Collateral attractions [?]: Kevin Spacey apologizes for a sexual assault and comes out
All in one blow. Anthony Rapp recounted an encounter from his adolescence in which he alleges Spacey tried to initiate sex with him; and Spacey responded by apologizing for an encounter he does not remember, and coming out.
Maybe this should be labeled “degrees of separation” — Spacey was the artistic director at the Old Vic when Armitage played in The Crucible.
My eyebrows are near my hairline.
Me + Richard Armitage 
I’m stunned and truly lost for words…
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yes, this was a bit of a bombshell.
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Were you surprised? It was an open secret. Led to the classic Kevin Spacey Denial in which a questioned actor would state that s/he wasn’t hiding anything but since his sexuality had nothing to do with his craft, he refused to comment on it.
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I am not stunned about his coming-out but about “everything else… 😟
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Where have we heard that before?!
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I think that’s an individual’s privilege. It’s not required to comment on one’s sexuality for work — indeed, one might argue that any such requirement to do so would be discriminatory.
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I knew he was said to be gay. I’m surprised that he assaulted a fourteen year old.
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Yes, that was a little surprising but guess I’m getting cynical about this. The rape/harrassment culture is so damn pervasive that I’m starting to wonder who isn’t a douche.
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I wish Spacey hadn’t connected these two things. All the time one spends arguing that same sex attraction is a different thing than pedophilia and he delivers opponents a piece of evidence that will never be erased.
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I am shocked and it is wrong to ‘lump’ these two quite different things together.
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I feel like Spacey was always involved in these aggressive power plays and here’s another one.
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Wow. Well, it’s good that people of both genders are feeling comfortable to talk about what happened to them.
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Absolutely. Everyone who feels led to do so should speak up.
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And Spacey’s response was a weird apology “but I was drunk, 26, and…” [insert swear wird] He just set up a case for “He said, but I say and I don’t remember” kind of thing which is difficult to prove in court and considering all the bias in cases like this….
I’m truly shocked, as KS came across as a decent guy.
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[*swear word in response to KS’s twitter statement]
I wonder whether this case would have a chance to go to court at all or would it be dismissed because 30 years passed?
Also reading some of the online comments…Unbelievable 😣 There is no no defence for KS behaviour in my opinion
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Rapp said somewhere (maybe Vanity Fair) that he had consulted an attorney and that he was told he did not have a case.
This kind of stuff brings out the worst in the Internet. Uch.
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Well, now…
Not surprised about the sexual orientation, but about the harassment apology. I’m confused about the connection.
Also, – and I’m basing this solely on the media coverage we get here in Denmark – the allegations/accusations are just flooding out from under the carpet. Can they all be trusted?
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The question of accusations of rape / assault and their veracity has been studied for the US by researchers. I’m aware of two studies. Both concluded that the accuracy rate was high (in the high 80 / low 90 percent range), because there is absolutely nothing to gain by accusing someone of these actions. You get your name dragged through the mud and people doubt what you say. This is why I always put the weight on first believing the accuser. I know in my own case that I had absolutely nothing to gain and that when I did tell some friends about it, I lost all those friends. And since they were exSO’s friends too, he lost them as well.
This will make Rapp less employable, rather than more. Moreover, Rapp has mentioned this incident several times over the years. He just hadn’t connected it to Spacey.
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So, KS outs himself in more ways than one? Odd, that.
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he’s probably trying to deflect what will come at him now, as there have been unpleasant rumors about him for years. Thinking back, I even remember one of them — and this is a thing I’m not really tuned into.
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I’ve never followed him that closely. I remember reading an interview once in which he talked about a troubled childhood and difficult youth – the implicature being drugs. I’m sure you’re much better informed in the US.
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Google KS and mugging — that’s the story that I remember. It was bigger in England, where he lived for many years.
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His statement does not mention the age of Rapp. Only ‘inappropriate behaviour’. Wauw – something will be coming alright😠
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I just saw that Netflix cancelled House of Cards.
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Not cancelled. Suspended production for November.
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Suspended indefinitely, is the word on all the news sites. Sounds an awful lot like canceled to me.
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This is from a series regular on the show. Season 6 was always going to be the final season (this has been known since May of this year). Current production on Season 6 which started Oct 15 has been suspended through November.
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we’ll see — but still looks an awful lot like cancellation to me. Once they suspend production, it’s hard to get everyone’s schedules back together, and given the uproar this weekend, it’s hard to believe there would not be a well organized campaign against the show.
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Spacey’s sexuality is one of the worst kept secrets in Hollywood/ entertainment. Be curious to see the fall out. I think the outing will deflect from the action, unless more victims come out. Unrelated, except to the 6 degrees of separation – after the wonderful Armitage Sleepwalker interview yesterday, for some reason I remembered that Richard Armitage nominated Kevin Spacey to the Ice Bucket challenge during The Crucible run ( he more or less declined) and I remembered thinking this was not a good move on Richard Armitage’s part. Having nothing to do with outing, etc.
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I still think Spacey has a lot of power and his statement “well, of course, if you say so, I’m sorry”” reflects that. He’s not really sorry and he made it all about him. I think anyone whom he had harmed would still think twice about making an acccusation — unless there are really enough victims out there to turn it into a flood, as in the case of Weinstein. It’s my impression so far anyway that these accusations are grouping themselves around a relatively small group of people, i.e., sexual harassment may be a larger problem in Hollywood on a daily basis but the accusations that are coming up now are focused on individuals where apparently the problem is well known.
re: the ALS challenge — that was a political mistake; I would have said, you don’t joke up the hierarchy or put more powerful people on the spot for a stunt like that. But I’m sure Armitage had his reasons. His connection to Spacey is really minimal, in any case. The remark about hearing him speak while in drama school and The Crucible.
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Re: Spacey – so he’s outed himself as bi-sexual. We’ll see whether any females come forward ( I’m doubting it), and if so, whether that will make a difference. He has a different kind of power than Weinstein, I think- because he is also talent. Not sure if this will make a difference. I tend to think this is going away. Yes – re Ice Bucket Challenge – bad political move – best way to describe it.
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I think it’s not unusual (particularly in his generation) for a gay man to have had sex with a woman at some point — although I’m guessing in his case that it must have been many years since it happened. I also can’t imagine it would make a difference (unless you mean it makes him look worse?).
re — power: I think one dynamic w/Weinstein, anyway, is that he was clearly broadly disliked in the industry. It comes out even in the statements of people who say they didn’t realize what he was doing. That seems to be true with Toback and that talent agent — part of the dynamic seems to be “what a relief, i can finally talk openly about what an asshole this guy is.” Contrast to a situation like Cosby, where the dominant trope of the accusations is regret, grief, sadness. So I think how much power Spacey has now depends in part on how much sympathy he has in his networks. I just wrote a paragraph about that question and deleted it — couldn’t figure out how to say it — but it’s possible that sympathy will still remain with Spacey. The way he writes tends to imply that he assumes that.
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What I mean about Spacey claiming to be bi-sexual ( actually, he says he is now living his life as a gay man, but also that he liked men and women) is this: will it hurt him more if a number of potential victims, should there be more, are women that he’s harassed. I’m thinking there weren’t many women. But then. we have the pedophile issue – which is, I don’t know, worse maybe? But, like you, I think he’ll weather this unless flood gates open. From a few things I’ve read, he, too, had a bad pattern of behavior that was known. Bill Cosby is in a different class IMO, because of the public perception of his persona over an entire career. It was a shock and he was so well liked and admired, especially when it came to kids.
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That was the question I was thinking about more — how does my admiration for them affect my appreciation of their work? Cosby Show reruns are on all the time here, but I’ve found I can’t watch them anymore. Cliff Huxtable had FOUR daughters. Not that I think Cosby was harassing those actresses but rather, the dissonance is just too strong. In Spacey’s case, two of his movies (American Beauty and The Usual Suspects) are on my “all time top ten” or close to it. Could I watch them now?
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I would reference Woody Allen here, with the caveat that I’m not 100% convinced about all the allegations against him. He’s also in a different category than Cosby. Most people have always thought Woody Allen was a little creepy- but I can’t give up his work.
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or for me, Martin Luther. Reformer and … anti-Semite.
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I think there’s a certain population segment that somehow thinks bisexuality is more acceptable to the casual observer than homosexuality — like it minimizes the effect of learning that someone is gay? I’m not sure that is really true but Spacey’s statement feels like that — it’s an attempt to humanize himself (and maybe claim that he wasn’t lying all the years when he denied being gay).
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I’d go with him claiming bisexuality to deflect the lies all his career when he claimed he wasn’t gay.
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I agree.
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What does mean “degress of separation”?
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It’s how “far” you are from someone in terms of your distance from people who know them in some way. So, for instance, I have never spoken to Richard Armitage personally. But I have spoken to someone who is friends with the person who interviewed him for TORn in 2012 and 2013. So we would be three degrees of separation apart — Armitage, to his interviewer, to her friend, to me. There’s a saying that no one on the planet is more than seven degrees of separation from anyone else.
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Thank you. By the way, how you sometime think that perhaps RA could be gay?
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This is too complicated a topic to discuss here; I don’t discuss this topic with people I don’t know well.
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Ok, I only wanted to know if I were the only one wondering that. Thank you
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I’m sure there are a lot of people wondering, including me. This is a question you can google, though, keeping in mind that not all information is equally reliable.
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I know that is why I wanted to ask you because you seems to be well informed about him. I don’t want to bother you more, thank you.
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There is a big difference between being gay, which is not a problem whatsoever, and making moves on 14 year old kids, which is a massive problem and potentially criminal conduct. Conduct which, in Canada at least, has no “expiry date” (in other words, a person can be prosecuted for allegations that occurred decades ago) but for the fact that cases generally don’t get better with the passage of time. I admire Rapp for speaking out, and I agree that his truthfulness is really unquestionable from a practical standpoint — nobody gains anything when they accuse people of sexual impropriety. I’m so relieved to see the lid blowing off of this pot. It’s about time.
PS I don’t follow Spacey. IS he a powerful person?
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I don’t know much about the law on this topic in the US; I read that Rapp had consulted an attorney many years later and was told he would not have a case; but I also know that laws here have changed as well.
re: Spacey — he was the artistic director of the Old Vic for a decade, and figured out a funding model that kept it open without public money, which was kind of a marvel (most of the London theaters have some kind of public support). And until yesterday he was the face of Netflix’s most visible and popular product, House of Cards. So he was some kind of powerful. Maybe not at the same level as Weinstein.
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Wtf? A gay molester is a molester. A bisexual pedophile is a pedophile. What else?
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Yeah. Spacey must know this, too — but chose to throw an entire movement out of the boat to save himself.
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I know, probably this is now fairly cheap and poor to say: Never particularly liked Spacey. There was always a hint of contempt about him. Just his face in the ads for ‘House of Cards’ was a definite turn-off for me to not watch this show ( for sure it’s a brilliant series!!).
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Well, Underwood was a character. But he did have a very sarcastic and cynical public face, I agree.
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The Old Vic issued a statement regarding this situation too.
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I saw that — and today they asked anyone who might have been harassed to contact them confidentially.
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And now it’s alleged that Spacey preyed on younger actors at the Old Vic:
http://www.vulture.com/2017/11/kevin-spacey-accused-of-groping-filmmaker-tony-montana.html
Guess we should be relieved that Armitage was 42/3 when he was working there.
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More allegations of assault on an underaged person: http://www.vulture.com/2017/11/kevin-spacey-alleged-sexual-relationship.html
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House of Cards, too. ( Young men, but not underage Confirms the serial sexual harasser theory https://www.avclub.com/new-allegations-say-kevin-spacey-made-the-house-of-card-1820098246?rev=1509670413677&utm_content=Main&utm_campaign=SF&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=SocialMarketing This is happening very fast. CAA just dropped him.
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Wow. This is fast.
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I was going to say when i first read this that i am not entirely surprised and there has been a sense of bullying behavior; sadly in the meantime that sense of unease has been confirmed by the reports. One again goes to show how vulnerable younger people and starters in this industry are to those who think they are untouchable and are in a position of power. Makes me shudder at all the times i saw him at the C and in the bar there etc (which is something that contributed to the feeling of dislike). The world is more full of abusers than i thought :-S
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Yeah, one of the articles I read (not sure if linked here or not) said that drinks in the Old Vic bar were one of his grooming steps. Glad I never had a drink there, now!
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Scotland Yard now investigating allegation of assault involving drugged victim: http://www.vulture.com/2017/11/british-police-investigating-kevin-spacey-assault-claim.html
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Oscar campaign for Spacey’s latest film axed; the film itself may not be premiered this year. http://variety.com/2017/film/in-contention/kevin-spacey-oscar-campaign-all-the-money-in-the-world-1202605587/
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Further allegations: https://www.buzzfeed.com/adambvary/kevin-spacey-more-accusations-secrets-abuse?utm_term=.ruKvR81Wg0#.byOXjVrOR1
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Spacey fired from House of Cards: http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/netflix-fires-kevin-spacey-from-house-of-cards-1202607002/
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[…] around the accusations of sexual harassment. You may remember that I started keeping track of the Kevin Spacey allegations and then I had to make myself stop documenting it, stop following it. A lot of us have been […]
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The book I didn’t read, and why | Me + Richard Armitage said this on November 28, 2017 at 3:03 am |
And show returns for a truncated season without Spacey. Sounds like it was a difficult thing. http://www.vulture.com/2017/12/house-of-cards-will-return-for-a-final-8-episode-season.html?mid=rss?mid=vulturelatest
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