How Kevin Spacey Blew Up Anthony Rapp's Shifting Stories And Proved His Innocence
Actor Anthony Rapp Constantly Changed His Allegations to Try And Gain Fame and A $30m pay day. The jury wasn't having it.
The UK’s Channel 4 recently aired a documentary featuring a series of men accusing actor Kevin Spacey of sexual misconduct.
But there’s a reason the accusations aired on television instead of in a court of law. That’s because every single allegation against Spacey that has ever made it to a courtroom has collapsed. Some were so weak they didn’t even get before a jury. One ended when the complainant withdrew after a judge’s warning about the perils of perjury and evidence tampering.
We’re going to walk you through Spacey’s two jury trials — the first in 2017 in New York and the second in 2023 in London. This is part one of two: New York. Stay tuned for the London case in a few days.
For the full story of the New York trial, listen to our podcast The Kevin Spacey Trial: Unfiltered.
In 2017, actor Anthony Rapp accused Spacey of sexually assaulting him at a party in 1986. At the time, Rapp was 14 and Spacey was 26. Rapp was performing in his first big Broadway show, and Spacey was acting in a star-studded production of Eugene O’Neil’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night.
When the #MeToo movement burst onto the scene, Rapp decided it was time to come forward. He went to his friend Adam Vary, then a reporter at struggling Buzzfeed News. Click here for our deep dive into all the ethical problems with that article. Basically the story started to fall apart before publication so Vary and Rapp got together to change Rapp’s allegations to fit the facts. They also agreed to obscure certain checkable details in order to make it almost impossible for Spacey to find evidence and challenge the allegations. They discussed the conspiracy by text which were then revealed in discovery. You can see the texts here.
But for now, let’s focus on what Rapp eventually claimed happened and was printed in Buzzfeed and how new facts emerged that proved it could not have happened as described.
Rapp told Buzzfeed that when he was 14 he got his first Broadway role. He frequently viewed other plays, and met Spacey backstage after he saw him perform in Long Day’s Journey. Rapp said he was with an older friend (he and Vary deliberately conspired to falsely state the friend was a minor link) and Spacey wound up inviting them to dinner, followed by visiting a nightclub called the Limelight. Before the night ends, Rapp said, Spacey invites Rapp to a small party he was throwing at his apartment several days later.
Rapp went to the party, alone. Apparently his mother, who was with him in New York for his Broadway stint, allowed him late at night to go to the apartment of an adult stranger she had never met. The party was after an evening performance of Spacey’s play, which was over three hours long. It had to have been after 11pm at the earliest when Rapp went to the apartment on the upper east side.
Once there, Rapp said he realized he didn’t know any of the adults at the party. Bored, he goes into the bedroom and watches television while sitting on the bed. He’s so engrossed in what he’s watching that he doesn’t realize that the party had ended and he’s now alone with Spacey who is looming in the doorway. Spacey, who Rapp said, appeared to be drunk.
Here’s how Buzzfeed News reported the encounter, over 30 years later:
At some point, Rapp said he turned to see Spacey standing at the bedroom door. And that's when he first realized that everyone else had left the party. They were alone.
“My memory was that I thought, Oh, everybody's gone. Well, yeah, I should probably go home,” Rapp said. Spacey, he recalled, “sort of stood in the doorway, kind of swaying. My impression when he came in the room was that he was drunk.” Rapp doesn't remember Spacey saying anything to him. Instead, Rapp said, “He picked me up like a groom picks up the bride over the threshold. But I don't, like, squirm away initially, because I'm like, 'What's going on?' And then he lays down on top of me.”
“He was trying to seduce me,” Rapp said. “I don't know if I would have used that language. But I was aware that he was trying to get with me sexually.”
Rapp recalled this all happening — Spacey appearing at the door, coming into the room, picking him up, and putting him on the bed — in one clumsy action, with Spacey landing at a slight angle on top of him. He said Spacey “was, like, pressing into me,” and that he remembers Spacey “tightening his arms.” But while he can't recall exactly how long Spacey remained on top of him, Rapp said he was able to “squirm” away after a short period.
After pushing Spacey off him, Rapp remembered he was able to step into the bathroom and close the door. "I was like, 'What is happening?'” he said. “I saw on the counter next to the sink a picture of him having his arm around a man. So I think on some level I was like, Oh. He's gay. I guess. Then I opened the door, and I was like, 'OK, I'm going to go home now.' He followed me to the front door of the apartment, and as I opened the door to leave, he was leaning on the front door[frame]. And he was like, 'Are you sure you wanna go?' I said, 'Yes, good night,' and then I did leave."
Over 30 years later Rapp sued Spacey for $30 million and the allegations ended his career. Spacey was left with rising legal bills and a major problem. How do you defend yourself against allegations that you did something brief against someone over 30 years ago. There was no email trail, no electronic calendar or phone photos? Spacey was a young actor living in various subleases or with friends. How could he even remember where he was living at an unspecified time of the year three decades previously?
And the case was to be before a Manhattan jury that had been steeped in the “believe all victims” mindset for years now. How could Spacey’s legal team prove his innocence?
This was where Spacey was a dream client. He had a secret weapon. Actually an entire stash of secret weapons. They could be found in a nondescript storage locker in south Baltimore.
To be more accurate it was a storage warehouse, the size of a hotel ballroom. We have photos of the interior. It’s massive. In one corner is furniture Spacey has inherited and collected over the years, but the other corner makes it apparent why Spacey needs all of its 11,000 square feet. There are hundreds and hundreds of boxes of all shapes and sizes, and in those boxes is basically almost every piece of paperwork that has ever passed through his hands. There are letters, photos, playbills, posters, bills and receipts and documents from every decade of Spacey's life.
Spacey addressed this habit in court. This is from the court transcript of the October 2022 trial:
“I had everything from my life. I kept sort of everything. I'm not a hoarder, but I save things. Everything had been moved to Baltimore in the fall of 2017, and when I got back…. to Baltimore, I began to go through boxes that had been in storage or been in my mother's house for years and years and years that I hadn't looked at.”
And, unbelievably, buried deep in these boxes Spacey found exactly what he needed to prove his innocence and that Anthony Rapp was not telling the truth.
But first the defense had to find out when Rapp was claiming the incident occurred. Remember he and Vary had made the date deliberately vague in the Buzzfeed article. But they could not get away with that in court proceedings. The defense noticed that Rapp mentioned he remembered watching Mollie Ringwald on the David Letterman show after her retreated to the bedroom.
A quick google search proved the date to be May 20, 1986. This allowed Spacey to go through his boxes to find where he lived and prove that the “ assault” could not have happened as Rapp described it.
There were letters, documents, and leases that all proved Spacey was actually living in a studio when he met Rapp. And it was a small studio. It did not have a bedroom. It did not have a bedroom door for Spacey to loom in and for Rapp to run out of.
Anthony Rapp was very clear that at the party, he retreated to a bedroom to watch TV, partially closed the door and didn't know people had left until Spacey loomed in the doorway before assaulting him.
But now Spacey had proof there was no bedroom with a TV, there was no door and no doorway -- the party and the assault could not have happened as Rapp claimed.
Spacey found a letter from 1985 to the landlord. This was six months before the alleged assault. In the second to last paragraph, he discusses subleasing her apartment for the next while and there’s a crucial line that would cast doubt on Rapp’s story.
It says, “I miss New York and have decided to fly up for Thanksgiving at Melanie's. To relax for one day and do nothing but socialize will be wonderful! If you are planning to be in town maybe we can get to-gether. Hang out, get re-aquainted and perhaps talk in more detail about the studio. I'm sure Kathe has kept you abreast of how much it means to me and I hold every hope that it will work out.”
He called it a studio, in writing, in 1985. This was huge.
Other papers he’d kept proved he was indeed living in a studio in 1986. Spacey found letters and even empty envelopes sent to him at that address. There was a dated ledger detailing a loan from his mother to cover the rent that mentioned the landlady by name. His lawyers even went to the studio and found that it was still owned by the same woman, who said it hadn’t been changed since the 80s. It was a studio, and they had pictures to prove it.
For Spacey’s lawyers these discoveries were a major development. They now felt that Anthony Rapp was for sure not telling the truth and that they could win the case. Jennifer Keller, one of his defense attorneys, said she felt the case was over once they had these papers and photographs in hand.
“We always believed Kevin, so we thought it was winnable in that sense,” she said. “But I think once we were able to nail down the apartment, I think we pretty much concluded that that would be the end of their case.”
But they needed to get Rapp to confirm, under oath, that he was claiming the assault occurred in a bedroom with a door. He could claim that Buzzfeed had erred or misinterpreted what he had told them. They had seen the texts with journalist Adam Vary and they knew that Rapp was capable of changing his allegations to match whatever facts emerged. They feared once he knew they could prove there was no bedroom, Rapp would again change his story. He would put forward new memories and slightly different allegations.
So they brought Rapp in for a pre-trial deposition. Depositions are a normal part of the trial process, but usually the complainant is the last to be questioned so he can be asked about what defense lawyers have learned from other witnesses. But for this case they made sure that Rapp was the first to be put under oath so he would not hear from other witnesses about the non existent bedroom and change his story. They had seen the text messages and knew that Rapp had no problem changing days, dates and details if the facts were inconvenient to his original allegations.
During the deposition, the lawyers carefully questioned Rapp about Spacey’s apartment building, and got him to swear that every detail in the Buzzfeed article was correct. They made him go into excruciating and exhaustive detail about the alleged bedroom.
They even made him draw a diagram of the apartment with its non-existent bedroom and doorway. Rapp did exactly what they wanted and confirmed again and again and again that the assault took place in a bedroom that the lawyers knew did not exist.
Here’s a transcript of just a part of the deposition where Spacey’s lawyer, Chase Scolnick, got Rapp to testify to the bedroom while under oath:
Q. So at some point after arriving at the party, you went into the bedroom?
A. Yes.
Q. And how big was the bedroom?
A. My -- my best recollection is the, you know, typical New York, the bed took up a lot of the space of the bedroom. There was a little bit of room from the foot of the bed to the door but not much, and there was a little bit of the space from the side of the bed to the window but not much. And in that space was where the television was. And on the other side was where the door to the bathroom was. That's my best recollection is, you know. As is typical of many New York apartments, it wasn't like super spacious. The bed was the major piece of furniture or anything in the bedroom.
Q. Did you close the door to the rest of the apartment when you were in there?
A. I did not close the door. It wasn't --
Q. Did you shut --
A. It wasn't wide open. It was, you know, cracked to somewhere between half and a quarter open; but no, I didn't close it.
Q. Did you close the door at least partially so that it was cracked?
A. I don't recall doing that. I just -- it was not wide open, and it wasn't closed. So it was somewhere in the middle.
Q. When you arrived at the apartment, was the door shut or open?
A. Open.
You can hear this exchange in this excerpt from our podcast. This is an actual recording of the deposition:
When Rapp took the stand during the trial, Spacey’s lawyers hammered him on this point. Rapp, true to form, modified his story to match the new facts. Suddenly, the bedroom no longer existed and Rapp was now talking about a “bedroom area.” However this sudden switch wasn’t enough to get him off the hook. Here’s an excerpt from the trial transcript of Rapp’s cross examination by lawyer Jennifer Keller.
JENNIFER KELLER And there had to be a doorway, again, for your story to be true, right?
ANTHONY RAPP Not for it to be true. It was what I remembered.
JENNIFER KELLER Okay. So, are you saying that what you remembered and what is true can be two completely different things?
ANTHONY RAPP I'm saying that I remember there being a doorway. I was answering your question when you said "for it to be true."
JENNIFER KELLER I'm just saying, was there or wasn't there a doorway?
ANTHONY RAPP There was a doorway.
But there was not a doorway.
And Spacey could prove it. Without one, Rapp’s whole story fell apart.
There were many other reasons to doubt Rapp’s credibility. His friend who was with him when he first met Spacey contradicted almost every part of the allegation. Rapp also had a history of violent outbursts against his mother and an ex-boyfriend (which he himself recounted in his memoir). He was also shown to be have a bad memory and be willing to lie about much more recent events. He even lied about what inspired him to come forward, saying he was inspired by an article by actress Lupita N’yongo about her experiences with Producer Harvey Weinstein. However it emerged in court he had in fact contacted Adam Vary with his allegations before that article was published.
All of this swung the jury in Spacey’s favor. They took less than an hour to decide that he was not liable for any damages to Rapp’s physical, mental, or emotional wellbeing.
This was the case that inspired all of Spacey’s other accusers to come forward, and it collapsed under scrutiny – and it was considered strong enough to go to trial. All the allegations from new accusers in the Channel 4 documentary have not been tested in court.
Stay tuned for part two about the London case when seemingly strong allegations from British accusers were dismissed by the jury after a lengthy trial. It’s a wild tale of clumsy passes, demands for money and an Elton John cameo.
Listen to the Kevin Spacey Trial: Unfiltered on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Great reporting and writing. 👏👏👏👏