ANOTHER GAY KEVIN

IN 2010 I PUBLICLY ENGAGED KEVIN SPACEY ABOUT HIS BEING GAY BUT HE ACCUSED ME OF BULLYING HIM. SOME IN THE PRESS TOOK HIS SIDE AND BULLIED ME BACK. THE STORY, AS WE SAY IN MY LINE OF WORK, HAD LEGS.

(Above: Portrait of Kevin Spacey by Ramachandra Babu.)

Since Kevin Spacey was acquitted this week of seven counts of sexual assault, one count of causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent and one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent brought against him in England, I think it’s time I revisited my interview with Spacey from more than a decade ago when I engaged him about his being a gay man to which he took offense even if he chose not to go off-the-record to take it when I offered him the chance to do so. It caused a bit of a media kerfuffle - many in the media taking his side in accusations of my outing him. Indeed, in a 2017 New York Times story bylined by Daniel Victor about the later criticisms directed at him from a range of fellow celebrities, including Billy Eichner and George Takei and Zachary Quinto, for choosing officially to come out in order to use the LGBTQ community as a kind of shield when earlier similar sexual assault allegations were lodged against him from Anthony Rapp, that interview with him was mentioned to wrap up the reportage. Victor wrote in the Times:

“While Mr. Spacey made references to rumors regarding his sexuality when he hosted the 2017 Tony Awards, he had never publicly confirmed them and fiercely guarded his privacy.

“In 2010, Kevin Sessums, a journalist, pressed Mr. Spacey on his sexuality in an interview for The Daily Beast."

“‘We gay men have always proudly claimed you as a member of our tribe, and yet you don’t proudly claim us back,’ Mr. Sessums said. ‘Why?’

“Mr. Spacey responded: ‘Look, I might have lived in England for the last several years but I’m still an American citizen and I have not given up my right to privacy.’

“Mr. Sessums continued the line of questioning, but Mr. Spacey pivoted to a discussion of bullying without addressing his own sexuality.

“‘No one’s personal life is in the public interest,’ Mr. Spacey said. ‘It’s gossip, bottom line. End of story.’”

The pushback I got from him that day was based on his claiming I was asking him about his sex life.  I tried to explain to him - and later to journalists taking his side - that I was instead asking who he was on the sidewalk or at the table where we were then sitting.  It was none of my business what he did behind a locked bedroom door.  Now I’d be even more pointed: it is none of my business what he does behind a locked bedroom door with another consenting adult. But he kept conflating his gay identity with the old-school idea that it only meant his being a sexual creature.  I knew when we talked years ago that the closet, his closet, no matter how cracked its door, can curdle one’s life and would finally curdle his.

Another of those who criticized him for coming out once he was accused of sexual assault was writer and columnist Dan Savage who cofounded the “It Gets Better” campaign with his husband Terry Miller as outreach to bullied LGBTQ children and teenagers. Since Spacey kept conflating my line of questioning with those who bully children and teenagers and hiding behind their being targeted as if I were targeting him in the same way, I did ask him if he would make an “It Gets Better” spot if he truly meant what he was saying. He said he would. I watched for one. I never saw it if it happened. But I did see this 2020 Christmas Eve one a decade later when he finally made a YouTube appeal based on his own troubles and for those whom he said had reached out to him in sympathy in their own shared pain, narcissism Christmas wrapped in the needs of others seen through the scrim of self (which, I guess, is how we all finally do see such needs) and at the end of it he appropriated “It Gets Better” for his own copy, his own needs. For effect, he began the video as if he were Frank Underwood in House of Cards - which always had the whiff of a Margo Martindale imitation to me - but then dropped that effect for the affectation of sincerity. But perhaps I am being as smug about his sincerity as I found him to be the day I interviewed him. Smugness is no crime but he was certainly guilty of it. I plead guilty of it myself in my memory of him.

Here is a bit of the introduction and an excerpt of the pertinent part of our interview at The Daily Beast:

I met Spacey at the London Hotel and we reminisced about our roster of teachers at The Juilliard School of Drama—I was class of 1975, he attended from 1979-1981—and how innocence and ambition were such a heady mix in those hallways back then. We also bonded over our appreciation for Kenneth Tynan. The collection of the late critic's diary entries, edited by John Lahr, has been my subway reading lately and I had placed it on the table where we were seated. "He's one of my favorite people ever," said Spacey, so I pointed out to him a passage that took place at the Old Vic, where Tynan served as literary manager for the British Royal National Theatre under the artistic directorship of Sir Laurence Olivier before the company moved to its current home on London's South Bank. [Spacey was the Artistic Director of the Old Vic from 2003 to 2015.] I thought Spacey would silently read it and perhaps knowingly grin. Instead he gave me a private performance, reading aloud in his plumiest put-on voice as he captured the rather lurid delight that a libertine and wordsmith of Tynan's tireless caliber had to have felt at the sound of his own.

KEVIN SPACEY (Reading from Tynan's entry of January 15, 1972): "What is the best theatrical impromptu I've ever heard? Probably John Gielgud's during the dress rehearsal of Peter Brook's production of Seneca's Oedipus at the Vic. Irene Worth as Jocasta had to pretend to impale herself vaginally on a large wooden sword fixed point upwards on the stage. To do this she went through a lot of protracted squatting motions, with appropriately agonized expressions. At the dress rehearsal she stopped in mid-squat and, shading her eyes, peered out into the auditorium. 'Peter,' she said, plaintively. 'The last time I did this it was much larger and it was on a plinth.' 'Plinth Charles?' said John G. 'Or Plinth Philip?'"

…

May I talk to you man-to-man? We can go off the record for this if you want.

You're conducting this interview so you can stay on the record if you wish. I don't mind.

OK, but at any point you want to go off-the-record let me know. Casino Jack has a tribal motif running through it. [We were doing this interview to promote that film. in which he starred as lobbyist Jack Abramoff.] There is Abramoff's taking advantage of the Native-American tribes and playing them off each other. There is the tribe of lobbyists in D.C., which is itself a tribal town. And there is his deep identification as a Jew that almost takes on tribal aspects in its religiosity. As I sat in the screening watching all these tribal narrative streams blend together I began to feel compelled to put this to you. We gay men have always proudly claimed you as a member of our tribe, and yet you don't proudly claim us back. Why?

Look, I might have lived in England for the last several years but I'm still an American citizen and I have not given up my right to privacy.

But that's where we differ. I don't think being gay is a private matter. Heterosexuals don't consider their heterosexuality itself a private matter. I'm not asking you what goes on behind a locked door anymore than I would ask a heterosexual. I'm not asking if you're a top or bottom. That's none of my business.

Let's enlarge the subject even more. I think what we have seen in terms of gay teenagers committing suicide because of bullying is anguishing. I think young people, if they are feeling like they are confused, need to know that there are people to talk to and that there are places they can go and not feel alone. But I feel that they have just as many rights as I do to not be bullied. And I don't understand people who say, "Well, this is a terrible thing that is happening to this young person whose life is being exposed," and then turn around and do it to another person. People have different reasons for the way they live their lives. You cannot put everyone's reasons in the same box. It's just a line I've never crossed and never will.

Well, I don't equate my discussing this with you as bullying you. You are an accomplished grown man, not a fearful teenager. But would you do one of those "It Gets Better" videos? I think that would be great if you did one of those.

Yeah. Absolutely. I'd do one of those. But why is it in this country that kids might think it's OK to bully and make fun of somebody? I'll tell you why, because what do they see in the media happening all the time? In the media they seem to think that's OK So if we stop using sexuality as a weapon against people maybe everyone will eventually get cool with it.

But I'm not attacking you. I don't see sexuality as a weapon. I see it as a gift. Look, I know that being an actor—and all the emotion and sexuality and longing that is projected onto you in a role by an audience—complicates the issue in that you have to take into account their required complicity in the very essence of your art. No performance is complete until their belief is a part of it. But I stopped being an actor after I left Juilliard because I couldn't live a lie to enable myself to pretend. That was too much of a double whammy.

I don't live a lie. You have to understand that people who choose not to discuss their personal lives are not living a lie. That is a presumption that people jump to.

There are lies of omission. But I have never heard that you are at all hypocritical in your daily life with your close friends and family. You've admitted you're a political animal so you have to understand the social significance of your being more open when discussing this. But you've been great to keep this all on the record. I appreciate that. That speaks to your innate integrity.

Look, at the end of the day people have to respect people's differences. I am different than some people would like me to be. I just don't buy into that the personal can be political. I just think that's horse shit. No one's personal life is in the public interest. It's gossip, bottom line. End of story. Now some people feed that. They'll go to the trendy restaurants where all the photographers are and then bitch about being famous. But if you don't want to feed that and you want your life to be based around what your work is then it ends there. Your saying that you are gay and that is how you walk about in the world and it has nothing to do with your true private life is a good distinction for you to draw. But it's not such a good distinction for other people. Personally, I don't really think that distinction exits. Look, I think finally this is a very important issue to be discussed. I do. Mainly because of how sad it is that young people in this country—and even around the world where they don't have the freedoms and rights we do—are being subjected to the kinds of abuse they are being subjected to. That's what is shameful.

OK. Enough. Let's call a truce and, yes, get back to your life's work. A part of it has been centered on Eugene O'Neill plays. Jack Lemmon became your mentor when he played James Tyrone in the production of Long Day's Journey Into Night in which you played Jamie. Your Hickey in The Iceman Cometh has become legendary and most recently you played Jim Tyrone in A Moon for the Misbegotten. Not since Jason Robards has there been an actor so attuned to O'Neill. Those plays have given us still more stunning proof of your protean talent as an actor. Why are you so adept at O'Neill? Few are.

I don't know. I didn't come from an alcoholic family. We were never drunk and screaming at each other. Maybe there is something in those plays that helps you recognize in those characters the goodness that they could have had. The career that James Tyrone could have had. And because he's self-aware it makes him tragic but it also makes him likable. The life that Mary Tyrone could have had. The life that Jamie could have had. O'Neill—like Williams in this regard—is just one of those playwrights that nothing came between his heart and his pen. Or really the pencil in O'Neill's case. It is what I admire about all great writing, that ability to expose everything, both the good and the bad.

But, unlike O'Neill's characters, you are certainly leading the life that you were meant to lead.

I am so leading the life that I want and wanted and dreamed of as a kid. I'm trying very hard not to abuse it or take advantage of it. I feel so grateful to be doing what I do and in the way that I'm doing it. I am lucky in that my mother a long time ago when I was very young said to me, "If you are lucky enough to have a dream come true in your life, make sure you have another dream." So now I am working on what is my next dream …

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In these last few years - and this week - I have not only often thought of the back-and-forth that Spacey and I had about his being gay but also about the irony of my last observation about him and his last two answers that have taken on themselves the tragic contours of an O’Neill play. And I’m not being smug about that.