“I felt like I was staring at a soulless monster,” Daniel, an actor, says of his alleged sexual assault by Kevin Spacey in a new Channel 4 documentary promising a “forensic look” at the Oscar winner’s rise to stardom and his alleged sexual misconduct.
Spacey Unmasked features 10 men, Daniel among them, to tell their stories of alleged abuse at the hands of Spacey. None of them were involved in the London trial that saw the actor acquitted of nine charges in July 2023, and all but one have never spoken out before. The charges stemmed from alleged acts that occurred from 2001 to 2013; Spacey was artistic director of London’s Old Vic Theatre from 2004 until 2015.
In between clips of prolific award wins and talk-show wisecracks, Spacey Unmasked features the testimonies of a group of men — identified by their first names only — that span five decades, ranging from a teenage Spacey at high school to the height of his House of Cards fame, as well as his time at the Old Vic.
Many of the victims claim to have been starstruck by Spacey, bowled over by his promise to aid them in their careers, only to soon realize it was at the cost of exchanging alleged “sexual favors,” often while on set as they claim he “kidnapped” crewmembers to “run lines.”
The two-part doc, directed and produced by Katherine Haywood and executive produced by Dorothy Byrne and Mike Lerner, is set to premiere in the U.K. on May 6 and 7. Its U.S. air dates on Max and Investigation Discovery will be announced next week. Roast Beef Productions produced in association with All3Media International, which is handling international sales of the documentary.
On Thursday, the actor pushed back against the doc, taking to X, formerly Twitter, to deny the allegations put forward in the documentary and on the British broadcaster’s program. “I will not sit back and be attacked by a dying network’s one-sided ‘documentary’ about me in their desperate attempt for ratings,” he wrote in a long thread. “There’s a proper channel to handle allegations against me and it’s not Channel 4. 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.”
The Oscar winner accused the channel of giving him too short a window to respond to the statements made in the program.
“Over the last week, I have repeatedly requested that @Channel4 afford me more than 7 days to respond to allegations made against me dating back 48 years and provide me with sufficient details to investigate these matters. Channel 4 has refused on the basis that they feel that asking for a response in 7 days to new, anonymized and non-specific allegations is a ‘fair opportunity’ for me to refute any allegations made against me,” he continued, before promising a fuller response to the documentary from his X account this weekend. “Channel 4 and @RoastBeef TV may find themselves ‘speechless,’ but I no longer will be.”
A Channel 4 statement given to The Hollywood Reporter in response to Spacey’s post reads: “Kevin Spacey has been given sufficient opportunity to respond.”
In Spacey Unmasked, one actor, Scott, tells viewers: “If you don’t pay the toll in sexual favors, you’ll have a decent career, but you won’t see your name in lights.”
Spacey’s brother, Randy, is also interviewed. He says in the doc that he was sexually abused by their father, who held “Nazi meetings” at their family home as a teenager. His brother Kevin was not abused to his knowledge — though that doesn’t mean there wasn’t “psychological trauma,” Randy adds.
The allegations in Spacey Unmasked also include that the star pushed his groin into the face of an Old Vic worker while serving as the venue’s director and that he masturbated in front of an aspiring actor as they watched Saving Private Ryan in a public theater, before trying to move the victim’s hand to join in.
“I felt his whole groin in my face… I could smell him,” Danny, an Old Vic staff member from 2007 until 2008, says. “I could feel him getting pleasure (from) it… It was all about, ‘I can do this, I can do this to you. I’m Kevin Spacey.’”
An ex-marine said that Spacey forced himself onto him while at a party of Bruce Willis’, while many of those interviewed suggested that the star allegedly enjoyed preying on straight men, “enjoying the chase” of trying to “flip” them. “Everybody knows: if you don’t want to go home with Kevin, don’t be the last guy in the bar with him,” Jesse, an ex-colleague of Spacey’s, says in the doc.
The documentary attempts to highlight the push-and-pull of the victims’ testimonies and their guilt for not uncovering Spacey’s alleged behavior sooner. Many of them say they felt as though reporting Spacey, who notably declined to talk about his sexuality in the press before the accusations against him surfaced, would be tantamount to outing him. (Upon a 2017 allegation made by fellow actor Anthony Rapp in 2017 that Spacey molested Rapp after a party in 1986, Spacey came out as gay.)
The documentary contributors voice concern over the impact it would have on their own careers as Spacey continually pledged to help budding actors and crew members with making it big. “He just rips out his d*** and shoves his tongue in my mouth,” Jesse, a crew member on the 1999 film The Big Kahuna, recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘Okay, so that’s how Hollywood is?’”
The men in the doc also comment on Spacey’s tenacity and boldness. Ruiari, an actor at the Old Vic in 2013, says that he was assaulted by the actor who turned him away from photographers at an afterparty in the British capital. Spacey, like a “shark”, then “moved into press mode” for the cameras, he claims.
Spacey Unmasked airs on Channel 4 May 6 and 7 at 9 p.m. local time.
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