Outside of his role on “The Deuce,” James Franco has largely been absent from mainstream films and TV projects over the past few years. This, of course, is a result of the sexual misconduct allegations against him during his time as an acting teacher years ago. But now, after a long time out of the spotlight, Franco has decided to begin his comeback tour.
In the interview with Jess Cagle on SiriusXM (see below), James Franco addressed the sexual misconduct allegations against him. For those that don’t remember, Franco was accused of grooming and coercing some of his female students into sexual encounters with him while he was teaching acting lessons. He never was charged with a crime and settled out of court in some of the accusations for unspecified damages.
“Over the course of my teaching, I did sleep with students, and that was wrong,” he explained. “But like I said, it’s not why I started the school and I wasn’t the person that selected the people to be in the class. So it wasn’t a ‘master plan’ on my part. But yes, there were certain instances where, you know what, I was in a consensual thing with a student and I shouldn’t have been.”
At the time, Franco didn’t think there was anything wrong with the situation and didn’t believe he was abusing his power over the young women.
“At the time I was not clearheaded, as I’ve said,” Franco added. “So I guess it just comes down to my criteria was like, ‘If this is consensual, like, I think it’s cool. We’re all adults so….’”
Over the course of the time away from the spotlight, the actor said that he’s been “doing a lot of work” on himself. He even said that his time in recovery for substance abuse (before the allegations) has helped him on this new path.
“And so I’ve really used my recovery background to kind of start examining this and changing who I was,” he explained.
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Also of note, Franco brought up his fractured friendship with Seth Rogen. When the allegations came out, Franco did what many of the people in a #MeToo situation do—he disappeared. Unfortunately, for Rogen, who has been a steady collaborator with Franco dating back to their time on “Freaks and Geeks,” he had to field a ton of questions about his controversial friend. Because of that, Rogen has publicly opened up about not working with Franco any longer and not really having much of a relationship with the actor, in any capacity, in the years since the allegations first came out.
This is something that Franco admitted is his fault and something he wished didn’t have to play out as it did.
“I just want to say, I absolutely love Seth Rogen. I love Seth Rogen,” said Franco. “I worked with him for 20 years and we didn’t have one fight. For 20 years, not one fight. He was my absolute closest work friend, collaborator. We just gelled… What he said is true. We aren’t working together right now and we don’t have any plans to work together. Of course, it was hurtful in context, but I get it, you know, he had to answer for me because I was silent. He had to answer for me and I don’t want that. And so that’s why, you know, it’s one of the main reasons I wanted to talk to you today is I just, I don’t want Seth or my brother [Dave Franco] or anyone to have to answer for me anymore.”
You can watch the interview below: