Seth Rogen hasn’t spent much time wondering about his old pal James Franco.
In an Esquire interview last year, which the magazine published on Tuesday, Rogen, 42, admitted that he missed Franco’s comments because he doesn’t pay attention to much news.
After the outlet asked Rogen how it felt to have something so personal” — the breakup of their friendship —become so public, the “Invincible” star replied, “Honestly, I absorb so little media that it really wasn’t on my radar.”
Rogen’s brief response was “all he wants to say about that,” per Esquire.
Rogen and Franco forged their famous friendship after starring in the TV series “Freaks and Geeks” from 1999-2000. The pair later went on to star in a slew of majorly successful comedy films like “Pineapple Express,” “This Is The End” and “The Interview.”
But Rogen’s bond with the “Spider-Man” star hit a rough patch in 2018, after multiple women accused Franco of inappropriate sexual behavior. The comedian showed support for Franco initially, but that came to a halt as more accusations from additional women arose.
Franco told Variety last year that the end of their friendship was “not for lack of trying” on his behalf.
“No. I haven’t talked to Seth. I love Seth, we had 20 great years together, but I guess it’s over,” Franco said in an Oct. 2024 interview, adding, “I’ve told him how much he’s meant to me.”
Rogen told The Times in 2021 that he would no longer be working with Franco.
“I also look back to that interview in 2018 where I comment that I would keep working with James, and the truth is that I have not and I do not plan to right now,” he told the outlet.
After The Times asked Rogen if their personal relationship was officially over, he shared that the accusations against Franco “changed many things in our relationship.”
While Franco initially denied the allegations to “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert in 2018, the “Hey Joe” star later admitted that he was trying “to kind of start examining this and changing who I was.”
“There were people that were upset with me and I needed to listen. There’s a writer, Damon Young, and he talked about when something like this happens, the natural human instinct is to just make it stop,” Franco said while discussing the accusations on an episode of “The Jess Cagle Podcast” in December 2021.
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Franco added, “You just want to get out in front of it and whatever you have to do, apologize, you know, get it done. But what that doesn’t do is allow you to do the work to, and to look at what was underneath.”
In June 2021, Franco agreed to pay more than $2.2 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that alleged he’d coerced his former film students at his now-defunct acting school to perform explicit sex scenes on camera.