Her decision to appear in the film was slammed by Woody’s estranged son Ronan Farrow. Every day, colleagues at news organizations forwarded me the emails blasted out by Allen’s powerful publicist, who had years earlier orchestrated a robust publicity campaign to validate my father’s sexual relationship with another one of my siblings… In their dozen years together, Allen and Farrow had a biological son, Satchel, and adopted two children together: Moses, a boy, and Dylan, a girl. During the premiere of Woody latest film, “Café Society”, Lafitte made headlines when he joked, “You’ve been shooting so many of your films here in Europe and yet in the US you haven’t even been convicted for rape”.
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Woody Allen poses with Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Blake Lively and Corey Stoll as they arrive on May 11, 2016 for the screening of the film “Cafe Society” during the opening ceremony of the 69th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France. “It would take a lot to offend me”.
“I never read anything about me”, the 80-year-old filmmaker said. “At the afterparty, [festival director] Thierry Fremaux told me that he went over to ask Woody if he was embarrassed by the joke, but he said he was not. I don’t think about it. I work”.
But American actress Blake Lively, who stars in Cafe Society, took offence, saying: “I think any jokes about rape, homophobia or Hitler is not a joke”.
Lively, 28, and Stewart, 26, sat down with PEOPLE at the Cannes Film Festival, where they dished on what it was like work with Allen on the upcoming film Caf Society.
It looks like Woody Allen’s facing some more controversy as the famed director’s PR team allegedly banned The Hollywood Reporter from a publicity event at the Cannes Film Festival!
Allen, meanwhile, said he was not bothered by the joke. “There was a joke about Nicole Kidman, and Thierry Fremaux asked me if the joke could be embarrassing for her. I didn’t want to embarrass anybody, so I didn’t say the joke”.
Allen made his comments following Farrow’s searing piece in the Hollywood Reporter comparing his father’s situation to comedian Bill Cosby, who escaped criticism for decades even though he was repeatedly accused of being a sex molester. “It was my show business attorney who told me she was bringing the accusation to the police and I would need a criminal lawyer”.
Jokes are fine, though: “I am completely in favor of comedians making any jokes they want”, Allen said of Lafitte’s barb at his expense. “I wrote the joke three weeks ago”, said the comic.
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He was involved with Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, who was 21 at the time of the scandal. They married in 1997.
