Kevin Spacey says Guy Pearce is ‘not a victim’ after Pearce says he was ‘targeted’ by Spacey
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Nearly 30 years after the fact, Guy Pearce appears to have processed his interactions with Kevin Spacey on the set of “L.A. Confidential.” But Kevin Spacey is not having it — even though Pearce said previously that he had dealt with being “made to feel uncomfortable” by Spacey at the time it happened.
“Grow up, Guy Pearce. You are not a victim,” the two-time Oscar winner wrote Tuesday on X, where he also posted a video responding to Pearce’s answers to a direct question on a recent podcast.
“I was scared of Kevin, because ... he’s quite an aggressive man, and extremely charming and brilliant at what he does, really impressive, etc. He holds a room remarkably,” the Australian-raised Pearce said on the Hollywood Reporter’s “Awards Chatter” podcast, published Saturday. “But I was young and susceptible, and he targeted me, no question.”
Pearce was on the podcast because of his supporting actor Oscar nomination for 2024’s “The Brutalist,” which received 10 Oscar nods, including one for best picture. He was also nominated for Golden Globe, BAFTA and Critics Choice awards for the same performance.
The veteran actor, known for “Memento,” “L.A. Confidential” and HBO’s “Mildred Pierce,” has been earning praise for his complex portrayal of an enigmatic industrialist.
Pearce made a point of telling his podcast interviewer, “I don’t want to use the word ‘victim’ because, even though I probably was a victim to a degree, I was certainly not a victim by any means to the extent that other people have been to sexual predators.”
But he said that after unwanted attention from Spacey that he “did that thing that you do where you brush it off and go, ‘Oh, no, that’s nothing. No, that’s nothing.’ And I did that for five months” until production was complete in August 1996.
Spacey told Pearce in his X video Tuesday that while he “would have preferred not to have to play this out in the media, you obviously have your own reasons for wanting to do exactly that.” But now the media were seeking out his response to the comments, which Pearce had originally made on an Australian talk show in 2018.
“You really want to know what my response is? Grow up,” the 65-year-old actor said in his video. “Did you also, by the way, tell the press that a year after we shot ‘L.A. Confidential,’ you flew to Savannah, Ga., while I was shooting ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’ just to spend time with me? I mean, did you tell the press that too, or does that not fit into the victim narrative you have going?”
A representative for Pearce did not immediately respond Tuesday to The Times’ request for comment about Spacey’s remarks.
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“So anyway, I apologize that I didn’t get the message that you don’t like spending time with me,” Spacey said in his video, with a touch of sarcasm as he raised up both hands.
“I mean, maybe there was another reason, I don’t know. But that doesn’t make sense that you would have just been leading me on, right? But here you are now on a mission some 28 years later, after I’ve been through hell and back, to do what? Just in time to stop the bad guy, huh? Is that what’s going on here? What took you so long? Did your horse run out of gas?”
Spacey then offered to have a conversation about it with Pearce. “I’m happy to do so anytime, anyplace. We can even do it here, live on X, if you like. I’ve got nothing to hide. But Guy, you need to grow up. You are not a victim.”
Pearce, now 57, was just 28 in 1996 when he was filming the Oscar-winning “L.A. Confidential,” which also starred Russell Crowe and James Cromwell. The movie lost the 1998 best picture prize to “Titanic” but picked up honors for supporting actress (Kim Basinger) and adapted screenplay.
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Pearce said he remembered telling Kate Mestitz, the Aussie actor whom he was with at the time and divorced in 2015, that the only time he felt “safe” on set was when “The Mentalist” actor Simon Baker was around, “because I’m dumped like a hot potato and he focuses on Simon ... ‘cause he was 10 times prettier than I ever was.” Baker’s role in “L.A. Confidential” was much smaller than Pearce’s Det. Lt. Ed Exley.
Pearce first went public about his interactions with Spacey after allegations about the latter’s inappropriate behavior became widespread in 2017. The “Jack Irish” actor said on the podcast that “thankfully” he was an adult when Spacey allegedly targeted him, rather than 14, the age accuser Anthony Rapp said he was when a 26-year-old Spacey allegedly climbed on top of him and made a sexual advance.
A civil jury in 2022 found that Spacey had not molested Rapp.
Pearce said he first heard Rapp’s allegations in fall 2017. “I heard these stories about Kevin sort of officially, as news stories, and I was in London working, and I heard this and I broke down and sobbed and I couldn’t stop. And I think it really sort of dawned on me, the impact that had occurred and how I’d sort of brushed it off, and how I’d sort of either sheltered or blocked it out or whatever.”
“That was a really, yeah, really incredible wake-up call, I suppose,” he told THR.
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“I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago,” Spacey said in 2017, responding to Rapp’s allegations. “But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years.” Then Spacey announced that he was gay.
The following summer, Pearce went public about working with Spacey during a July 2018 sit-down on a talk show in Australia.
“Tough one to talk about at the moment,” Pearce told host Andrew Denton. “Amazing actor. Incredible actor. Mmm, slightly difficult time with Kevin, yeah. He’s a handsy guy.”
He told CNN a few days later that he wanted to clarify what he’d said to Denton.
“I very much understand that it’s too sensitive a topic to be brushed off,” Pearce said. “Although I wasn’t sexually assaulted or molested, I was made to feel uncomfortable. I addressed and handled the situation when it took place, hence my regret at making it public now.”
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