The talent agency CAA is no longer representing Kevin Spacey as of late Thursday evening.
A person with knowledge of the decision who was not authorized to speak publicly confirmed that both CAA and Spacey’s publicist Staci Wolfe have parted ways with the actor amid growing claims of sexual harassment against him.
Representatives from the agency did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Meanwhile, CNN is reporting that eight current or former “House of Cards” workers claim that Kevin Spacey made the production a “toxic” workplace and one ex-employee alleges the actor sexually assaulted him.
The workers’ identities were withheld from Thursday’s report because they fear professional fallout, the cable news channel said.
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Among them is a former production assistant who alleged that Spacey assaulted him during one of the Netflix show’s early seasons, and CNN reported that all of the people described Spacey’s behavior as predatory.
The report accuses Spacey of allegedly targeting staffers who were typically young and male with nonconsensual touching and crude comments.
Netflix and Spacey’s publicist didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Production of “House of Cards” was previously suspended.
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Filmmaker Tony Montana earlier this week accused Spacey of drunkenly grabbing his genitals in early 2003 and then following him into a restroom where Montana said he’d gone in shock to collect himself.
That accusation came on the heels of actor Anthony Rapp’s allegations over the weekend that Spacey sexually assaulted him in the 1980s when Rapp was 14 years old. Spacey’s initial response triggered a strong backlash for including confirmation that the “Usual Suspects” actor is gay. So he tried again.
“Kevin Spacey is taking the time necessary to seek evaluation and treatment,” a rep for the Oscar winner said in a statement late Wednesday. “No other information is available at this time.”
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Montana, who first shared his story with Radar Online, recently told The Times that he was by himself in a booth at a now-defunct dive in West Hollywood making “paper edits” on a documentary, got up to get a drink and found himself talking to the actor at the bar. Spacey, he said, was making fun of a movie he had just been doing press for, “United States of Leland.” Montana said he had never met Spacey before.
“He was slurring his words, saying, ‘Lee-land, lay-land, wanna get laid.’ He was joking and stuff,” Montana said. “When someone who’s drunk and is joking, you let your guard down.” Plus, he said, it was Spacey. “Kevin Spacey’s fine,” he thought.
Then, Montana said, “He got close to me and put his arm around me and moved in, so now I can feel his breath, and smell it, and then he grabbed me, hard” on the genitals and told the filmmaker, “This designates ownership.”
Montana said he pulled Spacey’s thumb backward to get him to let go, then paid for the drink and went to the men’s room. Moments later, he said, Spacey walked in on him and practically fell onto him.
“It was a urinal. So I’m trying to get away from a guy who’s grabbed me like that, and then I’m going into a urinal to expose myself, and he comes in? I get a double whammy?” Montana said, adding that he pushed Spacey backward out the bathroom door, where one of the actor’s friends steered him away.
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Montana, who is straight, said his reaction had nothing to do with the actor’s sexual orientation.
Spacey’s apology for his alleged behavior with Rapp didn’t ring true to Montana.
Spacey said in the statement that he didn’t remember the incident alleged by Rapp — who accused the “American Beauty” star, then 26, of putting him in a bed and climbing on top of him after a party when he was 14 — but apologized for “what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior.” The notoriously private actor then confirmed that he is gay.
“That read like somebody who was trying to make it go away in the most polite way possible and who has gifted the world with revealing his sexuality identity,” Montana said. “And that kind of comes across as smarmy and it comes across as somebody that is projecting that they still have license.”
Montana said he had post-traumatic stress symptoms that lingered after his own alleged incident — including when he would see Spacey in the media or hear the actor’s name brought up for consideration at a business meeting — feelings that had welled up again as he talked about it publicly.
He said he struggled as he sought advice at the time from friends and family, to whom he didn’t give specifics beyond saying someone had touched him inappropriately and that he was having a hard time dealing with it.
“What actually defines PTSD is having a change in how you view yourself in the world, and a fundamental change in how you see yourself as being safe,” said Jeannie Lochhead, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UC Riverside School of Medicine. Lochhead, who specializes in trauma treatment, has not treated Montana.
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Montana said that by coming forward with his story, he was just “trying to work through” what happened to him.
“I’m not going after Kevin for money. I don’t wish him any ill will,” Montana said. “It’s just... he did something 14 years ago that’s affecting not only him but all the people who work on that show.”
That show would be “House of Cards” on Netflix, which this week indefinitely suspended production of the series’ sixth and final season.
Montana thinks Spacey will bounce back from the allegations, but said that given the current atmosphere in the industry and the country, such a comeback might look a bit different.
“I just know there seems to be a lot of people who are angry,” he said, referring to the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal and how it has focused attention on Hollywood’s inner workings.
“Kevin will take some time away, or he’ll muscle through it,” Montana said. “He has such a high ‘like’ factor. He’ll be back.”
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(Matt Kennedy / AP)
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This image released by Fox Searchlight Films shows Olivia Colman in a scene from the film “The Favourite.” (Atsushi Nishijima/Fox Searchlight Films via AP) (Atsushi Nishijima / AP)
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An Atlanta teenager (Amandla Stenberg) deals with the death of her friend in “The Hate U Give,” director George Tillman Jr.’s fine adaptation of the best-selling young adult novel.
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The new album embraces her individuality more explicitly than ever, both more autobiographical and more politically and socially direct than anything she’d recorded previously. It’s a rawer, less elaborate work than its predecessors, yet still hugely ambitious. Read the review
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Chuck Berry‘s surprise announcement last October that he would release his final studio album this year was made all the more poignant by his death March 18 at age 90.
“Chuck” (Dualtone/Decca) very much sounds like a career capstone, a thank-you to the people who mattered most to him — from his wife of 68 years, Themetta “Toddy” Suggs to the fan in the second row at one of his concerts.
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The title song from “Deliverance” is Grade-A late-period Prince, 3-plus-minutes of piano-organ interplay and sanctified backing vocals that impart an anthemic gospel feel. Read the review
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The self-released “Drogas Light,” Lupe Fiasco’s first album since severing ties with Atlantic, brought hope that it might rekindle the spark and freshness of his 2006 debut, “Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor.” Instead, it falters beneath its own cynicism. Read the full review.
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“Nothing Feels Natural” doesn’t come off like a new band’s first statement. It sounds fully formed and wickedly confident, the work of four people who had to get a few things off their chest. Read the review.
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“Black America Again” (ARTium/Def Jam) arrives as a one of the year’s most potent protest albums. The album sags midway through with a handful of lightweight love songs, but finishes with some of its most emotionally resounding tracks: the “Glory”-like plea for redemption “Rain” with Legend, the celebration of family that is “Little Chicago Boy,” and the staggering “Letter to the Free.” Read the review.
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Warpaint’s unerring feel for gauzy hooks and slinky arrangements germinated over a decade and flourished on the quartet’s excellent 2014 self-titled album. But the band has always nudged its arrangements onto the dance floor — subtly on record, more overtly on stage — and “Heads Up” (Rough Trade) gives the group’s inner disco ball a few extra spins. Read the review.
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Nick Cave has been singing about mortality for decades, and he’s really good at it. Whether the narratives are biblical or pulpy, the victims innocents or death row convicts, the circumstances comprehensible or cruelly random, Cave’s songs are on intimate terms with the infinite ways a life can be extinguished. And yet, “Skeleton Tree”, his latest album with his estimable band, the Bad Seeds, is a relatively concise song cycle shadowed by death that feels different than all the rest. Read the full review.
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On “Here” (Merge), the band’s first album in six years and 10th overall, the front line of Norman Blake, Gerard Love and Raymond McGinley once again trades songs (four each) and lead vocals, over sturdily constructed pop-rock arrangements. But the band has taken some subtle evolutionary turns to where it’s now a faint shadow of its “Bandwagonesque” incarnation. Read the review.
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In contrast, “Junk” (Mute”), M83’s seventh studio album, sounds chintzy — a bubble-gum snyth-pop album that indulges Gonzalez’s love of decades-old TV soundtracks, hair-metal guitar solos and kitschy pop songs. Read the full review.
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Kendrick Lamar’s “Untitled, Unmastered” is presented as an unfinished work, though it rarely sounds like one. Read the review.
Christie D’Zurilla is an assistant editor for entertainment news on the Fast Break team. A graduate of USC, she joined the Los Angeles Times in 2003 as a copy editor, started writing about celebrities in 2009 and has more than 34 years of journalism experience in Southern California.
