Hayley Atwell Joins Actors Vowing Never to Work With Woody Allen Again

Hayley Atwell has joined a mounting lists of actors and other power players in Hollywood who have vowed never to work with Woody Allen again.

The actress played Angela Stark in Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream in 2007. It was her first role in a major motion picture, long before she became known across several mediums as Peggy Carter, the spy who had a love affair with Captain America in the 1940s.

In an interview with The Guardian, Atwell said that the Me Too movement and the Time’s Up campaign have given her the courage to say that she won’t work with men like Woody Allen anymore. Reporters asked how her experience was on set with Allen.

“I haven’t spoken about this before,” she said. “It was my first film and I didn’t feel directed by him at all. I didn’t have any kind of relationship with him. And that was fine but bizarre. It was a great opportunity, so I did the best I could and left. I didn’t know back then what I know now.

“Would I work with him now? No,” she stated. “And I stand in solidarity with his daughter and offer an apology to her if my contribution to his work has caused her suffering or made her feel dismissed in any way. It’s exciting that I can say this now and I’m not going to be blacklisted.”

Allen’s daughter, Dylan Farrow, first accused of molesting her in 1992, when she was seven years old. The highly publicized case cast a shadow of Allen’s creative accolades, but ultimately, investigators decided that the accusation was false.

Allen’s career weathered the public relations disaster and he has managed to keep working all these years, but with the Me Too movement picking up steam in the past four months, celebrities are taking another look at the 82-year-old director.

In early December, Farrow herself wrote an op-ed for The L.A. Times, titled “Why has the #MeToo revolution spared Woody Allen?” Since then, many cast members of his most recent film, A Rainy Day in New York, have announced that they were donating their salaries from the project to the Time’s Up legal defense fund and other relevant charities.

Atwell was asked what the Me Too movement means to her in general.

“For me, it’s about better representation and treatment across all industries,” she said. “This past year, the conversation has been blasted open in quite an exciting way. It carries a lot of grief, rage, frustration and fear but could lead to deep cultural change. What’s brilliant is the solidarity of the women speaking out. It’s created a new vocabulary. I feel galvanised by it.”

“I’ve always been outspoken but this movement has created a quiet confidence that we can call things out when they’re not OK – not just sexual harassment but any abuse of power.”