Two women are suing James Franco and his former acting school Studio 4. The women allege that they were sexually exploited by the actor and his partners during their time as students.
The lawsuit, filed by Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, alleges that the defendants “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.”
They claim that these actions “led to an environment of harassment and sexual exploitation both in and out of the class.”
James opened the acting school, with branches in Los Angeles and New York, in 2014. The school was closed in the fall of 2017. The two women say they paid a monthly tuition of about $300 and the school also offered additional master classes that went up to $2,000 each, including a $750 master class for sex scenes.
The lawsuit claims that students who wanted to join the sex scenes class were required to audition on videotape and “sign away their rights to these recordings,” according to The New York Times.
“The lawsuit seeks monetary damages and the return or destruction of any video recordings of former Studio 4 class members, as well as class-action status so other women who may have similar experiences can join,” the paper reports.
James was previously the subject of #MeToo allegations back in 2018 and in an interview shortly after the accusations were made public he said, “If there’s restitution to be made, I will make it. I’m here to listen and learn and change my perspective where it’s off.”
Sarah Tither-Kaplan was one of the women who spoke up back then and she doesn’t feel he has lived up to his promises. She said, “I can’t sleep at night knowing that my coming forward, originally, did not do the work that I wanted it to do yet. There still has been no action, publicly, that shows me that these people know what they did is wrong and harmful and can’t been repeated.”
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