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Soon-Yi Previn, the wife of the film director Woody Allen, sent emails to Jeffrey Epstein telling the convicted sex offender that the #MeToo justice movement “has gone too far” – and smearing an underage girl at the center of a sexting case as “despicable and disgusting” rather than the former US congressman who went to prison for illicitly messaging the minor, according to recently released government files.
At one point, Previn also wrote about how her stepbrother Ronan Farrow received more “prestige … than he deserves” in a New York Times article published months after his journalism about Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie mogul and now-convicted sex offender, won a share of a Pulitzer prize and kicked off the #MeToo movement.
Those documents emerged amid Friday’s tranche of the so-called Epstein files, which built upon earlier partial disclosures and was released by the US justice department in connection with a congressional transparency law. They also surfaced as Previn’s complicated history in the public eye looms.
Many, including Farrow, have accused Allen, 90, of marrying Previn, 55, after grooming her in her youth while dating her mother – though the couple has said she was an adult when their relationship turned romantic.
Previn and Allen were among the myriad notable figures to maintain a friendship with the late Epstein even years after the affluent financier had pleaded guilty in Florida state court in 2008 to procuring a minor for prostitution. The new files, and ones released beforehand, are replete with communications surrounding social gatherings – even detailing how Epstein once gifted them genetic testing kits.
And, the new files also show, Previn sent emails to Epstein or an executive assistant of his as late as the fall of 2018, less than a year before officials say he died by suicide while he was in federal custody awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
Among the millions of most recent Epstein files are numerous messages addressed to or from Allen or the film-maker’s assistant. Yet some messages that are arguably the most striking are ones involving Previn, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
She for instance sent a September 2016 Daily Mail article to Epstein about how former congressman Anthony Weiner had texted a 15-year-old asking her to undress for him and engage in rape fantasies. The article had ignited another scandal for Weiner, whose political career had already nosedived upon previously being caught sexting young women while he was still married.
“Wow,” Epstein replied to Previn.
“I know,” Previn responded, before adding, “I also thought it was disgusting what the 15-year-old did to” Weiner.
“I hate women who take advantage of guys and she is definitely one of them. She knew exactly what she was doing and how vulnerable [Weiner] was and she reeled him in like fish to bait,” Previn said of the child at the center of the case. “What is her excuse for being a despicable and disgusting person who preys on the [weak]?”
She concluded the screed with: “So manipulative on her part. She should be ashamed of herself.”
Weiner subsequently pleaded guilty in May 2017 to federal charges of transferring obscene material to a minor and would get a one-year-and-nine-month prison sentence.
For a time beginning in the fall of 2017, the files show, Previn wrote about the #MeTooMovement as well as Farrow to Epstein – and in one instance to herself.
An agent of Allen’s forwarded Previn a Deadline article following up on her stepbrother’s explosive reporting about multiple rape allegations against Weinstein in the New Yorker. The Deadline article recounted how an NBC News executive told staff that Farrow had previously done reporting about Weinstein for the network that it decided against publishing – but that it was different than the bombshell the New Yorker put out to effectively vault the #MeToo movement into high gear.
Allen’s agent wrote to Previn, “Now he’s probably done at NBC,” where Farrow had worked for three years beginning in 2014. Previn then forwarded the agent’s email to Epstein without comment.
Then, in early 2018, Previn forwarded Epstein an email she initially had sent to herself with the subject line “Just as the Me Too movement has gone too far so has Botox.”
Roughly eight months after that, after Farrow had won a share of that year’s investigative reporting Pulitzer, Previn would send herself another email, Friday’s Epstein files set shows. Its subject read: “I thought this was funny in today’s New York Times in the Arts section.”
The 19 September 2018 message’s body read, in part, “It gives Ronan Farrow too much prestige. More than he deserves.”
It is not clear from the files to which article Previn referred. But around then, the Times’ Arts section published an article about how the previous night’s Emmy awards mostly avoided mentioning #MeToo, with one exception being when co-host Colin Jost joked that the scariest words for a network executive could hear were “Sir, Ronan Farrow is on line one.”
Federal authorities arrested Epstein on sex-trafficking charges in July 2019, during his former friend Donald Trump’s first presidency. About a month later, officials say, he died in a federal jail in Manhattan.
The circumstances of Previn’s marriage to Allen have long drawn scrutiny. The actor Mia Farrow and her then husband Andre Previn adopted Soon-Yi from South Korea when she was six. Mia Farrow, Ronan’s mother, divorced Andre Previn and then began seeing Allen when Soon-Yi was 11. The couple has said Allen and Soon-Yi Previn’s romantic relationship began when she was 21 – while he was still dating her mother.
A 2021 HBO documentary explored allegations that Allen sexually assaulted his daughter Dylan in 1992. Both he and Previn responded to the documentary Allen v Farrow with a statement saying “these allegations are categorically false” as well as alluding to how they had never resulted in criminal charges.
Interest in how the federal government handled the case against Epstein surged after Trump promised to release a full list of the late man’s clients while successfully campaigning for a second presidency in 2024. However, after taking office in early 2025, Trump’s justice department caused bipartisan uproar by declaring no such list existed.
The president later sought to alleviate some of the political pressure he invited on himself by signing a congressional bill directing his justice department to disclose more of the Epstein files than had previously been released. Friday’s tranche of Epstein files, along with a couple of others since November, stemmed from that bill.
