After James Franco was busted for hitting on a teenage fan over Instagram last month, the actor groused to Howard Stern this week, “my dirty s–t gets put out internationally.”

He also defended himself, saying he acted like “a gentleman” when trying to make contact with the 17-year-old tourist from Scotland after she took a picture with him on the street after his show, “Of Mice and Men.”

Franco told Stern of the incident: “[The media] make it out like I am pursuing young women. I’m not going to high schools, you know, looking for dates. I’m leaving my work and they’re coming there. So, I’m seeing attractive women. And, look, my fan base is, like, 17-year-old girls … to, you know, 30-year-old women. That’s my biggest fan base.”

The teenager, Lucy Clode, last month revealed that Franco had asked her online after she posed for a picture with him, “When is your birthday? Where are you staying? What’s your #?,” and, “What’s the hotel? Should I rent a room?”

Franco further told the shock jock of his initial attraction to Clode, “I saw her and she’s saying on her page, ‘Oh, I love James Franco’ … Okay, well, you look interesting. I don’t know how old you are. I was a gentleman. I said, ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ And her response was, ‘Not when you’re around.’ And that to me sounds like, okay, she’s interested.” But he added, “If I talk too much about it, it’s gonna be in the Clinton area of, like, ‘Oh, this is what he said’ and ‘What a scumbag’ … So, I’m reluctant to get into the details of it.”

Franco also told Stern that the fallout was worse for Clode. “My sense is it turned, like, bad on her,” he said. “And now people wanna say, like, I victim-bashed her or something. Like, how is she a victim? I was, like anybody, just trying to meet somebody. It’s just that my dirty s—t gets put out internationally.”