It has been four years since actor James Franco had sexual misconduct allegations leveled against him and he has been pretty silent about the claims…until now. The actor has given his first in-depth interview regarding the allegations and while I don’t condone anything Franco has done, his admissions and comments about sobriety from one vice leading to the addiction to others, are very telling and worth listening to.
The actor made headlines in January 2018 when the “Los Angeles Times” published an article that detailed the claims of five women who accused James Franco of sexual misconduct. Four of the women were students attending his acting class in the film school that Franco founded. At the time, Franco denied the allegations and even spoke publicly on the matter on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert where he refuted the claims further. The #MeToo movement was very much in the public eye around that time and many men in power in Hollywood were being called out for their predatory behavior against women. Due to this, Franco was essentially canceled and he hasn’t been a part of a major film or television project since. In June 2021, Franco paid $2.2 million to settle the sexual misconduct lawsuit from 2019 and as a part of the settlement, both parties issues a joint statement that declared, “While Defendants continue to deny the allegations in the Complaint, they acknowledge that Plaintiffs have raised important issues; and all parties strongly believe that now is a critical time to focus on addressing the mistreatment of women in Hollywood. All agree on the need to make sure that no one in the entertainment industry — regardless of race, religion, disability, ethnicity, background, gender or sexual orientation — faces discrimination, harassment or prejudice of any kind.”
Franco sat down with The Jess Cagle Podcast and spoke openly for the first time about the allegations and he’s taking ownership for the things he did that were wrong and also detailed his road to get help:
“In 2018, there were some complaints about me and an article about me and, at that moment I just thought ‘I’m gonna be quiet. I’m gonna be, I’m gonna pause.’ Did not seem like the right time to say anything. There were people that were upset with me and I needed to listen. There’s a writer Damon Young and he talked about when something like this happens, the natural human instinct is to just make it stop. You just want to get out in front of it and whatever you have to do apologize, you know, get it done. But what that doesn’t do is allow you to do the work to, and to look at what was underneath. Whatever you did, even if it was a gaff or you said something wrong or whatever, there’s probably an iceberg underneath that behavior, of patterning, of just being blind to yourself that isn’t gonna just be solved overnight. So I’ve just been doing a lot of work and I guess I’m pretty confident in saying like, four years, you know? I was in recovery before for substance abuse. There were some issues that I had to deal with that were also related to addiction. And so I’ve really used my recovery background to kind of start examining this and changing who I was.”
Franco has been candid in the past about his past addictions, particularly with alcohol, and it’s something that he kicked when he was only 17. What Franco soon realized was that even though he was clean and sober from one vice, and even attending AA meetings and offering to be a sponsor to those who needed help, he replaced it with another addiction and that was attention from women. Sex addiction is something that followed for Franco and while he was clean in spiritual in one facet of his life, he wasn’t acknowledging another part of his life that was getting out of control.
“Along the road of trying to get success and climb the top of that mountain, attention from women, success with women also became a huge source of validation for me. The problem with that is…like any sort of drug or anything, there’s never enough. It was never-ending. It’s such a powerful drug. I got hooked on it for 20 more years. The insidious part of that is that I stayed sober from alcohol all that time. And I went to meetings all that time. I even tried to sponsor other people. 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.”
Franco did admit to sleeping with students at his film school but wanted it to be known that this wasn’t the reason he started it. That being said, he realizes now that sleeping with any of his students was wrong but does point out that every single encounter was consensual.
“Over the course of my teaching, I did sleep with students, and that was wrong. 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 I was not clearheaded, as I’ve said. 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….'”
The topic of his friend and longtime collaborator Seth Rogen was also addressed as Rogen has declared in recent interviews that has no plans to work with Franco again after the allegations. Franco understands Rogen’s stance and goes on to say, even though his words were hurtful, he gets that others had to speak for him when he chose to be silent:
“I just want to say, I absolutely love Seth Rogen… He was my absolute closest work friend, collaborator, and we just gelled, and what he said is true, we aren’t working together right now, and we don’t have any plans to work together. Because I was silent, he had to answer for me, and I don’t want that. That’s one of the main reasons I wanted to talk to you today, is I just don’t want Seth or my brother or anyone to have to answer for me anymore.”
If you want to watch the full interview, we’ll have it linked below but just my personal hot take on this, I think he realizes how much he screwed up, he’s doing work to fix himself, and a part of it is owning up to a lot of this publicly. It may not be enough to fix his image completely in Hollywood but I think it’s a start in a sense that some may give him credit for admitting his faults and his willingness to seek help to fix himself. There may be some that are cynical and think this is a master plan to get back to his former glory but I think Franco is very much aware that he likely will never get there again. Again, not condoning his past behavior but I’m not against anyone making moves to make amends and get help.