‘House of Cards’ to go on without Spacey
Netflix announced Monday that its popular political drama “House of Cards” will have a sixth and final season but that it will be slightly abbreviated and it won’t feature its disgraced former star Kevin Spacey, Deadline is reporting.
Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said the show would return to production in the new year, with Robin Wright in the lead but without the Oscar-winning actor who was ousted from the show following allegations of sexual misconduct.
Wright plays Claire Underwood, the spouse of Frank Underwood, the conniving and murderous politician portrayed by Spacey.
The final season will be just eight episodes, instead of the show’s usual 13 episodes, but it will “bring closure of the show for fans,” Sarandos said.
It also will bring back to work to some 2,000 people in the Baltimore, Maryland, area whose livelihoods depend on the show being filmed there, Sarandos said at UBS’ Global Media and Communications Conference in New York.
The Los Gatos-based streaming giant suspended production of the show Oct. 31, after the first allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced against Spacey. Actor Anthony Rapp made the initial allegations in a Buzzfeed News interview. The “Star Trek: Discovery” actor said Spacey made unwanted moves on him in his New York apartment in 1986, when Rapp was a 14-year-old stage actor.
Other men have subsequently come forward to say Spacey harassed or assaulted them, including a crew member on the “House of Cards” set and young men involved with London’s Old Vic theater, where Spacey acted for decades and served as artistic director in 2014-15.
“House of Cards” was initially looking to get back into production after Thanksgiving, with the writers feverishly reworking the scripts to eliminate Spacey’s now ex-President Underwood, Deadline said.
Netflix ultimately cut ties with Spacey in November, saying in a statement it “will not be involved with any further production of ‘House of Cards’ that includes Kevin Spacey.”
Director Ridley Scott, meanwhile, also has erased Spacey from his upcoming true-crime drama “All the Money in the World,” handing the part of billionaire J. Paul Getty to Christopher Plummer.