James Franco 2013 Novel Under Scrutiny in Wake of Misconduct Allegations

James Franco’s 2013 book is under scrutiny after he was accused of sexual misconduct by five women in a Los Angeles Times article on Thursday.

The 39-year-old actor has denied all claims against him, but now people are questioning his integrity after a passage from his novel, Actors Anonymous, has made its way throughout the Twittersphere.

A short story in the book focuses on an actor who picks up a college-aged woman at the Toronto International Film Festival. While the story is believed to be fiction — the book is filled with “short stories, personal anecdotes, and poems” — some on Twitter believe the story is similar to not only something Franco has admitted to in the past, but a recent allegation against him.

Entertainment Weekly writer Mary Sollosi tweeted a passage from Actors Anonymous that has Franco writing about how a narrator used to pick up women after movie screenings. In the book, Franco reportedly writes:

“One of my favorite approaches was to ask the young girls that requested to take a photo with me to email me a copy of the photo; that way I can give them my info very quickly in front of a crowd of fans and later work out a way to see them. Usually this happens at an event, which means I am usually away from home, so I have girls all over the world. Usually they are ready when I go back to that city, whether it is Rome, Portland, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, Asheville, or D.C.”

In another passage that Sallosi tweeted, Franco writes about meeting an “okay-looking” student, who he calls Barbara, at a TIFF screening of his film 127 Hours in 2010. She asks for a photo, so he asks her to email it to him. He isn’t able to meet up with her that night because “I had already spent the night with a Princeton student who was volunteering at the festival” — but he does keep in touch. Not just with her, but with the Princeton student and a Berkeley student, too.

It’s important to note that the anecdote may or may not be true. In the short story, he writes that Barbara eventually comes to visit him in New York City. He writes:

“In the intervening months she had sent me plenty of photos of her body and especially her ass bent over in a G-string, so when she arrived at my Lower East Side apartment, I was ready and she was ready. Not only did she allow me to do everything I wanted to her, she let me film it on my phone.”

It’s unclear if the book is made up of fact or fiction. In a 2013 interview with Vanity Fair, Franco said while the book is narrated by an actor named “James Franco,” it shouldn’t be assumed that these stories are all true.

“If I’d wanted to write a book about my feelings on Hollywood,” he said, “I would have just written a memoir.”

Some say the excerpts closely resemble the time Franco got in hot water in 2014 after getting caught trying to pick up a 17-year-old girl on Instagram. He reportedly met the teenage girl while he was starring on Broadway in Of Mice And Men.

Franco admitted he was “embarrassed” and had “used bad judgment” while on Live With Kelly and Michael the next day.

“I guess I’m just a model of how social media is tricky,” he said at the time. “In my position, not only do I have to go through the embarrassing rituals of meeting someone, but sometimes it gets published for the world.”

New allegations against Franco were published after he won Best Actor at Sunday night’s Golden Globes for his role in The Disaster Artist. Five women accused the award-winning actor of abusing his power as an acting teacher and mentor in a sexually exploitative manner, and several called him out on Twitter for specific instances of sexual misconduct.

When speaking to Stephen Colbert on The Late Show, Franco said that these accusations were “not accurate, but I completely support people coming out and being able to have a voice because they didn’t have a voice for so long.” He also said, “In my life I pride myself on taking responsibility for things that I’ve done,” adding that, “whenever I know that there is something wrong or needs to be changed, I make it a point to do it.”