Ronan Farrow is not happy that his publisher is also putting out Woody Allen's memoir

By Sam Barsanti | March 4, 2020 | 3:43am

Aux Features Books

Ronan Farrow is not happy that his publisher is also putting out Woody Allen's memoir

Photo: Noam Galai

Recently, Grand Central Publishing announced that it had picked up the rights to Woody Allen’s unpublished memoir Apropos Of Nothing, which it’s not planning to release on April 7. The book, which Grand Central has apparently been sitting on for a year after no other publisher would touch it, is apparently a “comprehensive account of his life, both personal and professional.” As it turns out, Grand Central is a division of Hachette Book Group, the publisher that released Ronan Farrow’s Catch And Kill last year, and he seems very unhappy that his own publisher decided to put out his father’s book despite, you know, everything. (If you need a refresher: Farrow’s sister Dylan has maintained for decades that Allen sexually abused her when she was a child, and Farrow’s book is literally about powerful Hollywood men dodging sexual assault allegations, so it’s a little baffling that Hachette was willing to put out Allen’s book.)

Today, Farrow posted a statement on social media saying he was “disappointed” to learn that Hachette was putting out Allen’s book and that it “concealed the decision” from both him and the Hachette employees who worked with him on Catch And Kill. Dylan Farrow also says she was never contacted by fact checkers from Hachette to verify anything in Allen’s book, leading Ronan Farrow to accuse the publisher of not bothering to fact-check it at all. He says the decision to publish the book is “wildly unprofessional” and shows a “lack of ethics and compassion” for victims of sexual abuse. He also says that he informed Hachette that he can’t “in good conscience” work with a publisher that would do something like this.