In the dim glow of a New York café, Woody Allen’s eyes narrowed as he broke his long-held silence on Jeffrey Epstein, his voice trembling with defiance. “He was a friend,” Allen confessed, shrugging off the horrors that defined the disgraced financier’s life.T

In a rare, lengthy interview granted to a small French publication in late 2025, Woody Allen broke his near-total silence on the subject of Jeffrey Epstein. For years, the filmmaker had refused to comment on his documented social ties to the disgraced financier, despite photographs, flight logs, and multiple witness accounts placing him in Epstein’s orbit during the 1990s and early 2000s.

What Allen eventually offered was not an apology, nor a straightforward denial, but something far more unsettling: a philosophical shrug wrapped in elaborate intellectual justification.

“I knew Jeffrey the way people knew Bernard Madoff,” Allen stated. “Charming, generous with invitations, always interesting company if you didn’t look too closely at the numbers. People like that exist in every era. You meet them at dinner parties, you laugh at their jokes, and years later you discover the cellar was full of bodies. Life is long. You can’t vet everyone.”

He went further, comparing Epstein’s crimes to historical figures who were “monstrous in private yet stimulating in public,” citing Lord Byron and Roman Polanski as examples of men whose art and conversation were valued despite moral catastrophe. “We still read Byron,” Allen remarked. “We still watch Polanski’s films. Society has always made these accommodations. Why pretend otherwise?”

The comments have reignited fury among those who have long criticized Allen’s own legal and personal history. Rather than distancing himself from Epstein’s world of wealth, power, and exploitation, Allen appeared to normalize it — framing predatory behavior as an unfortunate but recurring feature of human nature, no different from infidelity or financial fraud.

Critics argue the statement is less a defense of Epstein than a defense of a certain kind of male privilege: the belief that intelligence, wit, and cultural capital should continue to purchase absolution long after the masks have fallen.

Allen concluded the interview by saying he has “no interest in joining the chorus of condemnation” because “condemnation is easy; understanding is difficult.”

Many readers, however, heard something else entirely: not understanding, but permission.