Renaissance man James Franco continued in his role of press critic last night, when he appeared on The Tonight Show to promote the new film Spring Breakers. In the film, Franco adopts cornrows, grills and a Southern drawl to play a rapper-slash-criminal named Alien. "All the actresses are telling people, 'Oh yeah, he never left character,'" he told Jay Leno.
Well, no, I did. I didn't talk because my guy, he talks a certain way, acts a certain way. I didn't act like that off set, but I couldn't get rid of the cornrows. Those take like five hours to get in.
It appears Franco might be taking issue with our current cover story, where co-star Vanessa Hudgens is quoted,
I have no idea who James Franco is. I know who Alien is. He's that into method acting. He comes on set as his character. In between scenes, he is still his character. When I first saw him, I was speechless because he just completely transformed himself. The way he talked, with that accent... Everything he does is so organic.
Despite his protests, the whole idea of James Franco breaking character makes us, as his character Alien would say, 'spicious. This is the guy who played himself on General Hospital, and then claimed that the fact of his appearance on the show was itself a performance. After that, James Franco can't claim that he "left character": James Franco is a character. Still, the cornrows do sound like a hassle.