James Franco Picks Up Young Girls on Instagram

Christina Drill
April 03, 2014

In a perfect world, James Franco would have remained Daniel Desario forever and we would have never gotten to know the man behind the character. This would have saved us from a lot of stress.

Sources are reporting that James Franco tried to pick up a 17-year-old tourist Lucy Clode from Scotland who posted pictures of him at the stage door of Of Mice and Men at the Longacre Theater in Midtown when she went to see the show with her mom.

After Lucy tagged Franco in some pics and videos on her Instagram account (you can hear him telling her, "You better tag me," in one of the videos) he direct messaged her with "Hi." Their conversation continued as follows:

Franco: Hi

Clode: Hi *Surprised cat emoji*

Franco: Where do you live?

Franco: NYC?

Clode: Scotland

Clode: In a small town called Dollar

Then Franco asks her if she's 18, if she has a boyfriend, when her birthday is, and what her phone number is. Homegirl says she is "nearly 18" but he continues to chat with her. Lucy then asks Franco to take a photo in which he is holding a piece of paper with her name on it, and he does.

HERE'S WHERE IT GETS CRAZY-- instead of going to meet up with James Franco, Lucy decides to leak the story to the internet. The second this happens, Franco updates his Instagram bio to say "(PLEASE DON'T DM ME IF YOU ARE UNDER 18. THANK YOU)" so he can't get in trouble for anything.

I guess I'm too old but I didn't know that you could pick people up via Instagram Direct Message. Is that how people do that?

There is some buzz going around that this might be some sort of viral marketing campaign to promote Franco's upcoming movie "Palo Alto" based on the book he wrote in 2010 with the same name. The plot centers around a teenage girl (who will be played by Emma Roberts) who begins an illicit relationship with her soccer coach (who will be played by Franco).

Read the original transcripts Lucy screenshotted here.