Paul Rust revealed on a recent episode of his podcast With Girly and Rust that James Franco “flipped out” on set, just days after co-hosting the 2011 Oscars with Anne Hathaway. He said he witnessed it.
“I saw James Franco flip out once,” Rust claimed. “When ‘Your Royal Highness’ was released, CollegeHumor was trying to promote it, and a group of geeks got together with ‘Your Royal Highness’ stars James Franco and Danny McBride to play Dungeons and Dragons. I had an idea.”
Rust said, “This was literally two days after[Franco]hosted the Oscars, so he was upset because the reviews weren’t good. He was in a bad mood.”
Franco co-hosted the Oscar ceremony in February 2011. At the time, Franco was also promoting “Your Highness,” a stoner comic fantasy film directed by David Gordon Green that was released in theaters in April of that year.
The comedian recalled that during the first take of a promo for CollegeHumor, Franco “had his head down” and “mumbled all his lines,” making the footage “unusable.” According to Rust, the director told Franco: what are you doing? “
“James Franco got even more upset because the director came in and gave it to him. So in the next take he starts going off script and he leaves — and that also meant that the script probably There’s a joke that he’s tired of, one about James Franco, the Renaissance man,” Rust said. “So the premise is that each person picks their own character and says, ‘My character is Skibby the Great, and he’s a warlock with these powers.'” And James Franco And he said, “My character is James Franco, and he’s obsessed with making chorizo.” That’s part of the problem. And then he starts ad-libbing about other things people are saying about James Franco. So he leaves, and in a murmured voice – he’s still mumbling, so he keeps his head down – he says, “Last night when I was hosting the Oscars, James… Franco was high on heroin.
“Then a publicist comes along, bends over and says, ‘Why are you saying that?'” he continued. The camera is on you now. You shouldn’t say that. ”
Ms. Rust said she “has a vague recollection” of Franco hosting the Oscars and people saying, “What’s the height of this guy’s behavior?” She added: “I don’t know if they said he was high on heroin. And for the record, I don’t think he was high.”
When podcast co-host Matt Gurley asked how Danny McBride acted on set, Rust responded that McBride was a “sweetheart.”
“Between takes, he was telling James Franco, ‘Hey, if you don’t want to do this, I don’t want you to feel forced to do this,'” Rust recalled. “But[Franco]just keeps doing it. And it gets to the point where James Franco gets up and kicks a chair and runs off the stage.”
Last said he believed Franco “never came back” and that although producers tried to restructure the project, it never “saw the light of day.”
Variety has reached out to Franco’s representatives for comment.
The 83rd Academy Awards received negative reviews from both critics and viewers, many of whom noted Franco and Hathaway’s roles as co-hosts. “The youth movement in this year’s Oscar host selection is evident, from the opening montage actor insert sequence (hello, Billy Crystal) to the stiff, awkward banter between James Franco and Anne Hathaway throughout. , it didn’t change the dynamic of the show,” reads Variety’s review of the 2011 ceremony. “Melissa Leo dropped the ‘f-bomb’ early on, but the ‘f’ words that best describe this incident would be ‘monotone’, ‘fumbling’, and ‘familiar’. It proves that a fresh coat of paint is not enough to revitalize a ritual that easily disrupts innovation. Given Inception’s many technical victories, perhaps this Oscar casting should be dismissed as a bad dream. ”
