The actress is sharing her shocking experience in her new book.
Busy Philipps is opening up about an incident during her teenage days on the set of Freaks and Geeks, where she alleges co-star James Franco assaulted her.
The actress details the alleged attack in an excerpt from her upcoming memoir, This Will Only Hurt a Little, obtained by Yahoo Entertainment. According to Philipps, she and Franco were doing a scene together where she was supposed to lightly hit him in the chest during their conversation. However, Franco apparently didn’t know the hit was part of the scene and wasn’t expecting it. Philipps claims when she hit him, he snapped.
“He grabbed both my arms and screamed in my face, ‘DON’T EVER TOUCH ME AGAIN!’” she alleges. “And he threw me to the ground. Flat on my back. Wind knocked out of me.”
The 39-year-old actress goes on to explain that despite encouragement from co-star Linda Cardellini, she never reported the alleged incident to her manager. Philipps says Franco apologized to her the next day after he was forced to by the show’s producers and director. However, Philipps claims that he was never truly punished for his alleged behavior.
Franco was accused of inappropriate behavior and sexual misconduct by five women earlier this year. During a visit to The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in January, he addressed the allegations.
"In my life, I pride myself on taking responsibility for things that I've done. I have to do that to maintain my well-being," he told host Stephen Colbert. "I do it whenever I know that there's something wrong or needs to be changed. I make it a point to do it."
"The things that I heard were on Twitter are not accurate, but I completely support people coming out and being able to have a voice because they didn't have a voice for so long," he continued. "So I don't want to shut them down in any way. I think it's a good thing and I support it."
The alleged incident between Philipps and Franco isn't the only traumatic moment detailed in her new book. She also discusses being raped at age 14, which she first revealed on Instagram amid Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of Judge Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
"This is me at 14. The age I was raped," Philipps captioned an old photo. "It's taken me 25 years to say those words. I wrote about it in my book. I finally told my parents and sister about it 4 months ago. Today is the day we are silent no more. All of us," Philipps wrote. "I'm scared to post this. I can't imagine what Dr. Ford is feeling right now."
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