“I had a sex addiction”: James Franco responds to sexual abuse allegations for the first time

CelebritiesJames Franco (43) breaks the silence after four years about the allegations of sexual abuse against him. The American actor was accused of sexually inadmissible behavior by five women in 2018, four of which were students at his acting school. In a conversation with The Jess Cagle Podcast, Franco reacts for the first time and confesses, among other things, that he was a sex addict. “I did have sex with a few students. Even if there was mutual consent, I still shouldn’t have had sex with a student.”

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Where Franco denied doing anything wrong in 2018, he now admitted that his behavior was not okay. “I thought it was better to keep quiet, because I didn’t think it would be useful to go into more detail,” he says in the podcast. “People were mad at me and I had to listen to that. People often tend to want to do something about it right away, but you have to look beyond that and work on it. And I did, I went to a clinic to kick the habit of various addictions.”

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The actor says he struggled with a sex addiction after he kicked off alcohol at a young age. “It’s a strong drug. I’ve had it for twenty years and since I stopped drinking and also went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, I thought in my head that I was living a spiritual life. But with everyone I’ve dated I cheated on me, I just couldn’t stay faithful because I was blinded by the dynamics of power and had no eye for other people’s feelings.”

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Sex with students

In 2014 Franco started his acting school Playhouse West Studio 4, where the actor is said to have misbehaved towards a number of students. Franco closed the school in 2017, after which several students spoke out about the actor’s sexually inadmissible behavior a year later. Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, two former students, sued the actor in October 2019. They alleged that Franco abused his power as a teacher. The actor is said to have forced the alleged victims to follow a ‘masterclass’ in sex scenes. For example, they had to do an orgy for the camera, because the auditions in question were filmed and afterwards remained in Franco’s possession. Students from his acting school were also required to sign a statement that they waived all their rights regarding the recordings.

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According to Franco, that’s not quite right. “The stupidest thing I did was call one of my classes ‘sex scenes’ because it wasn’t about that at all. I didn’t teach people how to do sex scenes or intimate scenes,” he says. The actor does admit that there were certain situations where he slept with students. “I did have sex with some students and that was wrong. But that was absolutely not the reason why I set up the school and besides, I had nothing to do with the selection process. And even if there was mutual consent, I still shouldn’t have had sex with a student.”

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In 2020, Franco still described the two women as attention seekers and claimed that they were only after fame and publicity. In early June, however, the actor made a deal with the lawyers of the two women. For example, he agreed to pay a sum of 2.2 million dollars (about 1.6 million euros). In exchange, Tither-Kaplan and Gaal dropped their charges against him. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Franco also agreed to some non-financial demands. It is not known exactly what these entail.

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