Update (March 3, 11:15 A.M.): In a statement released to Vanity Fair on Tuesday, the lawyers representing Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal in their lawsuit against James Franco hit back at the actor's “aggressive effort to position himself as the victim and smear the reputation of the survivors.” Last month, Franco's legal team filed a demurrer in the case, calling into question the veracity of the sexual misconduct claims made against the star.
Read the full statement from attorney James Vagnini:
“Mr. Franco’s aggressive effort to position himself as the victim and smear the reputation of the survivors who have come forward is, unfortunately, a tactic commonly used by perpetrators of wrongdoing. It is one of the many reasons that so many survivors are still afraid to speak publicly about their experiences.
We firmly believe Mr. Franco’s claims to be without merit and we are confident that, as we work through the legal process and hear from numerous other witnesses and survivors, we will achieve full justice for the women who have experienced abuse and exploitation at the hands of Mr. Franco and his associates.”
The original story continues below.
Legal representatives for James Franco have responded to sexual misconduct claims made against the actor in a lawsuit filed against him, calling the allegations “false and inflammatory.”
“The #MeToo and Times Up movements have made tremendous and important contributions to improving not only the culture of the entertainment business but also the world as a whole. Unfortunately, while these movements have rightly brought down a number of reprehensible individuals, they have also ensnared an innocent man. James Franco,” reads a notice of demurrer obtained by Vanity Fair and filed to Los Angeles county superior court late last month. “The salacious allegations in the Complaint have made great tabloid fodder, but like most tabloid stories, they are false and inflammatory, legally baseless and brought as a class action with the obvious goal of grabbing as much publicity as possible for attention-hungry Plaintiffs.”
Franco and his collaborators at the now defunct acting school Studio 4 were sued in October of last year by Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, two former students who alleged in the lawsuit that the school’s leadership 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.” Tither-Kaplan was one of five women to come forward in January 2018 with allegations of misconduct against Franco. “I can’t sleep at night knowing that my coming forward, originally, did not do the work that I wanted it to do yet,” Tither-Kaplan told the New York Times last year after filing the lawsuit against Franco. “There still has been no action, publicly, that shows me that these people know what they did is wrong and harmful and can’t been repeated.”
In the original Los Angeles Times piece describing the claims against Franco, Tither-Kaplan alleged that during the making of an orgy scene on the film The Long Home, Franco removed the plastic guards covering some of the women’s vaginas to simulate oral sex.
Franco’s attorney, Michael Plonsker, struck back at that accusation at the time: “the allegations about the protective guards are not accurate,” he said. The demurrer also refutes the allegation. “As to Tither-Kaplan’s most sensationalistic accusation—that the vaginal guards of four other actresses were removed by Franco during filming: (1) Tither-Kaplan admitted that she was not one of the actresses using a vaginal guard; (2) all of the actresses involved confirmed that their vaginal guards were not removed, that the shooting of the film was professional, and that they did not feel mistreated, uncomfortable or taken advantage of; and (3) the cameramen involved in shooting the scene have confirmed that the guards were never removed,” claimed Franco’s lawyers in the demurrer.
In a statement released last year, Plonsker also broadly denied the claims made by Tither-Kaplan and Gaal in the lawsuit. “This is not the first time that these claims have been made and they have already been debunked,” he said in a statement obtained by Vanity Fair just after the New York Times published its report on the legal filing against Franco. “We have not had an opportunity to review the ill-informed Complaint in-depth since it was leaked to the press before it was filed and our client has yet to even be served. James will not only fully defend himself, but will also seek damages from the plaintiffs and their attorneys for filing this scurrilous publicity seeking lawsuit.”
At the Golden Globes ceremony in January 2018, Franco wore a Time’s Up pin to show support for the group and the #MeToo movement. But he was quickly criticized on social media at the time, including by Tither-Kaplan. “Hey James Franco, nice #timesup pin at the #GoldenGlobes, remember a few weeks ago when you told me the full nudity you had me do in two of your movies for $100/day wasn’t exploitative because I signed a contract to do it? Times up on that!” she wrote. In addition to Tither-Kaplan, actor Ally Sheedy called out Franco in a series of now deleted tweets.
Days later, Franco appeared on The Late Show and was asked by host Stephen Colbert to respond to the allegations. “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 shut them down in any way. It’s, I think, a good thing and I support it,” Franco said, before addressing Sheedy. “Okay, first of all, I have no idea what I did to Ally Sheedy. I directed her in a play Off Broadway. I had nothing but a great time with her, total respect for her. I have no idea why she was so upset. She took the tweet down. I don’t know. I can’t speak for her, I don’t know. The others, look, in my life, I pride myself on taking responsibility for things that I’ve done. I have to do that to maintain my well-being. I do it whenever I know that there is something wrong or needs to be changed, I make it a point to do it.”
Franco added, “The way I live my life, I can’t live if there’s restitution to be made. I will make it. So if I’ve done something wrong, I will fix it. I have to. I mean, I think that’s how that works. I don’t know what else, I don’t know what else to do. I mean, as far as the bigger issues, you know, how we do it—I, look, I really don’t have the answers and I think the point of this whole thing is that we listen. You know, there were incredible people talking that night. They had a lot to say, and I’m here to listen and learn and change my perspective where it’s off, and I’m completely willing and want to.”
Franco is not directly quoted in the demurrer, but his legal representatives did include this passage about his current mindset on #MeToo and the allegations against him as a whole: “How should Franco respond? Some accused of misconduct confidentially settled claims to avoid more adverse publicity. Some fought back in highly publicized lawsuits. Not Franco. He is an ardent believer in the righteousness of the #MeToo and Times Up movements. Franco is doing what is best for him: forcefully denying the scurrilous and false accusations but supporting his accusers right to their day in court. In the end, Franco is confident that he will be vindicated.”
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