Rebecca Hall has detailed why she regrets making a public apology for working with the controversial filmmaker Woody Allen.
TheTown star, 42, who starred in Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona alongside Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem in 2008, issued a statement in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein abuse story when she was set to appear in the director’s 2019 romantic comedy A Rainy Day in New York.
Hall said her comments were made because she was in an emotional “tangle” while pregnant and wanted to do something “definitive” amid the explosion of the #MeToo movement.
Speaking to The Observer, Hall said: “It is very unlike me to make a public statement about anything. I don’t think of myself as an actor-vist. I’m not that person.”
Hall’s statement, in which she said she was “profoundly sorry” for working with Allen, followed a public call by the filmmaker’s adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, urging Hollywood to stop supporting him.
Allen has not been charged with any crimes and has always vehemently denied allegations that he molested his young daughter, who claims the abuse took place in 1992 when she was seven years old.
A number of Hollywood figures, including Mighty Aphrodite actor Mira Sorvino and To Rome with Love star and Barbie director Greta Gerwig expressed regret over working with Allen.
Hall issued a statement on Instagram saying she’d never work with Allen again, which she now says was a mistake “because I don’t think it’s the responsibility of his actors to speak to that situation”.
She said at the time she could see how “my actions have made another woman feel silenced and dismissed” and noted her A Rainy Day in New York salary to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund.
The star, who will next be seen in BBC drama The Listeners, recalled how she had been shooting a scene for Allen’s romcom, on which Weinstein was a producer, alongside her co-star Jude Law when the allegations about the film mogul broke. “My dialogue was, ‘You’ve got to stop sleeping with these f***ing 15-year-olds,” she said. “There’s a bank of journalists and paparazzi right there…all listening to me say this.”
Hall said that every interview that followed focused on Allen and Weinstein. “In this moment, it’s the most important thing to believe the women. Yes, of course, there’s going to be complications and nuances in these stories, but we’re redressing a balance here. So I felt like I wanted to do something definitive.”
Looking back, the star says she has no regrets over working with Allen. “He gave me a great job opportunity and he was kind to me,” she said. “I don’t talk to him any more, but I don’t think that we should be the ones who are doing judge and jury on this.”
When asked how she would respond if the allegations emerged now, Hall said: “I wouldn’t say anything – my policy actually is to be an artist. Don’t come out and state your stuff so much. I don’t think that makes me apathetic or not engaged. I just think it’s my job.”
It comes shortly after Allen hinted at retirement in April after finishing his 50th feature – French-language erotic thriller Coup de Chance – which he claimed could be his last film.
“I’m on the fence about it,” he said, “The whole business has changed, and not in an appealing way. All the romance of filmmaking is gone.”
When discussing being “cancelled,” the director said:“Someone asked me about cancel culture, and I said, ‘If you’re going to be cancelled, this is the culture that you want to be cancelled from.’ Because who wants to be part of this culture?”
