A tearful Kevin Spacey has told a court that he was “shocked”, “frightened” and “confused” by accusations that he made an unwanted sexual advance on a teenager in the 1980s.
Anthony Rapp says he was 14 when an intoxicated Spacey, then 26, climbed on top of him at a party in his Manhattan apartment in 1986.
Both were acting in Broadway plays at the time – Rapp in Precious Sons, and Spacey co-starring in A Long Day’s Journey Into The Night.
Rapp, now 50, said he squirmed out from underneath Spacey in the fully clothed encounter before running from the apartment, only to have the actor follow him and ask 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 report.
He said that, at the time, the #MeToo movement was gaining momentum and “the industry was very nervous”.
“There was a lot of fear in the air about who was going to be next,” he said.
“I was shocked. I was frightened and I was confused.
“I knew I had never been alone with Anthony Rapp.”
Spacey ‘regrets entire statement’
Spacey, 63, insisted he never had “any sexual interest in Anthony Rapp or any child – that I knew”.
Rapp, who was in the original cast of the musical Rent, filed his lawsuit in 2020, seeking compensatory and punitive damages up to $40m (about £35.9m).
After the allegations Spacey was edited out of the film All The Money In The World and replaced by Christopher Plummer as J Paul Getty. He was also sacked from the political drama series House Of Cards.
In court on Monday, he dabbed his eyes as he described being pressured into making a statement saying he did not remember anything happening with Rapp, but would be sorry “if” the allegations were somehow true.
He said he had since come to “regret my entire statement”, adding that his managers had said “it was the best way to contain a crisis that was going to get worse” and to avoid being accused of “victim shaming”.
‘My father was a white supremacist’
His account of the night was that he 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, a nightclub and then to his apartment, where he had flirted with Barrowman but not with Rapp before the visitors left, he said.
Earlier, 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 siblings and I were forced to listen to hours and hours of my father lecturing us about his beliefs,” he said.
“Everything about what was happening in that house was something I had to keep to myself.
“We never, ever, talked about it.
“I have never talked about these things publicly ever.”
As Spacey became interested in theatre, he said he endured the screams of his father, who “used to yell at me at the idea that I might be gay”.
The trial, which is in its third week, continues.