This morning, almost two weeks after HBO concluded its four-part docusieres Allen v. Farrow, CBS Sunday Morning announced that they will air their own special on “the career and controversy surrounded filmmaker Woody Allen,†featuring a sit-down interview with the director himself, on Paramount+ Sunday, March 28. If you presumed the special would feature the director responding to the recent Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering documentary series about the well-know allegations of sexual abuse leveled against him from his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow, however, well, it’s more confusing than that.
According to the network’s press release, Sunday’s CBS Sunday Morning: The Woody Allen Interview, anchored by Lee Cowan, will be comprised of an unaired Woody Allen interview from 2020, a 2018 CBS This Morning interview with Dylan Farrow, and a report from Erin Moriarty on “controversial artists and their art.†Cowan reportedly sat down with Allen last July to discuss the director’s memoir Apropos of Nothing, which was published on March 23 of last year. The interview, CBS notes, is “the filmmaker’s first in-depth television interview in nearly three decades.â€
In her 2018 interview with Gayle King, Farrow reiterated her claim that Allen molested her in 1992 and denied being coached by mother Mia Farrow, Allen’s then-girlfriend. And how will CBS Sunday Morning tie these threads together? Apparently, Moriarty will take a deep dive into “the challenges the public faces when respected artists are alleged — or discovered — to have acted in a morally questionable manner.†Allen has repeatedly denied abusing Farrow, most recently calling HBO’s Allen v. Farrow a “shoddy hit piece†in a joint press release with his wife, Soon-Yi Previn.
Update Monday, March 29, at 10:45 a.m.: CBS News is facing criticism for streaming its Woody Allen interview and it’s coming from within the network. CBS Sunday Morning featured a segment this weekend that took aim at the interview, which is streaming on Paramount+ now. Art critic Aruna D’Souza took issue with the attempt to repackage Allen’s interview in the wake of Allen v. Farrow on Sunday morning. “If someone is there being interviewed, they’re given a kind of legitimacy just by the fact that they’re being interviewed on a big newscast,†D’Souza said. During the program, Allen repeats his denials of Dylan Farrow’s claims, saying, “I believe she thinks it. I don’t believe she’s making it up. She’s not lying. I believe she believes that.†The 2020 interview was paired with Farrow’s own interview from 2018 and a segment from Erin Moriarty on “reconsidering†cancel culture. D’Souza challenges us and CBS to “look at someone else†instead of getting hung up on a problematic fave.
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