Two alumni who filed a lawsuit in 2019 accusing actor and filmmaker James Franco of subjecting them to sexually exploitative auditions and filming at a film and theater school he founded agreed to withdraw the claims against him as part of a deal signed earlier this month.
A joint situation report presented to the Los Angeles Superior Court on February 11 said that the two women who filed the lawsuit, Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, agreed to withdraw their individual claims against Franco. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Details of the February 11 lawsuit were reported on Saturday by The Associated Press. On Sunday, the plaintiffs’ lawyers confirmed the deal, which they said would be formalized in a court case at a later date. They did not provide further details.
Ms. Tither-Kaplan and Ms. Gaal said in a 2019 lawsuit that Franco bullied them into performing free sex scenes while denying protection from nude knights when they were students in a master class on sex scenes at their school , Studio 4, which operated from 2014 to 2017 and had branches in Los Angeles and New York.
According to the action, Mr. Franco “sought to create a channel for young women who were subjected to their personal and professional sexual exploitation in the name of education”. The two women said that those who cooperated were led to believe that this would win them roles in Franco’s films.
Franco’s lawyers did not respond to an email asking for comment on Sunday. Mr. Franco previously denied the charges.
Franco’s producer Rabbit Bandini and his partners, which include Vince Jolivette and Jay Davis, were also cited as defendants. The two parties had been discussing an agreement for several months, according to the request, and the progress of the process had been interrupted while they were doing so. Jolivette’s lawyers did not respond to an email asking for comment.
The claims of the other authors of the class action will be extinguished without prejudice to the terms of the agreement, according to the report, which means that they may be rehabilitated later.
Before filing the 2019 lawsuit, Ms. Tither-Kaplan and several other women accused Franco of sexual misconduct in a Los Angeles Times story after he won a Golden Globe for his performance in “The Disaster Artist” in January 2018. Another women discussed their experiences with Mr. Franco in social media posts they shared during and after the broadcast, which took place in the midst of the #MeToo movement.
Mr. Franco continued to appear in public in the days following the accusations, in which he explained that he supported women’s rights to report acts of sexual misconduct, but said the specific allegations about him were inaccurate.
Franco denied the charges in an appearance on “The Late Show”, but said to the host, Stephen Colbert: “If there is a refund to be made, I will do it. I am here to listen and learn and change my perspective of where I am ”.