Kevin Spacey has said he feels “much more welcomed” in Hollywood nine years after sexual assault allegations derailed his career.
The 66-year-old two-time Oscar winner, who was appearing as a guest on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast, was asked by the host whether he remains in “show business jail” and responded that he feels “less in jail than I did.”
Spacey was exiled from mainstream Hollywood in 2017 after multiple men accused him of sexual misconduct, which he has consistently denied.
In 2017, actor Anthony Rapp became the first to accuse Spacey of sexually abusing him. He claimed the incident occurred in 1986 when Spacey would have been 26, while Rapp was 14.
More than a dozen men subsequently accused Spacey of sexual misconduct, all of which he has either denied or insisted were consensual.
During the interview, Maher told Spacey: “I’m not going to lie to you, I go by numbers with scandals… If it’s like one person, I’m always like, I don’t know if I wasn’t in the room. When it gets to.. [the number of accusers Spacey had]… There’s too much smoke to be no fire.”
The American Beauty star responded: “I never said there was no fire. It just wasn’t a raging forest fire. It was a small kitchen fire that could have been put out with an extinguisher.”
Spacey went on to state that: “We’ve been found not guilty in every court we’ve gone into with a jury,” and added: “There are certain cases where part of something is true, but it’s been rethought, it’s been redesigned, or it’s been entirely made up, certainly in the case of Anthony Rapp, which is a case that we won in federal court in New York.”
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Rapp’s allegations were later dismissed by a Manhattan court in 2022, and in 2023, Spacey stood trial in the UK after four men alleged that he had sexually assaulted them in separate incidents between 2001 and 2013. He was again cleared of all nine offences.
Although Maher conceded he hadn’t “done his homework” regarding all of the allegations, he continued to push Spacey on the point that the number of accusations against him represented “a lot of smoke.” When Maher suggested that Spacey had been “forward,” the actor agreed: “I hit on a lot of guys.”
Spacey, who only came out as gay following Rapp’s allegations, added: “Over the years that I have been an actor, I was very, very closeted. I was fiercely closeted… I thought I was so clever that nobody knew, but of course kind of everybody knew.”
Since his acquittal, Spacey has starred in several small projects, including the 2024 thriller The Contract, in which he played the Devil.
Earlier this year, he was presented with the Maximo Award for Excellence at the Italian Global Series Festival, adding to his recent string of honours as he attempts to make a career comeback.
Asked specifically if he remains in “show business jail” almost a decade after Rapp’s allegations, Spacey said: “I feel less in jail than I did. I feel that when people look at things… I know, as you’ve said, you didn’t really pay attention to the details, and I know most people don’t, but I think when people hear the facts and see what we’ve won in court, I think people look at this and think: ‘Maybe nine years has been enough.’ If I had been a sports figure, I’d have been benched for seven games!”
He continued: “I believe we’re at a point now where people are starting to look at what actually happened, and I feel much more welcomed, and I think that things are moving in the direction that we hoped they were moving in.”
