Spiderman star, James Franco has admitted to sleeping with students at his film school.
This regret comes almost four years after sexual misconduct claims were first made against the star of ‘Pineapple Express’, ‘Spider-Man 3’ and ‘127 hours’.
His statement breaks his silence on allegations of sexual misconduct that were aired in an interview on Thursday.
In 2018, the Oscar nominee actor was publicly accused by five women of exploitative behaviour, including during nude scenes at his Studio 4 school in North Hollywood.
Franco, 43, said in his first major interview on the allegations with The Jess Cagle Show on SiriusXM.
“Look, I’ll admit, I did sleep with students.”
“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.”
Franco and his lawyers have previously denied these allegations that he had simulated oral sex on several actresses and removed a clear plastic guard that covered their vaginas.
In the interview with Cagle, Franco denied sleeping with students who were enrolled in his class entitled “sex scenes,” and said the class simply had a “provocative title” but did not specifically feature instruction on intimate scenes.
“It wasn’t a master plan on my part,” he said.
“But, yes, there were certain instances where I was in a consensual thing with a student and I shouldn’t have been.”
He is also accused of using his film school to entrap sexually available women, demanding female students to dance around him topless in an unscripted scene, and making “everybody think there were possible roles on the table if we were to perform sexual acts or take off our shirts.”
Pressed on how he could not have understood the power imbalance between a Hollywood star and their student, Franco said he had replaced his teenage alcohol addiction with an addiction to sex and his celebrity.“
I suppose at the time my thinking was ‘if it’s consensual, okay.’
“Of course, I knew… I talked to other people, other teachers… it’s probably not a cool thing.”
“At the time I was not clear-headed as I’ve said. So it just comes down to my criteria was like, ‘if this is consensual, I think it’s cool. We’re all adults.”
