It’s been less than two weeks since actor Anthony Rapp publicly accused Kevin Spacey of making a sexual advance on him when Rapp was only 14 years old.
Spacey apologized — or at least, he attempted to apologize. In a widely-derided statement, Spacey first said he had no recollection of the encounter (“if I did behave as he then describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior”) but then pivoted to awkwardly confirming a long-rumored fact about his sexual orientation: “I choose now to live as a gay man.” This conflation of homosexuality with predatory pedophilia did not go over well.
Since then, more than a dozen men have come forward to accuse Spacey of sexual harassment and assault. A number of these men say Spacey pursued them — and, in one case, had an ongoing inappropriate relationship with them — when they were underage. With astonishing speed, Spacey has been cast out by Hollywood: By the show in which he stars, by a movie he already finished shooting, and by his representation. And some of his accusers have reported their complaints to law enforcement; at present, there are criminal investigations against Spacey underway in two countries.
More accusers have come forward, with allegations spanning at least 20 years
Two days after Rapp went public with his story, the BBC reported that a man said “he was left traumatised after waking up to find [Spacey] lying on him when he was a teenager in the 1980s” while staying with Spacey in New York for the weekend. After refusing to sleep with Spacey in his bed, he said, he woke up on the couch to find Spacey in his underwear, with Spacey’s arms wrapped around him and head on his stomach.
Director Tony Montana told Radar that Spacey groped him at a bar in 2003. “He put his hand on my crotch forcefully and grabbed my whole package,” Montana said. “I had PTSD for six months after.”
New York magazine interviewed a man who detailed “an alleged extended sexual relationship he had at age 14 with Kevin Spacey.” Spacey was 24 years old at the time, and the man, who told his account anonymously, says their relationship ended with an attempted rape. “I would call him a pedophile and a sexual predator,” he said.
Actor Harry Dreyfuss told BuzzFeed that, when he was 18 years old, Spacey groped him. Dreyfuss, whose father is Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss, said Spacey groped him “one night when the three of us were alone in Kevin’s apartment rehearsing my father’s lines” when Spacey was directing Richard in a play, Complicit, at the Old Vic Theatre in London. “Kevin Spacey is a sexual predator,” he said. “But I still never thought talking about it seriously was ever an option.”
Eight House of Cards employees told CNN that Spacey sexually harassed and assaulted them on set. All the accusers, who spoke anonymously, called Spacey’s conduct “predatory.” One said Spacey created “a toxic environment for young men who had to interact with him at all in the crew, cast, background actors.”
Three men told BuzzFeed about the inappropriate and abusive sexual conduct Spacey inflicted on them:
- A journalist who interviewed Spacey in the early 2000s for a national magazine said Spacey was “aggressively groping him” during their conversation: “He just kept reaching between my legs and, you know, just grabbing my dick.” When the journalist tried to leave, he says, Spacey “sort of grabbed me, and tried to make me stay. I ended up sitting back down. He kept rubbing my leg. I moved seats. He came over and sat next to me again. I was trying not to make a big scene, because I had an assignment to write about him.” When the journalist did finally leave, he said, Spacey blocked his exit, “screaming at me with fury because I didn’t want to fuck him. He was actually saying that I did want to and I was a coward.” He told his editor but at the time didn’t go public with his story; he didn’t want to out Spacey as gay.
- Justin Dawes said that in 1988, when he was a 16-year-old high school junior interested in theater and Spacey was a 29-year-old actor Dawes met through a volunteer gig at a theater in New Haven, he and a male friend were invited by Spacey to watch Chinatown. When they arrived, Spacey “gave him a cocktail and played pornography.” Spacey knew Dawes was a minor, Dawes said, and the situation was “sleazy and manipulative” but “benign” compared to what Rapp experienced.
- Mark Ebenhoch was a military adviser on the set of 1995’s Outbreak when he says one of Spacey’s assistants asked him to go to Spacey’s trailer and “engage in a sexual act.”
As Buzzfeed reported, the experiences of these men demonstrate Spacey showed “a reckless disregard for personal and professional boundaries” for decades.
This Monday, Mexican actor Roberto Cavazos wrote a Facebook post alleging Spacey was sexually aggressive and inappropriate with a number of men at the Old Vic theater in London, where Spacey was artistic director for over a decade. “I myself had a couple of unpleasant encounters with Spacey that were on the edge of being considered assault,” he wrote in Spanish. “It seems like you only needed to be a man under 30 for him to feel free to touch us. It was so common that it turned into a (very bad) joke amongst us.”
On Wednesday, a Boston television journalist told media at a news conference that Spacey sexually assaulted her 18-year-old son last summer at a bar in Nantucket. As the New York Times reported, she said Spacey gave her son “drink after drink,” and then “reached down his pants and grabbed his genitals.”
Multiple criminal investigations are underway
The Boston journalist said that her son officially reported and “handed over evidence” to the Nantucket police last week. They’re conducting an investigation.
Scotland Yard is investigating Spacey as well, stemming from a complaint about “a man assault[ing] another man in 2008 in Lambeth.” A British actor, now 32, told police that he passed out after smoking weed with Spacey. “The man alleges that, upon regaining consciousness, he found Spacey performing oral sex on him. He told [Spacey] to stop, then fled the house. Spacey allegedly warned him not to tell anyone what had happened.”
Spacey will be cut out of an upcoming film and TV special, and could be killed off House of Cards
Already suspended from House of Cards (which he executive produces in addition to playing the series lead), Spacey could see his character, Frank Underwood, kicked off the show entirely. Variety reports that producers are reportedly considering killing off Frank and making Robin Wright’s Claire Underwood the center of the show’s sixth and final season. “The producers are currently poring over Spacey’s contract to see if they can legally move forward without him or if they are obligated to put him in the remaining episodes.” Shooting on this season began weeks ago but was halted amid these sexual assault allegations.
Director Ridley Scott is removing Spacey from his movie, All The Money In The World. The film is finished; Christopher Plummer is replacing Spacey and re-shoots are starting “immediately,” Deadline reports, to keep the slated December 22 release date. “In a unified front, the cast and crew of the film, and Sony Pictures, unanimously agreed to re-shoot all of Spacey’s scenes.”
Spacey is also being cut out of a 50th anniversary special for The Carol Burnett Show, which taped in October and will air December 3. According to Variety, “he performed a musical number with Carol Burnett, Kristin Chenoweth, and Bernadette Peters.”
Spacey’s agent and publicist dropped him
Four days after Rapp made his allegations against Spacey, Spacey was dropped by his agency, CAA, where he’s been since 2009, and his publicist, Staci Wolfe, at Polaris PR. He currently has no representation.