Woody Allen accuses Timothée Chalamet of ‘denouncing’ him to improve his chances of winning an Oscar

Actor donated his earnings from Allen’s movie A Rainy Day in New York after sexual abuse allegations against the filmmaker re-emerged

Woody Allen has claimed Timothée Chalamet only decided to “denounce” him in order to improve his own chances of winning an Oscar.

Chalamet, who starred in Allen’s film A Rainy Day in New York, said he did “not want to profit” from the movie and announced he would donate his salary to three charities including Time’s Up.

The actor’s decision came after allegations of sexual abuse against Allen by his daughter Dylan Farrow re-emerged. Allen has always denied the claims.

In his new book Apropos of Nothing, Allen accuses Chalamet of only making such a statement because he was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for Call Me by Your Name.

“All the three leads in Rainy Day were excellent and a pleasure to work with,” writes Allen. “Timothée afterward publicly stated he regretted working with me and was giving the money to charity, but he swore to my sister he needed to do that as he was up for an Oscar for Call Me by Your Name, and he and his agent felt he had a better chance of winning if he denounced me, so he did.”

He added: “Anyhow, I didn’t regret working with him and I’m not giving any of my money back.”

Chalamet did not win the Best Actor award, which went to Gary Oldman instead for his role as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour.

Other actors who denounced Allen after Farrow’s renewed abuse allegations include Greta Gerwig, Mira Sorvino, Colin Firth, Michael Caine and Jeff Daniels.

“The fact these actors and actresses never looked into the details of the case (they couldn’t have and come to their conclusion with such certainty) did not stop them from speaking out publicly with dogged conviction,” writes Allen.

“Some said it was now their policy to always believe the woman. I would hope most thinking people reject such simple-mindedness.”

Alec Baldwin, Scarlett Johansson, Diane Keaton, Javier Bardem and Joy Behar are among those to have spoken out in Allen’s defence.

Allen’s memoir was released by Arcade Publishing on Monday (23 March) after it was dropped by Hachette Book Group following mass walk-outs at the company.

The filmmaker uses his new memoir to respond to allegations of child sexual abuse made against him.

“I never laid a finger on Dylan,” he writes, “never did anything to her that could be even misconstrued as abusing her; it was a total fabrication from start to finish.”