Kevin Spacey hits back at docuseries alleging sexual abuse
Kevin Spacey has attacked an upcoming documentary detailing years of his alleged sexual abuse, saying he was not given adequate time to respond.
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The two-part documentary, Spacey Unmasked, which will be broadcast on Channel 4 on 6 and 7 May in the UK and will stream on Max in the US, claims to feature “never-seen-before interviews and archive” material to examine the Oscar-winning actor’s life “from childhood to early success on Broadway and subsequent meteoric rise to stardom”.
Spacey was acquitted of sexual assault against four men by a UK court in July 2023, in what was one of the country’s most high-profile #MeToo trials. According to the official description, the series will “investigate Spacey’s conduct and talks to multiple men unconnected to that case about their experiences with Kevin Spacey, almost all of whom have never spoken before”.
On X, formerly Twitter, the 64-year-old actor claimed that he had not been given enough time – seven days, he says – to respond to allegations “dating back 48 years” and that the network did not provide him “sufficient details to investigate these matters”.
“Channel 4 has refused on the basis that they feel that asking for a response in seven days to new, anonymized and non-specific allegations is a ‘fair opportunity’ for me to refute any allegations made against me,’” he added.
Spacey continued that he “will not sit back and be attacked by a dying network’s one-sided ‘documentary’ about me in their desperate attempt for ratings.
“Each time I have been given the time and a proper forum to defend myself, the allegations have failed under scrutiny and I have been exonerated,” he wrote.
In a statement to Variety, Channel 4 disputed Spacey’s claim for adequate time: “Spacey Unmasked will broadcast on 6th and 7th May. Kevin Spacey has been given sufficient opportunity to respond.”
Spacey wrote on X that he would be responding to the documentary over the weekend on the platform.
The UK court found Spacey, who stood trial under his given name, Kevin Spacey Fowler, not guilty of nine sexual offences against four men in their 20s and 30s, between 2004 and 2013. He had previously denied 12 charges – seven sexual assaults, three indecent assaults, one count of causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent and one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.
In October 2022, a jury in New York concluded Spacey did not molest the actor Anthony Rapp, his first public accuser, when Rapp was 14 and both were relatively unknown Broadway actors in the 1980s. Rapp sought $40m in damages in a civil trial.
The former star of House of Cards was previously ordered to pay $31m to Netflix after allegations of “systematically preying upon, sexually harassing and groping young men that he had worked with throughout his career on film, television and theatre projects”. An arbitrator found that he repeatedly breached contractual obligations by failing to provide services in a “professional manner” and that he violated anti-harassment policies.
Spacey has since endeavored to rebuild his career and received a standing ovation for his first stage appearance after the UK trial, at a theatre in Oxford.
