Ronan Farrow has been asked on live TV whether he is the secret son of Frank Sinatra.
The investigative journalist, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, was appearing on Real Time with Bill Maher to promote his new book when the question was asked.
“Now, what do you think your father would think about what you’re doing now?” Maher asked, in relation to his investigations into high-profile sexual misconduct.
“Meaning?” Farrow responded, to which Maher replied: “If he were alive.”
“I knew I was walking into that so I asked,” Farrow said. “I didn’t want to give you the sound-bite of ‘Which one?’”
Farrow, whose father has always been stated to be filmmaker Woody Allen, has long been dogged by rumours that he is in fact Sinatra’s son, the late singer having once been romantically involved with Farrow’s mother Mia.
In 2013, Mia Farrow told Vanity Fair that Sinatra could “possibly” be Ronan’s father.
“I feel like there’s no one more #MeToo-y than Frank Sinatra,” Maher continued, before suggesting that Farrow looked more like Sinatra than Allen. “You do own a mirror, don’t you?”
Farrow eventually said that he “doesn’t know” what Sinatra would have thought of his reporting, but joked that Maher could “ask my mom”.
Farrow’s new book, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, recounts his investigation into Weinstein and the figures that attempted to prevent allegations of his misconduct from surfacing. Weinstein has denied all allegations made against him.
