Former “House of Cards” star Kevin Spacey reprised his role as the show's lead character, Frank Underwood, in an interview with Tucker Carlson posted on X, the platform formerly Twitter, on Christmas Eve.
In the interview, Spacey and Carlson commiserated over their similar experiences being ousted by their respective networks, Netflix and Fox News, and discussed the current political environment, especially approaching the 2024 presidential election.
“You know you and I have something in common, actually,” Carlson said in the interview.
“Oh yes. We both got canned by our network,” Spacey replied.
Tucker said, “True, but they actually tried to kill you.”
“Yes, but here we are, Tucker, bigger than ever.”
Later, when asked whether he still watches Netflix, Spacey replied, “Probably as much as you watch Fox.”
“It is bizarre that they decided to publicly cut ties with me on allegations alone allegations that have now been proven false because I don't think there's any question: Netflix exists because of me,” Spacey said. “I put them on the map. And they tried to put me on the ground.”
Spacey was booted from his role as the lead character on “House of Cards” in 2017 after facing multiple sexual harassment allegations, including from members of the Netflix show’s crew.
Spacey was acquitted on sexual assault charges he faced in a trial in the United Kingdom this past July. A New York jury months earlier found him not liable for battery in a civil lawsuit brought against him by Anthony Rapp, who has alleged that Spacey made a sexual advance on him in the 1980s.
Last year, however, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled that Spacey and his production companies had to pay the makers of "House of Cards" more than $30 million due to losses as a result of his firing. The arbitrator found that Spacey violated his contract’s demands for professional behavior by “engaging certain conduct in connection with several crew members in each of the five seasons that he starred in and executive produced House of Cards.”
Carlson, meanwhile, was booted from Fox earlier this year, after the company agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems hundreds of millions of dollars to settle claims of defamation out of court.
As part of the Dominion litigation, a trove of internal messages from Carlson that showed him complaining about how Fox was covering the fallout of the 2020 election and disparaging female leadership at the network was exposed.
Throughout the interview with Carlson, it was not clear to what extent Spacey was speaking in character and to what extent he was talking about his own experience as an actor. Several times in the interview, Spacey broke the fourth wall — in the same way his character would in “House of Cards” — leaving it unclear which of his comments were made in earnest and which in character.
Carlson remarked on this ambiguity at one point in the interview .
“When are you getting back to work by the way?” Carlson asked.
Spacey replied, “Oh, I've been back at work from the moment we started talking, Tucker.”
“So does that mean this is like an episode or is it real?” Carlson followed up.
In a manner characteristic of Frank Underwood, Spacey said, “Well, it's probably a little of both. I mean, Tucker, what's true, what's false? What's life, what's art? What's real? What's performance? I love it when these things intersect because then it gets interesting.”
