Kevin Spacey has shared another Christmas Eve video on YouTube, the third consecutive year that he’s posted such a clip to his channel.
Called 1-800 XMAS, this video is slightly bleaker than previous years, where Spacey shows empathy to those who are enduring hardships during the holiday season.
“If you’re standing in a place that you can no longer remain standing, if you’re suffering, if you need help, if you feel guilt or shame, if you’re struggling with your identity, if your back’s up against the wall, or if you feel that there is no path for you, whatever your situation, I promise you there is a path,” he said. “At this time during this holiday and beyond, even if you don’t feel it, there are people out there who understand and who can help, because you are not alone.”
Spacey launched the now annual series in 2018 amid a court case in which he was accused of sexually assaulting an 18-year-old man in Massachusetts in 2016. In the first video, he assumed his House of Cards role of Frank Underwood to deliver a message about being ousted from the show and the sexual assault allegations.
“All this presumption made for such an unsatisfying ending and to think it could have been such a memorable send off,” he said in the tone-deaf 2018 video. “I can promise you this: If I didn’t pay the price for the things we both know I did, I’m certainly not going to pay the price for the things I didn’t do.”
Spacey ultimately came out ahead in the case he addressed, with the accusatory party invoking his Fifth Amendment rights and the prosecution later abandoning the charges. In the second video from 2019, Spacey wished viewers a Merry Christmas.
Besides the holiday videos, Spacey has been AWOL on social media since 2017, when actor Anthony Rapp claimed that Spacey made sexual advances when Rapp was 14. Spacey also faced backlash because he took that moment to come out as a gay man and implied that if he did assault Rap, it was due to “inappropriate drunken behavior.” In September, Rapp sued Spacey for an alleged sexual assault that happened in the 1980s.
Spacey has been embroiled in a number of legal battles over the last three years, with a massage therapist making the most recent allegations in 2019. However, that case came to a close when the accuser died and his estate dropped the charges.
