They say you can't control who you fall in love with.
Well, when it comes to Woody Allen we can't help but think that it's true.
He fell in love with the most unlikely person, and when he announced that he was getting
married to his adopted step-daughter, the world came to a standstill.
Woody himself admitted that he knew their relationship looked 'exploitive' but assured
that it was anything but.
Nobody could have imagined how his wife - and mother of his bride-to-be - felt when she
found out about the news, especially when she had encouraged the pair to bond.
Stay tuned to Rumor Juice while we take a deep dive into Hollywood's most unconventional
relationship.
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Allen, now 86 years old, got married to Soon-Yi Previn in 1997.
It was a marriage that gained international headlines because of the nature of their relationship.
Not only was Previn just a college student when the pair's relationship first began,
but she was the adopted daughter of Woody's former partner, Mia Farrow
People couldn't seem to make sense of their union, and to be honest, we don't blame them
for it.
Allen knew what the world was thinking about their marriage, and he did his best to defend
their relationship.
"I admit, it didn't make sense when our relationship started.
On the surface, we looked like an irrational match.
I was much older and she was an adopted kid…."
The American director was 35-years Soon-Yi's senior.
Naturally, under the unique circumstances of their relationship, it was met with a mountain
of criticism.
When he described his relationship with her as "paternal," it only raised more eyebrows.
"She responded to someone paternal."
Woody explained.
Before his marriage to Previn, Allen and Mia had been dating since 1980.
They had been together for around 12-years when things took a drastic - and very surprising
- turn of events.
Woody publicly announced that he was romantically involved with Soon-Yi Previn, then 21 years
old, sharing, "It's real and happily all true."
Mia had adopted her daughter, Soon-Yi when she was around 7 years old.
However, because of her new daughter's age, the actress explained that they struggled
to form a mother-daughter bond.
Farrow was already a mother to seven other children before meeting Allen.
The actress admitted that she had to "work very hard over many years" to create a bond
with Soon-Yi, making an effort by bringing her onto her film sets.
She was determined to show her new daughter that she was going to be there for her no
matter what.
She wanted Soon-Yo to understand that she was now part of their family and she wasn't
going to be abandoned.
Mia explained, "… I did not want her to be separated from me, even overnight."
It was during this time that Farrow claims she and her then-partner Woody Allen began
to experience problems in their relationship.
Mia explained that after a while, it didn't matter what she thought or how she felt; she
was there to serve him.
Allen also had no interest in raising children, so the couple made the decision to live in
separate apartments on opposite sides of New York City's Central Park.
In 1984, Farrow suggested to Allen they have a biological child together, and his response
was very non-committal.
"He said, 'Yeah, I would not object to that, but you have to understand I have zero interest
in a kid, so you would be entirely responsible, financially and in every way,'" Farrow claimed.
However, the couple struggled to fall pregnant, so Farrow suggested that they adopt a child
together.
The actress claimed that Allen said that if she wanted to adopt another child, it wouldn't
ruin the relationship, but he would still want nothing to do with the child.
"I thought... that's fair," she recalled.
The actress fell back into the role of "the perfect housewife" and attempted to be the
best version of what he wanted.
She confessed that she tried to be funny, but not too funny, responding to questions
but avoiding being too talkative.
She added that Allen would always remind her of how lucky she was to be working with him
because he could pick up the phone and have her replaced with someone else in minutes.
The actress described her relationship with her former partner as "Woody's World," and
every part of it was controlled by him.
Mia admitted that she encouraged Allen to bond with Soon-Yi because she was the shyest
out of all of her children.
Allen did his best to form a relationship with all of his former partner's children,
taking them shopping and showering them with gifts.
"He started bringing all of them to basketball games.
I really encouraged him to go with Soon-Yi, too, because she was really shy."
Mia shared.
Woody confessed that it was during one of the basketball games that he realized that
he enjoyed spending time with Soon-Yi more than he should have.
Just a few years later, the American director was busy filming 'Husbands and Wives, and
his step-daughter came to visit him on set during a college break.
He showed her the movie 'The Seventh Seal' in his screening room, and when the movie
ended, they were alone in the room together.
"And quite smoothly, if I do say so myself, I lean in and kiss her."
Allen admitted, adding, "She is complicit in the osculation and to the point, as always,
says, 'I was wondering when you were going to make a move.'"
For a while, Woody thought that they could have their "little fling" and keep it a secret
since Soon-Yi wasn't living at home.
He thought it would be a nice and exciting experience for them, and then she could go
back to college and meet a guy her age and enter a "more conventional" relationship.
However, he didn't realize how attached to one another they had already become.
Mia found out about their relationship in the worst way possible.
She discovered private photographs of her adopted daughter in Woody's home.
The American director later explained that the photos were taken two weeks after his
relationship with Soon-Yi had ignited.
"They wouldn't put them in Playboy," Farrow said of the photos.
"They were Hustler pictures.
Really, really raunchy pictures."
Horrified by her discovery, Mia immediately ended things with Woody.
When she confronted him, Allen reportedly replied: "I'm in love with Soon-Yi.
I would marry her."
While both the filmmaker and Previn claim that they did nothing wrong and merely followed
their heart and whatever happened was well within their legal right, everybody has looked
at it differently from an ethical and moral perspective.
In fact, Mia has a different version of the story, claiming that Woody's relationship
with Soon-Yi began while she was still in high school.
On the other hand, Allen adamantly claims their relationship began after Soon-Yi's first
semester of college in December 1991.
"I love her so much and I didn't ever blame her, you know, because she was just a little
kid when he came into the family.
We were family and he was in my home as my partner and as such he had responsibilities."
Farrow explained.
The actress also explained that the only thing she could do was move past the hurt and pain
that Allen had caused her.
She had no way of understanding it but had to come to terms with her new reality.
She had to focus on her one job, which was to be there for her children.
Following the public announcement of their relationship in 1992, Previn spoke out for
the first time claiming that Allen was "never any kind of father figure" to her and rarely
spoke to her growing up.
She also added that when she and Woody became intimate, he and Mia had already ended their
romance.
Soon-Yi shared that she and her new beau bonded over films, sports, and art.
However, she didn't shy away from adding that she thought Mia would have been angry if he
had taken up with another actress or his secretary.
She also alleged that Mia had a history of being "violent" with her.
Allen, on the other hand, held guilt over their relationship "I didn't feel that just
because she was Mia's daughter, there was any great moral dilemma.
It was a fact, but not one with any great import.
It wasn't like she was my daughter."
He continued to explain that he was never Soon-Yi's father, he had never lived in the
same house as Mia and her children, he had never attended family dinners with them all
together.
He assured them that he was not a father or stepfather to her adopted children in any
sense of the word.
Five years later, Allen married Previn, sharing that they had decided to wed "because the
timing felt right" for them.
The American director had just finished filming 'Deconstructing Harry', and Previn was graduating
with a master's degree in special education from Columbia University.
Over the years, the couple decided to adopt two daughters, and their relationship seemed
to flourish, despite the constant criticism that they constantly faced.
In an exclusive interview, Allen shared that he has a "perfectly healthy" relationship
with Previn and that there was "no downside" to getting together with her.
"The heart wants what it wants.
There's no logic to those things.
You meet someone and you fall in love and that's that."
He explained.
Woody also shared that he "liked her youth and energy" and that she "deferred" to him.
He added that he was happy to give her an "enormous amount of decision making" just
as a gift and let her take charge of many things in their relationship.
This was very interesting to hear, considering that Mia had previously recounted her relationship
with Woody as very controlling, and he never let her make any decisions when they were
together.
There's no doubt that Woody and Soon-Yi's romance is one of the most criticized and
unconventional relationships Hollywood has ever seen.
While we're left with more questions than answers while trying to understand their union,
we still can't help but feel heartsore for Mia Farrow, who was still left betrayed and
heartbroken by the two people she had trusted and loved.
We only hope that Mia is able to find peace with the betrayal and move on to have a happier
and scandal-free life.