“I never said there was no fire,” Kevin Spacey told Bill Maher. “It just wasn’t a raging forest fire. It was a small kitchen fire that could have been put out with an extinguisher.”
The 66-year-old actor was speaking on Maher’s Club Random podcast on Monday, June 29, about the sexual misconduct allegations that stopped his career in 2017. More than 50 individual allegations from multiple accusers, spread over several decades, have been made against him.
Maher put it to him directly: “There’s too much smoke to be no fire.” Spacey did not deny that he had crossed lines. “I hit on a lot of guys,” he said.
“I feel much more welcomed”
Spacey said his fortunes are turning after nine years away from mainstream Hollywood. “I feel much more welcomed, and I think that things are moving in the direction that we hoped they were moving in,” he said. He added: “I feel less in jail than I did. When people actually start to hear the facts, understand what we won in courts, I think people now look at this and think, maybe nine years has been enough.”
He compared his time out of work to sport. “If I had been a sports figure, I would have been benched for seven games,” he said. “If you’re hitting home runs, they want you on the field.”
His case rested on his court record. “We’ve been found not guilty in every court we’ve gone into with a jury,” he said.
The legal record
Actor Anthony Rapp accused Spacey of an unwanted sexual advance in 1986, when Rapp was 14. Rapp later filed a $40 million civil suit, and a federal jury in New York found Spacey not liable on all counts in 2022. Spacey described the case as one that was “entirely made up, certainly in the case of Anthony Rapp.”
A British criminal court acquitted him of nine charges of sexual assault in July 2023. A London High Court civil trial was avoided earlier this year when he reached out-of-court settlements with three civil accusers.
Spacey also looked back on his 2017 response to Rapp’s claim, when he apologised for any inappropriate behaviour and came out as gay in the same statement. That drew wide condemnation, including from LGBTQ+ people who accused him of using his sexuality to deflect. “I was fiercely closeted,” he said. “I thought I was so clever that nobody knew, but, of course, kind of everybody knew. It was a terrible mistake to combine the two things.”
He is working in European and independent productions, including the Italian comedy series Minimarket and the British thriller The Awakening. The Statesman reported he is set to receive a lifetime achievement award in Taormina, Sicily. The same outlet criticised his benching comparison, writing that it reduces accusers’ experiences to a performance penalty, and noted that a not-guilty verdict is not the same as vindication for those who came forward.
Sources
- Kevin Spacey says he feels 'much more welcomed' in Hollywood as he downplays misconduct allegations
- Kevin Spacey feels 'much more welcomed' as he looks to rebuild Hollywood career
- 'I feel much more welcomed': After 50+ allegations, Kevin Spacey says Hollywood is ready to forgive him – The Statesman
