Kevin Spacey returns as Frank Underwood
For Christmas he will slip into the “House of Cards” role again
Kevin Spacey is working on his Hollywood return.
© imago images/Maciek Musialek
Kevin Spacey has once again slipped into the role of his “House of Cards” character Frank Underwood this Christmas season.
Since the scandal involving Kevin Spacey (64) in the wake of the #MeToo movement, the Hollywood star has made it a tradition to post a video at Christmas time in the role of his “House of Cards” character Frank Underwood. At the end of 2023, he briefly slipped into the cunning and unscrupulous character from the Netflix series. Titled “Being Frank With Tucker” Spacey published a YouTube clip in which he conducts a fake interview with Tucker Carlson (54) – the fired television presenter who recently became too sensitive even for the controversial US news channel Fox News due to his questionable views.
“We have something in common,” Carlson states, to which Spacey, aka Underwood, replies: “Oh yeah, we were both kicked out by our network.” Spacey is alluding to his expulsion from the streaming service Netflix. When more and more people went public with allegations against the star around six years ago, his “House of Cards” role had to die in the sixth and final season without further ado and only mentioned in passing. “Do you still watch Netflix?” Carlson asks, Spacey replies: “Probably about as often as you still watch Fox.”
Billing with Netflix
Then comes his reckoning with the streaming service, where the boundaries between real and fictional people seem to be blurred. Or, as Spacey somewhat whimsically sums it up: “What is true and what is false? What is life and what is art? What is real and what is acting? I love it when these things intersect, because then it becomes real Interesting.” Addressing his former employer, he added: “I don’t think the question even arises – Netflix only exists thanks to me. I made them big and they tried to put me underground.”
Of course, in the course of the “interview,” Spacey/Underwood also brings themselves into conversation as a candidate for the upcoming 2024 presidential election. “We need someone in the White House who is not afraid – like me. Not afraid to push our country – or a journalist – in the right direction.” The perfidious allusion: In “House of Cards”, Spacey’s character pushed a journalist who was threatening to find out about him in front of an incoming subway…
Will it harm his comeback plans?
Spacey may once again have done himself a disservice with his video and his choice of conversation partner. The actor posted one of his Frank Underwood videos for the first time in 2018, causing a stir and sometimes even a lack of understanding.
Recently, however, the two-time Oscar winner was able to celebrate great success: in 2022, a New York court found him not guilty, and at the end of July 2023, a London court finally found him not guilty. Several men had previously accused him of sexual assault. In March 2024 he will also appear in his first US film since the allegations – in the indie thriller “Peter Five Eight”.