The headline on the latest in-depth interview with Woody Allen calls it one “he won’t read.” That’s because Allen has, by his own admission, gone to great lengths to inoculate himself against knowing what the world thinks of him. That inoculation means that, according to the director, he never really engaged in any of the commentary around his well-publicized marriage to Soon-Yi Previn—the adopted daughter of his then-partner Mia Farrow. So, as far as Allen is concerned, his 19-year marriage to Previn has been hugely beneficial. To both of them. Or maybe just to him.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Allen says the scandal around his marriage didn’t touch him at all. “I was immune, yes I was,” he says. “You can see I worked right through that, undiminished. Made films all through those years and at the same rate I was making them. I'm good that way. I am very disciplined and very monomaniacal and compartmentalized.” As for Soon-Yi, he refers to her as “one of the great experiences of my life” before going on to explain how their relationship allowed her to bloom.

She had a very, very difficult upbringing in Korea: She was an orphan on the streets, living out of trash cans and starving as a 6-year-old. And she was picked up and put in an orphanage. And so I've been able to really make her life better. I provided her with enormous opportunities, and she has sparked to them. She's educated herself and has tons of friends and children and got a college degree and went to graduate school, and she has traveled all over with me now. She's very sophisticated and has been to all the great capitals of Europe. She has just become a different person. So the contributions I've made to her life have given me more pleasure than all my films.

This description of Soon-Yi as something of a protégé dovetails with Allen’s 2015 interview with NPR, where he siad he “was paternal” and that his wife “responded to someone paternal.” Allen explains the appeal: “She deferred to me, and I was happy to give her an enormous amount of decision-making just as a gift and let her take charge of so many things. She flourished.”

This relationship exists in a vacuum for Allen who insists the scandal of it didn’t touch him “in the slightest” and says “I never, ever, ever read anything about myself. Not my interviews, not stories about me. I never, ever read any criticism of my films. I scrupulously have avoided any self-preoccupation.” An odd statement for someone whose peppered his entire filmography with filmic versions of himself. When asked if he has been in contact with Mia Farrow, Allen says dismissively, “No. I don’t think she lives in New York. I think she lives in Connecticut. I’m not sure. Or travels for UNICEF or something.”