Seth Rogen severed his personal and professional relationship with James Franco after his Freaks and Geeks co-star was accused of sexual misconduct in 2018 by five women, four of whom were his students. “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,” he said, adding, “I also look back to that interview in 2018 where I comment that I would keep working with James, and the truth is that I have not and I do not plan to right now.”
Franco spoke about the allegations during an interview on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Podcast this week. “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. 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,” he said. Franco also discussed Rogen’s comments:
“I just want to say, I absolutely love Seth Rogen. I love Seth Rogen. I worked with him for 20 years and we didn’t have one fight. For 20 years, not one fight. He was my absolute closest work friend, collaborator. We just gelled… What he said is true. We aren’t working together right now and we don’t have any plans to work together. Of course, it was hurtful in context, but I get it, you know, he had to answer for me because I was silent.”
Franco paid $2.2 million to settle the class action suit against him. “While Defendants continue to deny the allegations in the Complaint, they acknowledge that Plaintiffs have raised important issues; and all parties strongly believe that now is a critical time to focus on addressing the mistreatment of women in Hollywood,” the statement read.
You can listen to a portion of the podcast above.
(Via People)