Seth Rogen gave a pretty blunt reply after James Franco claimed that their friendship was "over".
Once one of Hollywood’s tightest and most hilarious duos, Franco and Rogen were the ride-or-die team behind some of the wildest comedies of the 2000s.
The bromance kicked off in 1999 on the teen cult series Freaks and Geeks and quickly snowballed into one of Hollywood’s most consistent partnerships.
The two racked up fan-favorite collabs like Pineapple Express (2008), The Interview (2014), and The Disaster Artist (2017).
But things started to crumble in 2018, when Franco was hit with sexual misconduct allegations from five women — including four of his former acting students, per the Independent.
Franco said at the time the accusations were “not accurate” but added that he didn’t want to “shut down” people who “did not have a voice.”
The lawsuit, filed by two of Franco’s former students, Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, claimed he and his business partners had “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.”
One especially disturbing claim involved a “sex scenes” masterclass where Franco allegedly “intimidated them into performing gratuitous sex scenes.”
By 2021, the actor settled the lawsuit for $2.23 million.
In the aftermath, Rogen publicly pulled away from his longtime friend.
In a 2021 interview with The Times, he said: “What I can say is that I despise abuse and harassment and I would never cover or conceal the actions of someone doing it, or knowingly put someone in a situation where they were around someone like that.”
He added: “The truth is that I have not and I do not plan to [work with Franco] right now.”
That statement stung Franco. In a Variety interview from October 2024, he spoke candidly about how the split hit him: “No. I haven’t talked to Seth. 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 called Rogen’s decision to distance himself “hurtful.”
When asked recently about Franco’s emotional comments, Rogen wasn’t eager to dive back in. Speaking to Esquire, he admitted: “Honestly, I absorb so little media that it really wasn’t on my radar.”
Reflecting on the quiet years, Franco said: “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.’”
He also shared that he used the time to do some serious self-work: “But I did certainly use the time to, I hope, good purpose. 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.
“As painful as it was – yes, of course rejection is painful, being told you’re bad is painful. But ultimately that’s kind of what I needed to just stop going the way I was going.”