Kevin Spacey gives typically bizarre response to Spacey Unmasked doc trailer
The two-part documentary comes out next month, while Spacey continues to talk about the allegations against him like he's a character in a TV show
Aux News Spacey
Few celebrities, when accused of sexual assault or misconduct by multiple people, have reacted it to in a stranger fashion than actor Kevin Spacey. A full timeline of Spacey’s public weirdnesses since 2017, when Star Trek: Discovery star Anthony Rapp accused the actor of making unwanted sexual advances against him when Rapp was only 14, would be difficult to encapsulate here. But it’s hard not to think, for example, of the near-annual Christmas Eve videos that Spacey has released to his remaining fans over the last seven years, almost all of which have involved him pretending, at least briefly, to be his House Of Cards character Frank Underwood—killed off on the Netflix series after Rapp’s allegations kicked off more than a dozen other reports of misconduct—while talking vaguely about the enemies arrayed against him.
By comparison, Spacey’s response to news that a new documentary about him is being released next month is fairly low-key, if still defiantly weird. In response to the trailer dropping for Spacey Unmasked, a U.K. documentary about the allegations against him (which has been picked up for an eventual release Stateside by Warner Bros. Discovery), Spacey gave this statement to Variety: “I’m honored to be starring in my first film with Warner Brothers in many years. I hope the Academy takes note of some of the great acting by the lesser known cast.”
Which is, at the risk of editorializing, basically something a character in a TV show would say: A mixture of the on-paper kind of clever and a complete amoral callousness that is entertaining to hear coming out of the mouths of fictional characters, and pretty much nowhere else. Which makes us wonder: Does Spacey genuinely believe he’s Frank Underwood now? Is the man himself still in there, somewhere, beneath the layers of BBQ sauce and accent?
Spacey Unmasked was actually announced back in 2022—notably, before Spacey won a trial in the U.K. in which he was facing charges of sexual assault. (He previously also won in a suit from Rapp, accusing Spacey of sexual assault and sexual battery.) The documentary, which will air in two parts in the U.K., on May 6 and 7, reportedly talks to several men who weren’t involved in the British trial “about their experiences with Kevin Spacey, almost all of whom have never spoken before.”
37 Comments
It seems insane to me that there hasn’t been a successful trial win against Spacey. I worked as an assistant stage manager for six years in London (on fringe plays rather than West End shows) but even then many of the actors I worked with had Spacey stories, the majority of which were related to how turning down his advances was often exhausting, but some were more fucked up than that.
It’s a combination of good(in the sense that they know their job, not like morally good) and bias judges
Well, Weinstein’s conviction was overturned and women would rather be alone with bears, so here we are. I’ll bet you have some very interesting stories.
Yeah but not because of inconclusive evidence or some sort of mischief. It was a potentially questionable call by the judge to let other allegations in as evidence against him despite not being proven. I know this was discussed at length when that article came out last week and apparently in sexual assault cases it’s more common than for other crimes given the he said/she said nature. But it looks like they’re going to have to prove it again with less of that type of testimony.
chubby hairy gay men are great to hang out with. dont be rude
This kinda thing is famously hard to prove, especially years after the fact. Also I’m not sure but I think juries are only supposed to consider the case at hand, and not the fact that it’s one of like fifteen accusations of the same kind of behavior.
That is the case, yes. For Spacey to go down in a big way, someone has to catch him on anything at least one time before things get past “allegation”. Which is, as you said, hard to do years after the fact. It’s fucked up but ultimately the way the courts work. Beyond a reasonable doubt and all that…
Spacey has no remorse, doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong, and so far has gotten away with it which feeds into his state of mind.
Him saying flippant and ridiculous things in public is basically.. presidential.
Exactly where my thoughts went. Of course, Hitler thought he was the shit too, as did his supporters.
Hitler is really not an apt point of comparison here. That’s almost always the case, and the exceptions are basically limited to populist demagogues and genocidal autocrats.
Hitlerish then?
Lol no, this is what I’m saying! He’s an asshole predator dirtbag, but he’s not killing people by the millions. Trumpish? Yeah, definitely, I agree with OP.
Trump’s policies during COVID: say this to the families who lost loved ones during his dirty reign; and the people suffering from Long COVID (I’m one of them) who lost their jobs, their homes and their hope.
1) I’m sorry about your long COVID! That really sucks.2) This, again, is my point: having sub-optimal health care policies that led to hundreds of thousands of excess deaths during a pandemic* is not remotely similar to intentionally murdering millions of people in facilities constructed to murder people.
*it’s worth remembering those excess deaths are still orders of magnitude smaller than expected death tolls in the absence of Trump’s (imperfect) intervention policies. That he is constantly touting his vaccine to his vaccine-hating chucklefuck fans is my favorite irony: he’s so desperate for credit for actually doing something right…but they won’t give it to him!It’s tempting to think we could have done more, and more, and more, but every intervention carried a societal cost. For example, we’re starting to understand that later school closures (I’m not talking about 2020 here) essentially traded away years of adolescent learning and social development for marginal reductions in case numbers…that’s a bill that’s going to come due.
On your last point, my wife and I thought the obvious disproportionate impact on lower-income kids whose families couldn’t afford private school, tutors, learning clusters or to opt out of work to home-school would force reopenings because once those kids fall behind, they do not catch up. Naive on our part, I guess. Aptitude scores are off across the board, but take a guess where it’s worst.
Look up Peter Serafinowicz‘s Kevin Spacey actor studio impression. It was before any allegations and it’s pretty scathing. Many people knew before the public did.
That’s always the case. Everyone in the business knew about Weinstein. And Cosby. And Spacey. Everyone in the business (in the UK) knew about Jimmy Saville. Maybe they talk amongst themselves and maybe they give a warning to someone who is too new to know, but “openly kept secret” seems the way of things until something sparks the more-than-deserved pile-on of accusations.
I think folks knew something was up w/ Spacey for a while though I don’t think folks really suspected the depths of it. I grew up in North Jersey and remember hearing rumors in the 90s — when Spacey’s career was ascendent but his sexuality was still an unknown — that, during his Broadway tenures, Spacey would occasionally trek over the bridge from Manhattan to cruise the campus of Montclaire State University looking to take undergrad boys for a ride. There’s a lot to unpack there, starting with 1) are these rumors even true 2) what in this story is rooted in perceptions and realities of homosexuality in the 90s 3) if there’s a predatory scale with honestly making a pass at someone on one end and violent rape on the other, where does this fall, compared to what Spacey was later accused of, and does it matter that it was gay men in the 90s?Most interesting to me though is these rumors even existed at all, again, in the 90s, well before he was “out” to the greater public. In any case, as to why Spacey hasn’t been nailed in the court of law, I think it’s really difficult in an industry like showbusiness where things like power and influence exist outside the formal structure of employment, so behavior and actions that would protect you from an employer don’t extend to what the law views as consenting adults, even when one of those adults has all the power and can theoretically crush the career ambitions of the other.
Have you heard Kevin Pollak’s Kevin Spacey story? It happened on the set of The Usual Suspects and it involves fellow shitheel Bryan Singer. It actually manages to make Singer sympathetic. That’s how terrible of a person Kevin Spacey is.
Link? Would be fascinating to hear this, especially from Pollak, a master storyteller. I did see a claim from Gabriel Byrne that shooting was derailed/delayed on the already tight shot because of “inappropriate behavior” on Spacey’s part, though Singer denied those claims.
Go to 38:40.
Thanks for sharing. Sounds completely on brand. It’s buried in the greys but I shared this somewhere else in the thread — I grew up in North Jersey and remember hearing rumors in the 90s — when Spacey’s career was ascendent but his sexuality was still an unknown — that, during his Broadway tenures, Spacey would occasionally trek over the bridge from Manhattan to cruise the campus of Montclaire State University looking to take undergrad boys for a ride.There’s a lot to unpack there, starting with 1) are these rumors even true 2) what in this story is rooted in perceptions and realities of homosexuality in the 90s 3) if there’s a predatory scale with honestly making a pass at someone on one end and violent rape on the other, where does this fall, compared to what Spacey was later accused of, and does it matter that it was gay men in the 90s?Most interesting to me though is these rumors even existed at all, again, in the 90s, well before he was “out” to the greater public.
Thanks for the tip – watched it and he is brilliant!
i mean…what else is he supposed to say? anything that could be construed as an admission of guilt or responsibility undermines his legal defenses. so yeah, why not say something flippant? why is this a news item?
I mean, he could keep his cunt mouth shut?
Presumably his lawyers are begging him to do just that, although not in those words (probably, though it’d be pretty funny if they did).
come on. he’s not going to do that. he will never do that. in addition to all the personal trespasses he committed, he appears to be an absolute raving narcissist. so he will always say something, and of course the thing he says will be something like this. so why spill any digital ink on the matter?
Pop culture website and they have to meet a word quota.
My first thought is that the bar for “raving” narcissist may have been raised in the last seven years. That or we need a new word.Anyway you asked, essentially what he could have done differently and I told you. He could have shut the fuck up. Had you framed your statement with something like “well he’s a trump-esq narcissistic rapist who can’t shut up…” that would be different.
Narcissism is commonplace in entertainment; here you clearly have a dose of sociopathy as well. Anyway, it’s relevant because he’s one of the highest-profile figures called out during the prime Me Too era but while at least some others went to jail or had to ask for public forgiveness, his response has essentially been “fuck you, what?”
I approve of this message.
We’re going to look back at Kevin Spacey in twenty years and ask ourselves a collective “What the FUCK?”
We’re asking it now.
“Which is, at the risk of editorializing, basically something a character in a TV show would say: A mixture of the on-paper kind of clever and a complete amoral callousness that is entertaining to hear coming out of the mouths of fictional characters, and pretty much nowhere else. Which makes us wonder: Does Spacey genuinely believe he’s Frank Underwood now?”
To try and say he’s “pretending to be a character” and not actually this arrogant is laughable. He’s clearly an ass.
But it’s a fair point. If you were watching this on TV he’d be a character you love to hate. You’d laugh at his brazenness. Like Underwood. But a guy behaving like this IRL just makes me want to take a shower.
I was a SCAD student when Spacey was filming Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in Savannah in the mid ‘90s, and he was notorious for chasing freshmen boys. A friend got flowers delivered daily for a while, with love notes attached. My friend eventually told KS to stop, at which point the rebuffed actor said my friend didn’t understand, that he (Spacey) was method acting, that it was his character, not Spacey, pursuing him. Nobody involved bought that.
This is one of the only times I ever read random internet rumours, remembered them and years later had them validated in some formI remember sitting in a hotel after binging a few episodes googling an explanation of something (I think season 2 had just come out?), and there was a random Reddit comment where the person said they worked in DC and Spacey was known to frequent the bars and be a creep with guys, and then there were replies from people who purportedly had worked with him in London or on random movies or whatever sort of casually replying with agreement and their own anecdotes. Remembered them because none of the responses were anything too crazy, but it was the first time I ever heard anything about Spacey’s supposed personal life