Kevin Spacey’s career took a hit in 2017 after a series of sexual assault and harassment allegations, but he told Bill Maher on Monday that things were starting to shift back.

“I feel much more welcomed, and I think that things are moving in the direction that we hoped they were moving in,” Spacey said on the “Club Random” podcast.

The two-time Oscar-winning actor fell from grace after “Rent” and “Star Trek: Discovery” actor Anthony Rapp alleged that Spacey hit on him sexually when he was 14. Harry Dreyfuss, the son of actor Richard Dreyfuss, also accused Spacey of groping and said it happened while his dad was in the room.

The accusations hurt Spacey’s Hollywood career. He was fired from his Netflix series, “House of Cards,” and replaced by Christopher Plummer in the Ridley Scott film, “All The Money In The World.”

Although the scandal affected Spacey’s public profile, he was found not liable for battery in Rapp’s civil case. A jury also found him not guilty of nine criminal charges of sexual assault from four complainants in London.

Spacey was happy to tout his successful legal record to Maher by noting he won “in every court we’ve gone into with a jury.”

“Look, I’m not going to lie to you, I go by numbers with scandals,” Maher said. “...There’s too much smoke to be no fire.”

“Oh, I never said there was no fire,” Spacey said. “It just wasn’t a raging forest fire. It was a small kitchen fire that could have been put out with an extinguisher.”

“I hit on a lot of guys,” he admitted.

Spacey also suggested that the scandals that have followed him for nearly a decade would be nothing if he were a different type of celebrity.

“If I had been a sports figure, I would have been benched for seven games,” Spacey said.

Maher and Spacey also discussed the actor’s widely criticized decision to announce he was gay right after Rapp’s accusations broke.

“I was fiercely closeted. I didn’t want anyone to know anything about me. And of course, I thought I was so clever that nobody knew, but of course, kind of everybody knew,” Spacey said.

Maher said he never understood why Spacey hid his sexual preference in the first place.

“There’s a point where it was so much cooler to be gay,” Maher said. “...I don’t get a lot of breaks from the media, especially they’re a little too woke and blah blah blah, if I, who they’re pretty rough on, if I, at some point came out as gay, it would be like, it would be the greatest thing that ever happened.”

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