It seems the #MeToo train will not be letting actor James Franco off at the next stop anytime soon. Nearly two years after seeing his Oscar chances derailed by a spate of sexual misconduct allegations, the “127 Hours” actor has now been hit with a lawsuit from two of his former acting students for alleged sexual harassment and discrimination.
“The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court by Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, seeks class-action status for themselves and an unspecified number of other ‘similarly situated women’ who attended classes at Studio 4, the acting school that Franco ran from 2014 to 2017,” reports NBC News.
The allegations against Franco broke out on Twitter in early 2017, when two actresses accused him of hypocrisy for wearing a “Time’s Up” pin at the Golden Globe Awards. The first accused him of misleading her into doing a full nude scene in one of his movies for cheap pay, while the second accused him of exposing his penis to her and propositioning her 17-year-old friend. Actress Ally Sheedy, who worked with Franco on a play in 2014, gave a more cryptic message on Twitter: “James Franco just won. Please never ask me why I left the film/tv business.” The post was later deleted.
Within days of the allegations, the Los Angeles Times published a scathing exposé alleging that Franco used his acting school, Studio 4, to sexually exploit women. The most damning allegation said that Franco removed actresses’ plastic vaginal guards while filming a sexually explicit scene. As a result, Franco lost a potential Oscar nomination for his role in “The Disaster Artist” and was digitally removed from a Vanity Fair cover page photo.
Speaking with Stephen Colbert at the time, Franco called the allegations against him “not accurate” and vowed restitution if he had done anything wrong.
“In my life, I pride myself in taking responsibility for things I’ve done. I have to do that to maintain my well-being. I do it whenever something needs to be changed,” he said. “I completely support people coming out and being able to have a voice because they haven’t had a voice for so long. I don’t want to shut them down in any way. It’s a good thing I support.”
“The suit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages at trial, as well as royalties and other compensation for work the women did for Franco’s production company, Rabbit Bandini,” NBC News continued. “Franco’s business partners, Vince Jolivette and Jay Davis, are named as co-respondents along with Franco and Rabbit Bandini.”
Franco’s attorney, Michael Plonsker, said in a statement on Thursday night that the charges against the actor “have already been debunked.”
“This is not the first time that these claims have been made, and they have already been debunked,” Plonsker said, adding that Franco is prepared to “fully defend himself” and is willing to seek damages from his accusers “for filing this scurrilous publicity-seeking lawsuit.”
The plaintiffs’ attorneys claim that Franco committed “egregious wrongs to hundreds of student actors and have done nothing to fix these wrongs,” alleging that he and others involved sought to “sexualize their power and fame by dangling the opportunity to aspiring actors of employment in film and television in exchange for explicit nudity, sex and as Franco put it, the ‘pushing of boundaries’ at Studio 4.”