In testimony in a civil trial, Mr. Rapp argued that Mr. Spacey had inflicted emotional distress by climbing atop him in a bed when Mr. Rapp was 14. Mr. Spacey says the encounter didn’t happen.
Watching Kevin Spacey’s character show sexual interest in a teenager in the film “American Beauty” was “unpleasantly familiar,” the actor Anthony Rapp testified in federal court on Tuesday, describing a repeated reaction he had in the years after Mr. Spacey climbed on top of him and made a sexual advance, which Mr. Rapp said occurred when he was 14.
Whenever he would see Mr. Spacey — a rising Hollywood star — appear in movies or in person, such as the day of the Tony Awards, Mr. Rapp said he would instantly recall the encounter, which Mr. Spacey denies ever happened. Even a brief appearance by Mr. Spacey in the 1980s movie “Working Girl,” in which his character propositions a secretary in a limousine, startled and upset Mr. Rapp.
“It was as if someone poked me with a cattle prod,” Mr. Rapp testified.
Mr. Rapp, a stage and screen actor best known for his role in the musical “Rent,” has sued Mr. Spacey over the incident, which he said occurred in 1986, when Mr. Spacey was 26. Mr. Rapp has accused Mr. Spacey of battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and the civil trial, which began in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday, has centered not just on whether the encounter happened as Mr. Rapp described, but whether he has psychologically suffered from it over the past three decades.
“As his name and notoriety increased, it was harder and harder to escape,” testified Mr. Rapp, who is seeking damages from Mr. Spacey.
During cross-examination, a lawyer for Mr. Spacey, Jennifer L. Keller, hammered Mr. Rapp on discrepancies between his testimony and earlier versions of his account, questioning whether he was being “deliberately vague” about his recollections.
Mr. Rapp, 50, has testified that after a party at Mr. Spacey’s Manhattan apartment, Mr. Spacey picked him up, laid him on a bed and climbed on top of him, with Mr. Spacey’s pelvis pressing into the side of his hip, before Mr. Rapp was able to escape.
There were no resulting criminal charges, but Mr. Rapp filed a lawsuit in 2020 with the help of a New York State law called the Child Victims Act, which includes a limited period of time in which people who say they were sexually abused as children could sue.
Mr. Spacey, 63, won an Oscar for his roles in “American Beauty” and “The Usual Suspects,” and is also known for his monologues as the sinister politician Frank Underwood in the Netflix series “House of Cards.” He has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than a dozen men, but this is the first time the actor has stood trial. In Britain, he awaits trial on sexual assault charges, and has pleaded not guilty in that case.
When Mr. Rapp took the stand on Friday, he walked the jury through his account of the night in 1986, when, he said, he attended a party at Mr. Spacey’s high-rise apartment. Mr. Rapp, who was a child actor in the Broadway show “Precious Sons” that year, did not recognize any other guests, so he went inside Mr. Spacey’s bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed watching TV, he testified. After some time, Mr. Spacey showed up in the doorway, Mr. Rapp said, appearing unsteady on his feet and glassy-eyed.
Walking over to the bed, Mr. Spacey picked up him up, Mr. Rapp testified, describing the positioning like a groom carrying a bride over the threshold. Then Mr. Spacey laid him down onto the bed and climbed on top of him, pressing his “full weight” into him, Mr. Rapp said.
“I knew something was really wrong now,” Mr. Rapp said, recalling feeling frozen in place.
Managing to wriggle out from under Mr. Spacey, Mr. Rapp testified, he shut himself into a nearby bathroom before making his way to leave the apartment. Mr. Spacey leaned into the front door and said, “Are you sure you want to leave?” — the first words Mr. Spacey said during the encounter, Mr. Rapp said.
Last week, Mr. Rapp’s side also presented testimony from two friends of Mr. Rapp’s who say that in the mid-1990s he told them about the encounter with Mr. Spacey.
In her cross-examination on Tuesday, Ms. Keller pointed to an inaccuracy from earlier comments by Mr. Rapp, in which he said that he had been inspired to tell BuzzFeed News about his account after reading a guest essay in The New York Times by the actress Lupita Nyong’o in which she wrote about how she felt unsafe when the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein asked to give her a massage.
Ms. Keller presented text messages between Mr. Rapp and the BuzzFeed journalist, Adam Vary, that showed that Mr. Rapp had first contacted Mr. Vary about his account several days before Ms. Nyong’o’s account was published.
At an awards event in 2018, Mr. Rapp had described how he decided to go public, so Ms. Keller said that “the bottom line is your acceptance speech in 2018 was not truthful.”
Mr. Rapp responded, “I’m learning right now it wasn’t true.”
In her questioning, Ms. Keller also pointed out that Mr. Rapp’s original lawsuit claimed that Mr. Spacey had “grabbed” Mr. Rapp’s buttocks, but that Mr. Rapp later said Mr. Spacey’s hand had “grazed” his buttocks while he was picking him up. Ms. Keller also disputed Mr. Rapp’s account of the apartment in which he said the encounter took place. Mr. Rapp has testified that he went inside a separate bedroom to watch TV and did not notice the other guests leave, but Mr. Spacey’s defense team has asserted that he was living in a studio apartment at the time without a separate bedroom.
“Is it possible you’re completely wrong about that?” Ms. Keller asked Mr. Rapp, to which he responded, “It’s possible, and I remember a bedroom.”
The defense has asserted — and Mr. Rapp agrees — that no one has come forward to confirm that he or she attended the party at Mr. Spacey’s apartment. It has also suggested that Mr. Rapp fabricated the allegation out of envy for Mr. Spacey’s career, which he denies.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Rapp testified that he had not discussed the accusations with a therapist until October 2017, the month the BuzzFeed article was published. It was the first time he had processed the long-term effect the encounter had had on his life, he said.
“I began to, in general, have intruding thoughts about it — sleepless nights sometimes,” he testified.
Unlike in a criminal trial, jurors in a civil trial do not need to find that the defendant committed the offenses beyond a reasonable doubt. Instead, the 12-person jury will be asked to consider whether the greater weight of the evidence is in the plaintiff’s or defendant’s favor.
Source: Television - nytimes.com
