James Franco is opening up about how being accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women impacted his friendship with Seth Rogen.
“I absolutely love Seth Rogen. I worked with him for 20 years. We didn’t have one fight for 20 years. Not one fight. He was my absolute closest work friend and collaborator. 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,” Franco, 43, admitted in a preview of his upcoming interview on SiriusXM’s “The Jess Cagle Podcast“, which airs in full on Thursday, December 23. “Of course it was hurtful, in context, but I get it, he had to answer for me ’cause I was silent.”
The 127 Hours actor acknowledged that it wasn’t anyone else’s responsibility to speak for him, adding, “It’s one of the main reasons I wanted to talk to you today. I don’t want Seth or my brother [Dave Franco] or anyone to have to answer for me anymore.”
In 2014, the Oscar nominee was accused of propositioning a 17-year-old girl via Instagram. Four years later, the James Dean star spoke out about the claims made against him.
“In my life, I pride myself on taking responsibility for things that I’ve done. I have to do that to maintain my well-being. I do it whenever I know that there is something wrong or needs to be changed, I make it a point to do it,” he said on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in January 2018. “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. I don’t want to, you know, shut them down in any way. It’s, I think, a good thing and I support it.”
That same month, five more women came forward and alleged they were victims of James’ inappropriate behavior. Earlier this year, the Spring Breakers star reached a settlement in the 2019 lawsuit. Us Weekly confirmed in February that two of his former acting students decided to drop their claims, according to court documents.
Following the settlement, Rogen, 39, revealed that he didn’t have any plans to work with his former Freaks and Geeks costar again.
“I have not, and I do not plan to [work with James] right now,” the Superbad actor told the U.K.’s Sunday Times in May. “What I can say is that I despise abuse and harassment, and I would never cover or conceal the actions of someone doing it, or knowingly put someone in a situation where they were around someone like that.”
The Golden Globe winner, for his part, explained his decision to stay “quiet” after the allegations initially came to light.
“[It] did not seem like the right time to say anything. There were people that were upset with me, and I needed to listen,” he told SiriusXM’s Jess Cagle. “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, get it done. But what that doesn’t do is allow you to do the work and to look at what was underneath.
The California native noted that he has been “doing a lot of work” since the scandal made headlines, saying, “I was in recovery before for substance abuse and there were some issues that I had to deal with that were also related to addiction. So I’ve really used my recovery background to kind of start examining this and changing who I was.”
If you or someone you know have been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
