James Franco has just been accused of sexually exploiting young women in his acting school along with his close associates.
Toni Gaal and Sarah Tither-Kaplan allege that the forty-one-year-old actor and his friends used to offer potentially inappropriate roles to women in James Franco’s now-defunct acting school.
The 127 Hours protagonist was behind an acting school called Studio 4, with branches in Los Angeles and New York. Both plaintiffs were enrolled in the LA branch and paid tuition fees of $300 each month.
The lawsuit suggests there was another masterclass including a separate class for intimate scenes for $750 and the students were taped during the auditions so that James Franco could select after reviewing the recordings. Gaal and Tither-Kaplan also alleged they were asked to sign away the rights to these recordings.
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The suit claims Franco and his partners were “engaged 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”.
Gaal said she was not allowed to join these classes after she spoke of the distress she experienced in the auditions. However, Tither-Kaplan confessed that her involvement in the audition got her a role in one of James Franco’s films which is yet to release.
This is not the first time someone has accused Franco. The Spiderman 3 villain had been accused of misconduct in 2018 by five women including Tither-Kaplan. However, his lawyer rejected the allegations.
In an interview with Seth Meyers, he had said, “I have my own side of this story, but I believe in these people that have been underrepresented getting their stories out, enough that I will hold back things that I could say, just because I believe in it that much. If I have to take a knock, because I am not going to try and actively refute things, then I will, because I believe in it that much.”
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