Kevin Spacey Comes Out After Accusations of Trying to Seduce a 14-Year-Old Actor

The phrase "when it rains it pours" is one of the only suitable expressions to describe the absolute onslaught of sexual assault allegations that began with searing exposes on Harvey Weinstein. In the aftermath of his swift downfall, everyone from Hollywood talent agents like Tyler Grasham to fashion photographer Terry Richardson have been accused of sexual harassment and abuse.

We can now add Oscar-winning House of Cards actor Kevin Spacey to this growing list. Yesterday, Buzzfeed News published an explosive interview with openly gay Star Trek: Discovery actor Anthony Rapp who accused Spacey of making a sexual advance towards him when he was only 14-years-old. At the time of the alleged incident, Spacey was 26-years-old.

Related | Orphan Black Star Jordan Gavaris Accuses Agent Tyler Grasham of Harassment

In 1986, Spacey befriended Rapp while both men were performing on Broadway. One night, he invited Rapp to his apartment for a party and, at the end of the night, the actor "picked Rapp up, placed him on his bed, and climbed on top of him, making a sexual advance." Shortly before this incident, Rapp met Spacey at an event and then proceeded to go along with him to the popular nightclub Limelight despite Rapp looking "younger than 14," according to him.

After the incident at the party, Rapp said that he remembered feeling "very fortunate that something worse didn't happen," but in the years afterward, he locked it away and never spoke to Spacey about it. "It was this thing that happened, and I locked it away," he said.

This is not the first time allegations against Spacey have been brought up. In a 2005 episode of Family Guy, creator Seth McFarlane includes a joke about children locked up in Kevin Spacey's basement.

More recently, on Oct. 13, former news anchor Heather Unruh tweeted, "The #weinsteinscandal has emboldened me ... I was a Kevin Spacey fan until he assaulted a loved one. Time the dominoes fell."

It also isn't the first time Rapp has talked about the incident, though it is the first time Spacey's name has been included. In a 2001 interview with The Advocate, he recounted the story, saying: "I was bored, so I was in his bedroom watching TV and didn't know everybody had left, and he came to the bedroom and he picked me up and lay down on top of me." Spacey's name was redacted but Rapp ends by saying this: "I always wonder if he remembers it, because he was pretty drunk. And he's had so many." While we can't be absolutely sure what "he's had so many" means in this context, we'll have to wait and see if more allegations against the actor come forward.

After all, it was the allegations against Weinstein that finally led to this moment. As Rapp explained, "Part of what allowed the Harvey situation to occur was that there was this witting and unwitting conspiracy of silence. The only way these things can continue is if there's no attention being paid to it, if it's getting forgotten."

In response to the allegations, Spacey released a statement coming out as a gay man and while we'd usually celebrate someone coming out, we're not here for this. Before he says anything about "relationships with both men and women," he says this very important bit about the incident with Rapp:

"I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago. But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior." While we wait for more details to emerge about this story, let's keep in mind that Spacey literally just blamed alcohol for possibly making a sexual advance towards an underage child and then used coming out as a way to distract from the story. We'll leave it to Vanity Fair film critic Richard Lawson's thread of tweets last night to sum up why connecting these two things is outrageous, dangerous, and disgusting.