Kevin Spacey Addresses Fresh Sexual Harassment Allegations: “I’ve Got Nothing Left to Hide”

Kevin Spacey has fired back at new allegations of sexual harassment and assault set to be heard as part of a Channel 4 documentary, Spacey Unmasked, premiering in the U.K. on May 6-7.

“I’ve got nothing left to hide,” Spacey told former U.K. broadcaster Dan Wootton during a two hour, 20 minutes interview titled Kevin Spacey: Right of Reply, which streamed on X (formerly Twitter).

Having seen off earlier allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior in civil and criminal court cases in the U.S. and the U.K., Spacey said he refused to stand by and stay silent as fresh allegations were made in the Channel 4 documentary. “I can’t go through this again, allowing myself to be basically attacked without defending myself as well,” he told Wootton.

While accepting that he may have flirted with or hooked up with fellow actors in the past, Spacey denied that he had ever done anything illegal. “I take full responsibility for my past behavior and my actions, but I cannot and will not take responsibility or apologize to anyone who’s made up stuff about me or exaggerated stories about me,” Spacey said.

He added: “I’ve been promiscuous, flirty. I’ve been annoying at times. Definitely persistent. But I have never, not once, blocked someone from leaving a room or locked the door. I cried once to try to keep somebody in the room. But I’ve never put my arm in front of the door or locked it,” Spacey said at one point.

The actor said having his Hollywood career cut short had hit him financially. “I’ve lost my house. I’ve got one foot in bankruptcy,” he said, adding that returning to work in the past year on a trio of indie projects had been both welcomed and challenging.

“It does feel very special, a very, very valuable time because, you know, acting is really lying for a profession. You’re trying to convince an audience that you’re somebody else, which is probably why it’s easy for me and why many think I’m good at it,” Spacey said at one point.

He added: “The reality is that I did only ever have one dream in life and that was to be an actor. And while I most certainly did love the attention I got, the truth is, I would be quite content to never show up at another award show ever again.”  

But Spacey time and again insisted he had to fight back against fresh allegations, otherwise he would have no hope of resurrecting his Hollywood career. “I would really love to be above all this and not have to talk about it, go back to my daily life, get back to work, but I have finally realized that, if I don’t fight back, this will never end!” he said during one emotional high point.

As he pushed back at the Channel 4 documentary, Spacey said the U.K. broadcaster giving him only a week to respond to accusations in the documentary reminded him of having to respond to the 2017 BuzzFeed News story that first went public with sexual misconduct allegations against the Oscar winner. Spacey said it took him a year to find the evidence to disprove the allegations against him from Anthony Rapp after the initial story that derailed his Hollywood career.

In October 2022, a jury concluded Spacey did not molest Rapp while both were relatively unknown actors in Broadway plays in the 1980s. Spacey told Wootton that having to respond to the BuzzFeed News story’s allegations quickly did not permit him time to include a firm denial. “The point is what was alleged to have happened, something 30 years earlier, I had no time to investigate any of it. So I didn’t deny that. But what I did say was I don’t remember, which at that point was true because it didn’t happen,” he said.

The impact of the BuzzFeed story was compounded, Spacey conceded, by his using a statement to say he had no recollections of an incident involving Rapp to also announce publicly for the first time that he was gay. “It was terribly timed and thought out,” the actor said of his emerging from the closet, despite long conversations with Evan Lowenstein, Spacey’s manager, over how to best do so.

“After being so fiercely closeted for so long, I had no idea what was on the other side of that door,” Spacey said. But while failing in the past to fully deny what he regarded as false accusations of sexual advances, Spacey said he was prepared to answer for past inappropriate behavior he had done.

“Absolutely, and I have. For the past 10 years, I have reached out to many people to make amends,” Spacey admitted, without specifying to whom he had apologized. He added he never felt the need to go public with his apologies for past behavior.

“It’s meaningless and completely impersonal to apologize on Oprah or Anderson Cooper for something you might have done to someone else,” he said, noting during the online interview that over the past seven years he had had ample time to rake over his past.

“For me, the real shame is that it took me years to begin to accept myself, and it’s a process that I’m still struggling with every day. And I’ve come to understand that it’s a large part of why I’ve always enjoyed being someone else. I didn’t want to be me. And being blocked from working has forced me to play the one role I’ve been avoiding my whole life: myself,” Spacey said.

He also addressed the question of power imbalances in Hollywood that allowed him to work in movies and TV series as whispers and speculation over his inappropriate behavior hung in the air.

“If I was really this monster, and everyone knew about it, then why aren’t people asking questions about the networks and the studios who were all too happy to monetize off of me, while allowing me to roam the streets freely? I mean, why didn’t the studios do anything? Why do people stand on the red carpets with me and say how great it was to work with me? I mean, do you really think that I had more power than them?” Spacey questioned.  

He also admitted to flirting and hooking up with fellow actors. “But I was not employing them. I was not their boss,” he insisted. Despite that criticism, Spacey insisted he was ready to come clean with his past.

“I wanted to ensure that by the time I did speak out, now publicly, I could be confident that I’ve taken responsibility for the mistakes I’ve made. … That said, nobody in Hollywood has ever presented a path back for me,” Spacey argued. “There’s no coursework material I’ve been given to check, nothing. It seems that some are content with just canceling me forever. It’s a life sentence.”

During much of the X interview, Spacey attempted to preempt and rebut often lurid allegations of sexual seduction and harassment set to be made in the Channel 4 documentary by young men, some of which had been offered earlier in court trials. Some of the allegations were bleeped to ensure the online interview did not breach U.K. privacy rules.

One claim set to be heard on Spacey Unmasked involved an intern who worked alongside Spacey on the 1999 comedy-drama Big Kahuna, and who alleged he agreed to give the star actor a massage that progressed to sexual harassment. “Well, I have to say that this guy’s story strikes me much more in keeping with something that I might have done … So yeah, I can accept the possibility of this so far,” Spacey admitted.  

He also opened up about how, as a famous movie star, he had to deal with people who might have wanted to have a relationship with him in exchange for helping them climb the ladder in Hollywood. “Do you think that might be because many guys knew that you were gay? It was a bit of an open secret in the industry, and they knew you might find them attractive, so they opted to flirt with you in exchange for some hopeful outcome that maybe would benefit them?” Wooton asked Spacey at one point.

After a pause, he replied: “It really hurts to think so.”

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