Kevin Spacey tearfully told a court he was “shocked”, “scared” and “confused” by allegations of making an unwanted sexual advance on a teenager in the 1980s.
Anthony Rapp says he was 14 when a drunk Spacey, then 26, climbed on top of him at a party in his Manhattan apartment in 1986.
Both were starring in Broadway shows at the time: Rapp in Precious Sons and Spacey starred in A Long Day’s Journey Into The Night.
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Rapp, now 50, said he wiggled out from under Spacey during the meeting fully clothed before running away from the apartment, only to be followed by the actor and ask him if he was sure he wanted to leave.
Spacey told a civil trial in Manhattan on Monday that he was “shocked” by the allegations, which were made public in a 2017 news bulletin.
He said the #MeToo movement was gaining momentum at the time and “the industry was very nervous.”
“There was a lot of fear in the air about who would be next,” he said.
“I was shocked. I was scared and I was confused.
“I knew I was never alone with Anthony Rapp.”
Spacey “regrets the whole claim”
Spacey, 63, insisted that he never had “any sexual interest in Anthony Rapp or any child – that I knew”.
Rapp, who was part of the original cast of the musical Rent, filed a lawsuit in 2020, seeking damages and punitive damages of up to $ 40 million (approximately £ 35.9 million).
Following the allegations, Spacey was eliminated from the film All The Money In The World and replaced by Christopher Plummer as J Paul Getty. He was also fired from the political drama series House Of Cards.
In court on Monday, he wiped his eyes as he described being forced to make a statement saying he didn’t remember anything from happening with Rapp, but would be sorry “if” the allegations were somehow true.
He said he had since come to “regret my whole claim”, adding that his managers had said it “was the best way to contain a crisis that would get worse” and avoid being accused of “shaming the victim.”
“My father was a white supremacist”
Her account of the night was that she had met Rapp and another aspiring actor, John Barrowman, who was 19 at the time, backstage after a performance.
He had taken them to dinner, to a nightclub and then to his apartment, where he had flirted with Barrowman but not with Rapp before the visitors left, he said.
Previously, Spacey had told the court that he grew up in “a very complicated family dynamic”, describing his father as a “white supremacist and neo-Nazi”.
“It meant that my brothers and I were forced to listen to hours and hours of my father teaching us his beliefs,” he said.
“Everything that was happening in that house was something I had to keep to myself.
“We never, ever talked about it.
“I’ve never talked about these things publicly, ever.”
When Spacey became interested in theater, he said he endured the screams of his father, who “yelled at me at the idea that I could be gay.”
The trial, which is in its third week, continues.
