[UPDATE]: “L’uomo Che Disegnò Dio” producer Louis Nero has pushed back against reports about the movie, telling Entertainment Weekly that “[the film] does not involve pedophilia, as I’ve read in the media. This is wrong.”
Original story below:
Actor Kevin Spacey is reportedly slated to return to the big screen in a film about a falsely accused pedophile, which will mark one of his first appearances in movies since more than 20 men accused him of sexual misconduct in 2017.
Spacey will have a cameo role in the Italian film “L’uomo Che Disegnò Dio,” or “The Man Who Drew God,” which will be directed and starred in by Franco Nero, according to Variety.
“I’m very happy Kevin agreed to participate in my film,” Nero told ABC News. “I consider him a great actor and I can’t wait to start the movie.”
The film depicts “the rise and fall of a blind artist who has the extraordinary gift of making true-to-life portraits just by listening to human voices,” according to Filmitalia.
Spacey will be playing a detective investigating Nero’s blind artist character for false allegations of sexually abusing children, reports Page Six.
Not long after movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s downfall and the rise of the MeToo movement in 2017, Spacey drew scrutiny when “Star Trek” actor Anthony Rapp told Buzzfeed that a 26-year-old Spacey had drunkenly forced himself on him at a party when he just was 14.
“I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago,” Spacey said in response to Rapp’s allegation. “But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years.”
Multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and assault from other men followed Rapp’s, both in the U.S. and the U.K., where Spacey worked at the Old Vic theater in London from 1995 to 2013.
Spacey, who appeared in the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs and was photographed sitting on the British throne in Buckingham Palace with Epstein’s alleged madame Ghislaine Maxwell, has managed to outlive several of his accusers.
The last film in which Spacey appeared was “Billionaire Boys Club,” which grossed a mere $618 in the U.S. during its opening weekend in 2018. Shortly before the allegations against him dropped, Spacey had just wrapped “Gore,” a seamy biopic about writer Gore Vidal, who had also been accused of gay pedophilia. In addition to booting him from “House of Cards,” Netflix also shelved “Gore.” Spacey’s scenes in Ridley Scott’s “All the Money in the World” were also quickly reshot with Christopher Plummer.
During a recent podcast, Spacey lamented his situation and likened it to those whose careers came crashing down because of the pandemic. “I don’t think it will come as a surprise for anyone to say that my world completely changed in the fall of 2017,” he said. “My job, many of my relationships, my standing in my own industry were all gone in just a matter of hours. And so I do have empathy for what it feels like to suddenly be told that you can’t go back to work or that you might lose your job.”
Editor’s Note: This article has been revised for clarity.
Related: Man Who Accused Kevin Spacey Of Sexual Assault Is Now Dead