James Franco calls sexual misconduct allegations "not accurate" on 'Colbert'

After James Franco won a Golden Globe for The Disaster Artist and accepted his award wearing a Time’s Up pin, several women took to Twitter to criticize him for wearing the pin and bring up accusations of sexual misconduct and abuse of power against him. Actress Violet Paley tweeted “Cute #TIMESUP pin James Franco. Remember the time you pushed my head down in a car towards your exposed penis & that other time you told my friend to come to your hotel when she was 17? After you had already been caught doing that to a different 17 year old?” Paley was presumably referring to when Franco was caught trying to pick up a teenage fan in 2014 (which Franco later discussed on “Live With Kelly & Michael” and called “bad judgement”). Paley later added “A couple weeks ago, James offered me & a few other girls an overdue, annoyed, convenient phone ‘apology.’ I don’t accept, but maybe some other people’s lives would be made easier if he donated all of his earnings from ‘The Disaster Artist’ to @RAINN01.”

Actress Sarah Tither-Kaplan tweeted “Hey James Franco, nice #timesup pin at the #GoldenGlobes , remember a few weeks ago when you told me the full nudity you had me do in two of your movies for $100/day wasn’t exploitative because I signed a contract to do it? Times up on that!” and later added “If a famous actor who has the ability to make or break my career with the snap of his fingers offers me a part, I don’t have bargaining power. I need work. I need to eat. I need a career. I can’t afford to say “no”.”

In a since-deleted series of tweets, actress Ally Sheedy wrote, “James Franco just won. Please never ever ask me why I left the film/TV business,” and later added, “Why is a man hosting? Why is James Franco allowed in? Said too much. Nite love ya #goldenglobes.”

Franco has since appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where Colbert asked him about the allegations. Franco replied, “There were some things on Twitter. I haven’t read them, I’ve heard about them — okay first of all, I have no idea what I did to Ally Sheedy. I directed her in a play Off Broadway, I had nothing but a great time with her, total respect for her. I had no idea why she was upset, she took the tweet down, I don’t know. I can’t speak for her, I don’t know. The others, look, in my life I pride myself on taking responsibility for things that I’ve done. I have to do that to maintain my well being. I do it whenever I know that there’s something wrong or needs to be changed. I make it a point to do it. The things that I heard that were on Twitter are not accurate, but I completely support people coming out and being able to have a voice because they didn’t have a voice for so long. So I don’t want to shut them down in any way. I think it’s a good thing and I support it.”

Colbert then asked, “Because for so long accusations were not believed, when accusations happen — in your case, you say that this is not an accurate thing for me — do you have any idea what the answer might be to come to some sense of what the truth is so there can be some sort of reconciliation between people who clearly have different views of things?”

Franco doesn’t entirely have an answer for Colbert, but adds “I think the whole point of this thing is that we listen” and “I’m here to listen and learn and change my perspective where it’s off.” Watch the full interview below: