US actor Kevin Spacey has been charged with sexually assaulting a teenager at a bar in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n
He will appear in court on 7 January over the incident, which allegedly occurred in Nantucket in July 2016.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Mr Spacey posted a video in which he appears to deny any wrongdoing while in character as Frank Underwood from House of Cards.<\/p>\n
“I’m certainly not going to pay the price for the things I didn’t do,” he says in the clip.<\/p>\n
“You wouldn’t believe the worst without evidence, would you?” he asks. “You wouldn’t rush to judgements without facts.”<\/p>\n
The alleged victim is the son of former television news presenter Heather Unruh, who spoke publicly about the incident last year.<\/p>\n
She accused Mr Spacey of buying her then 18-year-old son alcohol – the drinking age in Massachusetts is 21 – and then groping him.<\/p>\n
In the video, Mr Spacey speaks in Frank Underwood’s accent<\/a>\u00a0and addresses the viewer directly, much like he did throughout his five seasons on House of Cards.<\/p>\n “Of course some believed everything,” he says. “They’re just waiting with bated breath to hear me confess it all.”<\/p>\n “They’re going to say I’m being disrespectful, not playing by the rules,” he adds. “Like I ever played by anyone’s rules before. I never did. And you loved it.”<\/p>\n Frank Underwood was the power-hungry and conniving protagonist of the Netflix series, and murdered a journalist and a politician before he was killed off ahead of season six.<\/p>\n The three-minute clip, which is titled Let Me Be Frank, marks Mr Spacey’s first public appearance since the first allegation of sexual assault was made against him last November.<\/p>\n He was accused by actor Anthony Rapp of making a sexual advance in 1986 and a number of other allegations have since emerged.<\/p>\n Mr Spacey said he had no memory of the event but publicly apologised before issuing an “absolute” denial of the other allegations.<\/p>\n Separately, in September,\u00a0the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office said Mr Spacey would not be prosecuted<\/a>\u00a0over an accusation of sexual assault that allegedly took place in 1992.<\/p>\n It said it fell outside of California’s statute of limitations.<\/p>\n UK police are also investigating several allegations that centre around his time serving as artistic director at London’s Old Vic theatre.<\/p>\n The controversy has led to Mr Spacey being axed from a number of roles, including from House of Cards and the 2017 film All the Money in the World, which was re-shot without him.<\/p>\n A film in which he appears, Billionaire Boys Club, also took a record-breaking low of $126 (\u00a398) on its first night in US cinemas in August.<\/p>\n Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"