WATCH: Kevin Spacey responds to sexual assault allegations with street performance
Spacey delivered a "very pointed" reading of a poem in Rome after charges against him were dropped
Kevin Spacey has marked his first public appearance following a series of sexual assault allegations by becoming a street performer.
Spacey was filmed by journalists giving a reading of Gabriele Tinti’s poem The Boxer while standing in front of Greek statue Boxer at Rest in Rome, Italy.
It was Spacey’s first performance since sexual assault charges against him were dropped by prosecutors in Nantucket, Britain’s The Telegraph reports.
Spacey had been accused of sexually assaulting an 18-year-old at a bar in 2016, but prosecutors abandoned the case after alleged victim William Little refused to testify at a pre-trial hearing.
According to The Telegraph, Spacey delivered a “very pointed” reading of Tinti’s poem, which is about “a wounded performer determined not to succumb to the blows he endures.”
It includes the lines “They used me for their entertainment, fed on shoddy stuff. Life was over in a moment,” and “The more you’re wounded the greater you are. And the more empty you are. I have endured no end of sleepless nights. I have spent hours and hours sweating to destroy and fall.”
One onlooker told The Telegraph that Spacey made eye contact with “almost everyone” in the first few rows of the amassed crowd.
“It was as mesmerising as it was slightly terrifying,” Barbie Latza Nadeau said. “It was clear that while he may have fallen from grace for the alleged sexual assaults he did not feel any apparent remorse.”
Watch his performance below:
While charges were dropped in Nantucket, Spacey still faces multiple allegations of sexual assault.
London’s Metropolitan Police are investigating six allegations of assault against six different men between 1996 and 2013, with Spacey interviewed under caution in May of this year. Spacey was artistic director of the city’s The Old Vic theater between 2003 and 2015.
Last year, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office announced it was reviewing a historical sexual assault allegation against Spacey over an alleged incident in West Hollywood in 1992. However, prosecutors later announced that they would not be pressing charges, as the alleged incident was outside the state’s statute of limitations.
Spacey’s career unraveled in 2017 after Star Trek: Discovery actor Anthony Rapp accused Spacey of trying to seduce him when he was just 14 years old. The incident allegedly took place in 1986, while Rapp was at a party at then 26-year-old Spacey’s home.
Rapp said that at one point Spacey lay down on top of him, adding, “I was aware that he was trying to get with me sexually.”
Spacey initially tried to deflect from the controversy by coming out publicly, after saying he didn’t remember the incident.
That response drew outrage from the LGBTQ community, with columnist Dan Savage tweeting, “Nope to Kevin Spacey’s statement. Nope. There’s no amount of drunk or closeted that excuses or explains away assaulting a 14-year-old child.”
Spacey was subsequently fired from his flagship Netflix show House of Cards, after multiple claims of sexual harassment and misconduct arose during the show’s production.
The allegations against Spacey also led to him being digitally removed from Ridley Scott’s film All The Money In The World, with the actor replaced at great expense by Christopher Plummer.
Speaking last year, Rapp said he was “incredibly moved” by the support he had received after coming forward with his allegation.
“In this moment, with what’s happened, it’s become clear that people can be believed and that it can have an impact,” Rapp said at the time. “The entire apparatus that kept people silent and also kept [those accused] safe is being dismantled.”
Related:
LA prosecutors review 1992 allegation of sexual assault against Kevin Spacey
Anthony Rapp has opened up on why he came forward with Kevin Spacey allegations
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