Kevin Spacey’s got an interesting Christmas Eve tradition. Every year, he posts a video to YouTube in his Frank Underwood/ House of Cards persona. This year, he’s doubled down on controversy by enlisting Tucker Carlson to interview him, with it released on the latter’s X (Twitter) page:
Spacey does his Frank Underwood schtick for about seven minutes, with the character teasing a presidential run and complaining about “trigger warnings” and “bean bag chairs in the Oval Office.”
To be fair to Spacey, despite his widespread cancellation, he was found not guilty in his high-profile sexual assault case in London, but a return to the mainstream still seems unlikely for the former star. One London theater recently shut down the premiere of a movie in which he has a voice role due to not wanting to be associated with the actor. Spacey was notoriously fired from House of Cards before its sixth season following numerous sexual misconduct accusations, including one by actor Anthony Rapp that stated Spacey assaulted him when he was 14. Rapp would later launch a civil case against Spacey, but in the end, the actor would be found not liable.
Spacey hasn’t acted much since the allegations surfaced, with his role in All the Money in the World being reshot by Ridley Scott with Christopher Plummer. At the same time, Netflix shelved his long-gestating Gore Vidal biopic despite it being complete.
I’ll give Spacey this – there is one funny line in the interview when he casually mentions, “I love nothing better on this day than to do a line of blow, drink a whisky and coke and hit a reindeer with my car”. However, it all gets a bit rough as the video goes on when he slams Netflix for firing him but keeping sound fx from House of Cards in the Tudum sounder that kicks in every time you start the service. He even says Netflix exists because of him, although one could say he’s talking as Underwood, not Spacey.
Without getting overly political, what do you think of this latest Spacey video?