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The BBC has put Ordeal by Innocence on hold after allegations were made against Ed Westwick.
The BBC has put Ordeal by Innocence on hold after allegations were made against Ed Westwick. Photograph: Wiktor Szymanowicz / Barcroft Im/Wiktor Szymanowicz / Barcroft
The BBC has put Ordeal by Innocence on hold after allegations were made against Ed Westwick. Photograph: Wiktor Szymanowicz / Barcroft Im/Wiktor Szymanowicz / Barcroft

The entertainment industry is in a sex scandal muddle

This article is more than 6 years old
Catherine Bennett
Double standards make it difficult to determine who will be punished over sexual allegations and who will thrive

Among the numerous murder suspects in Agatha Christie’s Ordeal by Innocence, newly dramatised for the BBC, the young Micky Argyle is presented by the author as not notably appealing. “Handsome”, yes, but with a “reckless, angry, unhappy face”.

In this adaptation, intended as a highlight of the BBC Christmas schedule, Micky is played by Ed Westwick. In a Vanity Fair piece about the show at the beginning of November, the scriptwriter, Sarah Phelps promised “a nice murder, twisted deviance and savagery”.

Within a week, two women, Kristina Cohen, then Aurelie Wynn had alleged, separately, that they were raped by Westwick. He has strenuously denied the allegations – including a recently added one of assault – saying they were “unverified and provably untrue social media claims”. The BBC, meanwhile, put the series indefinitely on hold. “The BBC is not making any judgment but, until these matters are resolved, we will not include Ordeal by Innocence in the schedules”.

But if it is not, as above, making any judgment on Westwick, the BBC is plainly, by postponing one of its most cherished productions, making an important, perhaps exemplary, statement on how seriously Savile’s former home now takes accusations of sexual misconduct against an individual who was not under suspicion during filming.

It could also be understandable caution on the part of an organisation whose building is prominently adorned with a sculpture whose creator was long ago revealed to be an incestuous paedophile who even abused the family dog. Though, obviously, what with Eric Gill prancing about in his priestly shortie habit, it couldn’t have known that back in 1932.

In time, the BBC may even want to extend this concern for appearances to factual programming: disputed allegations of historic workplace flashing – by its best-paid employee, Chris Evans – still being something that licence fee payers are expected to overlook.

In ignoring certain allegations (including that Evans, in an account he rejects, grabbed a colleague’s breasts), the BBC makes another judgment which may reassure any participants in further, large-scale productions who are confused as to which levels of earlier sexual misconduct, involving one cast member, are severe enough to require major rescheduling.

As in Hollywood, in fact, it would help if senior figures could agree, for the sake of clarity and fairness, on the process whereby alleged sexual misdemeanours by artists and performers, taking into account factors such as fame, race and power, and the passage of time, result in outcomes ranging from, say: professional disgrace for Kevin Spacey: tarnished, but enduring eminence for Roman Polanski; some disappointed sighing around Dustin Hoffman; and, in the case of Casey Affleck – an Oscar.

Even pre-Weinstein, Affleck’s award, for his appearance in Manchester by the Sea, was widely interpreted as a lamentable indication, on the Academy’s part, that the star’s settlements of two (denied) separate accusations of protracted harassment, in 2010, were not that big a deal. How else to explain it? It’s difficult to believe these professionals would be naive enough, like the Archers fans who persecuted the actor playing Rob Titchener, to mentally merge the “outrageous” Affleck with the film’s hero, a solitary caretaker, bleakly atoning for a completely different kind of offence.

But if so, could a further sombre performance from Affleck, covered in a sheet in A Ghost Story, allow for further reputational enhancement when he presents the 2018 Oscar for best actress? Having almost been persuaded, after seeing Hugh Grant in Paddington 2, into forgiving his earlier collaboration on media regulation with Max Mosley, I appreciate that these transfers of affection can be hard to resist.

Art/life confusion can’t explain, on the other hand, why The Death of Stalin still seems immune to misconduct contamination, given that one of its stars, Jeffrey Tambor, who plays Stalin’s horrendous deputy, Malenkov, has recently been accused of harassment (which he denies) by three women. He has since left the cast of the Amazon Studio series, Transparent. That Tambor had not, when Armando Iannucci’s film was made, been accused, may not, to anyone who endorses the BBC’s dropping of Ordeal by Innocence, or the retrospective purging of Kevin Spacey, be much of an excuse. The severity of one misconduct charge doesn’t make a lesser one insignificant.

What the still-bright prospects of The Death of Stalin may affirm, however, is that a great film – or series – should be allowed to survive post-production, unrelated disclosures about the off-set life of an individual performer, acting a part.

Woody Allen and Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan Photograph: RONALD GRANT

If, however, respect for testimony by alleged victims does require backdated, as well as future disgrace, then consistency surely demands that the BBC reviews, as well as the Agatha Christie, all screenings of work featuring men only later accused of misconduct. A fast-expanding category that already includes, as well as Spacey, Charlie Sheen , Ben Affleck, Jeremy Piven and, unhappily for Tootsie , Dustin Hoffman. Piven has strenuously denied the allegations, branding them “absolutely false and completely fabricated”.

In a recent interview, Armie Hammer, who plays the older lover in Luca Guadagnino’s glorious Call me by Your Name, objected to a Hollywood system that celebrated Casey Affleck’s Oscar, but crushed another compromised figure, Nate Parker, once subject of a rape charge, of which he was acquitted. Parker, in whose film Hammer appeared, was sent to what the latter calls “director’s jail”: “It’s like there are two standards for how to deal with someone who has this kind of issue in their past.”

By extension, these variable standards can affect the fortunes of co-workers, such as Hammer. Sony still plans to release a film featuring Kevin Spacey (reconfigured as Christopher Plummer), because, it argues: “a film is not the work of one person.”

But sometimes, actually, it is. Only Woody Allen, who has been acclaimed as the “auteur personified”, can explain why so many of his films, have given, since he cast himself, aged 44, as the partner of a super-appreciative 17-year-old, played by Mariel Hemingway, the impression of a creep’s manifesto.

To date, there are few signs that an industry which is willing to condemn, post Weinstein, even honourably intended TV series and films, will ever recoil from what appears to be Allen’s mission: to make routinely grotesque Hollywood age gaps, between male and female leads, look stupidly unambitious.

While other new work is effectively erased because a participating actor was subsequently shamed, Allen, who survives allegations of abuse by Dylan Farrow, and the fact of his sexual relationship with her college-aged step-sister (daughter of Allen’s ex-partner) just comes back with yet more February-December trolling. The Farrow allegations, which Allen denied, were investigated at the time but no charges were pursued.

His latest offering, the forthcoming A Rainy Day in New York, features, it’s reported, intimacies between a 44-year-old male character, and a young female one, played by the latest in the Hemingway line of proteges, Elle Fanning (19).

Successive Woodyminded stars have explained why, even if that’s not entirely great, we shouldn’t “indict the work”. Separate the art from the artist. And forget one of Allen’s most quoted gags: “I can’t listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.”

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