Rebecca Hall is looking back on speaking out about regretting working on Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York.
In 2018, Hall had a small role in Allen’s film A Rainy Day in New York, which also starred Timothée Chalamet, Jude Law and Elle Fanning. After Allen’s daughter Dylan Farrow, accused him of sexually abusing her as a child and women came forward with sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein, Hall said at the time that she regretted the decision to star in the film. “I see, not only how complicated this matter is, but that my actions have made another woman feel silenced and dismissed,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “I regret this decision and wouldn’t make the same one today.”
In an interview with the Guardian published on Sunday, the actress was asked how she now feels about those comments.
“I struggle with this one. It’s very unlike me to make a public statement about anything. I make the stuff, that’s how I am political. I don’t think of myself as an ‘actor-vist’, I’m not that person. And, I kind of regret making that statement, because I don’t think it’s the responsibility of his actors to speak to that situation,” Hall said.
She recalled filming and being “outside, shooting a street scene with Jude Law where, literally, my dialogue was, ‘You’ve got to stop sleeping with these fucking 15-year-olds.’ And that day, the Weinstein scandal breaks. There’s a bank of journalists and paparazzi right there, because Weinstein’s a producer on it, and they’re all listening to me say this.”
Every interview about the film centered around Allen and Weinstein which left Hall “in a tangle.” “Like, in this moment, it’s the most important thing to believe the women. Yes, of course, there’s going to be complications and nuances in these stories, but we’re redressing a balance here. So I felt like I wanted to do something definitive,” she said.
Hall donated her salary to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund. “But it just became, ‘another person denounces Woody Allen and regrets working with him’, which is not what I said actually. I don’t regret working with him. He gave me a great job opportunity and he was kind to me,” Hall said.
She added, “I don’t talk to him any more, but I don’t think that we should be the ones who are doing judge and jury on this.”
When asked how she would respond if it were to happen now, Hall said, “I wouldn’t say anything – my policy actually is to be an artist. Don’t come out and state your stuff so much. I don’t think that makes me apathetic or not engaged. I just think it’s my job.”
At the time, A Rainy Day in New York actor Griffin Newman also donated his salary on the film to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. That same month director Kevin Smith donated his residuals on movies backed by Harvey Weinstein to the nonprofit Women in Film, which advocates for women in entertainment.
Chalamet donated his salary to three charities: Time’s Up, the LGBT Center in New York and RAINN.
