Kevin Spacey Trial Delivered Courtroom Drama: Will He Convince ...

Over the five weeks I’ve spent reporting on Kevin Spacey’s trial for sexual assault, I’ve been struck more than once by how much the experience could be mistaken for an immersive theater show.

Each day outside Southwark Crown Court, press and public jostle for a glimpse of the double Oscar winner as he heads in and out, just as they used to clamor for him by the stage door of the Old Vic, the prestigious London theater where Spacey spent more than a decade as artistic director.

Inside the building, down a drab, windowless corridor on the second floor, you’ll find Court One. As you enter, you must bow to the judge, Mr Justice Mark Wall, who is perched up on his bench in a plush red jacket with a fussy white collar and spectacular plush sleeves. In front of him are the lawyers, Christine Agnew KC for the prosecution and Patrick Gibbs KC for the defense, sweeping around the court in their curly grey wigs and Hogwarts-style black robes.

And then there’s Spacey, the former toast of Tinseltown, now locked inside the dock in the center of a courtroom. The dock is shaped like a glass box, like the kind you’d find in a zoo, and is flanked by reporters who spend all day watching the actor intently for the slightest grimace, smile, nod or twitch. For Spacey, who said on the stand he has hardly worked since being publicly accused of sexual assault by Anthony Rapp in 2017, the trial is the closest he has come to a starring role in six years.

Southwark has dispensed with its share of celebrities over the years, including former tennis champ Boris Becker (who was convicted of bankruptcy fraud) and television host Rolf Harris (who was found guilty of indecent assault), but the presence of a Hollywood star has rippled throughout the building. The few spaces in court not bagsied by reporters have been filled by goggle-eyed fans who sometimes try to approach the actor as he exits the room at the end of the day.

On one occasion, I even overheard a female security guard enthusiastically greet Spacey and his entourage as they handed over their wallets and phones for the X-ray machine at the court entrance. “It’s my favorite people!” she cooed.

Since Spacey isn’t in police custody, he is free to roam during the court breaks and it’s not unusual to find yourself passing him in the corridor or standing in line behind him at the court café or even, occasionally, squashed next to him in the lift. Whenever he appears, a hush tends to fall, smirks are suppressed and glances surreptitiously exchanged. Whether it’s because he’s Kevin Spacey — or because he’s Kevin Spacey on trial for sexual assault — is hard to tell.

No wonder Agnew, in her opening statement for the prosecution, felt compelled to remind the jury not to be dazzled by the actor’s illustrious background. “It is only right that you might feel a little starstruck or overwhelmed,” she told them. “But you must keep yourself grounded and true to the oath.”

Still, by the end of the trial, even Agnew herself admitted she’d felt a frisson of excitement when cross-examining Elton John, who appeared as a witness for the defense via videolink from Monaco. “I did have my own starstruck moment with Sir Elton,” she said during her closing argument.

Spacey’s starpower is one of the central issues at the heart of the case. Agnew has argued the actor “abused the power that his reputation and fame afforded,” enabling him to take “who and what he wanted, when he wanted.”

Gibbs, meanwhile, suggests his client’s fame caused him to feel lonely and suspicious and has put him at the mercy of mercenary fabulists. His only crime, in Gibbs’ account, is to find it as “interesting” to hang out with young people in a pub as to “stand on a red carpet and grin for the camera with someone else who’s won an Oscar.”

When Spacey finally stepped into the witness box, in the third week of his trial, it was hard not to imagine a spotlight above him. Where did the actor end and the man begin? Were those pregnant pauses as he replied to the lawyers’ questions genuine, or a technique he’d learned treading the boards? When the prosecution asked why one of the alleged victims would lie and he scathingly replied, “Money, money and then money,” was that an authentic off-the-cuff response or a pre-rehearsed soundbite?

Is Spacey — who celebrates his 64th birthday on Wednesday — guilty of sexually assaulting four British men between 2003 and 2013, or is he innocent?

That is precisely what the jury must now decide.