Almost two weeks after filmmaker Woody Allen spoke out about the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scandal to say he hopes it doesn't lead to a 'witch hunt atmosphere', director Judd Apatow has called out Allen on Twitter for being what he perceives to be part of the problem.
Yesterday afternoon, the director of films such as Knocked Up and This Is 40 retweeted an article by IndieWire which revealed Allen's new film includes a sexual relationship between an adult and 15-year-old girl.
In the caption, the 49-year-old father-of-two, husband to actress Leslie Mann, wrote: 'It is sad that he is obsessed with all these young actresses and none of them run when offered the job.'
Apatow's warning to young actresses comes days after Manhattan filmmaker Allen said he felt 'sad' for Weinstein following the allegations.
'There's no winners in that, it's just very, very sad and tragic for those poor women that had to go through that,' he told BBC News.
Allen also expressed his concerns that the Weinstain allegations might result in further reputation damage to Hollywood's male figures.
'You also don't want it to lead to a witch hunt atmosphere, a Salem atmosphere, where every guy in an office who winks at a woman is suddenly having to call a lawyer to defend himself,' he added.
In 2016, Allen's son Ronan Farrow - who incidentally was one of the journalists who investigated Weinstein and uncovered his alleged abuses - published an essay in The Hollywood Reporter discussing the sexual assault allegations against his father by his ex-wife Mia Farrow's adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow.
'Woody Allen was never convicted of any crime,' Dylan Farrow wrote in an open letter for The New York Times in 2014.
'That he got away with what he did to me haunted me as I grew up. I was stricken with guilt that I had allowed him to be near other little girls. I was terrified of being touched by men. I developed an eating disorder. I began cutting myself. That torment was made worse by Hollywood.'
Years later, Allen denied he molested his adopted daughter to The New York Times.
In his letter to the publication, he wrote: 'No one wants to discourage abuse victims from speaking out, but one must bear in mind that sometimes there are people who are falsely accused and that is also a terribly destructive thing.'
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