Kevin Spacey tells Bill Maher that he is out of a Hollywood prison after his career was derailed by dozens of sexual misconduct and harassment accusations.
“I feel more welcome than ever before, and I think things are going in the direction that we wanted them to go,” Spacey said on Maher’s “Club Random” podcast.
The Oscar-winning star of “American Beauty” and “The Usual Suspects” said he won “in every courtroom I went to with a jury.”
“There are certain cases where part of something is true, but it’s been re-imagined, re-engineered or completely fabricated. That’s certainly the case with Anthony Rapp, a case we won in federal court in New York,” Spacey said.
Rapp’s claim that Spacey assaulted him in his New York apartment when he was a teenager was published in a 2017 Buzzfeed article, triggering a series of allegations that led to the collapse of Spacey’s career. Rapp later filed a $40 million civil lawsuit alleging sexual assault and assault, but a New York jury found Spacey not liable in all respects.
Maher was relatively sympathetic to Spacey during the interview, and did not go into the details of the various allegations against Spacey, saying that although he could not dispute Spacey on all points of fact, he thought there was truth to some of the claims.
“I’m not going to lie, I judge scandals by the numbers,” Maher said. “If it’s one person, I’m always like, I don’t know if I wasn’t even in the room.” He added that in Spacey’s case, “there’s too much smoke for it not to start.”
Spacey admitted that his actions crossed the line.
“I never said there wasn’t a fire,” Spacey said. “It wasn’t a severe forest fire. It was a small kitchen fire that was extinguished with a fire extinguisher.”
“I picked up a lot of guys,” he added.
Maher argued that Spacey “should have been punished in some way.” However, the comedian added that Spacey had “paid a heavy price” for his criminal actions.
“Ten years in prison is a serious crime,” Maher said.
“I feel lighter than I did in prison,” Spacey said. “I think once people actually start hearing the facts and understanding that we won in court, people will look at this now and think maybe nine years was enough.”
“If I was an athlete, I would sit on the bench for seven games,” Spacey added. “If you’re hitting home runs, they want to have you on the field.”
After the allegations against Spacey came to light, he was fired from Netflix’s “House of Cards” and replaced by “All the Money in the World” star Christopher Plummer. Spacey, who says he lost everything, including his home, has booked work in recent years in European films and shows as well as low-budget indies such as Peter Five-Eight and The Awakening.
Spacey also used the interview with Maher to address persistent rumors about his sexuality that have dogged him throughout his career. Spacey only publicly came out as gay in response to Rapp’s claims in a widely criticized statement.
“I was extremely closed off…I thought no one knew because I was so smart, but of course everyone knew,” Spacey said.
“I never understood why they kept it a secret,” Maher said. “There was a time when it was much cooler to be gay… There’s not a lot of time off from the media, especially because they’re a little too woke and, well, if I were to come out as gay because they were treating me pretty rough, it would be the biggest thing that ever happened.”
