Friday morning on ‘Live! With Kelly and Michael’ James Franco was asked to answer questions surrounding the scandal of his attempting to pick up a 17 year old on Instagram.
“I’m embarrassed,” the 35-year-old actor said, “I guess I’m just a model of how social media is tricky, it’s the way that people meet each other today, but what I’ve learned – I guess because I’m new to it. You don’t know who’s on the other end. You get a feel for them, you don’t know who you’re talking to. I used bad judgment and I learned my lesson.”
Lucy Clode is the 17 year-old Franco met outside of his Broadway show, “Of Mice and Men,” on Monday. She asked him for a picture, and he told her to tag him on Instagram. After she tagged him, they began an alleged conversation on the popular social media site, where Franco asked her for her phone number, where she was staying, when she turns 18 and if they could meet up.
Clode, being a teen, uploaded screen shots of their Instagram and iPhone exchanges and before they were both deleted, they quickly went viral. Franco wrote about the situation on Wednesday on Twitter, making fun of himself that he hit on a teen. “I’m not! I hope parents keep their teens away from me. Thank You,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, in my position – I mean, I have a very good life, but not only do i have the embarrassing kind of rituals of meeting someone, but if I do that, then it gets published for the world. So now, it’s double embarrassing,” he told the ‘Live!’ audience. “I promise I won’t reveal our text messages, “Ripa joked to Franco.
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