- "Rent" actor Anthony Rapp testified in his lawsuit against Kevin Spacey on Friday.
- Rapp described Spacey making an unwanted sexual advance towards him at a party when Rapp was 14.
Anthony Rapp described the "very frightening" moment actor Kevin Spacey made an unwanted pass at him at a party in 1986, when Rapp was a minor.
Spacey is currently standing trial in Manhattan federal court after Rapp sued him in 2020 in connection to the decades-old alleged incident. Rapp is asking the jury to award him $40 million in damages. Spacey has denied any wrongdoing.
As Spacey watched intently from the defense table, a composed Rapp took the stand on Friday, telling the jury about how Spacey touched him inappropriately at a party at Spacey's Manhattan apartment in the spring of 1986.
Rapp said he attended the party alone, but felt awkward when he showed up and didn't know anyone besides Spacey. Rapp testified that he'd recently met Spacey since they both had plays showing on Broadway at the time. Rapp was 14 at the time and estimates that he was 5'4" or 5'5" tall, and around 100 pounds.
Feeling awkward at the party, Rapp went to a bedroom to watch TV and at some point, Spacey came in looking "unsteady" and "glassy-eyed."
Rapp said Spacey picked him up, touching his buttocks in the process, and laid him down on the bed he'd been sitting on seconds before.
"He was holding me like a groom holds a bride over the threshold," Rapp said.
Then Spacey laid on top of him, with his groin pressed on Rapp's hip.
"I didn't know what was happening or why," Rapp said.
When this happened Rapp said he "knew something was really wrong."
When asked whether he said anything to Spacey, Rapp said no, adding that he felt "very frozen."
"I didn't feel like I could do anything in that moment," he said.
Rapp said he managed to squirm away and fled to the bathroom, where he took a moment to collect himself.
Rapp said he knew he "had to get out of there," so he eventually left the bathroom, passing Spacey on the bed, who proceeded to follow him as he made his way to the front door.
As Rapp exited the apartment, he says Spacey spoke to him for the first time.
"Are you sure you want to leave?" Rapp recalled Spacey saying.
As he walked home, Rapp said he was thinking "how do I recover from this?"
"It was an incredibly upsetting and frightening experience. I just tried to gather myself and make my way home as safely as possible," Rapp said.
Rapp was living with his mother at the time, and said he didn't tell her because he wasn't ready to talk about sex with her and he liked the independence he had.
When asked by his lawyer to explain why this was a big deal, Rapp said it shouldn't have happened to a child.
"I was this 14-year-old child and I had no desire to have any kind of experience like that in my life. It was incredibly frightening and very alarming. It was antithetical to anything else I had ever experienced in the theater community. It disrupted a sense of belonging in this community. I'm fortunate that that 14-year-old boy had the wherewithal to move on ... but I would argue that he should have never gone through it in the first place," Rapp said.
Rapp's friends, Christopher Denny and Sean Snow, who he told about the Spacey incident years after, also testified on Friday and largely reiterated Rapp's story as he's told it before.
Rapp first went public with the story in an interview with BuzzFeed News in 2017, during the Me Too movement. More men came forward after Rapp with similar allegations against Spacey.
Spacey was fired from his role on the Netflix show "House of Cards," and edited out of the film "All the Money in the World," after the allegations.
He is set to go to trial in June on sexual assault charges in the UK. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which stem from three men's accounts.
Rapp is set to continue testifying when the trial resumes next week.