BOSTON (CN) — Hit with an assault charge this morning in Massachusetts, Kevin Spacey broke his silence Monday by delivering a monologue in the voice of his iconic “House of Cards” character, Frank Underwood.
The 59-year-old, whose full name is Kevin Spacey Fowler, is charged in Nantucket District Court with indecent assault and battery involving a purported incident at a restaurant with a teenage boy on July 7, 2016.
Shortly after District Attorney Michael O’Keefe announced the charge, Spacey posted to Twitter for the first time since Oct. 29, 2017, when fellow actor Anthony Rapp described a sexual advance Spacey made on him in 1986 when Rapp was 14 and Spacey was 26. Netflix booted the Academy Award-winning Spacey from “House of Cards” the following month.
Spacey’s tweet Monday includes a link to a video the actor posted this morning on YouTube. Titled "Let Me Be Frank,” the 3-minute video shows Spacey wearing an apron festooned with Santa Claus cartoons, delivering a sinister monologue in the style and Southern drawl of Underwood.
"I know what you want,” he says. “You want me back.”
Netflix has disavowed any involvement in the stunt.
In the video, Spacey goes on to say: "Of course some believed everything and have just been waiting with bated breath to hear me confess it all. They're just dying to have me declare that everything they said is true, and that I got what I deserved.”
But Spacey adds: “I'm certainly not going to pay the price for the thing I didn't do."
Spacey never explicitly refers in the video to his real-world charges but instead obliquely to the impeachment and death of his Underwood character on “House of Cards.”
"Soon enough, you will know the full truth,” the actor concludes, as the video ends with a burst of dramatic cliffhanger music.
District Attorney O’Keefe said that the criminal complaint against Spacey was brought on Dec. 20 after a public show-cause hearing. Spacey is set to be arraigned on Jan. 7, 2019.
Though the statement does not specify, former Boston news anchor Heather Unruh came forward in November 2017 to allege that Spacey stuck his hand down her then-18-year-old son’s pants and grabbed his genitals at the Club Car Restaurant.
Unruh said her son fled the Nantucket restaurant when Spacey went to use the bathroom, and was too embarrassed to report the assault right away.
"The complainant has shown a tremendous amount of courage in coming forward," Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer for Unruh's son, said in a statement Monday. "Let the facts be presented, the relevant law applied and a just and fair verdict rendered.”
Spacey spokeswoman Laura Johnson did not return a request for comment, the Associated Press reported Monday.
Unruh was one of many people to make allegations against Spacey after Rapp came forward last year. The actor has been under investigation in Los Angeles for purported sexual misconduct in 2016, but another allegation from 1992 has been shelved for exceeding the statute of limitations.
Several people have also accused Spacey of sexual misconduct during his time as artistic director of London's Old Vic Theatre.
Spacey did not come out as gay until the Rapp allegations emerged in 2017 — a response that was promptly criticized as a calculated smokescreen to distract from the negative press.
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