James Franco will attend the 2018 Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday, January 21, despite the recent sexual misconduct allegations made against him, the actor’s rep confirmed to CNN.
The 39-year-old is nominated for the SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role for The Disaster Artist. Earlier this month, he won Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globe Awards for his role in the biographical dramedy, which chronicles the making of Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 cult film The Room.
Franco attended the Globes on January 7, but skipped the Critics’ Choice Awards on January 11.
The Deuce star was first accused of sexual misconduct by several women on Twitter during the Globes broadcast. Many of the evening’s A-list attendees wore black in solidarity with the Time’s Up movement, which raises money to fight sexual harassment, assault and inequality in the workplace. Franco wore a Time’s Up pin on the lapel of his suit jacket.
Just a few days later, the Los Angeles Times published a report in which five women claimed that Franco had behaved inappropriately with them. Four of the women were former students at the actor’s film school Studio 4 in Hollywood. One woman, aspiring filmmaker Violet Paley, told the newspaper that she and Franco were involved in a consensual romantic relationship, but alleged that he once pressured her into performing oral sex on him in her car. In response, Franco’s business partner Vince Jolivette told Us Weekly on January 11 that their school “was always run professionally.”
Franco’s attorney disputed the allegations published by the Times, while the Oscar nominee himself addressed the Twitter claims during a January 9 appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
“The things that I heard that were on Twitter are not accurate, but I completely support people coming out and being able to have a voice because they didn’t have a voice for so long,” he said. “So, I don’t want to shut them down in any way. It’s, I think, a good thing and I support it.”
