Sam Amico
Woody Allen movies are generally lower budget but always consist of a variety of major names. Basically, whenever an Allen film is in the works, some of Hollywood’s most noted actors are involved. But, Rosie O’Donnell says she actually turned down an offer to work in an Allen movie — twice. This was back in the 1990s when O’Donnell was at her height as a sought-after performer.
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Allen, of course, has recently faced accusations of sexual abuse from ex-wife Mia Farrow. Theres even an entire HBO documentary, as it relates to their children.
“I had done an HBO special where I said everything about him,” O’Donnell told Howard Stern, via Entertainment Weekly. “And then I got on my [talk] show. So it’s the first year of my show [in 1996] and I get a call and they said, ‘He wants you to be in [1999’s Sweet and Lowdown]. I said, ‘Please send him my HBO special.’ And the woman said, ‘Oh he’s already seen it.’ And I said, ‘Send it anyway with two words: F— and no.’ And I sent it to him.”
Allen was not deterred, according to Rosie O’Donnell.
“They called back and said, ‘He really wants you to do it. He’d like to talk to you about it,'” O’Donnell recalled. “I said, ‘I’m not doing it. I’m not working for him or with him and being associated with him.'”
Allen, 86, has all but retired from filmmaking. Or at least he’s hinted that he might. He was first accused of sexually assaulting daughter Dylan Farrow back in 1992 when Allen and Mia Farrow split. Other accusations followed.
Allen V. Farrow
Sweet and Lowdown stars Sean Penn, Samantha Morton and Uma Thurman, with the plot centered on a 1930s jazz guitarist who has to deal with gangsters while falling for a mute woman.
It does not, however, feature O’Donnell. And that was by design, she emphasized.
But it did lead to a friendship between O’Donnell and Farrow.
“She heard that story [about rejecting the chance to work with Allen] and she called me to see if it was true and I said, ‘Oh yes, it’s true,'” O’Donnell told Stern. “And she started to cry and said, ‘Even my closest friends didn’t stick behind me during this and that here you did your HBO special and now you did this. I’m forever in your debt.'”
