Anthony Rapp took the stand Friday in federal court to testify against Kevin Spacey, telling the jury that when the much older fellow Broadway actor climbed on top of him as a teen in 1986, he felt like “a deer in the headlights.”
Rapp first said in 2017 that he was assaulted at Spacey’s home in Manhattan in 1986, when Rapp was 14, and sued in 2020. The “Rent” and “Star Trek” actor, the first to bring accusations against Spacey, is seeking $40 million in his civil trial – the first time Spacey has faced a jury after multiple men leveled misconduct allegations.
“I was this 14-year-old child and I had no desire to have any kind of experience like this in my life,” Rapp testified, according to Reuters. “It was incredibly frightening and very alarming and totally antithetical to anything else that I had ever experienced.”
The encounter with Spacey, who was 26 at the time, “disrupted my sense of belonging” in theater, Rapp added. Rapp reiterated his version of events, saying that after guests had left a party at Spacey’s apartment, the older actor lifted him off the ground, put him down on a bed and climbed on top of him in an unwanted sexual advance.
“I didn’t ask for him to do that,” Rapp said. “I felt like a deer in the headlights. I didn’t feel like I could do anything in that moment.”
Spacey has denied any wrongdoing, and his lawyers have suggested Rapp has had details incorrect in his testimony about Spacey’s apartment. The defense team is expected to cross-examine Rapp, who starred in the Broadway musical “Rent,” when trial resumes on Tuesday.
Further allegations against Spacey led to criminal charges in the U.K. – where he pleaded not guilty this summer and faces a separate trial next June – as well as being fired from Netflix’s “House of Cards.” A $31 million damage award for “House of Cards” producer MRC over costs of writing him out of the Netflix series was upheld by a judge this summer.
