‘We had 20 great years’: James Franco says Seth Rogen friendship ‘over’

James Franco and Seth Rogen were once close friends and collaborators. Now, Franco says their bond is “over.”
In an interview with Variety published Friday, the “127 Hours” actor got candid about a falling out with his former friend, Rogen, while also detailing his acting comeback after a wave of #MeToo sexual misconduct allegations in the 2010s.
“I haven’t talked to Seth. I love Seth, we had 20 great years together, but I guess it’s over. And not for lack of trying. I’ve told him how much he’s meant to me,” Franco told Variety in the interview.
Rogen and Franco, who met as teenagers in Hollywood, worked together on famous projects such as “Freaks and Geeks,” “The Disaster Artist,” “Pineapple Express” and “This Is The End.” But in real life, things have become far more complicated.
In 2021, Franco candidly spoke about his sexual misconduct allegations and the end of his relationship with Rogen, who told Britain’s The Sunday Times earlier that year that he had no plans to work with his ex-friend again.
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The Oscar nominee echoed Rogen’s claims during an interview with host Jess Cagle on SiriusXM’s “The Jess Cagle Podcast” in December 2021.
“Of course it was hurtful in context, but I get it. He had to answer for me, ’cause I was silent. He had to answer for me and I don’t want that. And so that’s why it’s one of the main reasons I wanted to talk to you today. I don’t want Seth or my brother (actor Dave Franco) or anyone to have to answer for me anymore,” Franco told Cagle during the interview.
Franco added in the 2021 interview that “We didn’t have one fight for 20 years. Not one fight. He was my absolute closest work friend, collaborator. And we just gelled and what he said is true: We aren’t working together right now, and we don’t have any plans to work together.”
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Franco, who is promoting his new film “Hey Joe” at the Rome Film Festival, again addressed the allegations and his comeback attempt in the Variety interview published Friday.
“Being told you’re bad is painful, but ultimately, that’s kind of what I needed to just stop going the way I was going,” Franco said.
He continued: “I’m so grateful to be working. I did go through a lawsuit, and during that lawsuit I wasn’t working. But then COVID hit so everybody wasn’t working. So, I don’t know, it was all… I mean, we were all kind of in it. So it was sort of like, ‘I don’t know what I am.'”
Franco and Rogen were friends for over 20 years, but the events that led to the downfall of the famed Hollywood couple’s relationship date back a decade.
In 2014, Franco, then 35, made headlines after he asked out a 17-year-old girl on Instagram. (He later apologized.) That year, Franco and Rogen both joked about the infamous incident on “SNL” during respective hosting stints.
Then, four years later, the Canadian comedian said “yes” when asked if he would continue working with Franco in a 2018 interview with Vulture.
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Later, in May 2021, in an interview with Britain’s “The Sunday Times,” Rogen provided an update on the pair’s relationship.
“I do look back at a joke I made on ‘Saturday Night Live’ in 2014 and I very much regret making that joke,” Rogen said. “It was a terrible joke, honestly. And I also look back to that interview in 2018 where I comment that I would keep working with James, and the truth is that I have not and I do not plan to right now.”
In June 2021, a month after Rogen’s comments, Franco agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle a sexual misconduct lawsuit brought against him by his former acting students, who alleged that he pushed students into increasingly sexual and exploitive scenes on camera at his now-shuttered Studio 4 acting and filmmaking school, which boasted locations in Los Angeles and New York City.
Contributing: Brian Truitt, David Oliver