Ruari Cannon’s eyes are closed as he relives the moments immediately after. It was June 2013 at The Savoy hotel in London, the press night party for a new production at The Old Vic theatre.
As he describes the scene – photographers assembled, fellow actors milling around, his girlfriend and best friend nearby – the contrast between the bustling glamour and the sudden shock he was experiencing cuts through. His voice flattens.
“It feels like you’re invisible,” he says. “Feels like you’re invisible in a space where everyone is looking at everyone else. I can see all the photographers,” he adds. The press was in attendance not only for the cast but also for the theatre’s Oscar-winning artistic director, Kevin Spacey.
“There’s all these faces and you’re moving through them, and you just want…” he pauses for a second as his face falls limp, “…someone to help you.”
It was just before this, Ruari alleges, that Spacey – the global star who ran the theatre – touched him inappropriately in public. Ruari is one of multiple men set to feature in a new Channel 4 documentary series, which Spacey, 64, has dismissed.
Spacey says he was not given enough time to respond to the allegations, adding that “each time I have been given the time and a proper forum to defend myself, the allegations have failed under scrutiny and I have been exonerated”.
Ruari was a young actor when he met Spacey. The new production of Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth was his West End debut. What should have been the most exciting night of his life he now relives in flashbacks.
Ruari was 21, the youngest member of the cast. Spacey was 53.
As he recounts the moments afterwards, his eyes are, at least for a minute, blocking out the glaring lights, the television crew and the cameras trained on him. Over five hours, he revisits the events of that night, his life before, and the aftermath.
We’re here with a TV crew because I’m interviewing him for the Channel 4 series about Spacey. But as he talks, something deeper emerges beneath his retelling of the events. That in those moments afterwards, struck by the thought that he couldn’t stop it, that no one was helping him, that no one was even noticing, two feelings surfaced again and again: helplessness and invisibility. Over time, he believes, those feelings crystallised into core beliefs about himself and his place in the world; ones that haunted him, affecting both his career and his mental health.
An evening can change a life.
Eleven years on, he’s speaking out as one of 10 men sharing their experiences of Spacey for the documentary – Ruari was the first to come forward. The two-part film, Spacey Unmasked, is due to be broadcast next week, a year after a jury at Southwark Crown Court cleared the actor of sexually assaulting four men. Spacey was found not guilty of all nine charges.
In 2022, a civil trial in the US also found in Spacey’s favour. Anthony Rapp, who made the first allegation against Spacey in 2017, brought a $40m lawsuit against the actor. But the judge dismissed his claims of assault and emotional distress, and the jury found that Spacey was also not liable for battery.
It was in early November 2017, shortly after Rapp’s story broke, that Ruari and I spoke for many hours over several days. He agonised over the prospect of telling his story publicly.
“If I don’t say anything, I’ll regret it. And if I do, I probably don’t get to be an actor anymore,” he told me then. “It’s not risk you can measure, because it’s unknown,” he said, worrying that he could be blacklisted within his industry. He feared being tarred as a troublemaker, being disbelieved, derided, quietly deselected from auditions, from jobs. “That’s the fear and it’s very hard to explain.” He grasped for a metaphor – standing on the top of a diving board looking over the edge – but it was more complicated.
Ruari wanted to help others but felt he also had to do what was right for himself. “I’m not in a point of my life where I can make that decision with no thoughts about how it impacts me,” he said. He provided some quotes, to be reported anonymously, for a story I wrote then about The Old Vic’s response to the mounting allegations. But ultimately he felt he couldn’t go on the record – terrified that it could quash his chances of making it as an actor, his lifelong dream.
Four years later, in 2021, Ruari messaged me out of the blue. In the resulting conversation he conveyed one simple message: I wasn’t ready then, I’m ready now. He wanted people to be able to see him, hear him – finally. He hoped he wouldn’t be alone; that perhaps other men might disclose their experiences. A documentary seemed to him the obvious choice. He wanted the invisibility to end.
Ruari has waived his right to anonymity. “What I hope is that this film can help other people feel less afraid, less fearful,” he says, as we sit facing each other under the lights. “By putting my name and my face to this I’m being honest with myself – the impact it had.”
Ruari is still frightened about speaking out, but in a different way than before. “My fears are around not being heard,” he says. “What I’m scared of is that we can shout ourselves blue in the face and it does nothing. But all we can do is just say our truths. Say what happened, say honestly how it affected us.”
Ruari is 32 now. Tall, with spiky flaxen hair and a narrow face, his accent fuses Scottish and English. These days he works in the family business, far from the lights of the West End, and has left acting altogether.
He was a promising young actor. At just 17, having grown up around Scotland and England, Ruari moved to New York with a scholarship to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. There he received the prestigious Charles Jehlinger acting award, previous recipients of which include Spencer Tracy, Anne Hathaway and Robert Redford. A year after graduating, in 2012, he had already appeared in a film with Brad Pitt, World War Z. By 2013, he had secured a role in the summer production of Sweet Bird of Youth at The Old Vic – a diamond in Britain’s cultural crown. Better still, its artistic director was the much-garlanded actor’s actor, Kevin Spacey.
“The opportunity to be in this was crazy to me,” Ruari says. “This was the perfect job for me.” The play starred Kim Cattrall of Sex and the City. The director was the Olivier-award-winning Marianne Elliott. Although Ruari’s was only a small part, it was a big show on a major stage run by one of the greatest actors in the world. Spacey had starred in Ruari’s favourite film, Seven. “Kevin Spacey was the gold standard,” he says.
The cast spent the early summer rehearsing furiously, bonding, becoming excited by the prospect of opening night. Spacey, busy shooting House of Cards, did not engage with them (aside from sending a video message) until very late in the process, but, says Ruari, “You felt like he was there anyway… It felt like everything that had to happen at that theatre went through him.”
Ruari had heard vague rumours about Spacey “taking a liking to male cast members” but took no notice. “You take that with a pinch of salt.”
His family came down from Scotland for the final preview – the performance before press night. After the cast took their bows, everyone piled into the Pit bar, downstairs at The Old Vic, where Spacey was surrounded by admirers. Ruari’s mother persuaded him to go and introduce himself. It was a brief, unremarkable hello and handshake.
But the next day was press night, and in the West End, that’s “as close as you can get to a Hollywood premiere”, he says. That afternoon, after a rehearsal, the cast returned to their dressing rooms. It’s a tradition to exchange gifts, but something unexpected happened that day.
There were boxes for every actor, with their name on it. Each member of the cast opened their box to find a personalised notebook and a card from Kevin Spacey. But there was nothing for Ruari. “I was a little bit confused,” he says, worrying that he must have done something wrong. The feeling didn’t last long. There was a knock at the door, through which one of Spacey’s assistants appeared brandishing a gift for Ruari: a large, framed poster from the 1985 production of Sweet Bird of Youth starring Lauren Bacall – signed by Lauren Bacall. It was, he thought, significantly more valuable than the other gifts he had seen.
“There was a real silence in the room. I felt a little bit embarrassed if I’m honest. And I didn’t really know what to do,” he says. “I opened the box and it had a little card from Kevin.” It read, “Ruari, Happy opening. K.”
There wasn’t time to consider what this might mean. “There’s a million things going through my head,” he says, because it was press night. “I felt like the best thing to do was to not mention it.”
After the show came the party, held at The Savoy. Ruari changed into a suit and jumped in a cab with one of the other cast members. His best friend and girlfriend were there already. As he arrived at the famous venue, there were press, photographers, other cast members and supporters. Finding himself momentarily on his own, he spotted Spacey, and bound by a sense of duty and gratitude, approached the star.
“I put my hand out and I said, ‘Thank you so much for the gift’ and he pulled me in very close with his right hand and sort of turned me 45 degrees.” He speculates now why that was, whether it was to hide from the cameras. Ruari then alleges: “And he put his left hand down by my bum and he stuck his middle finger as far up me as possible.” At this, Ruari exhales blowing out his cheeks slightly, as if to rid himself of disgust.
“I was wearing a suit, so he took up the recess material and just tried to go up through my boxers up inside me,” he says. “I just totally froze. He pulled me in closer and in my ear he whispered, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ My mind went completely blank. I was totally numb to everything that was going on.”
Spacey moved away quickly, Ruari says, returning to his press night duties. Ruari, not wanting to have his picture taken, went in search of his best friend and his girlfriend.
But when he found them, he struggled to say the words. “I did not have the capacity to explain what happened,” he says. Spacey approached them, inviting them to an after-party in his suite upstairs at the hotel. Ruari’s guests gratefully accepted before he could tell them anything, he says. They made their way up in the lift. The doors opened to an extravagant suite.
With industry people at the party – including well-known actors, fellow cast members, producers and theatre executives – Ruari felt he needed to manage the situation carefully. “Your next job might depend on how you interact with these people,” he says. “I felt like I was unable in that space to tell anyone about what just happened.”
He didn’t want to make a fuss or be seen as seeking attention, he says, fearing he might lose his job. He wondered if what had just happened, he says, “might just be the cost of entry” into the acting profession.
As the party progressed, on a couple of occasions he says Spacey walked past him, and “he sort of runs his hand across my arse again… He brushed his open hand across my arse.” Ruari again didn’t know how to handle it, and worried that leaving early would offend Spacey, the man artistically in charge of The Old Vic. “I was paralysed… I felt totally paralysed,” he says. Eventually, a fellow cast member approached him. Ruari thinks the actor was aware of something because, he says, the man advised him strongly to leave the party.
It was the impetus Ruari needed to grab his friend and girlfriend and go home. In the taxi, he told them what he says happened, and called his mother, Eleanor, to tell her too. She remembers that phone call, how he sounded, and what he said. “He was hyperventilating,” Eleanor tells i now. Chris, his best friend, recalls that Ruari was in “shock” as they made their way home, he tells i.
i provided Spacey with a detailed list of specific allegations contained in this story seven days before publication, and offered the actor further opportunities to respond. He chose not to comment. Spacey’s representatives had previously stated that they would respond by the given deadline.
On Thursday this week, Spacey posted a statement on X, formerly Twitter, saying “each time I have been given the time and a proper forum to defend myself, the allegations have failed under scrutiny and I have been exonerated”. Spacey said he would be making further responses about the docuseries over the weekend.
Ruari says he informed the stage manager at The Old Vic following the alleged incident, but when the manager asked if Ruari wanted him to take the complaint further, he said no, again conflicted about what to do. “I wanted them to know about it and I did not want to upset the apple cart,” he says.
He ploughed on with the rest of the play’s run, but that night changed everything. “There was a naivety that I treasured that was gone. You can’t get that back.”
When we first spoke in 2017, it was what he felt to be the inaction of others that particularly hurt him, compounding his sense of isolation and helplessness: why did no one help me? Surely someone – at the party, at the hotel – saw? Sometimes when he told people about the alleged incident, they would laugh.
“I became angrier,” he says. “More cynical.” He stopped making an effort to go to auditions or didn’t prepare properly. “I saw the industry so negatively,” he says, particularly the processes involved in hiring and firing. He became fearful, worrying, “Who’s going to do this to me next?” He used to take notes during rehearsals of lessons he’d learned that day. He stopped doing this too.
Over time, it became a protracted self-sabotage. He describes a feeling of worthlessness that he believes resulted from the alleged incident, of feeling so small that it undermined his ability to maintain the big ambition of becoming a great actor. “It felt like you were expendable,” he says. “Your voice gets smaller.”
“I see a very clear line in the sand between before what happened and after what happened,” he says.
A year or two later, Ruari told his father while they were watching television. “I got really, really upset with him, on the couch, and started crying,” Ruari says. “He was rocked by it.” His father, Malcolm, tells i now, “I was incandescent with rage.”
By then, Ruari’s self-esteem and mental health were suffering. As his drive for work withered, the offers dried up, and the central role that acting had played in his life for years hollowed out. He started drinking to fill the void, staying in bed all day, isolating himself from people he cared about. “I felt hopeless,” he says.
Ruari was staying at his mother’s house in late October 2017 when news of the allegations by Anthony Rapp against Spacey broke. “It hit me like a truck,” he says. A couple of days later, we spoke for the first time. His story, the details, have never wavered. What has changed is his determination.
During November 2017 when we were first speaking, Ruari made a complaint to The Old Vic, who had set up an email address in the wake of the growing allegations against Spacey, for anyone to contact them with concerns. But The Old Vic’s handling of Ruari’s complaint enraged him then, and troubles him still. They had released a statement saying that “any experience shared will be treated with the utmost confidence and with sensitivity. We have appointed external advisers to help us deal with any information received.”
Ruari therefore made contact via the email address, believing external advisers would handle it in confidence. However, he received a direct response from Kate Varah, then the executive director of The Old Vic.
“That freaked me out,” he told me in 2017, “[That] what I thought was confidential – professionally confidential – would be dealt with externally… When you say ‘confidential’ you don’t expect the person who is in charge of a very well-known theatre, to then get in touch with you.” Kate Varah then spoke to Ruari on the phone. He agreed to this, assuming this was his best hope of being heard, but was baffled to find himself in that position.
When I approached Varah for comment in 2017, an external public relations executive responded instead, calling Ruari’s concerns about their handling of his complaint a “false claim”, adding: “You have been misinformed, we are treating any information provided to the confidential hotline in the strictest of confidence.”
A journalist at The Stage newspaper, with whom I’d been in contact about Spacey, forwarded an email from the same PR executive. Buried in this was an admission: “This email address is received into a senior point of contact at The Old Vic, who is supported by external advisers.” This was not Ruari’s idea of confidential – but it evidently was to The Old Vic whose representative added that “the process would fall down” if there was not a senior executive receiving the emails, who then gave instructions to the external advisers.
When approached by i this week about the matter, a spokesperson for The Old Vic said: “The complaints system at The Old Vic was anonymous, confidential and independent… external advisers were appointed to help The Old Vic with the investigation and any information received. Any suggestion that it was not is completely wrong and categorically denied… The anonymity of those who did contact The Old Vic remains.
“As the last seven years has proven, there has not been a single breach of that confidentiality… The Old Vic ran a robust investigation following procedures as recommended by experienced external legal advisers. Only those who gave their details voluntarily were contacted.”
What constitutes absolute confidentiality, anonymity and independence remains a matter of contention between Ruari and the theatre, but their approach eroded his belief in the complaints system.
Twenty separate allegations of misconduct against Spacey were made to the theatre through the email system, mostly from former staff. In November 2017, Kate Varah stood on the steps outside, in front of TV cameras, saying: “The Old Vic apologises wholeheartedly to the people who told us they’ve been affected. We’ve learned that it’s not enough to have the right process in place – everyone needs to be able to speak out, no matter who they are.”
By then, Spacey was seeking treatment in a rehab centre in Arizona, and did not comment on the allegations relating to The Old Vic. He had previously responded to Anthony Rapp’s claims, saying: “I honestly do not remember this encounter… But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behaviour.” He was cleared of any wrongdoing in both the civil case relating to this, and in the criminal trial in 2023 regarding the allegations of four separate men.
Speaking to Ruari in 2017, his fury and frustration rang out, reverberating through his memories of that night, exacerbating the sense of helplessness and invisibility. It’s time, he feels, for that to end.
The day after filming his interview, I meet Ruari with the TV crew on the banks of the Thames to shoot extra footage for the documentary. He leans against the railings of the South Bank, looking across the water to the theatres of the West End. Behind him, a five-minute walk away, stands The Old Vic where his acting career withered just as it was emerging. His eyes fall onto the water, as if searching below the ripples. Two lines from the previous day seem to echo all around him.
“This is about telling the truth,” he said. “There’s nothing on this planet that can stop me now.”
On Thursday, Spacey posted a statement on X, formerly Twitter, accusing Channel 4 of not giving him enough time to “respond to allegations made against me dating back 48 years”, which he described as “anonymised and non-specific”. He also said that he would “not sit back and be attacked by a dying network’s one-sided ‘documentary’ about me in their desperate attempt for ratings”, adding that “each time I have been given the time and a proper forum to defend myself, the allegations have failed under scrutiny and I have been exonerated”. Spacey added he would issue a further response over the weekend.
C4 said it still intends to broadcast the programme, and had given the actor an opportunity to respond. A spokesperson for the broadcaster said: “Spacey Unmasked will broadcast on 6 and 7 May. Kevin Spacey has been given sufficient opportunity to respond.”
Spacey also provided a brief statement to Variety magazine last week regarding the upcoming documentary, which has been bought by Warner Bros Discovery to broadcast across several countries. “I’m honoured to be starring in my first film with Warner Brothers in many years,” said Spacey. “I hope the Academy takes note of some of the great acting by the lesser known cast.”
The statement astonished Ruari, at first. “I was absolutely stunned,” he tells i. “Aghast by the unmitigated gall.” But on reflection, he adds, “I’m in no way surprised – we are talking about someone who struggles with boundaries. I wouldn’t expect anything else.”
Spacey denies new allegations in Dan Wootton interview
Kevin Spacey has hit back at new allegations of sexual misconduct in an interview with former GB News presenter Dan Wootton.
Speaking in the interview published on X, he said: “I’ve got nothing left to hide – you are my jury.”
He went on to deny a list of claims put to him by producers of the Channel 4 documentary in an email asking for his response to the allegations.
Speaking about the approach by production company, Roast Beef Productions, he said: “These accusations date back to 1976, which is 48 years ago, you have to realise that in the (Anthony) Rapp case it took me nearly a year to find evidence to prove that he’d lied about this encounter he claimed he’d had with me.”
The actor’s former foundation for young artists The Kevin Spacey Foundation shut down in 2018 after sexual assault allegations were made against the actor.
Speaking about the foundation, Mr Spacey said: “Were there times when I would flirt with some of the people who were involved in those programmes? Who were in their twenties? Yes.
“Did I ever hook up with another actor? Yes
“Did I make a clumsy pass at someone who wasn’t interested, as it turned out? Yes.
“But I was not employing them, I was not their boss. I was often just swimming in for an hour, here or there, as a well-known actor to lend support.
“That may not have been the best decision… but it wasn’t illegal, and it’s never been alleged to be illegal.”
Addressing the allegations by Ruari Cannon, Spacey said the groping claims were “ridiculous” and “it never happened”.
Addressing the claim he presented Mr Cannon with a particularly valuable gift, Mr Spacey added “there’s nothing unusual about a cast member receiving an opening night gift from myself.”
He added: “I’m honoured that this person felt he was getting an extravagant [gift].”
If you want to contact the reporter who has worked on this story, please email patrick.strudwick@inews.co.uk
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