James has previously come under fire for allegedly trying to pick up a 17-year-old girl on Instagram on 2014, enticing her to meet him in a hotel room.
On Thursday, the Los Angeles Times published a report in which several women detailed James' alleged habit of coercing women into nudity for his projects, and into non-consensual sex acts.
As James accepted his award for best actor in a comedy on Sunday, women began tweeting about the actor's past behavior. "James Franco just won. Please never ever ask me why I left the film/tv business," Breakfast Club actor Ally Sheedy wrote in a now-deleted tweet. "Why is a man hosting? Why is James Franco allowed in? Said too much. Nite love ya #goldenglobes." Sheedy wasn't the only one:
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! — Sarah Tither-Kaplan (@sarahtk) January 8, 2018
Cute #TIMESUP pin James Franco. Remember the time you pushed my head down in a car towards your exposed penis & that other time you told my friend to come to your hotel when she was 17? After you had already been caught doing that to a different 17 year old? — Violet Paley (@VioletPaley) January 8, 2018
Sarah Tither-Kaplan, formerly a student at James' acting school Studio 4 (which was shut down in 2017), was more specific in her interview with the Times than she was on Twitter. Sarah alleged that James removed the plastic covering on actresses' vaginas while pretending to perform oral sex on them during an orgy scene she and several other women filmed with him. James reportedly pitched the orgy as a "bonus scene" for his feature film, The Long Way Home (which has yet to be released). Other actresses who appeared in the scene reportedly confirmed Sarah's account. Katie Ryan, who also took classes at the school, said James "would always make everybody think there were possible roles on the table if we were to perform sexual acts or take off our shirts."
Violet Paley, another woman whose tweets gained media attention Sunday, told the Times that James promised to help her with her acting career when she met him in early 2016, then they began dating. She alleges that one night he pressured her to perform oral sex on him while they were sitting in a parked car—something she didn't want to do. "I was talking to him, all of a sudden his penis was out,” Violet told the Times. “I got really nervous, and I said, ‘Can we do this later?’ He was kind of nudging my head down, and I just didn’t want him to hate me, so I did it." In hindsight, she told the Times, she believes James exploited the "power dynamic" between them.
Hilary Dusome and Natalie Chmiel, both James' students when he taught at Playhouse West in North Hollywood, told the Times that James lured them under murky pretenses—either to shoot an "art film" or a high-end jean commercial—to a strip club and allegedly grew angry when no one in the group of actresses he'd assembled would go topless in front of the camera. "I felt like I was selected for something based on my hard work and my merit, and when I realized it was because I have nice [breasts], it was pretty clear that was not the case," Hilary told the Times.
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