LONDON, Sept 15 — Woody Allen has said Jeffrey Epstein “couldn’t have been nicer” when he and his wife were invited to dinners hosted by the convicted sex offender.

The 89-year-old director told The Sunday Times that he had not known Epstein before attending a December 2010 dinner also attended by the Duke of York.

Allen explained that he and Soon-Yi Previn were invited by a publicist to join “one of those British royals” and other guests at the gathering.

At the time, Epstein had recently completed a prison sentence for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.

Allen recalled that Epstein told the guests he had been “falsely put in jail in some way” and was now giving money to scientists and universities.

“He couldn’t have been nicer,” Allen said, adding that the guests around Epstein embraced him as a “substantial character.”

Soon-Yi, the adopted daughter of Allen’s former partner Mia Farrow and her ex-husband Andre Previn, said she had wanted to meet Prince Andrew.

She later described the duke as “such a dullard” and admitted she “could not stand” him.

Allen noted that he and his wife became regular guests at Epstein’s house, where they dined with what he described as “illustrious people.”

He insisted that he never saw Epstein with underage girls, only with adult girlfriends, and added that Ghislaine Maxwell was not present at those events.

Epstein died in a New York prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, while Prince Andrew later stepped down from public life and paid a settlement to Virginia Giuffre.