James Franco reaches settlement with former students who accused him of sexual misconduct

In 2019, two former students of James Franco now-defunct acting school accused him and his partners in the organization of using the school as “little more than a scheme to provide him and his male collaborators with a pool of young female performers that they could take advantage of.” They filed a class-action lawsuit against Franco and others involved in the school, claiming that Franco and partner Vince Jolivette “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.” Among the accusations was that one of the classes offered at Franco’s school was specifically built around sex scenes, which prospective students had to audition for on camera, with Franco allegedly keeping the videos on file and asking the students to sign over their rights to them. One of the accusers, who was in this class, said that Franco once “removed protective garments from students before simulating oral sex on them as part of an orgy scene.”