Kevin Spacey said he believes his career is back on the rise in Hollywood after he faced dozens of sexual misconduct and harassment allegations.
“I feel much more welcomed, and I think that things are moving in the direction that we hoped they were moving in,” the “House of Cards” actor said on Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast Monday.
Spacey, 66, noted that he had won “in every court we’ve gone into with a jury.”
“There are certain cases where part of something is true, but it’s been rethought, it’s been redesigned, or it’s been entirely made up,” he claimed.
“Certainly in the case of Anthony Rapp, which is a case that we won in federal court in New York,” Spacey shared, referring to Rapp’s claim that the actor allegedly made an unwanted sexual advance towards the Broadway star when he was only 14.
Maher, 70, told his guest that he believed some of the claims against him were valid.
“I’m not going to lie to you, I go by numbers with scandals. If it’s like one person, I’m always like, ‘I don’t know if I wasn’t in the room,’” the comedian said to Spacey.
However, in the “American Beauty” star’s case, Maher said there was “too much smoke to be no fire.”
Spacey confessed that some of his behavior had gone too far.
“I never said there was no fire. It just wasn’t a raging forest fire. It was a small kitchen fire that could have been put out with an extinguisher,” he told Maher.
“I hit on a lot of guys,” the actor added.
Maher suggested Spacey “should have gotten some punishment” but also claimed the “Seven” actor “paid a lot” for his crimes.
“I feel less in jail than I did,” Spacey said. “When people actually start to hear the facts, understand what we won in courts, I think people now look at this and think, maybe nine years has been enough.”
“If I had been a sports figure, I would have been benched for seven games,” he added. “If you’re hitting home runs, they want you on the field.”
Spacey faced numerous sexual misconduct and assault allegations beginning in late 2017. He has vehemently denied all allegations.
Rapp filed a $40 million civil lawsuit for sexual assault and battery; however, in October 2022, a federal jury found Spacey not liable on all counts.
When the allegations surfaced, Spacey was fired from Netflix’s “House of Cards” and replaced in “All the Money in the World.”
In 2023, a London jury found the “Usual Suspects” actor not guilty of nine sexual offense charges, which included allegations of sexual and indecent assault and causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity between 2001 and 2013.
In March, Spacey settled out of court with three men who claimed the disgraced actor sexually assaulted them at times between 2000 and 2013.
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