“I didn't want to hurt anyone,” he said.
Four years after the sexual assault charges leveled against him, James Franco broke his silence on Wednesday, December 22, as part of an episode of the "Jess Cagle Podcast", broadcast on SiriusXM.
In January 2018, five women, four of whom were at the time students in his drama school, accused the actor, in the columns of the
Los Angeles Times
, of sexual misconduct towards them.
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"I slept with students"
"In 2018, there were complaints and an article about me," said the 43-year-old actor. At the time, I was just like, "I'm going to keep quiet. I'm going to take a break." It didn't seem like a good time to say anything. ” Today, the forties admits in the radio show to having had sex with the students of his former establishment, the Playhouse West Studio 4, created in 2014 and which closed its doors in 2017. In October 2019, two women, Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, had filed a complaint against the actor for sexual misconduct.
“When I was a teacher, I slept with students, and it was wrong,” he admitted.
But like I said, that's not why I created the school, and it wasn't me who selected the students in my class.
So it was not a "Machiavellian plan" drawn up by me.
But yes, there were times when I had a consensual relationship with a student, and I shouldn't have. "
Before adding: “At the time, I did not have clear ideas, as I said.
I guess my main point was, "If this is a consensual relationship, that's fine. We're all adults ..." "
The "Sex Scenes"
The actor also felt that he should not have called one of his lessons "Sex scenes".
“It wasn't about sex scenes,” he said.
I didn't teach people how to shoot in that kind of scene or in intimate scenes of any kind.
It was a provocative title. ”
Before continuing: “There is a program called
The Chair,
in which
the cool teacher, the one everyone wants to take the course for, titled this latest "Sex and American Literature", to be provocative and cool.
But you read Melville there, and that was what I did too. ”
The actor argued that his class should have been called "Contemporary Romance" instead.
“It was a class in which the students played scenes centered on their romances, on what they were going through as young people.
On meeting on dating apps, on the subject of breakups, or just bad dates.
This is what was done in this class.
They weren't sex scenes.
"
Sex addiction
James Franco has also revealed that he suffered at the time from a sex addiction, which would have succeeded an addiction to alcohol, developed when he was younger. “It's such a powerful drug (...), he explained. What's insidious is that I stayed sober all this time, and attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I even tried to sponsor other people. I thought, "Oh, I'm sober. I'm living a spiritual life." "
A sex addiction for which the actor said he has been on treatment for four years. “I worked a lot,” he said. And I think I can be pretty confident (
on his recovery, Ed
) saying, four years, you see?
I was recovering previously from alcoholism (...) So I really used my experience and my past healing to analyze this sex addiction and change who I was. "
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The discord pin
The actor also admitted that he had "cheated" all his partners before meeting his partner Isabel Pakzad. He claims to have become, at the time, “completely blind to the dynamics of power” between men and women and to “people's feelings”. His appearance at the 75th Golden Globes in 2018, wearing a Time's Up pin, generated an outcry on social networks. Actress Ally Sheedy, who starred with the actor in
The Long Shrift
in 2014, was particularly outraged. "James Franco has just won," she wrote on Twitter at the time. Please never ask me why I left the movie industry. ”
The next day, Monday, January 8, testimonies from women accusing him of sexual harassment began to flourish on Twitter. "Quickly ask Franco the difference between flirting with students and sexual harassment," tweeted Anne Helen Petersen, a reporter for the
American
Buzz Feed
. "Hey James Franco, nice your Time's Up pin at the Golden Globes, remember when you told me a few weeks ago that the completely nude scenes that I shot in two of your movies for $ 100 a day don't were not operating because I had done them under contract. It's time to talk about this! ”Said Sarah Tither-Kaplan.
Or: “Nice pin's James Franco.
Remember the time you lowered my head in a car towards your apparent penis and the other time you told my friend to come to your hotel when she was 17?
Having already been caught doing the same thing with another 17-year-old girl? ”Wrote Violet Paley, retweeted almost 10,000 times.
Since then, James Franco has reached an agreement with the two women who filed a complaint against him in 2019, and paid them two million dollars (1.7 million euros).
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