The ellipses, here, are doing neither Cox nor Spacey any favors. When the interviewer proposes that people who commit sexual crimes shouldn’t be cast in films, Cox deems it “understandable,” but argues that “we live in a free society, so people are allowed to be who they are, and they sometimes push their luck, particularly in the sexual area of life. Not everybody is abusive. Iâve never found Kevin Spacey abusive. He was misguided, certainly, in terms of his sexuality. But thatâs to do with him coming to terms with his own sexuality and how heâs dealt with that, and the dilemma that itâs caused in his life. And I think that one is to try to understand where heâs coming from, and what thatâs about.”
There are gray areas in human sexuality, to be sure, and in fairness Spacey has never been found liable in court for sexual abuse. He has, however, been accused of sexual assault or misconduct by over 30 men. But Cox frames things differently, and alarmingly. âWhen you look at the Holocaust, itâs bad and itâs wrong and it should never have happened, thatâs obvious. People who did that, they should be cancelled,” he says. “But because you sought to have sex with a few people, that doesnât necessarily mean you should be cancelled.”
Phew! That would be a pretty tough comparison to make even if Spacey’s father wasn’t an actual “neo-Nazi.” But the go-to defense for Kevin Spacey supporters is to downplay his actions, though typically not in such extreme terms. “Kevin grabbed people by their genitals. Many people. But nobody [has publicly said] heâs raped them or forced them into a sexual encounter. But thereâs so much hatred for him because in his case it was man-on-man. Thatâs why heâs not allowed to come back. Because he offended men,” Sharon Stone is on record as saying (somewhat inaccurately, given that Spacey has been accused in court of drugging and molesting at least one victim). Similarly, Cox himself previously hand-waved the accusations with vague language: “I just think Kevin had certain things which he couldnât or didnât admit to, and I think it was a strain on him in many ways. And for me, that was Kevinâs only difficulty,” he told The Hollywood Reporter last year.
It seems fair to say that Cox is biased towards his “old friend” Kevin. But perhaps he’d champion anyone who has been so-called “cancelled,” so long as they didn’t perpetuate the Holocaust. He really just hates the concept. “We’ve got to an age now where people are going, ‘Oh, thatâs bad, heâs out, boom, heâs cancelled,'” he complains. “What do you mean ‘cancelled’? How dare you cancel anybody?”
