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| We must listen to Soon-Yi Previn, as well as Ronan and Dylan Farrow | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| The first, and most obvious, thing to say is that Soon-Yi Previn has every right to tell her story, and any publication has the right to publish it. Obvious, and yet, obviously, not the opinion of everyone. Previn is best known as the adopted daughter of André Previn and Mia Farrow, and the wife of Farrow’s very much ex-boyfriend, Woody Allen. So when New York Magazine’s interview with the heretofore almost silent Previn went online on Sunday night, the most vehement reactions against it came from, predictably, the Farrow family. | The first, and most obvious, thing to say is that Soon-Yi Previn has every right to tell her story, and any publication has the right to publish it. Obvious, and yet, obviously, not the opinion of everyone. Previn is best known as the adopted daughter of André Previn and Mia Farrow, and the wife of Farrow’s very much ex-boyfriend, Woody Allen. So when New York Magazine’s interview with the heretofore almost silent Previn went online on Sunday night, the most vehement reactions against it came from, predictably, the Farrow family. |
| Dylan Farrow, who has long accused Allen of sexually abusing her when she was seven (abuse Allen denies), excoriated the magazine for getting Allen’s friend, Daphne Merkin, to interview Previn and write “a one-sided piece”. But Dylan herself gave a one-sided interview about the alleged abuse in 2014 to the New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof, who is a friend of the Farrow family (the New York Times’ then public editor, Margaret Sullivan, wrote that she was “troubled” by the publishing of Kristof’s piece). Ronan Farrow, meanwhile, who has done such sterling work in the past year writing about sexual abusers, complained that the interview constituted “a hit job” that lacked “eyewitness testimony”. And yet the eyewitness here is Previn herself, and to a large degree what she says in this interview about what she describes as her physically and emotionally fraught childhood in the Farrow home echoes what her brother Moses, now a 40-year-old family therapist, wrote in a recent blog, which Mia Farrow has denied. So unless Ronan and Dylan Farrow want to make the argument that only their claims of abuse are worth listening to, not those of their siblings, then they’ll struggle to argue that people should not listen to Soon-Yi Previn. (The Guardian has contacted Mia Farrow’s representatives for a response to Previn’s allegations, but is yet to receive a reply.) | |
| And anyone who is interested in this case really should listen to Previn. For so long she was the one person in this tale who held her counsel. She didn’t give misguided interviews, as Allen has done, most recently insisting he should be the “poster boy for the #MeToo movement”; she didn’t make coy jokes about whether Allen’s son was possibly conceived with Frank Sinatra, as Mia did about Ronan. But Previn’s silence means she has been dismissed as, first, Allen’s helpless victim and now his oblivious accomplice. The revelation of Allen’s affair with the then 21-year-old Soon-Yi has long been tangled up with the accusation, which emerged shortly after the affair was exposed, that he once sexually abused seven-year-old Dylan. That Previn, now 47, and Allen are still married, more than 20 years later, should be evidence of the stability of their relationship; instead, her presence next to him has acted as a constant reminder of his transgression, as though she is merely a representation of his wrongs. Previn’s first big solo interview shows there’s a lot more going on with her, and this story, than some people like to acknowledge. | And anyone who is interested in this case really should listen to Previn. For so long she was the one person in this tale who held her counsel. She didn’t give misguided interviews, as Allen has done, most recently insisting he should be the “poster boy for the #MeToo movement”; she didn’t make coy jokes about whether Allen’s son was possibly conceived with Frank Sinatra, as Mia did about Ronan. But Previn’s silence means she has been dismissed as, first, Allen’s helpless victim and now his oblivious accomplice. The revelation of Allen’s affair with the then 21-year-old Soon-Yi has long been tangled up with the accusation, which emerged shortly after the affair was exposed, that he once sexually abused seven-year-old Dylan. That Previn, now 47, and Allen are still married, more than 20 years later, should be evidence of the stability of their relationship; instead, her presence next to him has acted as a constant reminder of his transgression, as though she is merely a representation of his wrongs. Previn’s first big solo interview shows there’s a lot more going on with her, and this story, than some people like to acknowledge. |
| She begins by saying she “was never interested in writing a Mommie Dearest”, and yet it’s hard to see this interview in any other light. Farrow, who once claimed that Previn’s IQ is “slightly below average” (Previn speaks of a “little learning disability” that gives her trouble with spelling) has, perhaps, underestimated her daughter. While Moses Farrow wrote in his blog about some of the ironies in Mia’s life – that when she began her affair with Sinatra she was the same age Soon-Yi was when she began hers with Allen; that Mia’s affair with André Previn devastated his vulnerable wife Dory who was subsequently institutionalised – Soon-Yi goes for the jugular. Like Moses, she claims Mia had a terrifying temper that could be expressed physically. | She begins by saying she “was never interested in writing a Mommie Dearest”, and yet it’s hard to see this interview in any other light. Farrow, who once claimed that Previn’s IQ is “slightly below average” (Previn speaks of a “little learning disability” that gives her trouble with spelling) has, perhaps, underestimated her daughter. While Moses Farrow wrote in his blog about some of the ironies in Mia’s life – that when she began her affair with Sinatra she was the same age Soon-Yi was when she began hers with Allen; that Mia’s affair with André Previn devastated his vulnerable wife Dory who was subsequently institutionalised – Soon-Yi goes for the jugular. Like Moses, she claims Mia had a terrifying temper that could be expressed physically. |
| But she also reveals more of her and Allen’s dynamic than she perhaps intends. Previn comes across as a deeply formidable woman, but one who tends to Allen in a quasi-maternal fashion, flipping many people’s assumptions about their relationship. Nonetheless, she says, when their relationship began, Allen “went after me … He pursued me.” Farrow, she adds, “was never kind to me, never civil. And here was a chance for someone being nice to me, so of course I was thrilled and ran for it.” Perhaps the most ironic moment in a story that is full of ironies is Previn’s admission that “it only became a relationship really when we were thrown together because of the molestation charge”. | |
| One family can contain many truths. There is no doubting that Ronan and Dylan Farrow truly believe they are telling the truth, just as Moses Farrow and Soon-Yi Previn do. The objective truth will never be known. It has long been buried beneath decades of recriminations in an argument that once raged between feuding ex-partners but is now being carried on by the next generation. It’s sad. Honestly, I admire Previn for finally speaking out after having been spoken about for so long. But that she has had to speak out at all is, ultimately, an indictment of the grown-ups who were long ago supposed to look after her. | One family can contain many truths. There is no doubting that Ronan and Dylan Farrow truly believe they are telling the truth, just as Moses Farrow and Soon-Yi Previn do. The objective truth will never be known. It has long been buried beneath decades of recriminations in an argument that once raged between feuding ex-partners but is now being carried on by the next generation. It’s sad. Honestly, I admire Previn for finally speaking out after having been spoken about for so long. But that she has had to speak out at all is, ultimately, an indictment of the grown-ups who were long ago supposed to look after her. |
| • Hadley Freeman is a Guardian columnist | • Hadley Freeman is a Guardian columnist |
| Woody Allen | Woody Allen |
| Opinion | Opinion |
| Mia Farrow | Mia Farrow |
| #MeToo movement | #MeToo movement |
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