Denzel Washington has claimed there were rumors floating around about Kevin Spacey long before he was formally accused of sexual assault by numerous men.
The Gladiator II star, 69, made the statement in a recent five-part interview with Esquire, in which he reflected on his decades-long career.
Recalling the year he was up for Best Actor at the 2000 Oscars for his performance in The Hurricane, Washington remembered the devastation he felt when he lost the category to Spacey.
“I have a memory of turning around and looking at him, and nobody was standing but the people around him,” the American Gangster actor said. “And everyone else was looking at me.
“I’m sure I went home and drank that night. I had to,” he admitted. “I don’t want to sound like, Oh, he won my Oscar, or anything like that. It wasn’t like that.
“And you know, there was talk in the town about what was going on over there on that side of the street,” Washington added, “and that’s between him and God. I ain’t got nothing to do with that. I pray for him. That’s between him and his maker.”
Spacey won his second Oscar that night for his lead role in that year’s Best Picture winner, American Beauty.
The House of Cards star landed his first Academy Award in 1996 for his supporting role in The Usual Suspects.
Once one of the most recognizable faces and names in Hollywood, his career has since been derailed after he was first accused of misconduct in 2017 by actor Anthony Rapp, who claimed Spacey had tried “to seduce” him when he was just 14. Rapp’s allegations were later dismissed by a Manhattan court in 2022.
The following year, Spacey went on trial in the U.K. after four men alleged that he had sexually assaulted them in separate incidents over the period between 2001 and 2013. He was again cleared of all nine offenses.
Fellow Hollywood heavyweights, including Sharon Stone, Liam Neeson and Stephen Fry, have spoken out in support of Spacey, calling for his acting career to resume “after seven years of exile.”
“I can’t wait to see Kevin back at work,” Stone told The Telegraph in May. “He is a genius. He is so elegant and fun, generous to a fault and knows more about our craft than most of us ever will.”
