Kevin Spacey Says in Court His Dad was Neo-Nazi White Supremacist Who Verbally Abused Him for Being Gay
Photo: Scott Eisen/Getty
Actor Kevin Spacey offered a bizarre defense in the civil trial filed by Anthony Rapp alleging sexual assault, claiming during his testimony that his father was an avowed neo-Nazi and white supremacist who had verbally threatened him when he suspected his son might be gay.
The federal trial in New York stems from Rapp’s accusations in a 2017 Buzzfeed article that Spacey had attempted to “seduce” him at a party when Spacey was 26 years old and Rapp was only 14. Spacey issued a statement claiming “I honestly do not remember the encounter…[b]ut if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior.” In that statement, Spacey publicly acknowledged for the first time that he was a gay man.
Spacey’s acting career was largely derailed in the wake of Rapp’s allegations. Other accusers made claims against Spacey in that Buzzfeed article and the years since, but for the most part, efforts to pursue criminal prosecutions have mostly floundered, with one accuser dying, two criminal cases in the U.S. being dropped, and several cases in the UK similarly falling apart. Currently, one criminal case in the UK is still moving forward.
Regarding the $40 million civil lawsuit filed by Rapp, Spacey took the stand in his own defense on Monday, and launched into comments about his father almost immediately, describing the man as a failed writer who was struggling financially and embraced hateful beliefs, according to multiple media outlets covering the trial.
“I grew up in a very complicated family dynamic,” said Spacey, describing his father as “unemployed a great deal at the time so, therefore, he was home a lot of the time.”
“My father was a white supremacist and a neo-Nazi,” he continued, and he and his siblings “had to listen to my father lecturing us for hours and hours and hours about his beliefs and his ideas.”
Spacey blamed his father’s beliefs for why he did not publicly acknowledge his own sexuality until 2017, after Rapp’s accusations, saying he had grown up in an atmosphere where he was “terrified” of his own father and “wasn’t comfortable talking about things and part of those things was my father also used to yell at me about the idea that I might be gay because I was interested in theater and he didn’t encourage me in that way.”
“My father would scream at me don’t be a — he would use an f-word that is very derogatory to the gay community I won’t say it in court,” Spacey said. “As I continued in my life, I think I just, I had a degree of shame because I wanted people to remember the characters that I played and not know too much about me.”
Earlier Monday, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan dismissed one of Rapp’s claims against Spacey, for intentional infliction of emotional distress, allowing just the claim for battery to move forward. “I’m not looking to duplicate damages,” Kaplan said when announcing his decision, according to the report by Variety.
