The working relationship between Seth Rogen and James Franco that dates back to “Freaks and Geeks” appears to be over.
Rogen, who has co-starred with Franco in movies including “The Interview,” “This is the End,” “The Disaster Artist” and “Pineapple Express,” said he doesn’t plan to work with his frequent collaborator again after multiple women have accused him of sexual misconduct.
“What I can say is that I despise abuse and harassment and I would never cover or conceal the actions of someone doing it, or knowingly put someone in a situation where they were around someone like that,” the 37-year-old actor told the Sunday Times.
Specifically, Rogen was responding to the allegations of actress Charlene Yi, who accused him of being an “enabler” on the set of “The Disaster Artist.”
Yi, who played designer Safowa Bright-Asare in the Oscar-nominated 2017 movie, said in April that she had tried to quit the film over the allegations against Franco, who starred in and directed the flick, but that “they” had instead offered her a larger role, then “minimized” the accusations.
“Seth Rogen was one of the producers on this film so he definitely knows about the bribe and why I quit,” Yi wrote on Instagram.
“Denying/gaslighting is a tactic that abusers and enablers use that is psychological violence, & has serious affects: the survivor loses sense of reality/intuition to protect self from targeted again, PTSD, suicidal thoughts/suicide, etc.”
Yi also referenced a 2014 “Saturday Night Live” joke in which Rogen laughed off the at-the-time new revelation that Franco, who was 35 at the time, had propositioned a 17-year-old on Instagram.
“To make myself feel better I decided to prank James Franco,” Rogen said during the sketch, pretending to read from a diary.” I posed as a girl on Instagram, told him I was way young. He seemed unfazed. I have a date to meet him at the Ace Hotel.”
Now, Rogen says he regrets the joke.
“It was a terrible joke, honestly,” he told the Sunday Times.
Five women accused Franco of sexually inappropriate behavior in 2018 while they were students at his acting school, alleging that he tricked them into nude sex scenes, according to the Los Angeles Times. Busy Philipps, Ally Sheedy and his ex-girlfriend, Violet Paley, all came forward with their own stories of misconduct as well.
