Actor Anthony Rapp alleges Kevin Spacey made sexual advances towards him at 14
Star Trek: Discovery star and Broadway actor Anthony Rapp has alleged that Kevin Spacey made unwanted sexual advances towards him when he was a teenager.
In an interview with Buzzfeed News, Rapp, who has worked as an actor since starring in Rent at age 9 and is openly gay, detailed the incident which took place in 1986 while both actors were starring in the play Precious Sons.
Rapp said Spacey invited him to a party at his apartment where Spacey allegedly picked Rapp up, placed him on a bed and climbed on top of him.
Rapp, who was 14 years old, said he managed to get out from underneath Spacey, who was 26 at the time according to public records.
Spacey has since made a statement confirming he is gay after years of rumours in response to the allegations.
“My stomach churns,” Rapp told Buzzfeed about the incident. “I still to this day can’t wrap my head around so many aspects of it. It’s just deeply confusing to me.”
Rapp said he has told his story “to shine another light on the decades of behavior that have been allowed to continue because many people, including myself, being silent.”
“I was aware that he was trying to get with me sexually,” Rapp said.
— Kevin Spacey (@KevinSpacey) October 30, 2017
In the wake of the recent news exposing Harvey Weinstein’s rampant sexual abuse, former news anchor Heather Unruh tweeted about an alleged assault by Spacey but has not said anything publicly about the matter since.
Actor Corey Feldman has spent years talking about the abuse he said he and friend Corey Haim suffered as child actors in Hollywood, saying that paedophilia is the biggest problem in the industry.
The #weinsteinscandal has emboldened me– #truth time. I was a Kevin Spacey fan until he assaulted a loved one. Time the dominoes fell pic.twitter.com/C0eiWEfHSO
— Heather Unruh (@HeatherUnruh) October 13, 2017
Feldman claims that the abuse Haim suffered contributed in part to his early death from a drug overdose.
A 2014 documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Amy Berg called Open Secret skimmed the surface of this alleged culture of abuse but was shut out of film festivals and unable to find distribution.
Director Bryan Singer has been the subject of similar accusations since the 1990s, and was named in a 2014 lawsuit accusing him of rape which was later dropped.
Users on social media have expressed disgust that Spacey would choose now to come out, saying it is just a way to distract from the seriousness of Rapp’s allegations.
Coming out as a gay man is not the same thing as coming out as someone who preyed on a 14-year-old. Conflating those things is disgusting
— Richard Lawson (@rilaws) October 30, 2017
In his statement, Spacey apologised to Rapp, saying “If I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior.”
In his interview with Buzzfeed, Rapp said, “The older I get, the more I can’t believe it. I could never imagine [that] anyone else I know would do something like that to a 14-year-old boy.”
I can honestly say I haven’t pursued a sexual relationship with anyone underage since I was myself underage. (I guess technically there was a three week period immediately after I turned 17 and my partner was still 16 when that was legally not the case but hardly the sort of thing a court would frown upon.) I think that Kevin Spacey is conflating predatory behaviour with coming out, not cool.