James Franco’s #MeToo accusers are ‘attention hungry’: Court papers
2 women accused Franco of pushing them into sex scenes on camera at his now-defunct film school
Attorneys for actor and ex-film school founder James Franco have fired back at two former students who accused him of sexual impropriety, calling them “attention-hungry” and their lawsuit "a travesty of justice,” according to a report.
Franco’s lawyers filed the demurrer in Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday, nearly five months after Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, former students at the actor’s now-closed Studio 4, alleged Franco pushed them into performing in increasingly explicit sex scenes on camera in an “orgy type setting,” USA Today reported, citing the court documents.
In the most recently filed papers, the “Pineapple Express” star’s attorneys said the "salacious allegations… 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."
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The lawyers also cited a number of Tither-Kaplan’s tweets, in which they say she is lauding Franco and Studio 4, according to USA Today.
According to Variety, the court papers describe Franco as being “an ardent believer in the righteousness of the #MeToo and Times Up movements.”
The demurrer accuses Tither-Kaplan of choosing "to jump on the bandwagon and insert herself into the media’s insatiable appetite to ruin the next celebrity,” Variety reported.
On Monday, Tither-Kaplan tweeted a quote from Franco and added that she would not comment further.
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James Vagnini, an attorney for the women, said Franco's effort to make himself seem like the victim "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," Vagnini said in a statement.
Tither-Kaplan and Gaal, actresses who were reportedly taking a sex scene “master class” at the time, said Franco “sought to create a pipeline of young women who were subjected to his personal and professional sexual exploitation in the name of education,” the October lawsuit alleges.
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The situations described in the suit arose during a master class in sex scenes that Franco taught at the school, which he opened in 2014 and closed in 2017. The women say students were led to believe roles in Franco’s films would be available to those who went along.
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The lawsuit alleges that to take Franco’s master class, students had to audition by simulating sex acts on film, which he watched to choose candidates.
It says the class began with “encouraging female student actors to appear topless, then perform in sex scenes, then orgies and gratuitous full nudity,” without the careful guidelines and closed sets that are the industry standard for shooting sex scenes.
The suit alleges that Gaal was kept out of the master class for questioning its exploitative nature.
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Tither-Kaplan previously recounted her experiences with Franco and the school as one of five women who talked to the Los Angeles Times about him early in 2018.
In a January 2018 interview on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Franco called the sexual misconduct stories about him inaccurate, but said, “If I’ve done something wrong, I will fix it. I have to.”
Their suit also names Franco’s production company Rabbit Bandini and his partners as defendants.
This report was updated to include a statement from the plaintiffs' attorney, James Vagnini.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.