Maggie Gyllenhaal questioned every woman working on 'The Deuce' about their experiences with James Franco after he was accused of sexual misconduct.
Maggie Gyllenhaal
The 40-year-old actor was accused of inappropriate behaviour towards five women on and off movie sets in an article published in January and his co-star and producer on the HBO show felt a "responsibility" to investigate his conduct on the programme.
Asked by Sway Calloway on his SiriusXM show 'Sway in the Morning ' if she had ignored the allegations or confronted the star and what to do in such a situation, she said: "I would've felt similarly as an actor, but I felt it was my responsibility to do the opposite of ignore it.
"You know, we at the time that the accusations against James came out in the LA Times we read them all, we took them very seriously.
"We spoke to every woman on the crew and in the cast to find out if they felt respected and what their experience of working with James was and everyone said that they had been totally respected by him."
The 40-year-old star also took into account the topics of the show - which follows the beginnings of the sex trade industry in early 1970s New York - when it came to addressing the allegations and she insisted it would have been "wrong" to have cancelled the programme as a result.
She said: "For me, I would say another thing that was really important was our show is about, like I said, it's about misogyny.
"It's about transactional sex. It's about inequality in the entertainment business. You couldn't be more at the centre of that conversation than 'The Deuce.'
"To me, I thought I want to keep telling this story, I want to keep playing Candy and going deep into, like, really what it's like from a woman's perspective to be dealing with all the stuff that is on everybody's minds right now.
"I feel like it would've been the wrong consequence to those accusations to shut our show down. It would've been like actually the opposite of the right thing to do.
"And yet, you know, look, I believe that there should be consequences for disrespecting or assaulting women. Of course, I do."
James previously denied the allegations against him.
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