James Franco Says “I Wish I Was Gay” While Talking About The Jokes At His Roast

A couple of weeks ago James Franco got roasted, which involved lots of his friends and colleagues standing up to make fun of him, and as many noted, there were are awful lot of gay jokes, which veered from the intelligent (particularly Aziz Ansari’s riff on why everyone else was doing gay jokes) to those that bordered on homophobia.

Now Franco has been addressing the slight controversy that erupted, telling The Daily Beast “There’s two sides to what happened in the Roast. If that’s what they were going to make fun of me for, I was like, ‘Great! Bring on the gay jokes!’ because these aren’t insults at all. I don’t even care if people think I’m gay, so it was like, ‘Awesome!’ I mean, I wish I was…I wish I was gay.”

“Why?,” asked the Beast

“I mean … we don’t have to go into it. But as far as that larger phenomenon that you’re talking about that happens to other actors, part of it is that movies are a place where people can project things and identify with characters, and it’s the same thing with actors outside of their roles—and it’s been that way since Hollywood was around. That’s why there’s a lot of conjecture. That’s been one of my things, too. My relationship with my public image over the past four or five years has just become weirder and weirder, because I look at it and it’s me, and it’s not me, so if other people want to use that for their own purposes or needs, I’m fine with it.”