Yet more allegations against actor Kevin Spacey have come to light this week, with three more men coming forward with stories that Spacey groped them, called them a “coward” for refusing to have sex with him, and, in one case, served alcohol and displayed pornography to a 16-year-old visitor to his home.
Per Buzzfeed News, the latter story comes from Justin Dawes, who worked as an usher at a theater that Spacey was a regular performer at in the 1980s. He says the actor invited him and a friend—both minors—over to his home for what was supposed to be a viewing of Chinatown. When they arrived, they found that Spacey—who quickly mixed them cocktails—was the only person there, and, instead of the film, there was pornography showing on the TV. “We all had a drink, and we were kind of like, ‘Oh, no one else is coming?’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, no one else decided to come,’ and he never mentioned that this porn was playing. It was really awkward,” said Dawes, who characterized the encounter as “cringey” but “benign,” while adding, “He knew that I was in high school. It was pretty clear. It’s not like I was pretending to be an older, cooler person.”
Another account came from a Mark Ebonhoch, a military adviser who worked on the Spacey-starring film Outbreak, and who says one of the actor’s assistants approached him on the set with an explicit offer to come to Spacey’s trailer to perform an sexual act. Ebonhoch—who’s now openly gay—says he was shocked by the offer, and avoided Spacey for the rest of his time on the film, at least in part for fear of being outed himself.
Concerns about sexuality and secrecy also marked a third story, from a journalist who interviewed Spacey several years ago, and who asked to remain anonymous. After a successful interview, Spacey invited the writer out to a club, and once there, immediately became sexually aggressive. “He just kept reaching between my legs and, you know, just grabbing my dick. I would move his hand away, and say something that I thought was pretending was funny or whatever at first. And then I was starting to get annoyed by it, and that was pretty clear.” The situation continued to escalate, until Spacey followed the journalist out of the club, irate. “This man was screaming in my face outside of the main bar area, red-faced, spit flying out of his mouth, screaming at me with fury because I didn’t want to fuck him. He was actually saying that I did want to and I was a coward. That was his tactic. It was unbelievable.”
The writer reported the incident to his editor, but ultimately declined to write about the groping or Spacey’s other behavior, citing a desire to avoid outing Spacey as gay. He went so far as to allege that Spacey’s long-held public secrecy about his sexuality might even have been an intentionally obscuring tactic, meant to make it harder for his alleged victims to come forward:
It has occurred to me since then that there’s this weird way that Spacey had discovered that the closet would shield other things. Being closeted has for him enabled him to use this privacy claim as a shield against anybody looking closely at his actual behavior. And then it may have served as this strange, protective mechanism, to say, ‘My whole sexual life is off limits because of my sexuality.’
Spacey has been hit with several professional consequences since the first allegations came out earlier this week. Netflix—which plays host to his Emmy-nominated political drama House Of Cards—has cut ties with him, and Sony has pulled a planned Oscar campaign for his upcoming film All The Money In The World.