Let us take you back to 2011 whenJames Francoand Anne Hathaway hosted the Academy Awards. Despite both performers being considerably talented, it was a reminder thatnot just anyone could host an awards ceremonybecause everything about it didn’t work. It takes a special skill that not even two gifted actors have and once the reviews came out for the telecast, they certainly weren’t glowing. As it turns out, Franco took the reviews very hard, at least according to comedian Paul Rust, who says he saw the actor get physical with a chair following the telecast.
During an appearance on theWith Gourley and Rustpodcast, Rust said that he saw Franco become quite irritated a few days after co-hosting the Oscars with Hathaway. During this time, his filmYour Highnesshad also come out, and he was set to promote it with CollegeHumor alongsideDanny McBride, who was also in the film. The promotional piece was done two days after the Oscar ceremony that Franco co-hosted and Rust said,“So he was upset because the reviews were not good. He was in a bad mood.“After the director told Franco that the footage they shot for the promo was unusable because he was “mumbling all of his lines”, that is when things took a more bizarre turn.
“The director comes over and gives him that, and that makes James Franco more upset. So, in the next take, he starts going off-script, and he goes — and it’s also, like, the script is about, it’s the joke that he’s probably tired of, which is James Franco, Renaissance man. So, the premise was, each person picks their character and goes, ‘My character is Skibby the Great, and he’s a warlock who has these powers.’ And then it comes to James Franco, and he goes, ‘My character is James Franco, and he’s been getting into cooking chorizo.’ So, it’s sort of like he has to be self-effacing here, so that’s also part of the problem. And so, he starts doing ad-libs about other things that people say about James Franco. So he goes, but in the mumble voice — he’s still doing the mumbling thing, so he’s got his head down — he goes, ‘James Franco was high on heroin when he was hosting the Oscars last night.'”
James Franco’s Outburst Continued
Eventually, a publicist had to come out and ask what James Franco was doing and why he was saying things like that during the shoot, making it a whole scene. Rust recalled that some reviews suggested the actor appeared high while hosting the Oscars and maybe that’s why he made the joke, but it wasn’t what they were asking for. After Matt Gourley asked how McBride was on set, Rust said he was"a sweetheart"and that’s when he revealed Franco’s final outburst.
“Between takes, he’s saying to James Franco, ‘Hey, if you don’t want to do this, I don’t want you to feel forced that you have to do this. But [Franco] keeps doing it. And then I see, it reaches a point where I see James Franco stand up, kick a chair and storm out of the stage.”
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The 83rd Annual Academy Awards wasa unique experimentand an attempt to attract younger viewers to the telecast by having two younger performers lead the choice. On paper, it was a good idea to have Franco and Hathaway do it because they were some of the best actors of their generation and were a part of pretty popular projects, but the experiment didn’t work. Hathaway fared much better than Franco in the reviews, although some pointed to a lack of chemistry because she seemed more invested while Franco seemed disengaged. It’s possible that things ran much better in rehearsals, but the live show was mostly a disaster.
As forYour Highness, that film also proved to be a bomb. Directed byDavid Gordon Greenand also starring Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel, and Justin Theroux, the movie was met with mostly negative reviews and only grossed a mere $28 million worldwide on a $50 million budget.
Your Highness
