Two former students who filed a lawsuit in 2019, accusing actor and filmmaker James Franco of subjecting themselves to sexually exploitative auditions and film recordings to a drama and film school he founded, have agreed to their claims against him to abandon as part of a settlement reached earlier. this month.
A joint status report filed Feb. 11 in the Los Angeles High Court said the two women who filed the lawsuit, Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, agreed to drop their individual claims against Franco’s terms. . not known.
Details of the Feb. 11 filing were reported by The Associated Press. Lawyers for the plaintiffs on Sunday confirmed the settlement, which they said would later be formalized in a court case. They did not provide further details.
Me. Tither-Kaplan and me. Gaal said in a 2019 statement that Mr. Franco intimidated them into performing free sex scenes while denying the protection of nudity riders when their students were in a master class on sex scenes at his school, Studio. 4, which operated from 2014 to 2017 and had branches in Los Angeles and New York.
According to the case, Mr. Franco “sought to create a pipeline of young women who were subjected to his personal and professional sexual exploitation in the name of education.” The two women said that those who worked together believed that they had the roles in Mr. Franco’s films would give.
Attorneys for Mr. Franco did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday. Mr. Franco had earlier denied the allegations.
Franco’s production company, Rabbit Bandini, and his partners, which include Vince Jolivette and Jay Davis, are also named as accused. The two parties have been talking about a settlement for several months, according to the submission, and the progress of the lawsuit was interrupted while they were doing so. Attorneys for Mr. Jolivette did not respond to a request for comment.
According to the report, the claims of other plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit are dismissed without prejudice to the terms of the settlement, which means that it can be lifted again later.
Before she filed the lawsuit in 2019, Ms. Tither-Kaplan and several other women Mr. Franco accused of sexual misconduct in a Los Angeles Times story after winning a Golden Globe for his performance in “The Disaster Artist” in January 2018. Other women shared their experiences with Mr. Franco discusses in social media posts they shared during and after the broadcast, which came amid the #MeToo movement.
Mr. Franco continued to appear in public during the days following the allegations, in which he explained that he supported the rights of women to proclaim acts of sexual misconduct, but that the specific allegations about him were inaccurate.
Mr. Franco denied the allegations in an appearance on ‘The Late Show’, but told host Stephen Colbert: ‘If there is compensation, I will make it. I am here to listen and learn and change my perspective where it is not. ”