When Anthony Rapp resumed testifying in his sexual-abuse trial against Kevin Spacey on October 11, the Rent star described ongoing emotional turmoil as a result of an alleged 1986 encounter when he was 14 and the House of Cards actor was 26. “It was as if someone had poked me with a cattle prod,” Rapp said in Manhattan federal court, recalling when he went to see Working Girl in 1988 without knowing Spacey was in it. Rapp said that anxious feelings would return whenever he saw a film featuring Spacey, but as a member of the acting community, he felt it was his “duty” to see movies even if Spacey was in them. Doing what he could to brace himself, Rapp watched Spacey films such as L.A. Confidential, Se7en, Glengarry Glenn Ross, and several others. “As time had gone on, it got harder to do.” American Beauty was especially challenging. “He was playing a character where he was sexually involved with a teenager,” Rapp said. “It felt unpleasantly familiar.” He didn’t watch another Spacey movie after that.
Rapp’s team tried to preemptively address attempts by Spacey’s lawyers to cast him as a spiteful careerist following Spacey’s reps’ contention that Rapp was embittered by Spacey’s success and saw #MeToo as an attempt to boost his public profile. During direct examination, Rapp said he did tell other people about the alleged encounter, but not out of spite. Over the years, these people included close friends and associates; among them were attendees at a confidant’s Oscars party. He admitted to throwing a pencil at a TV during an Oscars party when Spacey appeared onscreen. Rapp, who filed suit against Spacey in 2020, said the hostess would throw a rubber chicken at the screen to show disapproval. “I threw a pencil in the spirit of throwing a rubber chicken,” he said. Rapp’s team also tried to address any defense efforts to portray Rapp as emotionally volatile. Rapp admitted to slapping his mother during an argument when he was a teen, and he also said that he struck a romantic partner in a fit of grief-fueled rage.
Rapp was matter-of-fact while testifying on direct examination, though at times his voice seemed strained. When Rapp said that he was inspired to come forward after women publicly accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct, Spacey shook his head. A coterie of apparent Spacey supporters was present at court. At several points when Rapp stumbled, a few low chuckles could be heard from the back of Judge Lewis Kaplan’s courtroom. Despite the made-for-tabloid nature of this case, jurors didn’t seem all that starstruck as testimony progressed. One even appeared to doze off during the morning.
When cross-examination began, Spacey’s team challenged Rapp on his public statements about coming forward. While Rapp publicly said at a 2018 awards ceremony that Lupita Nyong’o’s 2017 New York Times essay inspired him to speak out, they revealed that he had communicated with a BuzzFeed reporter several days prior to her op-ed. “Bottom line is, your acceptance speech in 2018 was not truthful, was it?” Jennifer Keller, one of Spacey’s lawyers, said. “I’m learning right now that it wasn’t true. It wasn’t how I remembered the events unfolding when I thought back on them,” Rapp conceded. Keller then seized on this to challenge Rapp’s memory. “These events that you’re talking about here, they weren’t 31 years old, were they?” Keller asked about his description of speaking out.
“There were not,” Rapp conceded.
“And yet you got them completely wrong, did you not?” she asked. As Keller’s grilling plodded along, Rapp became frustrated, at some junctures shaking his head as if exasperated or perplexed by her questions.
Keller questioned Rapp extensively on the physical elements of the alleged encounter — challenging him on his description of Spacey’s apartment and how he left it. Keller seized on a moment when Rapp failed to provide extensive details about how Spacey moved around his apartment.
“I know that you’re an actor on Star Trek, but I know you’re not alleging that he used a transporter to transport himself to the door,” Keller quipped.
