Busy Philipps Says Working with James Franco on Freaks and Geeks Was "Brutal"

Busy Philipps and James Franco may have played a couple on Freaks and Geeks, but their off-camera relationship was anything but loving. "Well, at the time, and we've since made amends, James Franco and I really didn't get along," she said during her appearance on Wednesday's Watch What Happens Live. 

In fact, Busy disliked James so much that she said he was the most difficult celebrity she has ever worked with. "We were on Freaks and Geeks when we were 19, and we really, really disliked each other," she explained. "It's well-documented. He, like, shoved me to the ground once. It was, like, really brutal."

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Busy elaborated on her relationship with James during their Freaks and Geeks days on the WWHL After Show, explaining that push was part of filming a scene that had gone awry, which is a story that she and her former co-star have previously recounted publicly. "He felt like he wanted his character to be one way. He had had a discussion with the producers that he came from an abused family or something, and so he didn't want his girlfriend — I played his girlfriend — to ever physically hit him," Busy said. "I never knew this conversation existed, and in an improv, I smacked him on the thing, and he was like, 'Don't ever touch me,' and grabbed me and shoved me to the ground. It was an overreaction by a 19-year-old dude. And it was weird and people's agents had to be called and he had to apologize to me." 

Now more than 15 years later, have Busy and James been able to move past that tumultuous time? "We're friends now, and we really like each other now as adults, but as kids we did not get along," she revealed. 

But was Busy friendly — or really friendly — with her Dawson's Creek co-stars James Van Der Deek and Joshua Jackson? See what she had to say about their on-screen smooching skills, below.

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