Actor James Franco has spoken up about sexual misconduct allegations against him. In an upcoming podcast, he admitted sleeping with students of an acting school he previously ran, according to reports.
He said that he struggled with a sex addiction and has been working to ‘improve his behaviour’, the Guardian reported. In excerpts from The Jess Cagle Podcast made public on Wednesday, Franco said that while teaching, he “did sleep with students, and that was wrong”.
In 2019, two women filed a civil suit against the actor, accusing him of exploiting aspiring actors at his now defunct school and duping young women into shooting explicit sex scenes. Opening up about the allegations, Franco said he had not started the school to lure women for sexual purposes.
On why he chose to remain silent for so long, the actor said: “Did not seem like the right time to say anything. There were people that were upset with me and I needed to listen.”
Franco said he had developed a sex addiction after he became sober from an alcohol addiction. “It’s such a powerful drug. I got hooked on it for 20 more years. The insidious part of that is that I stayed sober from alcohol all that time,” The Hollywood Reporter quoted him as saying.
He further stated that he was “completely blind to power dynamics or anything like that, but also completely blind to people's feelings.”
