Drew Barrymore admits regret over working with Woody Allen during candid chat with Dylan Farrow

Drew Barrymore has expressed regret over working with Woody Allen on the 1996 film Everyone Says I Love You, saying she was ‘gas lit’ into turning a blind eye to the filmmaker’s troubled personal life at the time. 

The E.T. star spoke about the experience during a candid interview with Dylan Farrow, discussing the HBO Max docuseries Allen vs. Farrow, that sheds light on the 30-year feud between Woody, 85, and Mia Farrow and the sexual abuse claims against him. 

‘I worked with Woody Allen,’ Drew told Dylan in the sit-down chat on The Drew Barrymore Show on Monday. ‘I did a film with him in 1996 called, ‘Everyone Says I Love You,’ and there was no higher career calling card than to work with Woody Allen.’

Drew, 46, then confessed that she regretted the decision once she had children (she shares two daughters Olive, eight, and Frankie, seven, with ex Will Kopelman) which changed her perspective on the situation.  

Drew said: ‘Then I had children and it changed me because I realized that I was one of the people who was basically gas lit into not looking at a narrative beyond what I was being told and I see what is happening in the industry now and that is because of you making that brave choice. So thank you for that.’ 

An emotional Farrow held back tears as she responded to Drew: ‘Thank you, hearing what you just said, I am trying not to cry right now.’

She continued: ‘It is just so meaningful because it’s easy for me to say, “Of course you shouldn’t work with him he’s a jerk, he’s a monster,” but I just find it incredibly brave and incredibly generous that you would say to me that my story and what I went through was important enough to you to reconsider that.

Mia, 76, publicly accused Woody of molesting her adoptive daughter Dylan, now 35, in 1992, when the couple split, which the director has strenuously denied. 

Some critics who have blasted the documentary as being one-sided claim that Mia has been on a ‘crusade’ to destroy Woody because he had an affair and later married her adopted daughters Soon-Yi Previn. 

But Drew, who was 21 when she worked with Woody, made a point of stating during the Monday interview that the Farrow family ‘did not produce’ the documentary.

‘No, they came to us,’ Dylan said, adding: ‘They went to everyone and that was important, even just to me to know that a level of journalistic integrity that was there.’

Dylan’s adoptive mother Mia has seen a great deal of tragedy in her life, including the premature deaths of three of her 14 children, accusations of violent rages and tragic deaths of her own siblings.