Actor Kevin Spacey is the defendant in a lawsuit filed by Anthony Rapp, the actor who in 2017 made the first in a string of sexual-misconduct allegations, MassLive noted, citing the Associated Press.
The trial, expected to last less than two weeks, will focus on an alleged encounter at a party between the two men in New York City in 1986, when Rapp was a 14-year-old actor and Spacey, then 26, was having a breakout moment on Broadway.
Rapp has claimed that a drunk Spacey swept him up in his arms, like a groom carrying a bride, then laid him on a bed and climbed on top of him.
When Rapp told his story to Buzzfeed in 2017 as the #MeToo movement began to grip Hollywood, Spacey said he had no recollection of the incident, "but if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior."
Three months ago, Spacey pled not guilty in London to charges that he sexually assaulted three men between 2004 and 2015 when he was the artistic director at the Old Vic theater. This summer, an L.A. judge approved an arbitrator's decision to order Spacey to pay $30.9 million to the makers of the Netflix show House of Cards for violating his contract by sexually harassing crew members.