Seth Rogen reacted to his longtime friend and collaborator James Franco declaring their friendship “over”.
In a new interview with Esquire Tuesday, Rogen begrudgingly addressed Franco’s comments from an October Variety interview, in which he revealed the friendship had run its course but not for a “lack of trying.”
Upon being asked how it felt “to have something so personal become so public,” Rogen told the magazine, “Honestly, I absorb so little media that it really wasn’t on my radar.”
He then declined to speak further on the topic.
Rogen and Franco started their careers together on Freaks and Geeks and then collaborated as co-stars in several movies, like Pineapple Express, This Is the End, and The Interview. The longtime friendship took a turn when Franco was accused of sexual misconduct in 2021 by students at an acting school he ran. Franco has insisted the relationships were consensual.
The actor settled a class action lawsuit brought by two of the students, for $2.2 million. As the scandal unfolded that year, Rogen told The Sunday Times that he had no plans to continue working with Franco. “I despise abuse and harassment and I would never cover or conceal the actions of someone doing it, or knowingly put someone in a situation where they were around someone like that,” Rogen said at the time, and added that the accusations “changed many things in our relationship and our dynamic.”
Franco confirmed last year that he hadn’t spoken to Rogen. “I haven’t talked to Seth,” he told Variety. “I love Seth, we had twenty great years together,” he also said, adding, “I’ve told him how much he’s meant to me.” But Rogen now claims he missed Franco’s comments to the site about the state of their relationship.
Rogen told Esquire, “I have a pretty good version of” fame, since “I’ve never been someone the paparazzi were fascinated by, and people don’t really shout at me on the street, so I feel like I dodged a bullet there.”
His alleged falling out with Franco is the closest Rogen’s name has been to tabloid fodder since his fame hit new heights in the early 2000s, so it’s a bullet he may continue to have to “dodge.”
