Celebrity News May 15, 2016
Susan Sarandon Calls Out Woody Allen: 'I Think He Sexually Assaulted a Child'
Breaking ranks with the many Hollywood stars who have supported him and worked with him, Susan Sarandon has come out strongly against Woody Allen in the matter of the sexual abuse allegations his daughter, Dylan Farrow, made against the legendary director.
Speaking at Variety and Kering's Women in Motion talk with Geena Davis at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday, Sarandon said of Allen, "I think he sexually assaulted a child, and I don't think that's right." She went on to say, "I have nothing good to say about him. I don't want to go there."
The accusations against Allen have been reignited by a Hollywood Reporter essay penned by Allen's son Ronan Farrow, as well as by the premiere of his new film "Café Society" at Cannes. The movie stars Blake Lively, Kristen Stewart, Jesse Eisenberg, Anna Camp, Steve Carell, Parker Posey, and others. Last week, Stewart said she found working with Allen to be "much easier" than she thought it would be. She also said she'd had concerns about working with Allen, so she asked co-star Eisenberg, "What do you think? We don't know any of these people involved. I can personalize situations, which would be very wrong."
For his part, Eisenberg told Variety "he doesn't recall the conversation."
Allen's reputation was the subject of mockery on Wednesday at the opening of Cannes, when master of ceremonies Laurent Lafitte joked, "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 U.S."
The audience gasped, but Allen shrugged it off, saying, "I am completely in favor of comedians making any jokes they want."
Allen's next project is a six-episode series for Amazon, set in the '60s, starring Miley Cyrus and comic legend Elaine May.