Kevin Spacey Takes Stand In $40M Sexual Misconduct Trial; Denies Groping Anthony Rapp, Details “Neo-Nazi” Father & Trauma-Filled Childhood – Update
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UPDATE, 9:59 AM: Over a week after Kevin Spacey’s trial for sexual misconduct started in a New York courtroom, the Oscar winner took the stand this morning in his own defense.
Having succeeded in having the intentional infliction of emotional distress claim stripped from Anthony Rapp’s $40 million case earlier Monday, a confident sounding Spacey began his testimony denying that he groped or was in any way inappropriate with the Star Trek: Discovery actor back in 1986 when Rapp was 14-years-old and the former House of Cards star was in his mid-20s. Spacey also refuted similar allegations from the Reagan Era from former New York public film coordinator Andre Holzman.
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In what is a clear tactic to rewrite the narrative, the much accused 63-year-old Spacey began his stint on the stand in Judge Lewis A. Kaplan’s federal courtroom by going heavily autobiographical.
“My father was a white supremacist and neo-Nazi,” Spacey told the court, detailing the “hours and hours” he and his sibling would be subjected to the racist, violent and right-wing beliefs of their parent. “I have never talked about these things publicly. Ever,” the actor added in what is now essentially a battery civil case.
“My father used to yell at me about the idea I might be gay,” the now openly out Spacey also said. “He would scream at me: ‘don’t be a’… he would use an f word that was very derogatory to the gay community.”
With a distraction that failed, Spacey first made public his sexual orientation in part in response to Rapp’s accusations in October 2017. Noting that Rapp once called him a “fraud” for keeping his sexuality out of the public sphere for so ling, Spacey said today “to call someone a fraud is to guess, say they are living a lie.” The actor informed his lawyer Chase Scolnick and the rest of the masked courtroom that it wasn’t the case in his own example. “I wasn’t living a lie. I was just reluctant to talk about my personal life.”
In terms of his personal life, Spacey reiterated remarks by his currently Covid-19 sidelined lawyer Jennifer Keller describing the Upper East Side apartment he had in 1986 as not conforming to the walled layout Rapp portrayed. Spacey drew a design that suggested, with a small kitchen off to one side, the apartment was a one-room studio with the bed almost in the dead center. Brandishing a lease of the pad as well, Spacey disputed Rapp’s recollection that he tossed the Precious Son actor on the bed and tried to fondle him in a separate room.
The court is on a lunch break, and Spacey’s testimony will resume this afternoon. The actor will likely be cross examined on Tuesday.
PREVIOUSLY, 8:58 AM: As the trial for the $40 million sexual misconduct civil suit against Kevin Spacey resumed today in Manhattan, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan threw out Anthony Rapp’s claim of emotional distress as the prosecution rested. That would lower any damages that might be awarded in the case.
With jurors not present, defense lawyer Jay Barron moved to throw out the claims of battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Kaplan agreed to dismiss the latter, saying that it was not allowed under state law because it merely duplicated the battery claim, which he allowed to proceed
In other developments this morning, Spacey lawyer Jennifer Keller is recovering from her bout with Covid that disrupted the trial last week. She is feeling better and could return to court soon. Meanwhile, just about everyone except the testifying witness is wearing a mask in the courtroom
Also today, the defense called its first witness. Before the actor John Barrowman took the stand, his May 2021 deposition was played in court. Recalling the night he met Spacey, he said the two-time Oscar winner took him and Rapp back to his apartment, and when Rapp went to the bathroom, Barrowman said, “Playfully, Mr. Spacey pushed me back” on to the bed, and lay there talking to him with arm draped over him. He said of the situation that it was “probably not the best one to be in if Anthony came out of the bathroom.”
So, Barrowman testified, he moved Spacey’s arm away, got off the bed and when Rapp came out told him. “We should get going.”
He added on the stand, “I didn’t want him to be in a situation like that.”
But he said he never found the encounter threatening. “I was a big boy” and he knew by then that Spacey was gay even if he hadn’t come out, Barrowman said. “I was also, actually, to be honest, quite flattered that an older man was showing any interest in me.
“I felt no threat whatsoever,” he said.
Barrowman was 19 at the time; Rapp was just 14.
Barrowman also testified that Rapp never told him of a second meeting at the apartment with Spacey until the two met for dinner in London several years later. He said Rapp described Spacey lying on top of him and how he wriggled away.
Asked by Spacey lawyer Chase Scolnick if Rapp spoke with “disdain” for Spacey, Barrowman said: “No, not that I recall. No disdain, no anger. It was a very matter-of-fact conversation about what happened.”
Rapp finished his testimony Wednesday. Keller’s cross-examination of Rapp lasted nearly five hours over two days as she repeatedly targeted apparent inconsistencies and vague elements of the actor’s recollection of the events and why he took his story to BuzzFeed.
Rapp’s allegations were among several that made Spacey an early focus of the #MeToo movement in 2017. The American Beauty and The Usual Suspects Oscar winner and multiple House of Cards Emmy nominee faces trial in the UK for alleged sexual assault, with that case set for June, and he is on the hook for $31 million awarded to House of Cards producers Media Rights Capital because the claims hastened the end of the show and were deemed a breach of his acting and producing agreements.
As with all the accusations against him made over the past several years, Spacey denies anything inappropriate ever occurred.
Sean Piccoli contributed to this report.
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