Kate Winslet shows Hollywood how to be outspoken about Woody Allen. It's about time. | Source: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
If Kate Winslet could turn back time, she’d never work with Woody Allen.
In an exclusive interview, the Oscar-winning actress says she regrets working with the disgraced director.
And while it’s great that she had such a phenomenal epiphany, the question of why the rest of Hollywood hasn’t followed her lead remains in the air.
There was a time when working on a Woody Allen film meant that you were in the creme de la creme of the acting world. And it was in that spirit that Kate Winslet worked with him on 2017’s “Wonder Wheel.” She also — perhaps even more embarrassingly — worked with convicted rapist Roman Polanski on 2011’s “Carnage.”
Fortunately, today, Winslet has regrets about both of those choices .
It’s unbelievable to me now how those men [Woody Allen and Roman Polanski] were held in such high regard, so widely in the film industry and for as long as they were. I have to take responsibility for the fact that I worked with them both. I can’t turn back the clock. I’m grappling with those regrets but what do we have if we aren’t able to just be f**king truthful about all of it?
This is a very different tune from the one she was singing three years ago , where she called working with Allen “extraordinary.’ You can listen to her sing his praises in the video below.
It’s great that Winslet is taking responsibility for her choices, but why isn’t Hollywood doing the same thing?
The issue of Roman Polanski is another story for another day, but the issue of Woody Allen is one that needs to be addressed here and now.
Leaving aside the gross and disturbing allegations against him , he is one of the most over-rated directors in the history of cinema. His films are marginally good — but they depict a sub-section of New York that is grossly homogenous and devoid of the city’s true culture. His nebbishy tics and lazy story-telling have become more pronounced as years go on, and at best he’s famous merely because he’s rich and privileged enough to be so.
Yet, despite all this, he still has his fair share of vociferous defenders — including Diane Keaton, Scarlett Johannson, and Blake Lively. And yes, Woody Allen even has “regular people” who defend him too, because this is 2020 and the world is gross.
Hollywood has always had a problem with performative activism. But now is one of those times where they need to take a stand and cancel Woody Allen once and for all.