
and have a picnic today.
That'll be great!
Me, too, I'm going to go with her
on her picnic.
Great.
So I said, "Oh, what are you serving
at this tea party?"
I first met Mia and Dylan and Ronan
in 1987
when I started dating Matthew,
one of Mia's oldest sons.
And I started going over there
every afternoon
and spending evenings with them,
even without Matthew.
So I became extremely close
to those little kids.
Priscilla definitely formed
a very close bond with the family.
She was just there all the time.
She was practically another sister.
When I would go over there
I'd feel like I'm immersed
in this bustling, warm,
diverse, loving family.
And there was lots of laughter
and funny stories.
And Woody was there every morning
before the kids woke up.
He was there every night
until they went to sleep.
I thought he was a great father.
Here we are in a carriage ride.
Children, say hi.
Hi!
- Isn't it beautiful?
- This is the greatest.
Nine times out of ten
he'd be there when we woke up,
we were spending our days together,
and the family was fully integrated.
The memories I do have were not,
like, distant, lost father memories.
They were he was my dad,
he was raising us,
we'd bond over,
loving genre movies,
he'd play me all of these
horror movies, science-fiction movies,
and things that I still love
to this day.
- Look at that pig!
- Yes.
Let's see if we have
any good pictures in here.
I remember every morning he would
read the comics section with me,
and on the days
that he wasn't there
he would actually
leave me little notes and comics
for me to find at the breakfast table.
He took me to my first Broadway
musical, Guys and Dolls,
and he explained the entire thing to me
so I understood it.
I worshiped him.
He was so funny
and he made me feel so special.
That's where things get
really, really complicated.
Because threaded throughout
all of those good times
there was a lot more going on.
Every time he showed up
at the apartment,
like a magnet,
he would just come straight to me.
Intense affection all the time.
In time what it became was there
was nobody but the two of them.
And he began just an incredible
amount of focus on her.
He didn't want to see the other kids;
he wanted to see her.
It was just so one-track.
If he was there
and we were there,
Dylan did not play
with the other children.
He would take her to tell her a story,
or take her for a walk,
so we would most of the time
leave because there was no point.
He followed Dylan
wherever she went.
We'd be playing,
Dylan, me, and Ronan,
I would look up and I would see him
standing there watching, silently.
And once Dylan noticed it
and she would say,
"Go away, Daddy, go away.
This is Priscilla time. Go away."
I remember
going to a friend's house once
and playing with dolls
with her in her room.
And I remember
kind of looking around and thinking,
like, her dad isn't in here.
Why isn't her dad in the room with her,
like, you know, hovering?
And then I just kind
of went back to playing.
But that was my entire
frame of reference.
I was always in his clutches.
He was always hunting me.
She and I would be playing together
and his voice would sound,
and he'd be calling her away.
And she would kind of stiffen up
and she would try
to scramble away from him.
And she was frightened of this stuff.
She would talk to me at the time
about being,
"I don't want to be with daddy.
Can we do anything other than this?"
He would come, she would run away
from the door and say, "Hide me."
And at first I thought it was a game,
but then I realized
that she sensed this kind
of smothering energy from him.
I only started questioning things.
Dylan's reaction to it made me think
that it wasn't good because she was
you could see her withdrawing from it.
Hi. Is this the secret place?
Is this the clubhouse?
She started running away from him.
She started
locking herself in bathrooms.
And he would say she was retreating
from reality or something,
but she wasn't like that
when he wasn't there.
She was fully conversant,
and then the minute he would walk
in she'd become an animal,
sometimes a dead animal,
sometimes a wounded animal,
lying on the floor,
anything that didn't talk.
Over time Dylan went from being
outgoing, and effervescent,
and talkative,
to her having this sadness
and this withdrawn quality.
And I didn't know as a kid
how to contextualize that,
but now in retrospect
I understand
that that was a pattern of something
very serious and alarming.
I have very vivid snapshots,
just different places in the apartment
or the country house, different rooms.
Mostly just a window
with a feeling attached.
I remember sitting
on the edge of his bed,
the light in the room,
the satin sheets.
There were clarinet reeds.
I have memories
of getting into bed with him.
He was in his underwear,
and I'm in my underwear, cuddling.
I remember his breath on me.
He would just wrap his body around me,
very intimately.
The first time that I saw it
I was coming into the room
and he was getting out of the bed,
and so I saw
that he was only wearing underwear.
I walked the other way, I didn't want
him to know that I had seen.
I would suddenly walk in
and there she would be in his bed,
with him in his underwear.
And sometimes he would also kneel
in front of her or sit next to her
and put his face in her lap,
which I caught a couple of times
and I didn't think that was right.
At the time,
I thought this was how fathers
interacted with their daughters.
I mean, I was a kid, so I
I internalized it
in a sense that I
I felt that if I felt weird about it
that was on me.
That was my fault. And that was
because I was doing something wrong.
In March 1991,
when Dylan was 5 years old,
she started therapy for being
"sad, withdrawn, and very fearful."
During therapy, Dylan twice told
her therapist she had "a secret."
Her therapist
never mentioned this to Mia.
When I went to the country house
it was a summer day.
We were all outside and the kids were
running around naked by the beach.
Then Mia handed Woody
a thing of sunscreen to put on,
and he was rubbing Dylan's back.
And his - my mom was there, too.
His hand went down
between her buttocks
and kind of lingered there,
and suggestively
I have to say "suggestively"
because that's what it was,
went between her buttocks cheeks
with his finger and then came back.
And Mia saw it, too,
and snatched the sunscreen away.
I felt more like a policeman,
coming him to, like,
am I going to see something
that shouldn't be happening?
One time we were all sitting
on the floor
and he slapped her hand away.
And I said, "Why did you do that?"
And he said, "She grabbed my penis."
So I was comforting her,
and at the same time I was thinking,
why would a little girl do that?
I tried to push it out of my mind,
but what kind of thing is going on
of that involved private parts
at all?
Maybe there were things that
I didn't know that might be happening.
I remember
Sitting on the steps
with him in the country house,
and there was nobody else around.
And he was directing me
on how to suck his thumb
Telling me
what to do with my tongue,
and I think that lasted a while.
It felt like a long time.
I saw her sucking his thumb,
which was really, really weird.
And he said, "This calms her down,
soothes her to do this."
I finally said,
"I'm not comfortable
with the way that you're handling her
and looking at her."
And he just got so angry with me,
oh my gosh.
It was as if I had accused him
of being an ax murderer.
"What is wrong with you?",
"How could you think that?"
I was crying and I was apologizing.
I said, "I'm just so sorry."
And sometimes he would say,
"I honestly think you need help."
And I began thinking,
I must be crazy.
He can't be a pedophile.
Of course, what am I saying? God.
He's my boyfriend, and I love him,
and I know him, and I must believe him.
And I wanted to believe that he
was not capable of what I feared,
I wanted to believe
that it was in innocence,
that it was just being affectionate.
And I just wanted
I wanted that to be true.
He's the man I love.
He's Woody.
He would never hurt the children
or hurt our family.
MIA'S APARTMEN
One day in our apartment building
there was a very famous psychiatrist.
Her name was Ethel Person.
Much-printed, very respected therapist.
And she called me.
And she said,
"Mia, I saw something of Woody,
the way he greeted
your daughter Dylan."
And I'm, like, "Yeah?"
And she said,
"There was something off."
And I'm, like - then the flood gates
opened for me.
The fact that she saw this,
I thought that he would listen,
and that it would really mean
something to him.
So I asked and he agreed
to see a person she recommended.
In 1990, Woody Allen began
seeing a clinical psychologist
about his behavior towards Dylan.
The psychologist said
she saw Allen
being "Inappropriately intense"
with Dylan.
The therapist told me
that the behavior was inappropriate,
but that it wasn't sexual.
It could be perceived
as sexual by others, by me,
and even by the child,
but it wasn't sexual.
It was just that he had never been
around children,
and that it was his way
of expression affection,
and that he must learn
how to behave with the child.
And when he would do things
the therapist told me to say,
"Could you not do that?"
and he then would just say,
"I, you know, was showing affection.
Never was any of it sexual."
And he relieved my anxiety
by saying, you know:
"You're right.
When you see something like that"
"it's good if you tell me,
and I won't get mad at you anymore."
And I felt it was under control.
So I thought things would get better.
And for a time it seemed that way.
I decided that not being
the legal father of Dylan and Moses
was just not acceptable.
I had assumed full responsibility
for both of them as their father.
Interestingly, for someone who always
wanted me to father her child,
Mia was suddenly very cool to the idea
of me adopting Dylan and Moses
when I broached it.
I had felt a little strange about it.
He had mentioned it before,
but I said I just didn't think
that would be a great idea.
That just is too big a step.
But once he was in therapy and said
he wouldn't get mad at me anymore,
I felt that maybe it
would be great if she had a dad.
Maybe it'd be a great thing,
as long as everything else was okay.
I said to the judge,
"I'm not giving up anything, am I?"
And the judge said,
"No, you're gaining something."
And then Woody
said he wanted to adopt Moses.
He was the only other child in the
family that didn't have a father.
So I asked Moses if he would like
to be adopted by Woody,
and Moses was over the moon.
The adoption of Dylan and Moses was
completed on December 17th, 1991.
The reason I let him adopt them
is because I thought
that he was my life's partner
and I believed in our future,
and that we were going to go on,
you know, and have a wonderful life.
JANUARY 13, 1992
One day I was at his apartment,
because I wasn't working that day.
So I took one of the kids over there;
we left a coat over there.
And there by the side of the phone,
to the right of the phone
was this stack of Polaroid pictures
of a pornographic pictures
of a woman, a girl.
And I picked them up and I realized
all them were of Soon-Yi.
So it was my own child.
She was in her first year of college.
And they were all just, like, I mean,
they wouldn't put them in Playboy.
They were, you know, I don't know,
Hustler pictures or something,
really raunchy pictures.
And I just, you know
I just remember
struggling to breathe.
I remember
getting my son,
trying to put his coat on,
trying to do the buttons.
I took the photos,
and I put them in my pocket,
and I was leaving.
And then I realized that I didn't even
think I could push the elevator button.
I was just, like, shaking.
And I took my child home
and I locked the door.
Soon-Yi was home,
and I remember saying,
"I found the pictures."
And she said, "What pictures?"
"The pictures Woody took."
And she started crying,
and I started crying,
and I'm, like, "It's not your fault."
And she was just beside herself.
Mia asked me to go in and talk
to Soon-Yi, and I did do that.
Mia said,
"I'm so upset right now
I don't think I should talk to her.
Will you go in and talk to her?"
Mia was very forgiving of Soon-Yi.
She said that he was an older man,
very much experienced,
and, "You would have no idea
how to resist his overtures."
The next thing I know
Woody had entered my apartment.
And I was saying,
"You've got to get out."
Then Woody was there for four hours,
just talking, and talking, and talking.
And first he said,
"I'm in love with Soon-Yi.
I would marry her."
And then he said, "I just said that.
It's something I thought of in the car.
I thought it would make it better
if I put it that way. I love you."
But then it was all of that
for four hours.
"I just made a mistake.
I lost control"
I didn't know what to think.
I just needed him to get out.
I came home one day
and my mom was
crying,
and she was standing in the doorway
of Soon-Yi's bedroom.
And Soon-Yi was on the floor
and she was crying.
I'm not sure if I really understood
anything that was going on.
It was like somebody
had shut the lights off.
Everything was suddenly very dark;
confusing for a kid.
It was Dylan's therapist who told me
I had to tell her, and also Ronan.
And she gave me the words,
and I memorized them.
And I would rather have cut off my arm
than have to tell them that.
I remember my mom told me
and Ronan,
"Daddy took naked pictures
of Soon-Yi",
and
that was sort of the first instance
that I thought,
"It's not just me."
Woody Allen denies
ever having been sexually inappropriate
or abusive with Dylan.