Actor James Franco is well-known for a wide number of roles in varying genres. He’s starred in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, Pineapple Express, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes to name a few examples. However, in recent years James Franco’s popularity has lowered over different allegations made against the actor.
Now James Franco has confessed and admitted that he’s had sex with students while teaching at his acting and filmmaking school, Studio 4.
He revealed this while speaking with Jess Cagle of Sirius XM. During this interview, he was asked about the lawsuit that former students Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal filed against James Franco.
Theirs claims included that James Franco and his partners “engaged in widespread inappropriate and sexually charged behavior towards female students by sexualizing their power as a teacher and an employer by dangling the opportunity for roles in their projects.” They further claimed this“led to an environment of harassment and sexual exploitation both in and out of the class.”
These details were further elaborated by the New York Times, where they revealed:
“The women said the school also offered additional master classes, which could cost as much as $2,000 each, including a $750 master class for sex scenes. According to the lawsuit, prospective students for the sex scenes class had to audition on videotape — so that Franco could later review the material, they were told — and sign away their rights to these recordings.”
Furthermore:
“In auditions and classes, the women said they were encouraged to push beyond their comfort zones while they were denied the protections of nudity riders and other film-industry guidelines that govern how actors can be portrayed and treated in nude scenes,” they reported.
It was also stated in the lawsuit against James Franco that the actresses “were routinely pressured to engage in simulated sex acts that went far beyond the standards in the industry.” While the lawsuit was apparently settled in February of 2021, Variety reported at the end of June that Franco settled the lawsuit for a massive $2.235 million.
Now here’s what James Franco had to say on Sirus XM over the matter:
“The stupidest thing I did, or one of the stupidest things I did at the school was I called one of my classes a Master Class Sex Scenes. It was not about sex scenes. I was not teaching people how to do sex scenes or intimate scenes or anything of that nature.”
“It was a provocative title. There’s a show on, that was just on, called The Chair about academia. And in it the cool, teacher, female teacher that everyone wants to take her class. She has a class called something like Sex and American Literature or something like that to be provocative and cool, but like they’re reading Melville in the class. That’s basically what I was doing,” he claimed.
He continued:
“It should have been called Contemporary Romance or something like that. It was a class where they did scenes about whatever their romances in their–what they go through as young people. So meeting people on dating apps or breakups or just a bad date, stuff like that. That’s what was being done in that class. It was not sex scenes.”
Jess Cagle then asked the actor then why the lawsuit perceived him as having exploited women sexually “in the name of education.” Here’s how he responded:
“Look, I’ll admit I did sleep with students. I didn’t sleep with anybody in that particular class. But 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,” he continued.
Franco added, “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.”
James Franco further attempted to explain why he wasn’t aware of the power imbalance he held over his students when having sex with them:
“I suppose at the time my thinking was if it’s consensual ‘okay.’ Of course I knew, I’m talking to other people, other teachers, or whatever. Yeah, it’s probably not a cool thing.
“At the time I was not clear-headed 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,” he concluded.