In a recent interview, out actor
Anthony Rapp said Lupita Nyong'o's story inspired him to speak out
about Kevin Spacey.
In late 2017, Rapp accused Spacey
(House of Cards) of sexual misconduct when the two actors were
working on Broadway and Rapp was 14. Spacey responded with an
apology of sorts, saying that he did not remember the encounter. “But
if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology
for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior,”
Spacey tweeted. Spacey also acknowledged for the first time publicly
that he was gay.
Since Rapp named Spacey (Rapp had
previously discussed the incident), more than a dozen men have
revealed their “me too” stories. Netflix fired Spacey from his
starring role in House of Cards over the allegations.
Speaking with Cameron Esposito on her
Queery podcast, Rapp said that he decided to come forward
after reading Nyong'o's op-ed in The New York Times.
“I was following along with the
Harvey Weinstein stories, to some degree, but I wasn’t like diving
into them,” Rapp
said. “I hadn’t yet really made the connection for myself. …
Lupita Nyong'o wrote a first-person piece in The New York Times
about her experience with Harvey. And as they go, she was pretty
fortunate in that she was able to avoid the worst of it, but she
wrote so beautifully and eloquently about what that experience was like
for her.”
“Coupled with it was the knowledge
that that had been going on for decades to so many people, and that I
knew for a fact several people in my own circle who had had
experiences with Kevin Spacey, that it was like that was when the
penny dropped, and I had to do something. It wasn’t about my own
experience, it really was not about airing out my own laundry.”
“I thought that would be the only way
that we could stop him,” he added.