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This is the end — of one Hollywood friendship.
James Franco revealed that he is no longer friends with Seth Rogen, with whom he starred in a slew of 2000s hits.
“No. I haven’t talked to Seth,” the 46-year-old told Variety in an interview published Friday. “I love Seth, we had 20 great years together, but I guess it’s over. And not for lack of trying. I’ve told him how much he’s meant to me.”
Franco also touched on facing a series of sexual misconduct allegations made by multiple women in 2018.
Four of the women were the “Spring Breakers” star’s acting students. In 2019, several students at Franco’s since-closed acting school, Studio 4, sued him and his partners.
The lawsuit alleged that the Oscar winner created “an environment of harassment and sexual exploitation” by engaging in “widespread inappropriate and sexually charged behavior towards female students.”
He settled the lawsuit for $2.2 million in June 2021.
On a podcast in 2021, Franco admitted to sleeping with students at his acting school. He was shunned from Hollywood as a result.
“Being told you’re bad is painful,” the actor recalled to Variety. “But ultimately, that’s kind of what I needed to just stop going the way I was going.”
“So now, after having the pause and, I think, changing priorities, I guess what I seek to fulfill me in life [is different]. Ultimately, I think I’m kind of grateful because it did afford me a chance to just do whatever private work and really change what I need to change,” continued Franco. “So now that I am working, I can just be there for the project. It’s not about me trying to fill some hole with work, it’s just about, ‘Wow, I have a really great life. I’m very grateful, and I hope to serve whatever project I do.’”
He was also snubbed for a Best Actor Oscar nomination for “The Disaster Artist” following the allegations and lawsuit.
“What I’ve really found is … I don’t want it to sound like platitudes, but honestly, this is my experience,” Franco explained. “Sometimes life delivers things to you, and the delivery system is so painful. It really hurts. Yeah, I felt really proud of that performance in ‘The Disaster Artist.’ And OK, I wasn’t nominated. Yeah, that hurt.”
However, the star took a minute to look at what had happened from another perspective.
“But ultimately, from the big picture that I’m talking about, maybe it’s for the best,” confessed Franco. “Who am I to say? When I was functioning in that workaholic mode, a lot of it was just my young self’s version of what a good life was. And I got pulled out of that.”
Afterward, the “Neighbors” alum started working on European productions.
“I’m so grateful to be working,” Franco told the outlet. “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.’ But I did certainly use the time to, I hope, good purpose.”
He added, “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.”
Franco has a new movie coming out, an Italian drama called “Hey Joe.” The film follows Dean (Franco), an alcoholic American WWII vet who ends up back in Naples in the early ’70s in search of a son he fathered there before leaving for New Jersey.
Explaining on how the film came to be, the “Freaks and Geeks” vet shared, “The movie was actually kind of a gift out of the sky.”
“I’ve loved European cinema for a long time, and I’d seen [director Claudio Giovannesi’s] movies before this offer,” Franco said. “And I’d met the writer, Maurizio Braucci, through another director named Pietro Marcello [‘Martin Eden’]. And then out of the blue, I got this offer. I was like, ‘Oh, I like this. I like the redemption idea.’ And then I love Italian cinema, in particular Claudio’s movies. So it was a very easy yes.”
“Hey Joe” hits theaters on Nov. 28 in Italy.