Kevin Spacey Lands New Role Weeks After Sexual Assault Trial
After winning a civil suit, Kevin Spacey has joined the cast of the British indie movie Control.
Although Kevin Spacey is still embroiled in legal controversy he has officially been cast in his next big movie role. Spacey was announced to be starring in Control just weeks after he came out unscathed (financially speaking) in a $40 million sexual battery lawsuit. Variety reports that the British indie is coming from Cupsogue Pictures and is written and directed by Gene Fallaize.
Control follows a British government minister who is engaging in an affair with the Prime Minister. One night, her self-driving car is hijacked by a mysterious stranger who wants to use her secret for revenge. Lauren Metcalfe plays the government minister, Mark Hampton plays the Prime Minister, and Kevin Spacey plays the stranger who remotely hijacks the car.
In late October, Kevin Spacey went to trial for a $40 million civil lawsuit filed by Anthony Rapp that accused Spacey of sexual battery when Rapp was a teenager. The New York jury ended up siding with Spacey, deciding that Spacey did not molest Rapp and that he wouldn’t be held liable for battery. Judge Lewis Kaplan dismissed the case after the jurors’ unanimous decision that Rapp’s lawyers failed to provide enough evidence of the sexual battery charge.
Of course, the Anthony Rapp case is far from the only legal hot water that Kevin Spacey is in right now. He’ll have another trial next summer in the UK, as he faces five counts of sexual assault that allegedly occurred between 2005 and 2013. Spacey pleaded ‘not guilty’ to all counts, so it will be up to the court to decide when his trial comes around.
The U.K.’s Crown Prosecution Service also recently charged Kevin Spacey with seven sexual offenses stemming from one complaint. Spacey has yet to submit a plea for these allegations. On top of these various sexual offense allegations, Kevin Spacey has also been ordered to pay House of Cards producer MRC $31 million due to the Netflix series being canceled after his abuse allegations.
Despite his legal turmoil, the writer and director of Control seems undeterred from including Spacey in his film, saying the controversies were “a consideration, I wouldn’t say it was a concern.” Fallaize isn’t the only person in the business still willing to work with Spacey, as the actor has a couple of other projects on the way. The first of which, The Man Who Drew God, is expected to come out in 2022 and tells the real-life story of a blind artist who drew realistic portraits just by listening to human voices.
Kevin Spacey is also starring in a 2023 film titled Peter Five Eight, where he plays a mysterious man who shows up in a mountainside town at the request of his boss. The team behind Peter Five Eight had a similar response as Fallaize when speaking about hiring Spacey for their film, saying “The production has no knowledge or comment on the various swirling allegations, and believe it’s a matter for the courts to determine validity if it exists.” Whether this stance would change if Spacey was found guilty remains to be seen.
Kevin Spacey has been replaced or cut from several roles since his scandals came to light. In addition to being cut from House of Cards, Netflix also canceled their completed Gore Vidal biopic that starred Spacey in the title role. He was also replaced in the Ridley Scott film All the Money in the World by Christopher Plummer.
