Since winning the Golden Globe for Best Actor: Comedy or Musical for his performance as Tommy Wiseau in the Disaster Artist, James Franco has undergone a great deal of criticism as well as being the subject of allegations. On the night of the Golden Globes, Ally Sheedy and others took to Twitter to accuse the actor of inappropriate behaviour.
Sheedy, who worked with Franco in an Off-Broadway production of The Long Shrift, tweeted during the awards ceremony: “James Franco just won. Please never ever ask me why I left the film/tv business.”
She also wrote “Ok wait. Bye. Christian Slater and James Franco at a table on @goldenglobes #MeToo” and later, “Why is James Franco allowed in? Said too much. Nite love ya”, after which she deleted all her tweets.
Since then, Franco has been interviewed and asked about the accusations on both Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers’ late night talk shows.
“In my life I pride myself on taking responsibility for what I’ve done. The things I heard are not accurate, but I completely support people coming out because they didn’t have a voice for so long,” he told Colbert. “I don’t want to shut them down in any way. I think it’s a good thing and I support it.”
Last week, the Los Angeles Times published an article where five women accused James Franco of “sexually exploitive and inappropriate behaviour.”
Ashley Judd, who is a Harvey Weinstein victim and strong advocate of the #MeToo movement, was asked about Franco during a BBC interview with Stephen Sakur for his HARDtalk series. Somewhat surprisingly, Judd had nothing but praise for the actor for attempting to own up to his behaviour.
“I think that what James said is terrific. And I think that we’ve all behaved — at a certain level — unconsciously, and done things that were insensitive, inappropriate, without necessarily understanding that they were,” she said. “I mean we’ve all operated with a certain amount of tone-deafness, and I like the culpability.”
She continued: “This is about men and women being all together and having a more equitable and just workplace, home life, social spaces. It takes that kind of individual accountability to collectively make the change on a large scale.”
*An earlier version of this article read 'Judd, who worked with Franco in an Off-Broadway production of The Long Shrift...' in place of 'Sheedy, who worked with Franco in an Off-Broadway production of The Long Shrift'. Apologies for the mistake.
