James Franco Fully Explains His Soap Role

James Franco has explained in more detail to New York Magazine his rationale behind joining GENERAL HOSPITAL.

The idea came to him while preparing a second movie with the artist Carter. The new film is called Maladies, and Franco plays a former soap star. “Now, just because I’m playing a character who was formerly on a soap opera doesn’t mean I had to go on a soap opera, right?” said Franco. “So going on GENERAL HOSPITAL isn’t directly related to Maladies. But we got to talking, like, ‘Hey, what if I really did a soap opera? That would be kind of amazing!’”

It turns out Franco has been a soap fan for a long time. “I was home sick a lot because I didn’t like school when I was little,” he said. “So if I wasn’t watching my VHS copy of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, or Whoopi Goldberg’s movie Jumping Jack Flash — because those were the only two movies we had the foresight to record — I guess I was watching soap operas.” So he called up the folks at GENERAL HOSPITAL, who were, of course, ecstatic. He only gave them one bit of direction: “I said, ‘I want to play an artist, and I want him to be crazy.’ And they wrote this character that was better than I could have ever asked for. It was their idea to call the character Franco. I said, ‘That’s crazy. Thank you.’” It was only after he’d signed up that he decided to bring his own crew along to film the filming, he said, “because I wanted to really have ownership over the piece.” (This footage would be part of his yet-to-be-confirmed performance-art show at Deitch Projects' Long Island City space this spring. And, in true meta form, that show might in turn be taped for a special episode of GENERAL HOSPITAL.)

Franco said the soap has made him a better actor. He recently auditioned for the role of Aron Ralston, the real-life trapped hiker who amputated his own arm with a pocket knife, in Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire follow-up, 127 Hours. The director asked him to quickly memorize and deliver his audition speech, and Franco nailed it. “Because I had just done GENERAL HOSPITAL, where I was doing 77 pages a day, I can memorize like that,” he said snapping his fingers. “I have to give credit to GENERAL HOSPITAL for being able to memorize like that, and I got the part!”