5 of the most shocking revelations from the premiere of ‘Allen v. Farrow’

On Sunday night, Crave dropped the first episode of Allen v. Farrow, a four-part documentary from filmmakers Kirby Dick, Amy Ziering and Amy Herdy. The series gives viewers a whole new perspective on what really happened in the Woody Allen-Mia Farrow household before and after the 1992 sexual abuse allegations from then-seven-year-old Dylan Farrow. And it uses a ton of home video footage and first-person interviews to do it.

In the first hour-long episode, Mia Farrow details her relationship with Allen, how they met, their unique living situation, and how they came to adopt Dylan Farrow before going on to have their own child, Ronan Farrow. Before long the episode gets into the very strange relationship that Dylan and Woody shared, the potential grooming that was going on, and added commentary from family friends, Mia, Ronan, and Dylan herself. “For the longest time I’ve been trying to set the record straight,” Dylan says at the beginning of the doc. “No matter what you think you know, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Allen, who is now 85 years old, has denied all allegations of sexual abuse and inappropriate conduct ever since the scandal first broke nearly 30 years ago. Although he declined to participate in the documentary, the filmmakers use his audio narration from his 2020 memoir, Apropos of Nothing. Following the premiere of the documentary, Allen—who has since married one of Farrow’s adoptive children, Soon-Yi Previn—released a statement from himself and his wife to The Hollywood Reporter.

“These documentarians had no interest in the truth. Instead, they spent years surreptitiously collaborating with the Farrows and their enablers to put together a hatchet job riddled with falsehoods. Woody and Soon-Yi were approached less than two months ago and given only a matter of days 'to respond.' Of course, they declined to do so,” reads the statement. “As has been known for decades, these allegations are categorically false. Multiple agencies investigated them at the time and found that, whatever Dylan Farrow may have been led to believe, absolutely no abuse had ever taken place. It is sadly unsurprising that the network to air this is HBO–which has a standing production deal and business relationship with Ronan Farrow. While this shoddy hit piece may gain attention, it does not change the facts.” (It should be noted Ronan’s participation in the film was as a subject only.)

Before the doc’s debut, the filmmakers did reveal they weren’t interested in interviewing anyone for the project who would speak to Allen’s side or defend the filmmaker, as this documentary is meant to give Dylan and her mother a voice and a platform to air their truth. (In another interview Ziering revealed that Mia didn’t want to do the documentary, but she agreed after Dylan told her how important it was to her.) In that vein, though not new to those who followed the case, here are some of the most shocking revelations from the premiere episode (now available on Crave).

1. Allen’s intense relationship with his daughter

Even before the allegations of abuse surfaced, those within the family circle were skeptical of Allen’s intense relationship with his adoptive daughter. According to Mia, he never wanted to be a father and when they first got together he had very little to do with her seven other biological and adoptive children. But when they decided to have a child together and had difficulties conceiving, he said he wouldn’t mind adopting a little blonde, blue-eyed girl. From the start, he was smitten with Dylan. However two years later when Mia gave birth to Ronan (a boy, when Woody stated in interviews that he’d hoped for a girl) Woody reportedly began separating Dylan from her mother, claiming that Mia was Ronan’s parent and Woody was meant for Dylan.

2. Dylan grew up in fear

In the documentary, several people (including family friends and Ronan) recall that when Dylan was a little girl she became fearful of her father and how he would often separate her from the other children. It got to the point where she would run and hide when he got home, or, according to Mia, she would pretend to be an animal or some other thing in her imagination that wouldn’t talk so that she wouldn’t have to interact with her father. By the time Dylan was 5 or 6 she began seeing a therapist because she was so withdrawn, and according to the doc she twice told the professional that she had “a secret.” That therapist never communicated that part of the conversations to Mia.

3. The public took note

While some perceived Allen’s affections for his daughter as doting, others noted that it seemed strange. At one point Allen flew Dylan’s forgotten stuffed animal first-class across Europe so that she could have it. And he was constantly in the same room as her while she played, just staring at her. Eventually, after witnessing Allen and Dylan together in public, a noted psychologist contacted Mia to tell her that she believed something was “off.” According to Mia, that was the point where the “floodgates” opened and she stopped ignoring her own instincts. Allen started going to therapy, where his worker agreed the relationship was too intense. However at the time that was chalked up to the fact that Allen just didn’t know how to be around children.

4. Inappropriate contact was recounted by family friends

In the doc’s first hour, there are stories about how Allen used to sleep with Dylan in bed, both of them in their underwear. “He would just wrap his body around me very intimately,” Dylan says. Meanwhile, Mia reveals that she would sometimes find her boyfriend kneeling in front of her daughter with his head in her lap, which was one of her first warning signs. Later, Dylan recalls how her father taught her to suck his thumb and use her tongue. A family friend also recounts a similar story of catching Dylan sucking her father’s thumb when she was younger, but Allen reportedly shrugged it off at the time, claiming that it soothed her.

5. Mia found Soon-Yi's nude photos

As the first episode begins to wrap, the story turns to the day that Mia went to her boyfriend’s apartment for something (the pair always lived separately), and she found “raunchy,” x-rated, Hustler type Polaroids of her adoptive daughter Soon-Yi. Soon-Yi was in university at the time and when a distraught Mia confronted her, she didn’t blame her daughter at all. She told Woody to leave, and following a conversation with her therapist, Mia decided to tell Dylan and Ronan the truth. “I remember my mom told me and Ronan, ‘Daddy took naked pictures of Soon-Yi.’ And that was sort of the first instance that I thought, ‘Oh. It’s not just me,’” Dylan says as the episode comes to a close.

The first episode of Allen v. Farrow is available now on Crave. New episodes are released Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.

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