Blake Lively Calls Woody Allen Empowering as Tea Lizards Rain from On High

By Courtney Enlow | Celebrity | June 30, 2016 |

By Courtney Enlow | Celebrity | June 30, 2016 |

Blake Lively talked to Hamptons Magazine about working with Woody Allen, in the whitest sentence ever uttered. She had glowing things to say. I have concerns about them.

“[Woody] creates a very pleasant set where everybody’s just happy to be there and happy to be making a movie, and happy to be a part of film history,” says Lively. “For him to have that confidence in you almost gives you the confidence in yourself to just go with the flow. And those are the moments that he really likes, the found moments, the moments that aren’t written but just happen.”

That’s cool, Blake. Here are some moments that weren’t written but just happened to Dylan Farrow.

When I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me. He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we’d go to Paris and I’d be a star in his movies. I remember staring at that toy train, focusing on it as it traveled in its circle around the attic. To this day, I find it difficult to look at toy trains.

But please, Blake, go on.

It’s really cool to work with a director who’s done so much, because he knows exactly what he wants.

That’s great. Here’s exactly what he wanted from daughter Dylan Farrow.

For as long as I could remember, my father had been doing things to me that I didn’t like. I didn’t like how often he would take me away from my mom, siblings and friends to be alone with him. I didn’t like it when he would stick his thumb in my mouth. I didn’t like it when I had to get in bed with him under the sheets when he was in his underwear. I didn’t like it when he would place his head in my naked lap and breathe in and breathe out. I would hide under beds or lock myself in the bathroom to avoid these encounters, but he always found me. These things happened so often, so routinely, so skillfully hidden from a mother that would have protected me had she known, that I thought it was normal. I thought this was how fathers doted on their daughters.

Sorry, Blake, I keep interrupting. So rude. Continue.

The fact that he does one shot for an entire scene—[and] this could be a scene with eight people and one to two takes—it gives you a level of confidence because when he’s got it, he knows he’s got it. He also is really encouraging as to why he cast you, so he’ll say, “Say the dialogue that’s written and then you can improvise for a while.” And his dialogue is so specific, and it’s speaking in a 1930s dialect and [with period] references, so it’s intimidating to think, Oh, let me just improvise there and hope that my words blend seamlessly alongside Woody Allen’s. Which they clearly wouldn’t and don’t. But he’s very empowering.

Super cool. Here’s how empowered Dylan Farrow has been by Woody Allen.

After a custody hearing denied my father visitation rights, my mother declined to pursue criminal charges, despite findings of probable cause by the State of Connecticut - due to, in the words of the prosecutor, the fragility of the “child victim.” Woody Allen was never convicted of any crime. That he got away with what he did to me haunted me as I grew up. I was stricken with guilt that I had allowed him to be near other little girls. I was terrified of being touched by men. I developed an eating disorder. I began cutting myself. That torment was made worse by Hollywood. All but a precious few (my heroes) turned a blind eye. Most found it easier to accept the ambiguity, to say, “who can say what happened,” to pretend that nothing was wrong. Actors praised him at awards shows. Networks put him on TV. Critics put him in magazines. Each time I saw my abuser’s face - on a poster, on a t-shirt, on television - I could only hide my panic until I found a place to be alone and fall apart.

Real happy about your movie, though, Blake. Sounds fun.