What an awkward time to find yourself working with Woody Allen. Numerous high-profile actors have decided to ignore the impropriety of working with the accused daughter-molester since Dylan Farrow’s 2014 open letter in the New York Times—including Kate Winslet, Justin Timberlake, Kristen Stewart, Jesse Eisenberg, and Blake Lively—but times, as they say, have changed.
It’s still, however, an awkward time to have your mom say “I told you so” on Instagram.
On Monday. Selena Gomez, who appears in Allen’s upcoming movie, A Rainy Day in New York (a “romantic comedy” about a middle-aged man pursuing a 15 year old girl), was called out by her mother, Mandy Teefey, in a reply to a comment on her Kicked to the Curb production company Instagram account. When user victorcircus1 suggested Teefey should “make” her daughter apologize for working with Allen—as Greta Gerwig, Mira Sorvino, and Ellen Page have now done—Teefey replied saying that no one controls Gomez, adding that she had been unable to talk her out of working with him in the first place.
Sorry, no one can make Selena do anything she doesn’t want to. I had a long talk with her about not working with him and it didn’t click. Her team are amazing people.
There is no fall person her. No one controls her. She makes all her own decisions. No matter how hard you try to advise. It falls on deaf ears.
The post in question is now filled with “best mom ever”/”worst mom ever” comments from grateful/angry Selenators, who have mixed feelings toward the woman who brought Gomez into their lives but then dared to publicly criticize her. Teefey no longer manages Gomez’s career, but the two still work together professionally, co-producing 13 Reasons Why last year. When asked about “Woody’s past” in a recent Billboard interview, Gomez said it was something she had been forced to “face and discuss” when the Weinstein wave first began during filming in October, though did not express regret. “Wow, the universe works in interesting ways,” she thought to herself, as if the Allen allegations weren’t already out there and readily available to her.
Two of Gomez’s A Rainy Day in New York co-stars, Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Hall, have now expressed public regret over their decision to appear in Allen’s film, with both pledging to donate their entire salaries to charity now that the tide of public opinion has turned against alleged abusers. Chalamet, who has dodged questions about the Allen allegations while promoting Call Me by Your Name, made the announcement in an Instagram post on Tuesday, saying that things have become “much clearer” to him in the wake of #MeToo.
Rebecca Hall also made her announcement on Instagram, saying on Friday that she was “profoundly sorry” for her decision to appear in the film. “My actions have made another woman feel silenced and dismissed,” she wrote. “That is not something that sits easily with me.”
It’s unfortunate that it took an outpouring of allegations against other men—and a second Dylan Farrow op-ed—for actors to finally begin to acknowledge that working with Allen is not OK—or at the very least, not a good look. With working with Allen becoming increasingly untenable, we can only hope that next time, actors like Gomez, Hall, and Chalamet listen to the former stage moms/dads/uncles/aunts in their life and steer clear.
