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In Busy Philipps memoir This Will Only Hurt a Little, she shares candid stories about her life, but the title isnt just a title. In the book, she recalls an incident on the set of the cult TV teen dramedy Freaks and Geeks when James Franco physically assaulted her.
According to Radar Online and Yahoo Entertainment, the memoir, which will be released Oct. 16, has a passage where Philipps describes a scene where she had to gently hit Francos character on the chest during a line. She claimed that Franco got upset with her after she hit him.
“He grabbed both my arms and screamed in my face, DONT EVER TOUCH ME AGAIN!” Philipps writes. “And he threw me to the ground. Flat on my back. Wind knocked out of me.”
She referred to Franco as a “f***ing bully” and said that everybody on set was horrified. She described the altercation to her co-star Linda Cardellini and she insisted that she report the incident to her manager. Franco ended up apologizing the next day after he was told by the directors and producers to do so. However, he wasnt formally punished for physically assaulting Philipps.
The assault claims come after Franco was accused of sexually inappropriate and exploitative behavior by five women earlier this year. Besides his role on HBOs The Deuce and in Coen brothers pic The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, he has been avoiding the spotlight. And with this story coming to light, he might be avoiding it a little more.
In addition to This Will Only Hurt a Little, Philipps is set to debut her late-night talk show Busy Tonight on E! Oct. 28 at 10 PM.
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