James Franco says it ‘was wrong’ to sleep with students as he addresses 2018 sexual misconduct allegations
James Franco now admits he had sex with women in his acting school, addressing accusations that surfaced nearly four years ago.
The Oscar nominee’s confession came during an interview on SiriusXM’s “The Jess Cagle Podcast” about the 2018 claims of five women, including four of his students, who told the Los Angeles Times that Franco had been exploitative or acted inappropriately.
“Over the course of my teaching, I did sleep with students, and that was wrong,” Franco told podcast host Jess Cagle in preview clips released Wednesday.
“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.”
Asked how he wasn’t aware that sleeping with students would create a power imbalance, Franco reiterated that he felt everything was OK at the time as long as the encounters were consensual.
The actor, 43, also claimed he never slept with a student in his “Sex Scenes” master class — a course he said was inaccurately named.
“It should have been called, you know, ‘Contemporary Romance’ or something like that,” Franco said. “It was a class where they did scenes about whatever their romance is, what they go through as young people. So meeting people on dating apps, or breakups, or just a bad date, stuff like that. That’s what was being done in that class. It was not sex scenes.”
Franco who received an Oscar nomination for 2010′s “127 Hours,” founded his since-shuttered Studio 4 drama school in New York and Los Angeles in 2014.
Earlier this year, he reached a $2.2 million settlement for a lawsuit filed in 2019 by former students Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, who claimed Franco “sought to create a pipeline of young women who were subjected to his personal and professional sexual exploitation in the name of education.”
During his interview with Cagle, which will air Thursday, the “Disaster Artist” star said he battled sex addiction after getting sober.
“Attention from women, success with women also became a huge source of validation for me,” Franco said. “The problem with that is, like, I’m sure you can guess, like any sort of drug or anything, there’s never enough.”
Franco claimed he has “been doing a lot of work” in the years since the allegations against him emerged.
“I’ve really used my recovery background to kind of start examining this,” Franco said, “and changing who I was.”
The Golden Globe winner said he frequently cheated on his girlfriends before beginning his relationship with current partner Isabel Pakzad. He described himself as previously being “blind” to power dynamics and the feelings of other people.
“I stayed sober from alcohol all that time, and I went to meetings all that time,” Franco said. “I even tried to, you know, sponsor other people, and so in my head, it was like, ‘Oh, I’m sober. I’m living a spiritual life.’ Where on the side, I’m acting out now in all these other ways, and I couldn’t see it.”
Earlier this year, Seth Rogen — who worked with Franco on comedy films including “This Is the End,” “Pineapple Express” and “The Interview” — said he has no plans for another collaboration.
Franco confirmed that to Cagle, but said he loves Rogen and “didn’t have one fight” with the filmmaker in 20 years.
”He was my absolute closest work friend, collaborator,” Franco said. “We just jelled. And what he said is true, you know, 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. He had to answer for me, because I was silent.”
