Whether one loves or hates Woody Allen, it’s undoubtedly true that he reigned for decades as one of America’s greatest filmmakers. Moreover, after having been happily married for almost 30 years to Soon-Yi Previn, Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter, the scandals associated with his and Farrow’s ugly breakup seem to have dissipated, leaving Allen as a respected eminence grise.
It was in that role that Woody Allen appeared on Bill Maher’s show for an interview during which he talked about Donald Trump. Allen was unstinting in his praise of Trump’s professionalism when they worked together in 1998 on Allen’s Celebrity, a movie about a divorced couple, with the man, who initiated the divorce, flailing, while the woman achieves post-marriage success in the media. Here’s Trump’s brief cameo:
Yes, it was only five seconds or so, but a shot like that can take hours to film. According to Allen, Trump made the work easy:
????NEW: Dem Filmmaker Woody Allen — who once directed Trump — *HEAPS PRAISE* on president's acting????
— Jason Cohen ???????? (@JasonJournoDC) September 1, 2025
"He was a pleasure to work with and a very good actor. He was very polite and hit his mark and did everything correctly and had a real flair for show business."@DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/tNJMzcjq46
Kudos to both Maher and Allen for being able to be objective about Trump the person, even as they admit to opposing him politically.
What struck me so much about Allen’s praise for Trump’s professionalism is that I’ve heard that before. And here I must take you back in time.
As you all recall, during the run-up to the 2016 election, when Democrats were starting to panic about Hillary’s prospects, they revealed the Access Hollywood tape as their October surprise. In the audio, Trump can be heard shooting the breeze with the guys on the bus.
During that conversation, which is bawdy because that’s what guys do, especially when they’re posturing, Trump talks about wooing women and explains that when you’re rich and famous, there is a class of women who will allow you to do anything to them, including (as the Victorians would have said) taking liberties. Notably, Trump did not say he’d done that kind of thing; he only said that these women exist, and that, when dealing with these women, wealth grants the man automatic consent.
Of course, the Democrats and NeverTrumpers seized on that line to accuse Trump himself of assaulting women. Fortunately, most Americans were not impressed.
However, what ought to have been noted all along was that the clip was taken from a much longer video. Thus, that snippet was completely out of context. The video as a whole was telling.
Diana Davison, a Canadian legal researcher who specializes in defending those falsely accused in the criminal justice system (especially men falsely accused of rape and other sexual crimes), did something no one else did: She watched the entire video. What she discovered is that the video as a whole puts the lie to the whole “grab ‘em by...” charge leveled against Trump.
Over the course of 20 minutes, Davison goes through the entire video practically frame by frame, starting with that bus conversation and then following Trump as he gets off the bus and enters the Access Hollywood set. Near the end of Davison’s dissection of Trump’s conduct, she reaches this conclusion (beginning at 18:00; emphasis mine):
No matter how many allegations you hear in the news in the next few weeks, just go back to that tape and see how Donald Trump actually behaves, despite Billy Bush egging him on. If Donald Trump is going to make a grab for someone, it would have happened right there. But he never did, because he doesn’t do that. He was a perfect gentleman despite the set-up. Now I’m not saying that Donald would be the perfect president, but he shouldn’t lose the election based on lies.
I know that this is an old video about a long-gone story, but it still makes for fascinating viewing. That’s because it provides such an insight into how the media manipulates material. There’s a straight line from the fake “grab ‘em” scandal to CBS slicing and dicing the interview with Kristi Noem to keep its viewers ignorant about what a bad man Kilmar Abrego Garcia really is.
And of course, I consider the video relevant now, not just because it’s part of a continuum of the lies the media spread about Trump, his people, and his policies, but also because of how Woody Allen echoes Davison’s observation. Nine years ago, she said, “He was a perfect gentleman,” and last week, Woody Allen said, “He was a pleasure to work with...He was very polite...” That is the real Trump.
Image created using AI.