K evin Spacey wants to “get back to full-time acting.” That is what the two-time Oscar winner told Piers Morgan last week in a 90-minute discussion of the allegations of sexual abuse that derailed his career, his “not guilty” verdict at a U.K. criminal court last summer, and a new documentary, Spacey Unmasked, which details separate allegations of sexual misconduct.
Regardless of where those challenges lead, the actor is in the process of trying to rehabilitate his image and career. This past week, I spoke via Zoom with Spacey’s Peter Five Eight co-star, Jet Jandreau. The movie, recently released on streaming services, is Spacey’s first American project in seven years. I’ll have more to say about my interview, about Peter Five Eight, and about Spacey’s acting comeback in the coming days. But first, a catch-up on the allegations.
Spacey’s trouble began in 2017, soon after the New York Times and New Yorker investigations into Harvey Weinstein were published. A week later, actor Anthony Rapp told BuzzFeed that Spacey made sexual advances towards him at a party when he was 14 and Spacey was 26.
Rather than deny the allegations outright, Spacey issued a public statement saying that he was “horrified” by Rapp’s account and that, while he had no memory of the alleged event, if it did happen, he was very sorry for “what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior.” In the same post, he announced that, after years of sexual encounters with men, “I choose now to live as a gay man.”
This obviously did not go over well. (Later, at the Rapp civil trial, Spacey said: “I’ve learned a lesson, which is never apologize for something that you didn’t do. I regret my entire statement.”)
Soon after the Rapp allegations, other men came forward with similar claims that they had received unwanted sexual advances from Spacey. Netflix fired Spacey from House of Cards, the popular show he starred in. His agent and publicist dropped him. His lead role in Ridley Scott’s film All the Money in the World, which he’d already finished shooting, was scrubbed and re-shot with Christopher Plummer.
In Hollywood, Spacey was persona non grata. But his troubles didn’t stop there. The allegations kept coming, some of them morphing into serious criminal charges.
Despite multiple investigations, lawsuits, and trials concerning allegations of sexual abuse, to date, Spacey has not been convicted of any crime.
The Rapp case, which was a civil suit, was dismissed for lack of evidence; Rapp was ordered to pay Spacey $40,000 in damages. In 2018, Spacey faced a charge of indecent assault and battery of the 18-year-old son of a former Boston news anchor; but the case fell apart after the boy’s family refused to testify about a missing smartphone Spacey’s lawyers had requested as evidence for the defense. Last summer, a U.K. jury found Spacey not guilty of nine sexual-assault charges involving four men, alleged to have happened between 2005 and 2013 when Spacey was artistic director of London’s Old Vic Theatre.
“I am enormously grateful to the jury for having taken the time to examine all of the evidence and all of the facts carefully before they reached their decision,” Spacey said to the press, after his acquittal was announced.
Spacey may have won the legal battle, but, in the post–Me Too landscape, the court of public opinion still presents many challenges.
On May 6, the U.K.’s Channel 4 released its documentary Spacey Unmasked. The documentary does not include interviews from the 2023 criminal trial. Instead, it features ten other men who claim to have experienced inappropriate sexual behavior from Spacey.
Spacey complains that Channel 4 gave him only seven days’ notice to respond to the “anonymized and non-specific allegations.” Without Spacey’s perspective, the documentary is a one-sided condemnation of the actor as a “cold-eyed monster.”
One man interviewed, a high school peer of Spacey’s, claims that when they were both 16 or 17 — so nearly 50 years ago — Spacey put his hand on the other boy’s crotch while that boy was driving. (Predator-in-waiting or teenage horseplay?) Another man says that he had oral sex with Spacey despite being heterosexual because he believed that’s what it took to make it in Hollywood. Here, one wonders: Who was exploiting whom?
The trouble with Me Too is that it sometimes ignores a simple fact about human nature. Which is that some people try to use sex to get what they want (success), while others try to use success to get what they want (sex). You might think these exchanges are gross or immoral, and you might be right, but unless there is coercion — i.e., persistence after consent has been denied or withdrawn, or threats or actual punishment for refusing sex — then, among adults, the accountability is shared to a degree.
On Morgan’s show, Spacey admitted that he has been “too handsy” in the past. Yet he maintains he was not aggressive in his advances: “You’re making a pass at someone — you don’t want to be aggressive. You want to be gentle. You want to see if they’re going to respond positively.” He says he’s since learned that a first move need not be physical.
Spacey claims that he has learned from his mistakes. He says that his goal now is to prove he is a “man of good character.”
Sometimes those who are “canceled” have done nothing wrong. Other times, people who’ve been called out or punished for violative behavior deserve everything they got. Other times still, they have erred but the punishment they endure as a result is overkill. Before Me Too, we relied on time-tested ideas: presumption of innocence, due process, and proportionality. I’ll add one to the list: forgiveness or rehabilitation.
So far, the most serious allegations against Spacey have not held up in court; that’s all we can say for sure. Still, if it’s punishment people are hungry for, he’s faced plenty. He appears to have emerged from this humbled and contrite.
In my next piece, I’ll discuss Spacey’s new movie and my interview with his co-star.