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Film director Spike Lee apologises after defending Woody Allen and criticising 'cancel culture'

Lee called Allen “a great, great filmmaker” in an interview on Friday.

FILM DIRECTOR SPIKE Lee has apologised for words he said were “wrong”, after voicing support for Woody Allen and criticising cancel culture.

In an interview Friday on the New York radio station WOR 710, Lee called Allen “a great, great filmmaker”.

“This cancel thing is not just Woody,” he said.

“And I think that when we look back on it, (we’re) gonna see that, short of killing somebody, I don’t know if you can just erase somebody like they never existed.

“Woody’s a friend of mine,” said Lee. “I know he’s going through it right now.”

But the following day, Lee tweeted an apology and said his “words were wrong”.

“I do not and will not tolerate sexual harassment, assault or violence. Such treatment causes real damage that can’t be minimised,” he said.

Allen has been accused of molesting his daughter Dylan Farrow when she was seven years old in the early 1990s. Allen has long denied the allegation.

Earlier this year, he released a memoir through Arcade Publishing after his original publisher, Hachette Book Group, dropped the book amid widespread criticism.

Allen’s agreement with Hachette meant that he briefly shared a publisher with one of his biggest detractors, his son Ronan Farrow, whose book Catch And Kill was released last year by the Hachette division Little, Brown and Company.