James Franco has been known to be a smidge creepier than your friend's drunk uncle at a summer cookout. In 2014, a 17-year-old girl called Franco out and provided evidence of him sliding into her Instagram DMs, and later her texts. "When is your bday?" he asked at one point, a question better known as lesson one in Pedophilia 101. While some theorized the whole thing could have been a publicity stunt, Franco appeared on Live with Kelly and Michael almost immediately after the incident and said he was "embarrassed" by the exchange. "I used bad judgment," Franco said.
Fast forward to Sunday night, when Franco won a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his role in The Disaster Artist. It was the perfect time for women to call him out for both the attempted dalliance the general public is aware of, and the ones we're not.
Leading the charge was The Breakfast Club actress Ally Sheedy (who has since deleted her tweets). "James Franco just won," she tweeted. "Please never ever ask me why I left the film/tv business." In another deleted tweet, Sheedy wrote, "Ok wait. Bye. Christian Slater and James Franco at a table @goldenglobes." Sheedy ended that tweet with the hashtag #MeToo, which notably brought women and men together online to share in their experiences with sexual harassment.
While Sheedy's comments weren't specific, other women chimed in with criticisms of Franco's Instagram pickup gone wrong, and similar experiences:
Whatever I still remember James Franco trying to pick up a teenager on Instagram
quick ask Franco about the difference between skeezing on undergrads and sexual harassment
Hey, remember when James Franco was creeping in the instagram dms of underage teenage girls and shit? Anyway he's a Golden Globe winner this year -we're just glad that everyone in that room is comfortable enough to crack jokes about predators tho 🙃
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?
If there's anything that's been made clear throughout the countless sexual harassment allegations that have turned Hollywood on its head, it's that the line between creepy and abusive is still being drawn in the sand. The more solid it becomes, the less breathing room predatory assholes will have.
