Baller Alert Entertainment & Lifestyle
Actor James Franco is being sued by former students for sexually exploiting students at his now-closed film school.
According to NPR, the complaint against Franco was filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court by two women who studied at his film school, Studio 4.
NPR reached out for a comment on the suit which was returned by his attorney Michael Plonsker as he issued a statement denying the allegations:
“This is not the first time that these claims have been made and they have already been debunked. 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.”
Franco first opened Studio 4 in 2014, Sarah Tither-Kaplan was one of its first students. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
According to the report, Franco taught a class called Sex Scenes, which students had to audition for and pay an extra $750 for it. Despite the cost, Tither-Kaplan said she was thrilled to be selected.
“I really respected him as an actor, and the fact that I was selected based on an audition meant to me that I was valued for my talent,” Tither-Kaplan said.
Initially, she assumed the class would teach her how to “maneuver in sex scenes professionally as an actor,” but it “did not do that at all.”
“In fact, I didn’t know anything about nudity riders, the detail required in them, the right to counsel with the director about nude scenes, the custom to choreograph nude scenes ahead of time to negotiate them with the cast and the director — I knew none of that throughout that class,” Tither-Kaplan said.
As the class progressed, Tither-Kaplan said, students were encouraged to take risks with their bodies, which she went along with an attempt at being a team player.
“I wanted to do my best, and I wanted to make friends there, and I wanted to have it really mean something for me,” she said. “So I did what seemed to be the thing that they wanted in this class, and that was get naked and do sex scenes and not complain and, you know, push the envelope. And … I felt encouraged when I just went for it.”
She said she was rewarded for her involvement.
“After I did the Sex Scenes master class, and did the nude scene, and the sex scene in my short film, I started working with them very regularly,” Tither-Kaplan detailed. “And not a lot of other students got that chance.”
Former student Toni Gaal is the other plaintiff named in the complaint, she also explained what the experience was like for her.
“Most of the work that was offered for us had nudity requirements — for women specifically,” Gaal said.
The two named plaintiffs plan to represent a class of more than 100 former female students at Studio 4.
Their complaint alleged that the film school set out to “create a steady stream of young women to objectify and exploit.” The complaint also argued the school was “designed to circumvent California’s ‘pay for play’ regulations,” which prohibits making actors pay for auditions, reports say.
Gaal said that this wasn’t the only problem with auditions: “We were consistently auditioning for projects that had nudity, and we had to upload our self-tapes at home, so they were consistently getting footage of this sensitive nature of work.”
According to the publication the allegations against Franco first surfaced on Twitter, which was followed by a story in the Los Angeles Times, in January 2018.
At the 2018 Golden Globe Awards Franco was seen wearing a Time’s Up pin which caused all three women to Twitter with comments stating how disingenuous his support was.
Just a day later, Franco appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and denied the accusations declaring:
“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’s something wrong or needs to be changed. I make it a point to do it. 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. I think it’s a good thing and I support it.”
In addition to Franco, two other defendants and their production company, Rabbit Bandini, are also being sued based on the complaint.
In a statement released at the time of the 2018 accusations, Vince Jolivette — the co-owner of Rabbit Bandini, said that “the school was always run professionally,” that “instructors were excellent, [and] student feedback was positive.”
However, the complaint argues against that, alleging that the acting school purposefully sought out “young, naïve women between the ages of 17-24” because they would not understand how the film industry functions.
“They knew who they were asking to do the improvised sex and nude scenes,” said Tither-Kaplan. “They knew what level we were at in our careers. And I think that’s by design, because it sort of protects them from any real repercussions because they can just write us off as nobodies.”
According to the complaint, the women are seeking unspecified damages. They also want an apology followed by the destruction of any videos Franco and his partners still have from their time in the class.
