James Franco admitted to sleeping with students of his acting school and having a sex addiction in a recent interview with The Jess Cagle Podcast.
The Disaster Artist star told Cagle, “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.”
Back in June, Franco settled a sexual misconduct lawsuit for $2,235,000 after he and his business partner were accused of engaging “in widespread inappropriate and sexually charged behavior towards female students by sexualizing their power as a teacher and an employer by dangling the opportunity for roles in their projects” at their acting school, Studio 4.
He admitted that after he became sober at a young age, he struggled with sex addiction and “cheated on everyone” before he met his current girlfriend, Isabel Pakzad.
The actor added, “So I’ve just been doing a lot of work. And I guess I’m pretty confident in saying like, four years, you know? I was in recovery before for substance abuse. There were some issues that I had to deal with that were also related to addiction. And so I’ve really used my recovery background to kind of start examining this and changing who I was.”
Franco also addressed his former friend Seth Rogen’s decision to end their working relationship, saying, “I get it, he had to answer for me ’cause I was silent. He had to answer for me and I don’t want that. And so that’s one of the main reasons I wanted to talk to you today is. I don’t want Seth or my brother or anyone to have to answer for me anymore.”
