![]() Yes, it was unorthodox, uncomfortable, disruptive to our family and it hurt my mother terribly. He agreed and started taking her to Knicks games. It was my mother who first suggested, when Soon-Yi was 20, that Woody reach out and spend time with her. In truth, Woody and Soon-Yi rarely even spoke during her childhood. (She got a master’s degree in special education from Columbia University!) And the claim that they started dating while she was underage is totally false. She is not Woody’s daughter (adopted, step, or otherwise), nor is she developmentally challenged. The public attacks on Soon-Yi by complete strangers still stagger me, as does the general misinformation that so many people consider fact. My mother insisted that we remove both of them from our lives, and we had no choice but to accept.Įven people who doubt Dylan’s claims of assault, often cling to Woody’s relationship with Soon-Yi as justification for their skepticism about him. Then, of course, the news of Woody and Soon-Yi went public – and everything changed. I never once saw anything that indicated inappropriate behavior at any time. In the evenings, he’d come over to Mia’s apartment and spend time with us. As the years went by, Satchel, Dylan and I were frequent visitors to his movie sets and his editing room. We played catch and chess, fished, and shot hoops. I was thrilled when Woody officially became my father, since he had already taken on that role in my life. In 1992 she successfully petitioned to allow Woody to co-adopt both Dylan and me, writing to the adoption agency, detailing what an excellent father he was. Mia had adopted me, her seventh child, as a single parent in 1980. At the age of 49, Woody seemed to delight in his new role of father. Two years later she and Woody had their only biological child, Satchel. My older siblings were all either biological or adopted children of Mia and her ex-husband André Previn. ![]() He’d make her a couple of slices of toast with cinnamon or honey and be there as she ate her breakfast. We’d spend this peaceful time together before waking Dylan. While he read The New York Times, I’d grab the Post and go straight to the comics and word puzzles. I would wake up before the others, and so he and I would sit at the kitchen table together for breakfast. To help explain why, I want to give you a little background about our family.Įven though Woody and Mia never married – and he never lived with us or even stayed the night at our apartment in the city – he would often come over around 6:30 in the morning, bringing two newspapers and a bunch of muffins. I would keep my eyes on Woody until she returned. I had also learned repeatedly that to go against her wishes would bring horrible repercussions. I thought my job was to support my mother and I desperately wanted her approval, as did all of her children. (So often did she repeat it that Satchel would announce to one of our nannies, “My sister is fucking my father.” He had just turned four.) My mother was our only source of information about Woody – and she was extremely convincing.Īs the oldest child at the house that summer day, I took Mia’s warnings very seriously. For months now, she had been drilling it into our heads like a mantra: Woody was “evil,” “a monster,” “the devil,” and Soon-Yi was “dead to us.” This was the constant refrain, whether or not Woody was around. She was understandably furious: seven months earlier she had learned that he was in an intimate relationship with my 21-year-old sister Soon-Yi, after discovering Polaroids of her in Woody’s apartment. ![]() But my mother had put all of us on notice not to let him out of our sight. ![]() On the surface, it was not unlike his previous visits to our country home. There was another grown-up in the TV room that day, sitting on the floor, watching “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” with the rest of us – Woody Allen. We were being supervised by our nanny, Kristi, as well as Casey’s nanny, Alison, and our French tutor, Sophie. I was 14 at the time, and home that day with my little sister Dylan, who had just turned seven, my four-year-old brother Satchel (who now goes by the name Ronan) and Casey’s three kids. My mother, Mia Farrow, was out shopping with her close friend since childhood, Casey Pascal. Augwas a warm, sunny day in Bridgewater, Connecticut, but in our family’s country home, Frog Hollow, there was a chill in the air.
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