"At the time I was not clear-headed."
The 43-year-old Hollywood actor had multiple allegations filed against him in 2019.
James Franco has spoken about the numerous sexual assault allegations which were filed against him back in 2019. Speaking on 'The Jess Cagle Podcast', the actor admits he did sleep with his female students during a time when he struggled with a sex addiction.
In excerpts from the podcast, which were made public on Wednesday this week, the 'Spider-Man' and '127 Hours' actor admitted to the charges which were placed against him four years ago from five different women.
Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, who were two of the five attendees to come forward from Franco's now-obsolete acting school, Studio 4, said their teacher would: "Create a pipeline of young women who were subjected to his personal and professional sexual exploitation in the name of education."
At the time, Franco said the allegations were "not accurate". His former colleague Busy Philipps also alleged the actor assaulted her on the set of 'Freaks & Geeks' in 1999.
He has since agreed to pay out $2.2m (€1.9m) in July of this year after being sued for engaging in "sexually-charged behaviour towards female students" and duping young women into shooting explicit sex scenes.
Speaking on the podcast about his actions for the first time, James Franco says the sexual assault happenings were "wrong" of him, admitting he "did sleep with students".
He said he had not started the school to lure women for sexual purposes, but: "I suppose at the time, my thinking was if it’s consensual, okay.
"At the time I was not clear-headed."
The actor has said that he has been in recovery from sex addiction since 2016. "It’s such a powerful drug," he said. "I got hooked on it for 20 more years. The insidious part of that is that I stayed sober from alcohol all that time."
Franco said he had remained quiet for so long because: "There were people that were upset with me and I needed to listen."
"I didn’t want to hurt people," he added, saying he had "been doing a lot of work and changing who I was”.
Earlier this year, Franco's former colleague and friend Seth Rogen said the allegations towards the actor "changed" their dynamic, and he had no plans to work with him in the future.