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James Franco has reflected on the breakdown of his friendship with longtime collaborator Seth Rogen.
The pair first met while starring in 1999 teen comedy-drama series Freaks and Geeks and went on to work together on a string of hit movies, including 2008’s Pineapple Express, 2014’s The Interview and 2017’s The Disaster Artist.
When Franco was accused of sexual misconduct in January 2018, Rogen publicly distanced himself.
In a new interview with Variety, Franco said the pair are no longer in touch.
“I haven’t talked to Seth,” he revealed. “I love Seth, we had 20 great years together, but I guess it’s over. And not for lack of trying. I’ve told him how much he’s meant to me.”
In 2018, five women – including four of Franco’s former pupils – came forward with allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior by the 46-year-old. At the time, Franco said the allegations were “not accurate” but that he did not want to “shut down” people who “did not have a voice.”
Seth Rogen and James Franco at a screening of ‘The Disaster Artist’ in 2017 (Sasha Haagensen/Getty Images for Fast Company)
Two of his accusers, Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal – both of whom were taught by Franco at the Playhouse West Studio 4 school he co-founded in 2014 – went on to seek legal action in 2019.
In June 2021, it was reported that Franco had agreed to pay $2.23m (£1.67m) to settle the suit, which alleged that he and his business partners had “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.”
The allegations in the lawsuit had referred to a “sex scenes” masterclass taught by Franco, in which he was accused of having “intimidated them into performing gratuitous sex scenes.”
Elsewhere in the Variety interview, Franco said he is “so grateful to be working” after starring in Italian director Claudio Giovannesi’s Hey Joe.
“I did go through a lawsuit, and during that lawsuit I wasn’t working,” he continued. “But then Covid hit so everybody wasn’t working. So, I don’t know, it was all… I mean, we were all kind of in it. So it was sort of like, ‘I don’t know what I am.’”
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“But I did certainly use the time to, I hope, good purpose. And whatever had been going on with me before, I had to change my whole way of life. So I am proud of the kind of work I did during that time. And yeah, I wasn’t working in movies, but I certainly was doing a lot of work to change who I was.”
He added: “As painful as it was – yes, of course rejection is painful, being told you’re bad is painful. But ultimately that’s kind of what I needed to just stop going the way I was going.”
In 2021, Franco said he had been “completely blind to power dynamics” as he admitted to having sex with his acting students.