Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Soon-Yi Defends Woody Allen Against Child Sex Abuse Accusations

(JTA)– Soon-Yi Previn, the wife of filmmaker Woody Allen, defended her husband of 25 years against charges that he sexually abused his adopted daughter when she was 7.

“What’s happened to Woody is so upsetting, so unjust,” Previn, 47, told New York magazine in an interview published in the Sept. 17 issue and posted on the magazine’s Vulture website late last week. “[Mia] has taken advantage of the #MeToo movement and paraded Dylan as a victim. And a whole new generation is hearing about it when they shouldn’t.”

Previn is the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and her ex-husband Andre Previn. She met Allen when the filmmaker was Farrow’s boyfriend. Allen and Farrow have a biological son and also adopted two children.

In May, in the wake of accusations by dozens of women against movie producer Harvey Weinstein and the launch of the #MeToo movement, Allen’s adopted daughter Dylan Farrow revived her accusation that the acclaimed director had molested her in Farrow’s home when she was 7 years old in 1992. Allen has denied that he ever molested his adopted daughter, and an investigation in 1993 determined that Dylan Farrow was coached to make the accusation, which she denies.

The New York article was written by Daphne Merkin, who said in the piece that she has been friends with Allen for more than 40 years. The revelation has led to accusations of bad journalism policies against the magazine.

These are the first comments that Previn has made on her relationship with Allen and the accusations against him in their years together.

Allen and Previn began their relationship in 1991, when Allen still had some kind of relationship with Farrow, and when Previn was a freshman in college studying art. They had planned to keep their relationship a secret and guessed that it would end quickly. Upon discovering the relationship, Farrow called it a virtual case of incest because of the complicated relationship between Allen and the women.

Previn said that Farrow was abusive and considered her to be retarded, but she said that she and Allen did not start a relationship to punish Farrow.

“I wasn’t the one who went after Woody — where would I get the nerve? He pursued me,” she told Merkin. “That’s why the relationship has worked: I felt valued. It’s quite flattering for me. He’s usually a meek person, and he took a big leap.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.