James Franco Isn’t A Pervert, He’s A Prankster (We Think)

The Internet exploded today when news broke that James Franco may have tried to lure an underage girl to his hotel room. In case you've been trapped in an airplane all day, or you simply forgot to pay your Time Warner bill, let's refresh.

A 17-year-old Scottish girl named Lucy was vacationing in New York when she met Franco outside of his Broadway show, Of Mice and Men. She took an Instagram video with the actor, who insisted that she tag him. According to screencaps Lucy later posted to imgur, Franco began a seedy correspondence with the teen, in which he tried to arrange a late-night rendezvous in a hotel room. You can see that here.

Everyone wanted to believe that the images were fakes, because James Franco the polymath actor/artist/creep just doesn't have a nice ring to it. But, the evidence was damning, especially the image he sent her of him holding a piece of paper that read "Lucy." While no one flat-out accused Franco of lewd conduct, there were a lot of uncomfortable implications.

But, before Franco was officially indicted in the court of public opinion, the Twittersphere awoke from its logic slumber and realized that this is James Franco we're talking about. It has to be a hoax.

Franco is way too Internet savvy to think that he could proposition an underage teen, in this day and age, and not risk having it leaked. He also has a movie coming out this month called Palo Alto, in which he plays a soccer coach who, you guessed it, sleeps with high school girls. Couple that with the fact that Franco has established himself as a meta/self-reflexive/post-celebrity, and what we have here is likely a case of the actor pulling a fast one on all of us.

Let's not forget that April Fools just passed, and that world famous actors tend to not desperately proposition underage girls by sending hugely incriminating photos of themselves. The mysterious Lucy's Instagram account and her original postings of their text history have also been removed. Franco's likely goal here was to get us talking about his under-the-radar indie flick Palo Alto. Note, that's the second time we mentioned it in this piece alone. He wins.

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