The ‘Spider-Man’ (2002-2007) star James Franco, who played the role of Harry Osborn, has recently acknowledged sleeping with his students from his Studio 4 acting school in North Hollywood, which he used to run before. In an interview with The Jess Cagle Show on SiriusXM, he said on Wednesday that he used to struggle with his sexual addictions and for that he used to sleep with his students at that time, “Look, I will admit, I did sleep with students. Over the course of my teaching, I did sleep with students, and that was wrong.”
In 2019, five women accused James for exploitative behaviour and sexual assault at his school. Though, Franco and his lawyer had denied about the allegations previously. He was also accused of forcing his students to do seductive scenes and to perform provocative roles with him in the name of teaching. About these allegations, Franco said in the show, “It was not a master plan on my part. But, yes, there were certain instances where I was in a consensual thing with a student and I shouldn’t have been.”
In February 2021, those women dropped their claims as James Franco officially admitted the allegations and agreed to settle down the issue for $2.2 million in late June. In the show when Cagle asked him how he was not been aware of the power imbalance between a teacher and a student, James said, “Of course I knew, you know talking to other people, other teachers or whatever, like, yeah, it’s probably not a cool thing. At the time I was not clear-headed… so I guess it just comes down to, my criteria was, like, if this is consensual I think it’s cool, we’re all adults.”
Franco also admitted in the show that he has cheated on his previous relationships. He said that his sponsor had suggested him the idea not to settle down to be in the limelight.
He also spoke about his long term friend and collaborator, Seth Rogen, who has stopped working with James Franco further, after he got accused of sexual conduct. Franco said, “I love Seth Rogen. I worked with him for twenty years, we didn’t have one fight. He was my absolute closest work friend, collaborator, we just gelled. And what he said is true, we are not working together right now and we don’t have any plans to work together.” Franco said that back then Rogen’s comments about him in an interview were hurtful but now he understands that Seth Rogen had to speak for himself because during Franco’s sexual conduct he was silent.
