Following a sexual misconduct scandal and years of controversy, James Franco is finally speaking out. The 43-year-old actor faced allegations from several women who were students in his acting program. They stated that he manipulated them into believing he was not only going to teach them how to act, but he would create career opportunities, as well. However, the alleged victims claimed that instead, Franco abused his power and was sexually inappropriate. He later settled a lawsuit for $2.2 million.
Franco’s legal team would deny the accusations but this week, the actor addressed the controversy while visiting The Jess Cagle Podcast. He said that when the allegations first surfaced, he thought it would be best if he just kept quiet because “there were people that were upset with me and I needed to listen.”
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“There’s a writer Damon Young and he talked about when something like this happens, the natural human instinct is to just make it stop,” said Franco. “You just want to get out in front of it and whatever you have to do apologize, you know, get it done. But what that doesn’t do is allow you to do the work to, and to look at what was underneath.”
“Whatever you did, even if it was a gaff or you said something wrong or whatever, there’s probably an iceberg underneath that behavior, of patterning, of just being blind to yourself that isn’t gonna just be solved overnight.” The actor also detailed his addictions to alcohol, drugs, and sex.
“It’s such a powerful drug,” he explained. “I got hooked on it for 20 more years. The insidious part of that is that I stayed sober from alcohol all that time. And I went to meetings all that time. I even tried to sponsor other people. So in my head, it was like, ‘Oh, I’m sober. I’m living a spiritual life.’ Where on the side, I’m acting out now in all these other ways, and I couldn’t see it.”
“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.”
Watch Franco on The Jess Cagee Podcast below.