Actress Rebecca Hall has walked back a 2018 statement in which she seemed to express regret at working with Woody Allen.

In a recent interview, actress Rebecca Hall has walked back a 2018 statement in which she seemed to express regret at working with director Woody Allen. The development itself isn’t particularly noteworthy, but what’s interesting is how the statement provides some insight into the peak of the #MeToo era, when due process was tossed aside in favor of a “believe all women” standard.

During that period, Ronan Farrow resurfaced old accusations that Allen had molested the daughter that Allen and his girlfriend, Mia Farrow, had adopted. (Ronan is another of their children.) Though the director was toasted by Hollywood for decades after the accusations, and actresses including Hall were eager to work for him, he came to be viewed under a new light during the #MeToo era. Hollywood stars began running away from Allen as though he had the plague.

Hall, who did two films with Allen, released a statement six years ago saying that after viewing the resurfaced accusations, she felt that her actions “made another woman feel silenced and dismissed.” She added, “I am profoundly sorry. I regret this decision and wouldn’t make the same one today.”

Now, in an interview with the Guardian, she says she regrets making the statement and denies any regrets over her work with Allen. She said she never liked to be political, stating, “I don’t think it’s the responsibility of his actors to speak to that situation.”

She said that she was working on the Allen movie A Rainy Day in New York when the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke:

Every interview that followed revolved around Allen and Weinstein, “and I was in a tangle. Like, in this moment, it’s the most important thing to believe the women. Yes, of course, there’s going to be complications and nuances in these stories, but we’re redressing a balance here. So I felt like I wanted to do something definitive.” That’s when she made the statement, trying to articulate her discomfort, but remain balanced. “But it just became, ‘another person denounces Woody Allen and regrets working with him’, which is not what I said actually. I don’t regret working with him. He gave me a great job opportunity and he was kind to me.” Beyond that? “I have no idea. I don’t talk to him any more, but I don’t think that we should be the ones who are doing judge and jury on this.” How would she respond if it were to happen now? “I wouldn’t say anything – my policy actually is to be an artist. Don’t come out and state your stuff so much. I don’t think that makes me apathetic or not engaged. I just think it’s my job.”

It’s certainly true that leading up to #MeToo, there were too many men in powerful positions who were predatory toward women and created an environment that made victims too intimidated to come forward. But it’s also true that in the frenzied period after the Weinstein revelations, normal standards of evaluating accusations were abandoned. Hall here is explaining that she had no interest in being an activist actor but felt peer-pressured into it. We saw this on a much more prominent stage later in 2018, when Democrats tried to use a sexual assault accusation against Brett Kavanaugh to sink his nomination despite the lack of corroborating evidence.

NR’s friend and former colleague Kyle Smith emphasizes that Hall declined to go further by admitting that the accusation against Allen doesn’t stand up to scrutiny (which Kyle argued diligently here at NRO).  I would just note that many people conflate the super icky reality that Allen married Farrow’s grown adopted daughter (whom he didn’t adopt) with the accusation that he molested their jointly adopted daughter when she was seven. But they are not the same thing.