Exclusive Interview: Kevin Spacey

NEW YORK: Actor Kevin Spacey talks to World Screen about the Netflix hit House of Cards, which he executive produces and stars in.

WS: How did you first get involved in House of Cards and what appealed to you about the project?
SPACEY: I produced a film called The Social Network. It was during the shooting of that film that David Fincher and I—we had worked together previously as actor and director in Se7en—started throwing around the idea of wanting to work together again. This conversation went on for a little while, maybe a month or so, just poking around with the idea. Then he came to me and said that he had heard that the rights of a British television series that he had never seen called House of Cards were available. I said, Well, I have seen it and I thought it was really terrific and actor Ian Richardson was brilliant. So he went away to watch it, I went away and watched it again and we came back together and decided that it would in fact translate very well to a U.S. series. From there we began to develop the idea and Beau Willimon was brought on. He wrote the first two scripts and then we went out and pitched it to all of the networks that one would pitch something like this to and ultimately we also pitched it to Netflix.

I suppose what attracted me to it first and foremost were David Fincher and Beau Willimon. I was incredibly excited and pleased that we brought on a playwright to be the head writer and showrunner. I had really liked his previous work and certainly knew him from Ides of March, which was a play called Farragut North that George Clooney turned into Ides of March. It just started to develop and lo and behold before we knew it we made a deal with Netflix and we were off to the races.

WS: Was part of the attraction the fact that Frank Underwood, Frank Urquhart in the original British series, had so much in common with Richard III, a character you know so well?
SPACEY: Perhaps your readers won’t know that actually the role of Frances was based on Richard III in the original books by Michael Dobbs

. That’s why the direct address [Frank speaking directly to the camera] happens. While many people think Ferris Bueller was the first direct address, it was actually William Shakespeare and in Richard III he created direct address. It’s different from a monologue. In Shakespeare, a monologue is a character expressing his thoughts and sharing them with the whole theater. In direct address you’re looking directly into the eyes of the audience and engaging them individually. To some degree, Frank and Richard III have certain shadows of each other, but obviously Frank is a very different kind of character and obviously in a very modern setting. But both of these works are about the nature of power, the nature of what people will do to retain it and get it.

But in our case, when we looked at the original series, we really wanted very much to improve the role of the wife. We wanted to make the wife almost an equal. Once we knew that we had Robin Wright, we were able to have an actress who could embody the challenges that we wanted to throw at that character. While the original series was a launching point for us, and Richard III was certainly the foundation, we really tried to make it our own.

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