In 2018, Busy Philipps released her memoir, This Will Only Hurt A Little. It's about her hilarious teenage years, personal struggles in Hollywood, and ruminations about motherhood. Still, the media managed to make it all about her Freaks and Geeks co-star, James Franco. Stories about an "abusive" James Franco got out and the actress received a great deal of backlash for it.
What's interesting is that the story of Busy and James' beef in the past has always been public. But people thought it was just another inflammable accusation thrown at The Disaster Artist actor. At that time, five women had come forward with sexual misconduct allegations against James. Busy refuted the stories linking her personal experience to the actor. She clarified that stories from her book about their teenage feud were blown out of proportion as clickbait.
So how did it get that bad? Here's the truth behind the beef Busy once described as brutal.
James Bullied Busy On The 'Freaks And Geeks' Set
James and Busy played a couple in the short-lived show Freaks and Geeks. But they "really, really disliked each other. "In 2016, before her memoir came out, Busy was asked on Watch What Happens Live about the most difficult celebrity she'd ever worked with. There, she told the story of how James used to bully her on set.
"He like shoved me to the ground once. It was like really brutal," Busy described to Andy Cohen. The actress gave a more detailed version of the story in her book. She said she was asked to lightly hit James in the chest for a scene on the show. James hated it. "He grabbed both my arms and screamed in my face, 'DON'T EVER TOUCH ME AGAIN!'" Busy wrote. "And he threw me to the ground. Flat on my back. Wind knocked out of me."
Busy also said that James' actions weren't 100% against or about her. They were just an overreaction by a 19-year-old guy going through something. "He felt like he wanted his character to be one way. He had had a discussion with the producers that he came from an abused family or something, and so he didn’t want his girlfriend—I played his girlfriend—to ever physically hit him," Busy explained.
James Apologized But Was Never Punished For His Behavior
Busy has always reduced her past feud with James into a teenage phase. "We're friends now," Busy said on Watch What Happens Live. "We like each other now as adults but as kids, we did not get along." In her book, Busy said that James stormed off after he threw her to the ground. He did apologize the next day as instructed by the director and producers but was never punished for it.
That's the part that birthed the misconstrued stories. Around that time, Busy Philipps was also showing public support for Christine Blasey Ford who testified that Brett Kavanaugh assaulted her when they were in high school. It inspired the White Chicks star to share a similar experience on Instagram. She said she was raped at the age of 14.
It probably confused fans, associating the sexual harassment claims against James with Busy's own story and their long-resolved fight. It was all because a lot of different information was coming out at the same time. Busy didn't like that the media piled up everything on James, too.
"It really bummed me out because I also felt like, I’m a woman in this industry who wrote a very personal book about my experiences in life and in this industry and then the headlines were all about a man. I was like, that was my point the whole time," Busy told Andy Cohen in 2018.
They're On Good Terms Now
Busy Philipps has always made it clear that she and James had already made amends over the years. Neither has hard feelings towards the other. They're simply not in contact. So Busy didn't hear from James Franco when the clickbait headlines were going around. But she said she could imagine that he wasn't "thrilled" about it. Months before that, James had already addressed the sexual misconduct accusations on Late Night With Seth Meyers.
He said he wasn't invalidating the claims and that it's important to have these conversations. "I have my own side of the story but I believe in, you know, these people that have been underrepresented, getting their stories out enough that I will hold back things that I could say because I believe in it that much," James told Seth Meyers. "I'm not going to try and actively refuse things."