Scarlett Johansson Is ‘Unaware’ of the Woody Allen Backlash That Blew Up Her Google Alert

Scarlett Johansson had an interview this weekend in The Guardian promoting Under the Skin, but things got interesting with questions about Dylan Farrow's open letter that condemned Hollywood for ignoring the allegations that Woody Allen sexually abused her as a child.

Scarlett Johansson had an interview this weekend in The Guardian promoting her upcoming sci-fi alien art film Under the Skin, but things got interesting when Carole Cadwalladr started lobbing questions about Dylan Farrow’s open letter that condemned Hollywood for ignoring the allegations that Woody Allen sexually abused her as a child.

Johansson was among the celebrities Farrow called out in her piece for working with Allen long after he was first accused of molestation. She appeared in three Allen films in short succession—2005’s Match Point, 2006’s Scoop and 2008’s Vicky Christina Barcelona—and has always spoken highly of the director. Her reaction to Farrow was pretty blunt: leave me out of it.

"I think it's irresponsible to take a bunch of actors that will have a Google alert on and to suddenly throw their name into a situation that none of us could possibly knowingly comment on. That just feels irresponsible to me," she said.

She added that she’s "unaware that there’s backlash" against Allen. "I think he'll continue to know what he knows about the situation, and I'm sure the other people involved have their own experience with it. It's not like this is somebody that's been prosecuted and found guilty of something, and you can then go, 'I don't support this lifestyle or whatever.' I mean, it's all guesswork."

It's a surprisingly candid take from ScarJo, much more aggressive than the statement Cate Blanchett issued during her Oscar campaign for Blue Jasmine, where she said she hoped the family would "find some sort of resolution and peace" from the "long and painful situation."

While she was apparently caught off-guard by the questioning (Cadwalladr then rolls right into the controversy over Johansson's appearance in ads for SodaStream), Johansson is making a fairly cogent point about the difficulty outside observers might have weighing in on an intense decades-long inter-family dispute that involves serious accusations of criminality. Although perhaps her phrasing could have been a little more sensitive, considering the nature of the accusations.