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James Franco breaks silence on sexual misconduct allegations, says 'I didn't want to hurt people'
James Franco explained in a new interview this week that he has been 'examining' his past behavior and 'changing who I was'
*TRIGGER WARNING*
James Franco is speaking out about the sexual misconduct claims levelled against him over four years ago. In a January 2018 piece published by The Los Angeles Times, the Pineapple Express actor, 43, was accused of sexually improper conduct by five women, four of whom were his acting students.
That same month, Sarah Tither-Kaplan, one of the alleged victims, told Good Morning America that Franco "abused his power by exploiting the non-celebrity women he worked with under the guise of giving them opportunities." As per PEOPLE, at the time, Franco's attorney disputed all of the charges. However, Franco struck an agreement during the summer with Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, two of his former acting students who brought a sexual assault complaint against him in 2019. According to court records acquired by PEOPLE from the Los Angeles Superior Court at the time, he agreed to pay USD 2,235,000 in the settlement.
Franco spoke with SiriusXM's The Jess Cagle Podcast this week on why he's coming out about the allegations at this time. "In 2018, there were some complaints about me and an article about me and, at that moment I just thought 'I'm gonna be quiet. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna pause.' Did not seem like the right time to say anything," he recalled. "So I've just been doing a lot of work," he told Cagle, "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 said that he had suffered with sex addiction for years after quitting drinking at a young age. "It's such a powerful drug," he explained. He confessed that before his current relationship with girlfriend Isabel Pakzad, he "cheated on everyone" and that he could "never be faithful to anybody." According to Franco, he became "completely blind to power dynamics or anything like that, but also totally blind to people's feelings."
"I didn't want to hurt people. In fact, I wasn't really a one-night-stand guy. People that I got together with or dated, I'd see them for a long time, years. It's just that I couldn't be present for any of them. And the behavior spun out to a point where it was like I was hurting everybody." However, Franco admitted to Cagle: "I did sleep with students."
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