Selena Gomez's mum told her not to do Woody Allen film

From Digital Spy

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, many celebrities have gone out of their way to distance themselves from accused abusers like Harvey Weinstein and Woody Allen.

While some of the accused have faced their own reckonings and had their work pulled out of the public eye, Allen's accusations stem from his daughter Dylan Farrow's 2014 open letter in The New York Times accusing him of sexually assaulting her when she was 7 years old.

Shortly after, Allen denied the accusations in his own op-ed. (He was investigated but never prosecuted for the accusations in 1993, following his split with actress Mia Farrow.)

Despite these statements, Allen is still set to release a 2018 film, titled A Rainy Day in New York, as part of his partnership with Amazon. The movie is set to star Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Hall, Liev Shreiber, Diego Luna, Jude Law, and notably Selena Gomez.

Many fans of Gomez have expressed disappointment that she would agree to be in an Allen film, especially since her fanbase skews towards younger women, but in a reply to an Instagram comment, Gomez's mother Mandy Teefey expressed that she attempted to talk Selena out of taking a job with Allen to no avail.

The comment, as attached to an unrelated Instagram post, was in response to a user asking Teefey to "make Selena write an apology about woddy [sic] Allen film".

Teefey responded: "Sorry, no one can make Selena do anything she doesn't want to. I had a long talk with her about not working with him and it didn't click.

"Her team are amazing people. There is no fall person here. No one controls her. She makes all her own decisions. Nomatter how hard you try to advise. It falls on deaf ears."

This statement on Gomez making her own decisions comes shortly after Teefey made a statement about her daughter's resumed relationship with Justin Bieber, in which she said she was unhappy with their reunion but also said "Selena is an adult and can make her own choices."

Teefey stating that she spoke with her daughter about working with Allen is the first time anyone from Gomez's camp has spoken about the controversy around A Rainy Day in New York and Allen's increasingly tarnished reputation.

Gomez hasn't publicly addressed her decision to work on the movie, although Us Weekly reports that she has since donated more than the value of her salary from the film to the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund.

It comes as her co-stars Rebecca Hall, Griffin Newman and Timothée Chalamet all expressed regret for working on the movie and donated their salaries to charities that benefit survivors of sexual abuse.

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