Published 10:08 15 Jun 2026 GMT
Seth Rogen has made a rare comment about his former friendship with James Franco, years after he cut him off.
Rogen, 44, and Franco, 48, had been friends for years after they met on the set of the 1999 NBC series Freaks and Geeks, going on to work together in several movies over the next two decades, including Pineapple Express, The Disaster Artist, and This Is The End.
However, their longstanding friendship came to an end in 2018 after Rogen cut Franco off in the wake of the latter's allegations of sexual misconduct.
Franco had been accused of inappropriate behavior by former students at his Studio 4 film school, which closed in 2017.
Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal had accused the actor and his partners of "sexualizing their power as a teacher and an employer by dangling the opportunity for roles in their projects," with the suit alleging Franco "was looking to create a pipeline of young women who were subjected to his personal and professional sexual exploitation."
The lawsuit was settled in 2021, and Franco addressed the allegations during an interview on SiriusXM, telling host Jess Cagle, per USA Today: "I'll admit I did sleep with students.
"I didn't sleep with anybody in that particular class. But over the course of my teaching, I did sleep with students, and that was wrong."
When challenged about the power imbalance between him and the students he had relations with, Franco responded: "I suppose at the time, my thinking was if it's consensual, OK.
"Of course, I knew talking to other people – other teachers or whatever – it's probably not a cool thing. At the time I was not clearheaded, as I've said."
Franco addressed his fallout with Rogen in 2024, telling Variety: "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."
Rogen has largely remained quiet about the end of the friendship, telling Esquire in 2025 that he hadn't seen those comments from Franco, claiming: "Honestly, I absorb so little media that it really wasn’t on my radar."
However, in a new interview released on June 13, 2026, Rogen addressed the end of their friendship in more depth, admitting it was "nuanced".
Speaking the New York Times The Interview podcast, Rogen revealed: "I haven't worked with him in a really long time and I have no plans to," adding that he also hasn't "talked to him in a long time."
When he was asked about Franco, Rogen took several seconds to consider how much he wanted "to personally share about this," adding: "The nuance of it is too personal for me to get into right now."
He explained: "It is a very personal thing. There's the public-facing side of it, which I've spoken about, and I have the same stance publicly that I've had, and I think the proof is in the pudding more than anything. I have not worked with him in years.
"But the personal side of it is just so nuanced, and it involves people that I don't know if I should be dragging into this."
Published 10:56 26 Oct 2024 GMT
Published 16:19 12 Jun 2025 GMT
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.”
Published 16:26 23 Dec 2021 GMT
James Franco has spoken out about the current status of his relationship with friend and longtime collaborator Seth Rogen following allegations of sexual misconduct.
Franco, 43, appeared on SiriusXM's The Jess Cagle Podcast this week to candidly address the ongoing controversy surrounding his personal and professional actions. Back in 2018, The Los Angeles Times published an article in which five women accused the actor of sexually inappropriate behavior. Four of these women were students at Franco's acting school.
The Spider-Man star remained silent on the issue for nearly four years, but has now addressed the allegations in his recent interview.
During the interview, he also responded to comments Rogen made back in May about their working relationship.
Rogen, 39, told The Sunday Times that he currently has no plans to work with Franco right now. The two actors starred alongside each other in movies such as Pineapple Express and The Interview.
Rogen also asserted: "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."
Responding to the comments in his interview on The Jess Cagle Podcast, Franco said: "He was asked about me, and I just wanna say I absolutely love Seth Rogen... I love Seth Rogen."
Franco added: "I worked with him for 20 years. We didn't have one fight for 20 years. Not one fight. He was my absolute closest work friend, collaborator. We just gelled."
"What he said is true, you know, we aren't working together right now and we don't have any plans to work together," the actor continued. "Of course, it was hurtful, in context, but I get it. He had to answer for me 'cause I was silent.
"He had to answer for me, and I don't want that. So that's why, that's one of the main reasons I wanted to talk to you today: I don't want Seth or my brother [Dave Franco] or anyone to have to answer for me anymore."
Elsewhere in the interview, Franco directly addressed the sexual misconduct allegations made against him.
"In 2018, there were some complaints about me and an article about me and, at that moment I just thought 'I'm gonna be quiet. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna pause.' Did not seem like the right time to say anything," he said. "There were people that were upset with me and I needed to listen."
Franco then admitted that he has battled sex addiction for years, and said that he did sleep with students at his acting school.
"Over the course of my teaching, I did sleep with students, and that was wrong," he said. "But like I said, it's not why I started the school and I wasn't the person that selected the people to be in the class. So it wasn't a 'master plan' on my part. But yes, there were certain instances where, you know what, I was in a consensual thing with a student and I shouldn't have been."
Published 17:46 22 Dec 2021 GMT
James Franco has broken his silence about sexual misconduct allegations made against him nearly four years ago.
The actor, 43, was accused of sexually inappropriate behavior by five women, four of whom were his acting students, in an article published by The Los Angeles Times in January 2018.
That same month, one of the alleged victims, Sarah Tither-Kaplan, told Good Morning America that Franco "abused his power by exploiting the non-celebrity women that he worked with under the guise of giving them opportunities."
The Oscar nominee opened his acting school Playhouse West Studio 4 in 2014 before it closed in 2017.
Watch James Franco speak out:At the time, an attorney for Franco denied each of the allegations and cited the actor's 2018 comments on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert as his formal denial.
"The things that I heard that were on Twitter are not accurate, but I completely support people coming out and being able to have a voice because they didn't have a voice for so long. So I don't want to, you know, shut them down in any way," his statement read.
However this past summer, Franco reached a deal with Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal — two of his former acting students who filed a sexual misconduct lawsuit against him in 2019.
Now, Franco has finally spoken out about the allegations and is coming clean about his wrongdoings.
"In 2018, there were some complaints about me and an article about me and, at that moment I just thought 'I'm gonna be quiet. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna pause.' Did not seem like the right time to say anything," he said on SiriusXM's The Jess Cagle Podcast.
He went on: "There were people that were upset with me and I needed to listen. There's a writer Damon Young and he talked about when something like this happens, the natural human instinct is to just make it stop.
"You just want to get out in front of it and whatever you have to do apologize, you know, get it done. But what that doesn't do is allow you to do the work to, and to look at what was underneath.
"Whatever you did, even if it was a gaff or you said something wrong or whatever, there's probably an iceberg underneath that behavior, of patterning, of just being blind to yourself that isn't gonna just be solved overnight."
The Spider-Man actor continued: "So I've just been doing a lot of work, and I guess I'm pretty confident in saying like, four years, you know? I was in recovery before for substance abuse. There were some issues that I had to deal with that were also related to addiction. And so I've really used my recovery background to kind of start examining this and changing who I was."
Franco revealed he has struggled with sex addiction for years after becoming sober from alcohol at a young age. "It's such a powerful drug," he explained.
"I got hooked on it for 20 more years. The insidious part of that is that I stayed sober from alcohol all that time. And I went to meetings all that time. I even tried to sponsor other people. So in my head, it was like, 'Oh, I'm sober. I'm living a spiritual life.' Where on the side, I'm acting out now in all these other ways, and I couldn't see it."
Franco's former students, Tither-Kaplan and Gaal, also alleged that the circumstances "led to an environment of harassment and sexual exploitation both in and out of the class." As part of the deal reached this year, Tither-Kaplan and Gaal agreed to drop their individual claims.
Franco admitted to Cagle: "I did sleep with students.
"Over the course of my teaching, I did sleep with students, and that was wrong. But like I said, it's not why I started the school and I wasn't the person that selected the people to be in the class."
He added: "So it wasn't a 'master plan' on my part. But yes, there were certain instances where, you know what, I was in a consensual thing with a student and I shouldn't have been.
"At the time I was not clearheaded, as I've said. So I guess it just comes down to my criteria was like, 'If this is consensual, like, I think it's cool. We're all adults so….'"
Published 16:24 29 Apr 2026 GMT
James Franco's co-star has alleged that she tried to quit starring in The Disaster Artist and called the actor a "sexual predator" in a scathing social media post.
Charlyne Yi, who appeared in the 48-year-old's 2017 film as costume designer Safowa Bright-Asare, detailed the claims in a series of Instagram posts shared during Sexual Assault Awareness Month back in 2021.
According to the 40-year-old actress, she attempted to "break legal contract" and quit the movie, but said her objections were brushed aside.
She claimed filmmakers "minimized" her concerns and "said Franco being a predator was so last yr and that he changed… when I literally heard of him abusing new women that week".
Yi also alleged she was offered a larger role to remain involved, calling it "the exact opposite of what I wanted".
Beyond Franco, Yi directed sharp criticism at those she says enabled sexual misconduct, specifically naming producer Seth Rogen among those who should be held responsible.
"Enablers are just as toxic and are abusers too," she wrote. "Disgusted by white men choosing power over protecting children and women from predators. Educate, organize, and dismantle corruption in your circles and in the law."
She continued: "White men saying it’s not their responsibility when holding Franco accountable, or when holding Seth Rogen and enablers accountable. Then whose responsibility is it? The women and children who have PTSD from Franco? Or the future targets of abuse?"
In a caption accompanying the post, the House actress expanded on those accusations, writing: "Seth Rogen was one of the producers on this film, so he definitely knows about the bribe and why I quit."
"Seth also did a sketch on ‘SNL’ with Franco enabling Franco preying on children. Right after Franco was caught," she continued. "Franco has a long history of preying on children. This is on top all the corrupt laws that protect predators made by violent white men."
A few months after Yi’s claims, Franco admitted he had used fame "as a lure" in a candid interview on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show.
The Spring Breakers star revealed in his first interview since his sexual misconduct allegations surfaced that he slept with students at his acting school, Studio 4, and said he had been "completely blind" to "power dynamics" and "people’s feelings," cited by Deadline.
"Along the road of trying to get success and climb the top of that mountain, attention from women, success with women also became a huge source of validation for me," he said. "The problem with that is…like any sort of drug or anything, there’s never enough. It was never-ending."
Reflecting on addiction and behavior that spiraled beyond his control, Franco added: "So in my head it was like, ‘Oh, I’m sober. I’m living a spiritual life,' where on the side I’m acting out now in all these other ways, and I couldn’t see it."
Addressing allegations that the school functioned as "to create a pipeline of young women who would be subjected to his personal and professional sexual exploitation," Franco denied there was ever a "master plan".
However, he admitted that he "was not clear-headed" and had wrongly justified relationships with students because they were "consensual".
The Interview star also called naming one of his classes "Sex Scenes" as "one of the stupidest things" he had done.
"It should have been called ‘Contemporary Romance’ or something like that," Franco said. "It was a class where they did scenes about romances…what they go through as young people - so, meeting people on dating apps, or breakups, or just a bad date, stuff like that."
Franco also addressed why he stayed silent for years, saying: "There were people that were upset with me...and I needed to listen."
He explained: "What that doesn’t do is allow you to do the work and to look at what was underneath. Whatever you did…there’s probably an iceberg underneath that of behavior, of patterning, of just being blind to yourself that isn’t going to just be solved overnight.
"So, I’ve just been doing a lot of work and I’m pretty confident in saying, [it’s been] four years… I’ve really used my recovery background to start examining this and changing who I was," he added.
While he said he never intended "to hurt people," he acknowledged his behavior escalated to a point where he was "hurting everybody." That included Rogen, who has said he has no plans to work with Franco again.
"I just want to say, I absolutely love Seth Rogen… He was my absolute closest work friend, collaborator, and we just gelled, and what he said is true. We aren’t working together right now, and we don’t have any plans to work together," he said.
"Because I was silent, he had to answer for me, and I don’t want that. That’s one of the main reasons I wanted to talk to you today, is I just don’t want Seth or my brother or anyone to have to answer for me anymore," he concluded.
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