“I was never interested in writing a Mommie Dearest, getting even with Mia — none of that,” Soon-Yi tells me quietly but firmly. “But what’s happened to Woody is so upsetting, so unjust. [Mia] has taken advantage of the #MeToo movement and paraded Dylan as a victim. And a whole new generation is hearing about it when they shouldn’t.”
Not for the first time will it occur to me how different Soon-Yi is from the person whom Farrow more than two decades ago described as slow, even dim — and who was dismissed as Allen’s brainwashed mouthpiece when she did speak up, in August 1992, in a statement to Newsweek: “I’m not a retarded little underage flower who was raped, molested, and spoiled by some evil stepfather — not by a long shot.” Over a series of conversations that began in May and continued intermittently through June and July, Soon-Yi, a voracious reader with a slightly quirky sense of humor, is articulate and self-aware. “Woody says I can make jokes but I don’t get them — I’m always looking deeper for the meanings,” she says.
'Mia was so volatile. I understand she would be angry — don't get me wrong, she had every right to be. But she was like a sinkhole taking everything down with her,' Previn said in the new interview.
Moses Previn, who is now a therapist, is the only of Farrow's 11 surviving children who spoke out in the article to support Previn's claims.
Moses described Farrow's parenting style as a 'total breakdown of your spirit, to ensure that you would do what she wanted you to do.'
'It's the honeymoon when you're first adopted, then the veil gets pulled back and you start seeing Mia for who she is,' he said. Farrow adopted Moses in 1989, when he was two.
Previn claims that Farrow asked her to make a tape about her origins, detailing how she'd been the daughter of a prostitute who beat her - but Previn had no memory of such a past, and refused.
She also describes Farrow's borderline abuse as she tried to adapt to life in a new country with an unfamiliar language.
'She tried to teach me the alphabet with those wooden blocks. If I didn't get them right, sometimes she'd throw them at me or down on the floor. Who can learn under that pressure?'
Previn claims that Farrow would hold her upside down 'to get the blood to drain to my head. Because she thought — or she read it, God knows where she came up with the notion — that blood going to my head would make me smarter or something.'
She also describes being slapped across the face and spanked her with a hairbrush by Farrow, who she says called her 'stupid' and 'moronic.'
In statements, Dylan Farrow and Ronan Farrow blasted the article as inaccurate and biased.
'The idea of letting a friend of an alleged predator write a one-sided piece attacking the credibility of his victim is disgusting,' said Dylan Farrow. 'Woody Allen molested me when I was seven years old.'
'As a brother and son, I'm angry that New York Magazine would participate in this kind of a hit job, written by a longtime admirer and friend of Woody Allen's,' wrote Ronan Farrow, Allen's purported biological son.