Slamming publisher Hachette for acquiring Woody Allen’s memoir Apropos of Nothing , journalist and director Woody Allen’s estranged son Ronan Farrow has announced that he is ending his association with the company.
Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, acquired the memoir a year ago and will bring it out on April 7, the company said earlier this week.
It was reported last year that Allen was pitching his memoir to several publishers but but was rebuffed in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
The multi-hyphenate director has become a subject of discussion over the resurfacing of the sexual assault allegations levelled against him by his step-daughter Dylan Farrow, Ronan Farrow’s sister, which caught steam in the wake of the #MeToo uprising. He has repeatedly denied the accusations.
Incidentally, Hachette’s division Little, Brown and Company published Catch and Kill , by Ronan Farrow in 2019, in which he wrote about his reporting during the #MeToo movement that led to the downfall of many powerful Hollywood executives, including Harvey Weinstein , over sexual abuse allegations. He also won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2017 reporting at the New Yorker on Weinstein.
Ronan Farrow said he was “disappointed” to find out that Hachette not only went ahead with the acquisition of Allen’s book but also “concealed” the decision.
“I was disappointed to learn through press reports that Hachette, my publisher, acquired Woody Allen’s memoir after other major publishers refused to do so and concealed the decision from me and its own employees while we were working on ‘Catch and Kill’ – a book about how powerful men, including Woody Allen, avoid accountability for sexual abuse,” he said in a statement posted on Twitter Tuesday.
Alleging that Hachette had not fact-checked the book, Ronan Farrow added no one contacted his sister for her side of the story.
He said the publisher had displayed a “wildly unprofessional” approach, which also “shows a lack of ethics and compassion for victims of sexual abuse.”
“My sister Dylan has never been contacted to respond to any denial or mischaracterisation of the abuse she suffered at the hands of Woody Allen – a credible allegation, maintained for almost three decades, backed up by contemporaneous accounts and evidence.
“It’s wildly unprofessional in multiple obvious directions for directions for Hachette to behave this way. But it also shows a lack of ethics and compassion for victims of sexual abuse, regardless of any personal connection or breach of trust here.”
Ronan Farrow further said he had urged Hachette to conduct a fact check on Allen’s account.
“I’ve also Hachette that a publisher that would conduct itself in this way is one I can’t work with in good conscience,” he said.
Dylan on Monday took to Twitter to slam the company for betraying her brother with their decision to publish Allen’s memoir.
“Hachette’s publishing of Woody Allen’s memoir is deeply upsetting to me personally and an utter betrayal of my brother whose brave reporting, capitalised on by Hachette, gave voice to numerous survivors of sexual assault by powerful men. For the record, I was never contacted by any fact checkers to verify the information in this ‘memoir’, demonstrating an egregious abdication of Hachette’s most basic responsibility,” she said in a statement posted on the microblogging site.
