Timothée Chalamet felt ‘forced’ to turn on Woody Allen, Epstein email says

As Timothée Chalamet campaigns to win a best actor Oscar in March, the “Marty Supreme” actor may have to contend with being the latest boldface name to have potentially embarrassing information about him revealed in the Epstein files.

An email to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which is part of more than 3.5 million files released by the U.S. Justice Department, suggests that the media-savvy actor didn’t publicly renounce director Woody Allen in 2018 out of any principled support for the #MeToo movement or victims of sexual assault. Rather, he did so for public-relations purposes, according to the email.

The email was sent to Epstein from his good friend, powerhouse Hollywood publicist Peggy Siegal, who also described Chalamet as her “good friend.”

After Chalamet worked with Allen on the film, “A Rainy Day in New York” in the fall of 2017, he began promoting his film “Call Me By Your Name,” which also involved a public-relations campaign to score his first best-actor Oscar nomination.

That nomination came through on Jan. 23, 2018. But prior to getting the nomination, Chalamet publicly distanced himself from the legendary “Annie Hall” director — even though he was “sick about being forced into any action by the press,” according to the January 27, 2018 email from Siegal.

In the email, Siegal told Epstein how their mutual friend Allen had become the latest target of the “#MeToo witch hunt.” She wrote: “I am sick about Woody. This “#Me Too” witch hunt is out to destroy an 80 year old global cinematic treasure and it makes me so sad.”

Allen had indeed become the latest powerful man in Hollywood to face a reckoning during the #MeToo movement, which had begun several months earlier after the New York Times and New Yorker published blockbuster reports on producer Harvey Weinstein’s long, alleged history of sexual assault and harassment of actresses and other women who worked for him.

Allen’s past conduct came under scrutiny due to renewed interest in allegations made by his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow, who alleged that Allen molested her in 1992 when she was 7. Journalist Ronan Farrow, who authored the New Yorker’s Weinstein story, also is Allen’s son and Dylan Farrow’s younger brother. Ronan Farrow took his sister’s side and used his platform to promote her decades-old allegations against their father.

Allen was never formally charged and has consistently denied abusing his daughter. In 2021, he and his wife Soon-Yi Previn, with whom he began an affair while in long-term relationship with her adopted mother Mia Farrow, called the allegations against him “categorically false.” 

As for Chalamet, he was among a number of stars who were put on the spot about working with Allen  as the #MeToo momentum grew in 2017 and 2018. Dylan Farrow gained online support after she called out stars like Kate Winslet, Blake Lively and Greta Gerwig for publicly defending working with her father, or for trying to sidestep the question. She praised other stars like Elliott Page, Jessica Chastain and Susan Sarandon for saying they would never work with him again.

According to Siegal, Chalamet “could not go anyplace on his ‘Call Me By Your Name’ Oscar campaign without the press hounding him about working with Woody.” As Vanity Fair reported at the time, Chalamet had been asked several times at press events about working with Allen.

Chalamet finally responded to those questions by announcing on Instagram on Jan. 15 that he had donated his salary for “A Rainy Day in New York” to three different charities, including the anti-sexual violence organization RAINN, Vanity Fair and CNN reported. 

“I don’t want to profit from my work on the film,” Chalamet wrote, according to Vanity Fair. He said he had joined the Allen film because he is “a young actor trying to walk in the footsteps of more seasoned actors I admire.”

But Chalamet said he was “learning that a good role isn’t the only criteria for accepting a job—that has become much clearer to me in the past few months, having witnessed the birth of a powerful movement intent on ending injustice, inequality and, above all, silence.”

Continuing, the actor said he ultimately decided to donate his salary to charities because he wants “to be worthy of standing shoulder to shoulder with the brave artists who are fighting for all people to be treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.”

But Siegal explained to Epstein that it wasn’t Chalamet’s choice to donate his salary or to make that kind of statement.

“His agents made him give his money away, supposedly not as a sign of Woody’s guilt, but (in) support of hysterical woman and media,” Siegal said. “He is genuinely upset about the whole thing and at 22 is a pawn in a bigger game.”

Siegal’s email only represents her version of events when it comes Chalamet’s decision to renounce Allen. There’s also nothing to suggest that Chalamet did anything questionable, other than to be a young star allegedly acquiescing to his agents’ concerns about his public image.

This email from Siegal came as Esptein was tracking the fallout of #MeToo and advising Allen and other accused men behind the scenes, according to Epstein files viewed by the 19th News.

The financier famously cultivated access to rich and powerful men in media, business and politics, and the newly released Epstein files “provide a window into how he reacted and strategized in real time to the political and cultural earthquake of #MeToo,” according to The 19th News. The emails show him getting input from Siegal and other associates on the public response to the allegations against Allen and Weinstein, as well as those involving talk shw host Charlie Rose, comedian Louis C.K., former “Today Show” host Matt Lauer and ex-CBS chairman Les Moonves.

“The world is topsy turvey,” Siegal wrote in a Nov. 17, 2017 email. “That has been going on since the beginning of time (and that is not an excuse) has suddenly erupted in our day of massive global information as a new moral code of behavior.”

Allen’s wife of 28 years, Soon-Yi Previn, also had a lot to say to their friend Epstein about the #MeToo movement, saying it has “gone too far,” according to her emails to the late financier, which also have become public, the Daily Beast reported.

The year before, Previn also joined Epstein in defending disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, according to one email. She called the 15-year-old girl Weiner sent nudes to and requested participation in rape fantasies from, “despicable and disgusting.” Weiner pled guilty to transferring obscene material to a minor in 2017 and spent 15 months in federal prison for the crime.