WILD ‘CARD’
‘House’ villain in Season 5 presidential power struggle
IF Frank Underwood is the most wicked character on “House of Cards,” Doug Stamper, his chief of staff, is a close second.
Stamper, played by Michael Kelly, achieved his dark apotheosis at the end of Season 3, when he killed Rachel Posner (Rachel Brosnahan), a prostitute who could connect Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) to the murder of Congressman Peter Russo (Corey Stoll). Audiences were rooting for Rachel when she managed to elude Doug’s evil clutches once, beating him with a brick, but her luck eventually ran out. He buried her in the New Mexico desert.
“I don’t think of him as a sociopath,” says Kelly, whose jovial personality is the polar opposite of Stamper’s attack-dog calm. “Maybe that’s just me playing a character I’ve grown to love, but I don’t think he’s your typical bad guy. Killing Rachel, okay, that was bad. But it was truly the hardest thing he’s had to do. He loved her.”
Season 5, which bows Tuesday on Netflix, finds Doug reconnoitering amid a shifting power base at the White House. He has to share the President with the First Lady and Vice President Claire Underwood (Robin Wright). It’s clearly not his style.
“Doug gets stuck in the middle,” Kelly says. “He’s never kept in the dark with Frank. She keeps him at a distance until she needs him.”
The 48-year-old actor calls “House of Cards” the “greatest job [I’ve] ever had.” Not only has it brought him two Emmy nominations for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, he works most often with the star of the show. Of Spacey, he says, “He’s a consummate performer. It took me a long time to get to know him. It was years before that door opened. I respect him for his privacy.”
The air of menace Kelly so easily conjures led to a most unusual offer last year when he was cast as Dr. Edgar Dumbarton in the dark period drama “Taboo,” working with one of his idols. “I happen to believe Tom Hardy is the best guy in my age group doing it now,” he says, adding that the actor was more
than accommodating when a scene they had together didn’t make sense. “He said, ‘Yeah, mate. That was s--t.’ So for 45 minutes, we worked it out with the director.”
During the England shoot, Kelly made his first trip to Ireland. The actor, who was born in Philadelphia but raised in Georgia, is actually firstgeneration Irish. His father, also named Michael, was born in Donegal and his countrymen, including one “Game of
Thrones” star, came out in full force to greet him.
“It was the best 30 hours of my life,” says Kelly, who had asked contacts at the American Ireland Fund for“true Irish pub” ub re com recommendations before board-o ar ding the plane. He was met upon landing by aa young woman namedd Siobhan Gallagher.
“I started drinking at 11:30 a.m. [and continued] until 2 a.m. the next day,” he says, cracking up.
Inside one bar was Liam Cunningham, who plays Davos on “GoT.”” Kelly told the Dublin native, “I’ve never seen your show.” His reply? “‘Thank God. I’ve never seen yours.’ Neither of us had any idea who each other was.”