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Wallace Shawn on why he'll continue to work with Woody Allen: 'A miscarriage of justice'
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But the larger circumstances surrounding the production and release of Rifkin's Festival are far from typical. Originally shot on location in Spain in 2019, it's the first film that Allen directed following the termination of his five-movie deal with Amazon Studios part of the still-ongoing fallout surrounding Dylan Farrow's renewed allegations of sexual abuse. In 2014, Allen's adopted daughter with Mia Farrow published an open letter in The New York Times shining a new spotlight on her claims of childhood sexual assault that had previously resulted in a very public 1993 court battle. (Allen was ultimately not charged, but a judge denied him custody of Dylan and two of her siblings, describing him as "self-absorbed, untrustworthy and insensitive.")
Following her open letter, Farrow has continued to make her case in interviews and a closely-watched 2021 HBO documentary series. Meanwhile, studios like Amazon have exited partnerships with Allen, and past collaborators like Drew Barrymore, Kate Winslet and Colin Firth have expressed regret over working with him. For his part, the filmmaker who financed Rifkin's Festival with funds from the Spanish company, Mediapro has repeatedly denied her charges, and criticized the actors who have spoken out as "well-meaning but foolish."
Shawn is one of the performers, along with Javier Bardem and Diane Keaton, who continues to publicly defend Allen. Last year, when Rifkin's Festival was still awaiting a U.S. release date the movie premiered in European theaters in 2020 and finally debuts stateside on Jan. 28 he penned his own open letter for The Wrap, outlining his reasons for believing the director's version of events and chiding the actors who had "distanced themselves" from Allen.
"I was very upset that some of my fellow actors leapt to the conclusion that Woody was guilty of a serious crime that you can go to prison for without really knowing that much about it," Shawn says of his motivation for writing his letter. "Of course, if someone like [Dylan] says 'This happened to me,' I don't fault people for thinking 'That might be true.' But on the other hand, Woody said, 'That didn't happen,' and I didn't care for the fact that so many of my fellow actors didn't look into it any farther, and just assumed he was guilty."
"I've followed the case: I've read quite a bit about it, I saw the documentary trying to substantiate Dylan's story and I don't believe that this happened," Shawn continues. "So I was angry at my fellow actors and at the fact that Woody Allen someone who has done beautiful things for the world became a pariah. That's a miscarriage of justice in my opinion. I hope that the more of us who stick our neck out and say, 'You must not jump to that conclusion,' it will become easier for more people to say that."
"At the moment, people's agents tell them to denounce Woody and to not work with him. If more people like Scarlett Johansson and Dianne Wiest say, 'We're delighted to work with him,' then maybe eventually the tide will turn," he adds.
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For now, it's unclear whether the 86-year-old Allen will make another film. While he's previously announced plans for a Paris-set drama, the Covid-19 pandemic has delayed the start of that production. In some ways, Rifkin's Festival feels like a natural endpoint for Allen's filmography, although Shawn believes he'll make a 50th feature and beyond. "I'm sure it won't be his last," he says, adding that he'd be open to collaborating with Allen again, perhaps with the benefit of not having to be the leading man.
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As it turns out, imitation has served Shawn well in the past. With the 35th anniversary of The Princess Bride approaching later this year, the actor confesses that his performance as the rhyme-hating, wine-poisoning kidnapper Vizzini is modeled entirely after director Rob Reiner. "I didn't really appreciate the humor of The Princess Bride it's just not me at all," remarks the author of cerebral comedies like My Dinner with Andre and Marie and Bruce. "So I asked Rob, 'Could you please show me how you would say this line?" I asked him that repeatedly and he would do it, and I would imitate it."
According to Shawn, his Reiner imitation grew out of self-preservation. Before shooting began, the actor was made aware that he wasn't the filmmakers' first choice to play Vizzini, and that knowledge left him uncertain about his continued employment. "My agents told me who Rob really wanted," he recalls. "First choice: Danny DeVito. Second choice: Richard Dreyfuss. They didn't even say, 'You're the third choice.' I might have been the 25th choice, but all I knew was who the first two choices were, and they weren't me."
Having worked alongside DeVito in the New York theater world and on the set of the classic '80s sitcom, Taxi Shawn had firsthand experience with the actor's specific comic capabilities, and that reinforced the fear that his Princess Bride stint might be short-lived. "I knew that I could not do what he did, and I also knew that what they wanted was what he did," he says, chuckling.
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