James Franco, who was previously accused of sexually exploiting five women, said he’s tried and failed to rekindle his friendship with his former bestie and longtime collaborator Seth Rogen.
“I haven’t talked to Seth. I love Seth, we had 20 great years together, but I guess it’s over,” Franco said in an interview while attending the Rome Film Festival where he promoted his new film “Hey Joe.”
“And not for lack of trying. I’ve told him how much he’s meant to me,” Franco said.
Franco and Rogen had always been two peas in a pod, coming together to create and star in hilarious cinematic treats, including “Pineapple Express,” “This Is The End,” and their last works, “The Disaster Artist,” which Franco won the Golden Globe for Best Actor. But things grew sour between the buds in 2018 after five women — four of whom were Franco’s acting students at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) — accused him of sexual exploitation.
In 2021, Franco and two of the former students reached a tentative deal to settle the lawsuit. Per People, Franco agreed to pay up $2.235 million.
That same year, Rogen shared that, for now, he wouldn’t be moving forward with any other creative plans with Franco, despite previously saying he would.
“I also look back to that interview in 2018 where I comment that I would keep working with James, and the truth is that I have not and I do not plan to right now,” Rogen told The Sunday Times at the time.
“Hey Joe” is the second film Franco has release since 2019. During his recent interview, he said he’s grateful to be working.
“I’m so grateful to be working. I did go through a lawsuit, and during that lawsuit I wasn’t working. But then COVID hit so everybody wasn’t working. So, I don’t know, it was all… I mean, we were all kind of in it. So it was sort of like, ‘I don’t know what I am,’” Franco explained. “But I did certainly use the time to, I hope, good purpose. And whatever had been going on with me before, I had to change my whole way of life. So I am proud of the kind of work I did during that time. And yeah, I wasn’t working in movies, but I certainly was doing a lot of work to change who I was.”
