Kevin Spacey admitted to “pushing the boundaries,” being “too handsy” and “touching someone sexually in a way that I didn’t know at the time they didn’t want” in a new sit-down with Piers Morgan, the latest in an attempt at a redemptive press tour that the actor launched in May with his first on-air interview since 2017.
Starting that year, Spacey was hit with a series of sexual assault and groping allegations that include being charged with one felony count of indecent assault and battery for allegedly groping a busboy at a Nantucket restaurant. The charges were eventually dropped, and Spacey has, to date, never been convicted of sexual misconduct.
“Some people would say that that is criminal, that if you grope people in a sexual way against their wishes, that that is a crime,” Morgan told Spacey in the interview, which streamed live on his YouTube channel Tuesday.
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“I agree that the word grope is a very odd word,” Spacey said. “I personally—I have caressed people, I have been gentle with people. That is the way that I am. You’re making a pass at someone, you don’t want to be aggressive. You want to be gentle. You want to see if they’re going to respond positively. So, I think the word [grope] is not a word that I associate with my experience.”
“If you’re being handsy, you’re groping people and they don’t wanna do it,” Morgan began, “then they should let you know they don’t wanna do it so that you can understand it’s non-consensual and stop,” Spacey said.
Spacey has additionally been accused of forcing a Malibu masseuse to touch his genitals in a lawsuit that was eventually dismissed, and of making a “sexual advance” upon then-14-year-old Rent actor Anthony Rapp in 1986.
The actor told Morgan that after the Rapp allegations came out, and he was removed from the final cut of the Ridley Scott movie All The Money In the World, he wasn’t sure that he “could have said anything that would have been satisfactory.”
Spacey released a statement at the time saying that if he “did behave then as [Rapp] describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior.”
In the same statement, Spacey confirmed speculation on his sexuality: “I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man.”
“We were given no time to respond” to Rapp’s accusation, Spacey added. “I have to take full responsibility for that statement. It stops with me, it was a bad statement, I should have made separate statements about my sexuality and about his accusation.”
A federal jury eventually found Space not liable for battery of Rapp. Spacey was also charged with nine separate counts of assaulting four different men in a London criminal trial in 2023. Spacey was acquitted in the U.K. trial.
Spacey ultimately broke down in tears as he told Morgan that he’s barely dodged bankruptcy, his assets are down to “none,” and he is being forced to move out of his home after it was repossessed.
“I still owe a lot of legal bills,” Spacey said. “It’s considerable... Many millions.”
Recounting the last seven years, Spacey told Morgan, “there’s been a couple of times where it was very dark and I was at my lowest.”
