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James Franco Digitally Removed From ‘Vanity Fair’ Hollywood Cover Amid Sexual Misconduct Claims

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James Franco attends the Coach and Friends of the High Line Summer Party at High Line in New York City on June 6, 2017.Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for Coach

Some of the top nominees from the 2018 awards season joined together for Vanity Fair’s Hollywood issue, but there was one star noticeably missing: James Franco.

Related: Hollywood’s Sexual Misconduct Scandals

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the 39-year-old actor sat down for a photo shoot and interview with the magazine, in addition to being included in photographer Annie Leibovitz’s stunning cover spread alongside stars including Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Michael B. Jordan, Gal Gadot and Robert De Niro.

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However, Franco was digitally removed from the cover due to allegations of sexual misconduct that surfaced after he won the Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy or musical for The Disaster Artist earlier this month. “We made a decision not to include James Franco on the Hollywood cover once we learned of the misconduct allegations against him,” a spokesperson for Vanity Fair confirmed to THR on Thursday, January 25.

As previously reported, several women took to Twitter during and after the January 7 Globes ceremony to accuse Franco of misconduct. Days later, the Los Angeles Times published a story in which five additional women — four of whom were former students at the actor’s Hollywood film school Studio 4 — accused him of inappropriate or sexually exploitative behavior.

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The Deuce star’s attorney disputed the allegations, while Franco himself said on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert that the Twitter claims were “not accurate.” Still, he added, “I completely support people coming out and being able to have a voice.”

Since then, the Pineapple Express actor — who did not receive an Oscar nomination for The Disaster Artist amid the scandal, though he did attend the SAG Awards on January 21 — has been “paranoid,” a source exclusively told Us Weekly. “He changed his phone number the second the scandal broke. He’s keeping a very low profile. He is only talking to a very few select people now.”

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