NEW YORK — Embattled actor Kevin Spacey took the witness stand Monday at his Manhattan trial, where he launched into his testimony by revealing his rocky relationship with a “neo-Nazi” father who verbally abused him because he suspected his son was gay.
Spacey, who is being sued in Manhattan federal court by actor Anthony Rapp in a $40 million civil lawsuit that claims the older actor aggressively came on to him in 1986 when he was 14, told jurors that his father was a white supremacist who ”used to yell at me about the idea I might be gay because I was interested in theater, and he didn’t encourage me in that way,” said Spacey, adding that his dad would “scream” homophobic slurs at him.
“He would use an F-word that is very derogatory to the gay community,” added Spacey, 63.
Spacey’s testimony comes after Rapp testified over three days last week that the alleged incident at the heart of his lawsuit was the most traumatic event of his life.
Rapp claims Spacey, then 26 years old, came on to him after a party at his Upper East Side apartment and laid on top of him with “dead weight” before the teen squirmed out from under Spacey and ran off.
Lawyers for Spacey have accused Rapp of having an ax to grind because Spacey didn’t come out as gay until late in his career. Spacey revealed his sexuality in a statement responding to Rapp’s allegations in 2017.
In the first minutes of his testimony Monday, Spacey sought to explain why he had kept it a secret for most of his career, attributing his reluctance to his upbringing.
Spacey said his father’s hateful beliefs also meant he couldn’t invite his Jewish best friend over for play dates.
“I couldn’t bring him to my house. And everything about what was happening in that house was something I felt I had to keep to myself and keep private and never, ever talk about to anybody,” he said.
“I have never talked about these things publicly, ever.”
Early Monday, Judge Lewis Kaplan threw out Rapp’s claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress for legal reasons, leaving a remaining battery claim. The judge ruled in June that Rapp had waited too long to sue Spacey for assault.
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