A tearful Kevin Spacey told the court he was “shocked”, “terrified” and “confused” after he was accused of having unwanted sex with a teenager in the 1980s.
Anthony Rapp said he was 14 when Spacey, then 26, climbed on top of him at a party in his Manhattan apartment in 1986.
Both were performing in Broadway plays at the time – Rapp in Precious Sons and Spacey co-starring in The Long Night.
Anthony Rapp. Image: NDZ/STAR MAX/IP
Rapp, 50, said he wriggled under Spacey during the full-suit encounter and ran out of the apartment only to have the actor follow him and ask if he was sure he wanted to leave.
Spacey said Monday at a Manhattan civil trial that he was “appalled” by the allegations, which were made public in 2017 news reports.
At the time, the #MeToo movement was gaining momentum and “the industry was very nervous,” he said.
“There is fear in the air about who will be next,” he said.
“I was shocked. I was scared, I was confused.
“I know I’ve never been alone with Anthony Rapp.”
Spacey ‘regrets the entire statement’
Spacey, 63, insists he has never “had any sexual interest in Anthony Rapp or any children – I know”.
Rapp, who starred in the original cast of the musical Rent, filed a lawsuit in 2020 seeking up to $40 million (£35.9 million) in compensatory and punitive damages.
Following the charges, Spacey was dropped 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 what happened to Rapp, but would be sorry “if” the allegations were true to some extent .
He said he later “regretted my entire statement”, adding that his manager had said “this was the best way to contain a crisis that was going to get worse” and avoided being accused of “shaming the victim”.
‘My father was a white supremacist’
His description of the night was that he met Rapp and another aspiring actor, John Barrowman, backstage after the show, when he was 19.
He said he had taken them to dinner, to a nightclub and then to his apartment, where he flirted with Barrowman, but not Rapp before the tourist left.
Earlier, Spacey told the court he grew up in “a very complex family environment”, describing his father as a “white supremacist and neo-Nazi”.
“It meant that my siblings and I were forced to listen to my father lecture us for hours on his faith,” he said.
“I have to keep secrets about everything that happened in that house.
“We never talked about it.
“I’ve never talked about these things publicly.”
As Spacey became interested in the drama, he said he endured the screaming of his father, who “used to yell at me for the idea that I might be gay”.
The trial is in its third week and continues.