James Franco returns to acting with period drama 4 years after sexual misconduct allegations

James Franco is set to return to the big screen four years after facing sexual misconduct allegations. Franco, who stepped away from acting after multiple women accused him of sexually inappropriate behavior in 2018, will star in director Bille August's coming-of-age period film Me, You.

The post-World War II drama, adapted from Erri De Luca's novel Tu, Mio, follows 16-year-old Marco, a London native who embarks on a summer holiday in Italy with his father (Tom Hollander). Marco meets fisherman Nicola, played by Franco, who per the synopsis "beguiles" Marco with his post-war stories "following his military service as a U.S. GI". Later, the teen meets and falls in love with the older and "enigmatic" 20 year old Caia (Daisy Jacob).

After Caia reveals her painful past, including a childhood stolen by the SS and being thrown out of a train by her father to save her from the horrors of a concentration camp, Nicola and Caia's stories "awaken a ferocious resentment for the SS in Marco." When he encounters rude German tourists on the island, Marco "decides to avenge Caia's pain."

"I am excited to board this phenomenal project and to be working with the legendary Bille August," Franco said in a statement. "I'm a huge fan of his work, and Me, You is a truly brilliant script."

The film marks Franco's first project since 2019. He last starred in TV series The Deuce and did voiceover work for the animated film Arctic Dogs. In 2018, five women — four of whom were his students at an acting school he previously ran — accused Franco of sexually exploitative behavior in an exposé published in Los Angeles Times. One student claimed Franco "would always make everybody think there were possible roles on the table if we were to perform sexual acts or take off our shirts," among other allegations.

Franco's representation denied the allegations, telling the Times that the complaints would be investigated. Later that year, two of the students sued Franco for the alleged exploitation; he reached a settlement in February 2021, paying $2.2 million to settle the case. In December of that year, Franco appeared on SiriusXM's The Jess Cagle Podcast and addressed the misconduct allegations, admitting that he slept with students.

"In 2018, there were some complaints about me and an article about me and, at that moment I just thought, 'I'm gonna be quiet,' " Franco said. " 'I'm gonna pause.' Did not seem like the right time to say anything. There were people that were upset with me and I needed to listen." He's "been doing a lot of work," he said. "I was in recovery before for substance abuse. There were some issues that I had to deal with that were also related to addiction. And so I've really used my recovery background to kind of start examining this and changing who I was."

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