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Gina Gershon is explaining why she felt comfortable starring inWoody Allen’s new movie, which is being released after years of delays amid the pandemic and his resurfaced controversy.
Allen wrote and directed the movieRifkin’s Festival, which is being released this week. The romantic comedy was filmed in summer 2019. It stars Gershon, Wallace Shawn, Christoph Waltz, Elena Anaya, Louis Garrel and Sergi López.
While promoting the film this week in a joint interview with costar Shawn onWGN, Gershon, 59, took issue with the question of why they would work with Allen when so many actors have distanced themselves from him.
“If they’re against it, they just shouldn’t,” she said with a laugh about colleagues vowing not to work with the Oscar winner again. Gershon added of why she signed on to the project: “Because he’s a genius.”
“You know what, it serves no one to keep great artists from working, even the alleged victims, right? And Woody Allen, you know, it makes me a little sad that that’s how you lead this whole talk, talking about that whole controversy instead of talking about what an incredible artist he is. For me as an actress, he’s been inspiring me ever since I can remember. So I was really thrilled to work with him.”
For his part, Shawn, 78, said he believes Allen is an “innocent man.”
Gershon cut in, saying that the situation is a “family matter” and “not really any of our businesses.”
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“In this world that we’re living in right now it’s a little bit tricky to even talk about it because things are pulled apart and put on social media and clickbait, and no one is safe. It’s sad. And that’s the world we’re living in right now. I thought in this country you’re innocent until proven guilty, because if the opposite were true we’d all be canceled basically. That’s how I feel. It’s a weird time in the world.”
The actress also pointed out that it’s “not an easy question” to discuss in its complexities in a five-minute interview.
Back in 2019,Gershon said starring in the Allen filmwas a “dream come true.”
Allen said in a2020 interview that was released on Paramount+in March: “It’s so preposterous, and yet the smear has remained. And they still prefer to cling to if not the notion that I molested Dylan, the possibility that I molested her. Nothing that I ever did with Dylan in my life could be misconstrued as that.”
Dylan Farrow and Mia Farrow in 2016.Getty
Back in 2014, Dylan wrote anopen letterforThe New York Timescalling out actors who continued to work with Allen, explaining how she felt “silenced” and disregarded as Hollywood upheld Allen as an A-lister.
“For so long, Woody Allen’s acceptance silenced me,” she wrote at the time. “It felt like a personal rebuke, like the awards and accolades were a way to tell me to shut up and go away. But the survivors of sexual abuse who have reached out to me — to support me and to share their fears of coming forward, of being called a liar, of being told their memories aren’t their memories — have given me a reason to not be silent, if only so others know that they don’t have to be silent either.”
If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.
source: people.com
