‘General Hospital’ spoilers find that James Franco is in the news. The actor, who is best known as his role as Franco Baldwin on the hit ABC soap, is being sued by two actresses who say that he intimidated his students into gratuitous and exploitative sexual situations. Here’s what you need to know.
According to reports, Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, former students at Franco’s now-closed Studio 24, filed the suit Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court. They claim that Franco Baldwin pushed his students into performing in increasingly explicit sex scenes on camera in what they call an “orgy type setting.”
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Apparently, Franco taught a class called Sex Scenes. Students had to audition for the class and had to even pay to be in it but one of the plaintiffs says that she was actually excited to be selected for the class, mostly because of Franco’s fame and celebrity status.
“I really respected him as an actor, and the fact that I was selected based off of an audition meant to me that I was valued for my talent,” Tither-Kaplan says.
However, little did she know at the time that the class didn’t teach what she had expected. At first Tither-Kaplan assumed that the class would be about how to maneuver in certain situations but that wasn’t the case at all.
“In fact, I didn’t know anything about nudity riders, the detail required in them, the right to counsel with the director about nude scenes, the custom to choreograph nude scenes ahead of time to negotiate them with the cast and the director — I knew none of that throughout that class,” Tither-Kaplan says.
Instead, Franco allegedly subjected them to sexually exploitative auditions and film shoots, all while promising them roles in movies that never materialized or were never released. So far James Franco himself has not made any comments about the case. In the meantime, let us know your thoughts in our comments section below.
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