Kevin Spacey testifies that he didn’t come out as gay because of his ‘neo-Nazi’ father – Yahoo Entertainment
While taking the stand to deny allegations that he made unwanted sexual advances toward an underage Anthony Rapp, Kevin Spacey told jurors Monday that his “white supremacist and neo-Nazi” father made him reluctant to live openly as a gay man.
Testifying for the first time in the $40 million civil lawsuit Rapp filed against him in New York, Spacey responded to allegations that in 1986, when he was 26 and Rapp was 14, he lifted Rapp up “like a groom carrying a bride over the threshold” and took him to a bed, where he climbed on top of him. Rapp testified earlier this month that he was then able to squirm away from Spacey and flee the apartment.
“They are not true,” Spacey said of the allegations, per the Associated Press.
Daniel Zuchnik/WireImage Kevin Spacey
Spacey then addressed Rapp’s previous testimony in which he called Spacey a fraud for not living openly as a gay man throughout his career. (Spacey came out in 2017 while in the process of responding to Rapp’s allegations.) “To call someone a fraud is to say someone is living a lie,” Spacey said, according to Variety. “I wasn’t living a lie. I was just reluctant to talk about my personal life.”
Speaking for the first time about his “very complicated family dynamic,” Spacey reportedly said that living with a “white supremacist and neo-Nazi” father “meant that my siblings and I were forced to listen to hours and hours” of racist lectures. “[It was] humiliating and terrifying when friends came over to the house,” Spacey continued, per multiple outlets. “Everything about what was happening in that house was something I had to keep to myself. We never, ever talked about it. I have never talked about these things publicly ever.”
Spacey added that his love of theater caused his father “to yell at me at the idea that I might be gay.” He also told jurors that when he expressed an interest in acting, his father told him “don’t be an F-word,” according to Variety. “I won’t say it here because it’s derogatory,” Spacey testified. “I certainly had a degree of shame.”
Earlier in the day, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan dismissed Rapp’s emotional distress claims against Spacey, saying they were too similar to his claims of assault and battery. “I’m not looking to duplicate damages,” Kaplan said, per multiple reports.
Rapp is one of several people who have come forward with accusations of sexual misconduct against Spacey in recent years. When Rapp first went public with his accusation in 2017, Spacey initially apologized on social media. “I honestly do not remember the encounter,” he wrote. “But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years.”
Spacey has since been dropped from multiple projects amid the allegations, and in May he was charged with four counts of sexual assault against three U.K. men. Spacey denied and pleaded not guilty to the charges. He’s due to face trial next summer.
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