#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life

0:00:00 The following is a conversation with Kevin Spacey, a two-time Oscar-winning actor who
0:00:05 has starred in seven the usual suspects, American Beauty, and House of Cards.
0:00:11 He is one of the greatest actors ever, creating haunting performances of characters who often
0:00:17 embody the dark side of human nature.
0:00:20 Seven years ago, he was cut from House of Cards and canceled by Hollywood in the world, when
0:00:25 Anthony Rapp made an allegation that Kevin Spacey sexually abused him in 1986.
0:00:32 Anthony Rapp then filed a civil lawsuit seeking $40 million.
0:00:38 In this trial, and all civil and criminal trials that followed, Kevin was acquitted.
0:00:46 He has never been found guilty nor liable in the court of law.
0:00:52 In this conversation, Kevin makes clear what he did and what he didn’t do.
0:00:57 I also encourage you to listen to Kevin’s Dan Wooten and Allison Pearson interviews for
0:01:03 additional details and responses to the allegations.
0:01:09 As an aside, let me say that one of the principles I operate under for this podcast and in life
0:01:16 is that I will talk with everyone, with empathy and with backbone.
0:01:22 For each guest, I hope to explore their life’s work, life’s story, and what and how they
0:01:28 think, and do so honestly and fully, the good, the bad, and the ugly, the brilliance, and
0:01:35 the flaws.
0:01:36 I won’t whitewash their sins, but I won’t reduce them to a worse possible caricature
0:01:43 of their sins either.
0:01:45 The latter is what the mass hysteria of Internet mobs too often does, often rushing to a final
0:01:50 judgment before the facts are in.
0:01:53 I will try to do better than that, to respect due process, in service of the truth.
0:02:00 And I hope to have the courage to always think independently and to speak honestly, from
0:02:05 the heart, even when the eyes of the outraged mob are on me.
0:02:10 Again, my goal is to understand human beings, at their best and at their worst, and hope
0:02:17 is such an understanding leads to more compassion and wisdom in the world.
0:02:23 I will make mistakes, and when I do, I will work hard to improve.
0:02:31 I love you all!
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0:05:11 every night.
0:05:12 You’re talking about 8 billion people on earth, all of them sleep every night.
0:05:19 They are exploring some magical land.
0:05:23 I just would love to see all the different worlds they’re being explored.
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0:05:40 I’d love to be able to visualize it.
0:05:42 In general, this whole collective intelligence of the human species is an interesting organism
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0:05:50 I would love to visualize that.
0:05:52 The power of the collective mind.
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0:06:23 spent probably more than 20 years ago.
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0:09:54 And now, dear friends, here’s Kevin Spacey.
0:09:57 You played a serial killer in the movie Seven.
0:10:18 Your performance was one of, if not the greatest portrayal of a murderer on screen ever.
0:10:25 What was your process of becoming him?
0:10:27 John Doe, the serial killer.
0:10:29 The truth is, I didn’t get the part.
0:10:34 I had been in Los Angeles making a couple of films, Swimminger Sharks and Usual Suspects,
0:10:41 and then I did a film called Outbreak that Morgan Freeman was in.
0:10:47 And I went in to audition for David Fincher in probably late November of ’94.
0:10:59 And I auditioned for this part and didn’t get it.
0:11:03 And I went back to New York.
0:11:07 And I think they started shooting like December 12th.
0:11:13 And I’m in New York.
0:11:14 I’m back in my wonderful apartment on West 12th Street, and my mom has come to visit
0:11:19 for Christmas.
0:11:21 And it’s December 23rd.
0:11:24 And it’s like seven o’clock at night, and my phone rings.
0:11:28 And it’s Arnold Copelson, who’s the producer of Seven.
0:11:33 And he’s very jovial, and he’s very friendly, and he says, “How you doing?”
0:11:37 And I said, “Fine.”
0:11:38 And he said, “Listen, do you remember that film you came in for Seven?”
0:11:42 And I said, “Yeah.
0:11:43 Yeah.
0:11:44 Absolutely.”
0:11:45 He goes, “Well, turns out that we hired an actor and we started shooting.
0:11:50 And then yesterday, David fired him.
0:11:54 And David would like you to get on a plane on Sunday and come to Los Angeles and start
0:11:59 shooting on Tuesday.”
0:12:02 And I was like, “Okay.
0:12:08 Would it be imposing to say can I read it again?”
0:12:11 Because it’s been a while now, and I’d like to…”
0:12:15 So they send a script over.
0:12:18 I read the script that night.
0:12:21 I thought about it.
0:12:26 And I had this feeling.
0:12:29 I can’t even quite describe it.
0:12:33 But I had this feeling that it would be really good if I didn’t take billing in the film.
0:12:44 And the reason I felt that was because I knew that by the time this film would come out,
0:12:48 it would be the last one of the three movies that I just shot, the fourth one.
0:12:54 And if any of those films broke through or did well, if it was going to be Brad Pitt,
0:12:59 Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kevin Spacey, and you don’t show up for the first
0:13:03 25, 30, 40 minutes, people are going to figure out who you’re playing.
0:13:08 So people should know that you play the serial killer in the movie, and the serial killer
0:13:15 shows up more than halfway through the movie.
0:13:18 Very late.
0:13:19 That’s one.
0:13:20 And when you say billing, it’s like the posters, the VHS cover and everything.
0:13:25 You’re gone.
0:13:26 You’re not there.
0:13:27 Not there.
0:13:28 Green Line Cinema told me to go fuck myself, that they absolutely could use my picture
0:13:34 and my image.
0:13:36 And this became a little bit of a, I’d say, 24-hour conversation.
0:13:41 And it was Fincher who said, “I actually think this is a really cool idea.”
0:13:46 So the compromise was, I’m the first credit at the end of the movie when the credits start.
0:13:54 So I got on a plane on that Sunday, and I flew to Los Angeles, and I went into where
0:14:01 they were shooting, and I went into the makeup room, and David Fincher was there, and we
0:14:05 were talking about what should I do, how should I look, and I just had my hair short for outbreak
0:14:14 because I was playing a military character.
0:14:18 And I just looked at the hairdresser, and I said, “Do you have a razor?”
0:14:22 And Fincher went, “Are you kidding?”
0:14:25 And I said, “No.”
0:14:27 He goes, “If you shave your head, I’ll shave mine.”
0:14:32 So we both shaved our heads.
0:14:35 And then I started shooting the next day.
0:14:39 So my long-winded answer to your question is that I didn’t have that much time to think
0:14:47 about how to build that character.
0:14:51 But I think in the end, Fincher was able to do so brilliantly with such terror was to
0:15:02 set the audience up to meet this character.
0:15:07 I think the last scene, the ending scene, and the car ride leading up to it, where it’s
0:15:13 mostly on you in conversation with Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, it’s one of the greatest
0:15:21 scenes in film history.
0:15:23 So people somehow didn’t see the movie, there’s these five murders that happen that are inspired
0:15:28 by five of the seven deadly sins, and the ending scene is inspired, represents the last two
0:15:35 deadly sins.
0:15:37 And there’s this calm subtlety about you in your performance, it’s just terrifying.
0:15:46 Maybe in contrast with Brad Pitt’s performance, that’s also really strong, but in the contrast
0:15:53 is the terrifying sense that you get in the audience that builds up to the twist at the
0:16:00 end or the surprise at the end with the famous “What’s in the box?” from Brad Pitt.
0:16:06 That is Brad Pitt’s character’s wife, her head.
0:16:12 I can really only tell you that while we were shooting that scene in the car, while we were
0:16:17 out in the desert in that place where all those electrical wires were, David just kept
0:16:25 saying “less, do less.”
0:16:31 And I just tried to, I mean, I remember he kept saying to me, “Remember, you’re in control,
0:16:40 like you’re going to win.”
0:16:43 And knowing that should allow you to have tremendous confidence.
0:16:49 And I just followed that lead, and I just think it’s the kind of film that so many of
0:17:00 the elements that had been at work from the beginning of the movie in terms of its style,
0:17:07 in terms of how he built this terror, in terms of how he built for the audience a sense of
0:17:12 this person being one of the scariest people that you might ever encounter, it really allowed
0:17:20 me to be able to not have to do that much, just say the words and mean them.
0:17:28 And I think it also is, it’s an example of what makes tragedy so difficult.
0:17:42 I mean, very often tragedy is people operating without enough information.
0:17:48 They don’t have all the facts, Romeo and Juliet.
0:17:51 They don’t have all the facts.
0:17:52 They don’t know what we know as an audience.
0:17:58 And so in the end, whether Brad Pitt’s character ends up shooting John Doe or turning the gun
0:18:10 on himself, which was a discussion, I mean, there were a number of alternative endings
0:18:15 that were discussed, nothing ends up being tied up in a nice little bow.
0:18:22 It is complicated and shows how nobody wins in the end when you’re not operating with
0:18:33 all the information.
0:18:36 When you say, say the words and mean them, what does mean them mean?
0:18:46 I’ve been very fortunate to be directed by Fincher a couple of times.
0:18:52 And he would say to me sometimes, I don’t believe a thing that is coming out of your
0:19:01 mouth, shall we try it again?
0:19:07 And you go, okay, yeah, we can try it again.
0:19:12 And sometimes he’ll do take, and then you’ll look to see if he has any added genius to
0:19:24 hand you.
0:19:25 And he just goes, let’s do it again, and then let’s do it again.
0:19:28 And sometimes I say this in all humility, he’s literally trying to beat the acting out
0:19:36 of you.
0:19:38 And by continually saying, do it again, do it again, do it again, and not giving you
0:19:42 any specifics, he is systematically shredding you of all pretense of all, because look,
0:19:55 very often, you know, actors, we come in on the set and we’ve thought about the scene
0:19:59 and we’ve worked out, you know, I’ve got this prop and I’m going to do this thing with
0:20:02 a can, you know, all these things, all the tea, I’m going to do a thing with that thing.
0:20:08 And David is the kind of director where he just wants you to stop adding all that crap
0:20:14 and just say the words and say them quickly and mean them.
0:20:20 And it takes a while to get to that place.
0:20:24 I’ll tell you a story, a story I just love because it’s in exactly the same wheelhouse.
0:20:31 So Jack Lemmon’s first movie was a film called It Should Happen to You, and it was directed
0:20:36 by George Cukor.
0:20:37 And Jack tells the story and it was just an incredibly charming story to hear Jack tell.
0:20:42 He said, “So I’m doing this picture and let me tell you, this is a terrific part for me
0:20:48 and I’m doing a scene.
0:20:49 It’s on my first day.
0:20:50 It’s on my first day and it’s a terrific scene.”
0:20:52 And he goes, “We do the first take and George Cukor comes up to me and he says, “Jack,”
0:20:57 I said, “Yeah.”
0:20:58 He said, “Could you do, let’s do another one, but just do a little less in this one.”
0:21:02 And Jack said, “A little less, a little less than what I just did?”
0:21:04 He said, “Yeah, just a little less.”
0:21:06 So he goes, “We do another take.”
0:21:08 And I think, “Boy, that was it.
0:21:09 I mean, let’s just go home.”
0:21:11 And Cukor walked up to him and said, “Jack, let’s do another one.
0:21:14 This time just a little bit less.”
0:21:16 And Jack said, “Less than what I just did now?”
0:21:20 He said, “Yeah, just a little bit less.”
0:21:21 He goes, “Oh, okay.”
0:21:22 So he did another take and Cukor came up and he said, “Jack, just a little bit less.”
0:21:26 And Jack said, “A little less than what I just did?”
0:21:29 He said, “Yes.”
0:21:30 He goes, “Well, if I do any less, I’m not going to be acting.”
0:21:32 Cukor said, “Exactly, Jack, exactly.”
0:21:36 I mean, I guess what you’re saying is it’s extremely difficult to get to the bottom of
0:21:42 a little less.
0:21:44 Because the power, if we just stick even on seven, of your performance is in the tiniest
0:21:50 of subtleties, like when you say, “Oh, you didn’t know,” and you turn your head a little
0:21:55 bit.
0:21:56 And the little bit maybe a glimmer of a smile appears in your face.
0:22:05 That’s subtlety.
0:22:06 That’s less.
0:22:07 That’s hard to get to, I suppose.
0:22:10 Yeah.
0:22:11 And also because I so well remember, I think the work that Brad did and also Morgan did
0:22:18 in that scene, but the work that Brad had to do, where he had to go, I remember rehearsing
0:22:23 with him as we were all staying at this little hotel nearby that location, and we rehearsed
0:22:28 the night before we started shooting that sequence.
0:22:30 And I just, I mean, it was just incredible to see the levels of emotions he had to go
0:22:39 through and then the decision of what do I do?
0:22:45 Because if I do what he wants me to do, then he wins.
0:22:47 But if I don’t do it, then I’m, what kind of a man, husband am I?
0:22:52 I just thought he did really incredible work.
0:22:54 So it was also not easy to not react to the power of what he was throwing at me.
0:23:03 I just thought it was an extraordinary, a really extraordinary scene.
0:23:09 So what’s it like being in that scene?
0:23:11 So it’s you, Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, and Brad Pitt is going over the top just having
0:23:17 a mental breakdown and is weighing these extremely difficult moral choices, as you’re saying.
0:23:24 But he’s like screaming and in pain and tormented while you’re very subtly smiling.
0:23:32 In terms of the writing and in terms of what the characters had to do, it was an incredible
0:23:37 culmination of how this character could manipulate in the way that he did and in the end, succeed.
0:23:52 You mentioned Fincher likes to do a lot of takes.
0:23:55 That’s the, the famous thing about David Fincher.
0:23:59 So what are the pros and cons of that?
0:24:01 I think I read that he does some crazy amount.
0:24:06 He averages 25 to 65 takes and most directors do less than 10.
0:24:14 So yeah, sometimes it’s timing.
0:24:17 Sometimes it’s literally, he has a stopwatch and he’s timing how long a scene is taking.
0:24:23 And then he’ll say, you need to take a minute off this scene, like a minute, yeah, a minute
0:24:31 off this scene.
0:24:33 I want it to move like this.
0:24:35 So let’s pick it up.
0:24:36 Let’s pick up the pace.
0:24:37 Let’s take, let’s see if we can take a minute off.
0:24:39 Why the speed?
0:24:40 Why, why say it fast is the important thing for him, you think?
0:24:46 I think because Fincher hates indulgence and he wants, he wants people to talk the way
0:24:53 they do in life, which is, we don’t take big dramatic pauses before we speak.
0:25:02 We speak.
0:25:03 We say what we want.
0:25:05 And I guess actors like the dramatic pauses and the, the indulge in the dramatic pauses.
0:25:10 They didn’t always like the dramatic pauses.
0:25:12 I mean, look, you didn’t want to, you go back, any student of acting, you go back
0:25:16 to the 30s and the 40s, 50s, the speed at which actors spoke, not just in the comedies, which
0:25:27 of course, you know, you look at any Preston Sturges movie and it’s incredible how fast
0:25:31 people are talking and how, and how funny things are when they happen that fast.
0:25:39 But then, you know, acting styles changed.
0:25:42 We got into a different kind of thing in the late 50s and 60s and, and, you know, a lot
0:25:49 of actors are feeling it, which is, I’m not saying it’s, it’s a, it’s a bad thing.
0:25:55 It’s just that if you want to keep an audience engaged as Fincher does, and I believe successfully
0:26:05 does in all of his work, pace, timing, movement, clarity, speed are admirable to achieve.
0:26:19 And all of that, he wants the actor to be as natural as possible, to strip away all
0:26:23 the bullshit of acting and become human.
0:26:27 Look, I’ve been lucky with other directors, Sam Mendes is similar.
0:26:31 I remember when I walked in, to maybe the first rehearsal for Richard, the third that
0:26:36 we were doing, I had brought with me a canopy of, of ailments that my Richard was going
0:26:44 to suffer from.
0:26:46 And Sam, you know, eventually whittled it down to like three, like maybe your arm and
0:26:53 maybe you think, and maybe your leg, but let’s get rid of the other 10 things that you brought
0:26:57 into the room because I was, you know, I was so excited to, you know, capture this character.
0:27:02 So, you know, very often, Trevor, known as this way, a lot, a lot of wonderful directors
0:27:09 I’ve worked with, they’re really good at helping you trim and edit.
0:27:16 David Fincher said about you, he’s talking in general, I think, but also specifically
0:27:22 in the moment of House of Cards, said that you have exceptional skill both as an actor
0:27:27 and as a performer, which he says are different things.
0:27:32 So, he defines the former as dramatization of a text and the latter as the seduction
0:27:37 of an audience.
0:27:39 Do you see wisdom in that distinction and what does it take to do both, the dramatization
0:27:47 of a text and the seduction of an audience?
0:27:50 Those are two very interesting descriptions.
0:27:55 When I think, I guess when I think performer, I tend to think entertaining, I tend to think
0:28:02 comedy, I tend to think winning over an audience, I tend to think that there’s something about
0:28:13 quality of wanting to have people enjoy themselves.
0:28:21 And when you saddle that against what maybe he means as an actor, which is more dramatic
0:28:30 or more text driven, more, look, I’ve always believed that my job, not every actor feels
0:28:42 this way, but my job, the way that I’ve looked at it is that my job is to serve the writing.
0:28:49 And that if I serve the writing, I will in a sense serve myself because I’ll be in the
0:28:56 right world, I’ll be in the right context, I’ll be in the right style, I’ll have embraced
0:29:02 what a director’s, you know, it’s not my painting, it’s someone else’s painting, I’m
0:29:08 a series of colors and someone else’s painting.
0:29:11 And the barometer for me has always been that when people stop me and talk to me about a
0:29:22 character I’ve played and reference their name as if they actually exist, that’s when
0:29:29 I feel like I’ve gotten close to doing my job.
0:29:32 Yeah, one of the challenges for me in this conversation is remembering that your name
0:29:38 is Kevin, not Frank or John or any of these characters because they live deeply in the
0:29:47 psyche.
0:29:48 To me, that’s the greatest, that’s the greatest compliment for me as an actor.
0:29:58 I love being able to go.
0:30:00 I mean, when I think about performers who inspire me and I remember when I was young
0:30:09 and I was introduced to Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda, Katherine Hepburn, I just, I believed
0:30:18 who they were, I knew nothing about them, they were just these extraordinary characters
0:30:22 doing this extraordinary stuff, and then I think more recently contemporary, when I think
0:30:33 of the work that Philip Seymour Hoffman did and Heath Ledger and people that, when I think
0:30:40 about what they could be doing, what they could do, what they would have done had they
0:30:45 stayed with us, I’m so excited when I go into a cinema or I go into a play.
0:30:52 And I completely am taken to some place that I believe exists and characters that become
0:31:02 real.
0:31:03 And those characters become lifelong companions, like for me, they travel with you and even
0:31:09 if it’s the darkest aspects of human nature, they’re always there.
0:31:14 I feel like I almost met them and gotten to know them and gotten to become friends with
0:31:20 them almost, Hannibal Lecter or Forrest Gump, I mean, I feel like I’m like best friends
0:31:27 with Forrest Gump, I know the guy and I guess he’s played by some guy named Tom, but Forrest
0:31:33 Gump is the guy I’m friends with.
0:31:37 And I think that everybody feels like that when they’re in the audience with great characters,
0:31:40 they just kind of, they become part of you in some way, the good, the bad and the ugly
0:31:46 of them.
0:31:48 One of the things that I feel that I try to do in my work is when I read something for
0:31:56 the first time, when I read a script or play, and I am absolutely devastated by it, it is
0:32:07 the most extraordinary, the most beautiful, the most life-affirming or terrifying.
0:32:16 It’s then a process weirdly of working backwards because I want to work in such a way that
0:32:24 that’s the experience I give to the audience when they first see it, that they have the
0:32:29 experience I had when I read it.
0:32:33 I remember that there’s been times in the creative process when something was pointed
0:32:38 out to me or something was, I remember I was doing a play and I was having this really
0:32:43 tough time with one of the last scenes in the play, and I just couldn’t figure it out.
0:32:49 I was in rehearsal, and although we had a director in that play, I called another friend
0:32:54 of mine who was also a director, and I had him come over and I said, “Look, this scene,
0:32:59 I’m just having the toughest, I cannot seem to crack this scene.”
0:33:03 And so we read it through a couple of times, and then this wonderful director named John
0:33:08 Swanbeck, who would eventually direct me in a film called “The Big Kahuna,” but this
0:33:12 is before that, he said to me the most incredible thing, he just said, “All right, what’s the
0:33:19 last line you have in this scene before you fall over and fall asleep?”
0:33:22 And I said, “The last line is that last drink, the old KO,” and he went, “Okay, I want you
0:33:32 to think about what that line actually means and then work backwards.”
0:33:40 And so he left, and I sort of was left with this, “What, like, what does that mean?
0:33:45 How am I supposed to…”
0:33:47 And then like a couple of days went by, a couple of days went by, and I thought, “Okay, so
0:33:51 I see it.
0:33:52 What does that line actually mean?”
0:33:53 Well, that last drink, the old KO, KO is knockout, which is a boxing term.
0:34:04 It’s the only boxing term the writer uses in the play.
0:34:10 And then I went back, and I realized my friend was so smart and so incredible to have, you
0:34:17 know, said, “Ask a question you haven’t thought of asking yet.”
0:34:21 I realized that the playwright wrote the last round, the eighth round between these two brothers,
0:34:27 and it was a fight, physical as well as emotional.
0:34:31 And when I brought that into the rehearsal room to the directors doing that play, he
0:34:36 liked that idea, and we staged that scene as if it was the eighth round, although audience
0:34:41 would have known that.
0:34:43 But just what I loved about that was that somebody said to me, “Ask yourself a question
0:34:51 you haven’t asked yourself yet.
0:34:52 What does that line mean and then work backwards?”
0:34:55 What is that like a catalyst for thinking deeply about what is magical about this play, this
0:35:03 story, this narrative, that’s what that is, like thinking backwards, that’s what that
0:35:07 does?
0:35:08 Yeah.
0:35:09 But also because it’s this incredible, why didn’t I think to ask that question myself?
0:35:15 That’s what you have directors for, that’s what you have, you know, so many places where
0:35:19 ideas can come from.
0:35:21 But that just illustrates that even though in my brain I go, “I always like to work
0:35:25 backwards,” I missed it in that one, and I’m very grateful to my friend for having pushed
0:35:33 me into being able to realize what that meant.
0:35:38 To ask the interesting question, I like the poetry and the humility of, “I’m just a series
0:35:46 of collars in someone else’s painting,” that was a good line.
0:35:51 That said, you’ve talked about improvisation, you said that it’s all about the ability to
0:35:56 do it again and again and again, and yet never make it the same.
0:36:00 And you also just said that you’re trying to stay true to the text.
0:36:05 So where’s the room for the improvisation, that it’s never the same?
0:36:11 Well there’s two slightly different contexts, I think.
0:36:14 One is in the rehearsal room, improvisation can be a wonderful device.
0:36:21 I mean Sam Mendy’s, for example, he’ll start a scene and he does this wonderful thing.
0:36:28 He brings rugs and he brings chairs and sofas in and he says, “Well let’s put two chairs
0:36:34 here and here.
0:36:35 You guys, let’s start in these chairs far apart from each other.
0:36:39 Let’s see what happens with the scene if you’re that far apart.”
0:36:42 And so we’ll do the scene that way, and then he goes, “Okay, let’s bring a rug in and
0:36:46 let’s bring these chairs much closer and let’s see what happens if the space, if the space
0:36:51 between you is …” And so then you try it that way, and then it’s a little harder in
0:36:56 Shakespeare to improv.
0:37:00 But in any situation where you want to try and see where could a scene go, where would
0:37:06 the scene go if I didn’t make that choice?
0:37:09 Where would the scene go if I made this choice?
0:37:10 Where would the scene go if I didn’t say that or I said something else?
0:37:14 So that’s how improv can be a valuable process to learn about limits and boundaries and what’s
0:37:28 going on with a character that somehow you discover in trying something that isn’t on
0:37:35 the page.
0:37:38 Then there’s the different thing which is the trying to make it fresh and trying to make
0:37:42 it new, and that is really a reference to theater.
0:37:48 I’ll put it to you this way.
0:37:54 Anybody loves sports, right?
0:37:56 So you go and you watch on a pitch, you watch on a tennis game, you watch basketball, you
0:38:01 watch football.
0:38:03 Yeah, the rules are the same, but it’s a different game every time you’re out on that court or
0:38:08 on that field.
0:38:11 It’s no different in theater.
0:38:14 Yes, it’s the same lines.
0:38:18 Maybe even blocking is similar.
0:38:25 But what’s different is attack, intention, how you are growing in a role and watching
0:38:33 your fellow actors grow in theirs and how every night it’s a new audience and they’re
0:38:38 reacting differently.
0:38:41 You literally, where you can go from week one of performances in a play to week 12 is extraordinary.
0:38:53 The difference between theater and film is that no matter how good someone might think
0:39:00 you are in a movie, you’ll never be any better.
0:39:06 It’s frozen, whereas I can be better tomorrow night than I was tonight.
0:39:10 I can be better in a week than I was tonight.
0:39:14 It is a living, breathing, shifting, changing, growing thing every single day.
0:39:24 But also in theater, there’s no safety net.
0:39:26 If you fuck it up, everybody gets to see you do that.
0:39:30 And if you start giggling on stage, everyone gets to see you do that too, which I am very
0:39:34 guilty of.
0:39:35 I mean, there is something of a seduction of an audience in theater even more intense
0:39:44 than when you’re talking about film.
0:39:48 I got a chance to watch the documentary now in the wings on a world stage, which is behind
0:39:54 the scenes of, you mentioned, you teaming up with Sam Mendes in 2011 to stage Richard
0:40:01 III, a play by William Shakespeare.
0:40:05 I was also surprised to learn you haven’t really done much Shakespeare, or at least
0:40:10 you said that in the movie.
0:40:13 So there’s a lot of interesting behind the scenes stuff there.
0:40:17 First of all, the camaraderie of everybody, how like the bond theater creates, especially
0:40:22 when you’re traveling.
0:40:24 But another interesting thing you mentioned with the chairs of Sam Mendes, trying different
0:40:28 stuff.
0:40:29 It seemed like everybody was really open to trying stuff, embarrassing themselves, taking
0:40:34 risks, all that.
0:40:36 I suppose that’s part of acting in general, but theater especially.
0:40:42 Take risks.
0:40:43 It’s okay to embarrass a shit out of yourself, including the director.
0:40:47 It’s also because you become a family.
0:40:52 It’s unlike a movie where I might have a scene with so-and-so on this day, and then another
0:40:57 scene with them in a week and a half.
0:40:59 And then that’s the only scenes we have in the whole movie together.
0:41:03 Every single day when you show up in the rehearsal room, it’s the whole company.
0:41:08 You’re all up for it every day.
0:41:10 You’re learning.
0:41:11 You’re growing.
0:41:12 You’re trying.
0:41:13 And there is an incredible trust that happens.
0:41:20 And I was, of course, fortunate that some of the things I learned and observed about
0:41:28 being a part of that family, being included in that family and being a part of creating
0:41:31 that family, I was able to observe from people like Jack Lemmon, who led many companies that
0:41:37 I was fortunate to work in and be a part of.
0:41:42 There’s also a sad moment where, at the end, everybody is really sad to say goodbye, because
0:41:48 you do form a family and then it’s over.
0:41:50 I guess somebody said that that’s just part of theater.
0:41:54 It’s like, I mean, there’s a kind of assumed goodbye in that this is it.
0:41:59 Yeah.
0:42:00 And also, there are some times when like six months later, I’ll wake up in the middle of
0:42:05 the night and I’ll go, “That’s how to play that scene.”
0:42:10 Yeah.
0:42:11 Oh, God, I just finally figured it out.
0:42:15 So maybe you could speak a little bit more to that.
0:42:17 What’s the difference between film acting and live theater acting?
0:42:21 I don’t really think there is any.
0:42:24 I think there’s just, you eventually learn about yourself on film.
0:42:30 When I first did like my first episode of The Equalizer, you know, it’s just horrible.
0:42:39 It’s just so bad.
0:42:41 But I didn’t know about myself.
0:42:43 I didn’t slowly begin to learn about yourself, but I think good acting is good acting.
0:42:49 And I think that if a camera’s right here, you know that your front row is also your
0:42:56 back row.
0:42:57 You don’t have to, you don’t have to do so much.
0:43:01 There is in theater a particular kind of energy, almost like an athlete, that you have to have
0:43:11 vocally to be able to get up seven performances a week and never lose your voice and always
0:43:16 be there and always be alive and always be doing the best work you can that you just
0:43:20 don’t require in film.
0:43:22 You don’t have to have the same, it just doesn’t require the same kind of stamina that doing
0:43:32 a play does.
0:43:33 It just feels like also in theater, you have to become the character more intensely because
0:43:40 you can’t take a break, you can’t take a bathroom break.
0:43:43 You’re like on stage.
0:43:45 This is you.
0:43:46 Yeah, but you have no idea what’s going on on stage with the actors.
0:43:49 And I have literally laughed through speeches that I had to give because my fellow actors
0:43:57 were putting carrots up their nose or broccoli in their ears or doing whatever they were
0:44:01 doing to make me laugh.
0:44:03 So they’re just having fun.
0:44:04 They’re having the time of their life.
0:44:06 And by the way, Judy Dench is the worst giggler of all.
0:44:09 I mean, they had to bring the curtain down on her and Maggie Smith because they were
0:44:13 laughing so hard, they could not continue the play.
0:44:17 So even when you’re doing like a dramatic monologue still, they’re still fucking with
0:44:20 you.
0:44:21 There’s stuff.
0:44:22 Okay.
0:44:23 That’s great.
0:44:24 That’s good to know.
0:44:25 You also said an interesting line that improvisation helps you learn about the character.
0:44:35 Can you explain that?
0:44:37 So like through maybe playing with the different ways of saying the words or the different
0:44:43 ways to bring the words to life, you get to learn about yourself, about the character
0:44:48 you’re playing.
0:44:49 It can be helpful.
0:44:53 But improv is, I’m such a big believer in the writing and in serving the writing and
0:44:59 doing the words the writer wrote that improv for me, unless you’re just doing like comedy
0:45:06 and you know, I mean, I love improv and in comedy, it’s brilliant.
0:45:11 So much fun to watch people just come up with something right there.
0:45:16 But you know, that’s where you’re looking for laughs and you’re specifically in a little
0:45:21 scene that’s being created.
0:45:24 But I think improv has had value.
0:45:29 But I have not experienced it as much in doing plays as I have sometimes in doing film where
0:45:39 you’ll start off rehearsing and a director may say, “Let’s just go off book and see
0:45:44 what happens.”
0:45:46 And I’ve had moments in film where someone went off book and it was terrifying.
0:45:55 There was a scene I had in Glen Gary, Glen Ross, where the character I play has fucked
0:46:03 something up.
0:46:04 It’s just screwed something up and Pacino is livid.
0:46:09 And so we had the scene where Al is walking like this and the camera is moving with him
0:46:16 and he is chewing me a new asshole.
0:46:20 And in the middle of the take, Al starts talking about me.
0:46:27 Oh, Kevin, you don’t think we know how you got this job?
0:46:34 You don’t think we know who’s dick you’ve been sucking on to get this part in this movie?
0:46:40 And I’m now, I’m literally like, I don’t know what the hell is happening, but I’m reacting.
0:46:51 We got to the end of that take, Al walked up to me and he went, “Oh, that was so good.
0:46:57 Oh my God, that was so good.
0:46:59 Just so you know.”
0:47:00 The sound.
0:47:01 I asked them not to record.
0:47:03 So you have no dialogue.
0:47:04 So it’s just me, “Oh, that was so good.
0:47:08 You look like a car wreck.”
0:47:09 And I was like, “Yeah.”
0:47:13 And it was actually an incredibly generous thing that he gave me so that I would react.
0:47:21 Oh, wow.
0:47:22 Did they use that shot because you were in the shot?
0:47:27 It was my close-up.
0:47:28 Yeah.
0:47:29 Yeah.
0:47:30 And yeah, that’s the take.
0:47:31 It wasn’t intense, right?
0:47:32 I mean, what was it like if we can just linger on that, just that intense scene with Al Pacino?
0:47:38 Well, he’s the reason I got the movie.
0:47:41 A lot of people might think it because Jack was in the film that he had something to do
0:47:46 with it, but actually I was doing a play called Lost in Yonkers on Broadway, and we had the
0:47:50 same dresser who had worked with him, a girl named Laura, it was wonderful, Laura Beatty.
0:47:56 And she told Al that he should come and see this play because she wanted to see me in
0:48:03 this play.
0:48:04 I was playing this gangster’s fun, fun, fun part.
0:48:08 So I didn’t know Pacino came on some night and saw this play.
0:48:12 And then like three days later, I got a call to come in and auditioned for this Glenn
0:48:17 Green, Glenn Ross, which of course I knew was a play, David Mambis’ play.
0:48:22 And then I auditioned, Jamie Foley was the director who would eventually direct a bunch
0:48:29 of House of Cards, wonderful, wonderful guy, and I got the part.
0:48:35 Well, I didn’t quite get the part.
0:48:37 They were going to bring together the actors that they thought they were going to give
0:48:40 the parts to on a Saturday at Al’s office.
0:48:44 And they asked me if I would come and do a read through, and I said, “Who’s going to
0:48:47 be there?”
0:48:48 Well, so-and-so-and-so-and-so-and-so, and Jack Lemon is flying in, and I said, “Don’t
0:48:52 tell Mr. Lemon that I’m doing the read-through.
0:48:55 Is that possible?”
0:48:56 And I’m like, “Sure.”
0:48:58 So I’ll never forget this.
0:48:59 Jack was sitting in a chair in Pacino’s office doing the New York Times crossword puzzle,
0:49:05 as he did every day.
0:49:06 And I walked in the door and he went, “Oh, Jesus Christ.
0:49:11 Is it possible you could get a job without me?
0:49:13 Jesus Christ.
0:49:14 I’m so tired of holding up your end of it.
0:49:16 Oh my God.
0:49:17 Jesus Christ.”
0:49:18 So I got the job because of Pacino, and it was really one of the first major roles that
0:49:26 I ever had in a film, and to be working with that group.
0:49:31 Yeah, that’s one of the greatest ensemble casts ever.
0:49:36 We got Al Pacino, Jack Lemon, Alec Baldwin, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, you, Jonathan Price.
0:49:47 It’s just incredible.
0:49:49 And I would have to say, I mean, maybe you can comment.
0:49:52 You’ve talked about how much of a mentor and a friend Jack Lemon has been.
0:49:56 That’s one of his greatest performances ever.
0:49:58 Ever.
0:49:59 You have a scene at the end of the movie with him that was really powerful, like firing
0:50:03 on all cylinders.
0:50:05 You’re playing the stain to perfection, and he’s playing desperation to perfection.
0:50:13 What a scene.
0:50:14 What was that like?
0:50:15 Like, at the top of your game, the two of you.
0:50:18 Well, by that time, we had done Long Day’s Journey Tonight in the theater.
0:50:23 We’d done a mini series called The Murder of Mary Fagan on NBC.
0:50:27 We’d done a film called Dad, that Gary David Goldberg directed with Ted Danson.
0:50:33 So this was the fourth time we were working together, and we knew each other.
0:50:38 We’d become, he’d become my father figure.
0:50:42 And I don’t know if you know that I originally met Jack Lemon when I was very, very young.
0:50:49 He was doing a production at the Mark Taper Forum of a Chando Casey play called Juno in
0:50:53 the Peacock with Walter Matthew and Maureen Stapleton.
0:50:56 And on a Saturday in December of 1974, my junior high school drama class went to a workshop.
0:51:06 It was called How to Audition.
0:51:09 And we did this workshop.
0:51:11 These schools in Southern California were part of this drama teachers association.
0:51:14 So we got these incredible experiences of being able to go see professional productions
0:51:18 and be involved in these workshops or festivals.
0:51:21 So I had to get up and do a monologue in front of Mr. Lemon when I was 13 years old.
0:51:27 And he walked up to me at the end of that, and he put his hand on my shoulder and he
0:51:31 said, “That was a touch of terrific.”
0:51:33 He said, “No, everything I’ve been talking about, you just did.
0:51:36 What’s your name?”
0:51:37 I said, “Kevin.”
0:51:38 He said, “Let me tell you something.
0:51:39 You finished with high school, as I’m sure you’re going to go on and do theater.
0:51:42 You should go to New York and you should study to be an actor because this is what you’re
0:51:45 meant to do with your life.”
0:51:48 And he was like an idol.
0:51:52 And 12 years later, I read in The New York Times that he was coming to Broadway to do
0:51:57 this production of A Long Day’s Journey tonight, a year and some months after I read this article.
0:52:02 And I was like, “I’m going to play Jamie in that production.”
0:52:08 And I then, with a lot of opposition, the cast and director didn’t want to see me.
0:52:15 They said that the director, Jonathan Miller, wanted movie actors to play the two sons.
0:52:24 And ultimately, I found out that Jonathan Miller, the director, was coming to New York
0:52:29 to do a series of lectures at Alice Tully Hall.
0:52:34 And I went to try to figure out how I could maybe meet him.
0:52:40 And I was sitting in that theater listening to this incredible lecture he was doing, and
0:52:46 sitting next to me was an elderly woman, I mean, elderly AD something, and she was asleep.
0:52:57 But sticking out of her handbag, which was on the floor, was an invitation to a cocktail
0:53:05 reception on her, Dr. Jonathan Miller.
0:53:08 And so I thought, “You know, she’s tired.
0:53:14 She’s probably going to go home.”
0:53:16 So I took that and walked into this cocktail reception and ultimately went over to Dr. Miller,
0:53:25 who was incredibly kind, and said, “You sit down, I’m always very curious what brings
0:53:30 young people to my lectures.”
0:53:32 And I said to him, “You’re Jean O’Neill brought me here.”
0:53:35 And he was like, “What?
0:53:36 What?
0:53:37 I’ve always wanted to meet him.
0:53:38 Where is he?”
0:53:39 And I told him that I’d been trying for seven months to get an audition for a long day’s
0:53:46 journey, and that his American cast directors were telling my agents that he wanted big
0:53:50 American movie stars.
0:53:52 And at that moment, he turned, and he saw one of those casting directors who was there
0:53:57 that night.
0:53:58 So I knew he was going to be in New York starting auditions that week.
0:54:04 And she was staring daggers at me, and he just got it.
0:54:10 And he said, “Someone have a pen,” and he took the paper and started writing.
0:54:15 He said, “Listen, Kevin, there are many situations in which casting directors have a lot of say
0:54:19 and a lot of power and a lot of leverage.
0:54:21 And then there are other situations where they just take directors’ messages, and on
0:54:24 this one, they’re taking my messages.
0:54:26 This is where I’m staying.
0:54:27 Make sure you people get to me.”
0:54:28 We start auditions on Thursday.
0:54:31 And on Thursday, I had an opportunity to come in and audition for this play that I’ve been
0:54:37 working on and preparing.
0:54:40 And at the end of it, I did four scenes at the end of it.
0:54:45 He said to me that unless someone else came in and blew him against the wall like I had
0:54:49 just done, as far as he was concerned, I pretty much had the part, but I couldn’t tell my
0:54:53 agents that yet because I had to come back and read with Mr. Lemon.
0:54:57 And so three months later, in August of 1985, I found myself in a room with Jack Lemon again
0:55:05 at 890 Broadway, which is where they rehearsed a lot of Broadway plays.
0:55:10 And we did four scenes together, and I was toppling over him.
0:55:13 I was pushing him.
0:55:14 I was relentless.
0:55:18 And I’ll never forget at the end of that, Lemon came over to me.
0:55:25 He put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, “That would you touch it, terrific.”
0:55:27 I never thought we’d find the rotten kid, but he’s it, Jesus Christ.
0:55:30 What the hell was that?
0:55:33 And I ended up spending the next year of my life with that man.
0:55:38 So it turns out he was right.
0:55:44 Yeah.
0:55:45 This world works in mysterious ways.
0:55:47 It also speaks to the fact of the power of somebody you look up to giving words of encouragement
0:55:55 because those can just reverberate through your whole life and just make the path clear.
0:56:01 I’ve always, we used to joke that if every contract came with a Jack Lemon clause, it
0:56:07 would be a more beautiful world.
0:56:10 Beautifully said.
0:56:11 Jack Lemon is one of the greatest actors ever.
0:56:13 What do you think makes him so damn good?
0:56:20 Wow.
0:56:25 I think he truly set out in his life to accomplish what his father said to him on his deathbed.
0:56:36 His father was died.
0:56:38 His father was, by the way, called the Donut King in Boston.
0:56:42 And not in the entertainment business at all.
0:56:45 He was literally owned a donut company.
0:56:48 And when he was passing away, Jack said, “The last thing my father said to me was, ‘Go
0:56:55 out there and spread a little sunshine.'”
0:56:59 And I truly think that’s what Jack loved to do.
0:57:07 I remember this, and I don’t know if this will answer your question, but I think it’s
0:57:15 revealing about what he’s able to do and what he was able to do and how that ultimately
0:57:22 influenced what I was able to do.
0:57:26 Sam Endes had never directed a film before American Beauty.
0:57:32 But so what he did was he took the best elements of theater and applied them to the process.
0:57:39 So we rehearsed it like a play in a soundstage where everything was laid out like it would
0:57:44 be in a play and this couch will be here.
0:57:49 And he’d sent me a couple of tapes.
0:57:52 He’d sent me two cassette tapes, one that he’d like to call pre-Lester before he begins
0:57:59 to move in a new direction and then post-Lester and they just were different songs.
0:58:07 And then he said to me one day, and I think always thought this was brilliant of Sam to
0:58:11 use lemon, knowing what lemon meant to me.
0:58:16 He said, “When was the last time you watched The Apartment?”
0:58:19 And I said, “I don’t know.
0:58:21 I love that movie so much because I want you to watch it again and then let’s talk.”
0:58:28 So when I watched the movie again and we sat down and Sam said, “What lemon does in that
0:58:37 film is incredible because there is never a moment in the movie where we see him change.
0:58:47 He just evolves.”
0:58:50 And he becomes the man he becomes because of the experiences that he has through the
0:58:56 course of the film, but there’s this remarkable consistency in who he becomes and that’s what
0:59:03 I need you to do is Lester.
0:59:06 I don’t want the audience to ever see him change.
0:59:10 I want him to evolve.
0:59:12 And so we did some — I mean, first of all, it was just a great direction.
0:59:18 And then second of all, we did some things that people don’t know we did to aid that
0:59:24 gradual shift of that man’s character.
0:59:30 First of all, I had to be in the best shape from the beginning of the movie because we
0:59:33 didn’t shoot it in sequence.
0:59:35 So I was in this crazy shape.
0:59:38 I had this wonderful trainer named Mike Torsche who just was incredible.
0:59:44 But so what we did was in order to then show this gradual shift was I had three different
0:59:51 hair pieces.
0:59:52 I had three different kinds of costumes of different colors and sizes.
0:59:58 And I had different makeup.
1:00:01 So in the beginning, I was wearing a kind of drab, dull, slightly uninspired hairpiece.
1:00:10 And my makeup was kind of gray and boring.
1:00:14 And I was a little bit — there were times when I was like too much like this and Sam
1:00:17 would go, “Kevin, you look like Walter Mathau.
1:00:20 Could you please stand up a little bit?”
1:00:21 We’re sort of midway through at this point.
1:00:24 And then at a certain point, the wig changed and it had little highlights in it, a little
1:00:32 more color, a little more — the makeup became a little — the suits got a little tighter.
1:00:38 And then finally, a third wig that was golden highlights and sunshine and rosy cheeks and
1:00:45 tight fit.
1:00:46 And these are what we call theatrical tricks.
1:00:49 This is how you — an audience doesn’t even know it’s happening.
1:00:53 But it is this gradual — and I just always felt that that was such a brilliant way because
1:01:04 he knew what I felt about Jack.
1:01:06 And when you watch the apartment, it is extraordinary that he doesn’t ever change.
1:01:12 So I’m — and, in fact, I thanked Jack when I won the Oscar.
1:01:24 And I did my thank you speech and I walked offstage and I remember I had to sit down
1:01:34 for a moment because I didn’t want to go to the press room because I wanted to see if
1:01:39 Sam was going to win.
1:01:42 And so I was waiting and my phone rang and it was lemon.
1:01:47 He said, “You’re a son of a bitch.”
1:01:50 I said, “What?”
1:01:51 He goes, “First of all, congratulations and thanks for thanking me because, you know,
1:01:56 God knows you couldn’t have done it without me.”
1:01:58 He said, “Second of all, you didn’t know how long it took me to win from supporting
1:02:02 actor.
1:02:03 I won it for Mr. Roberts and it took me like 10, 12 years to win Oscar.
1:02:08 You did it in four, you son of a bitch.”
1:02:10 Yeah.
1:02:11 The apartment was, I mean, it’s widely considered one of the greatest movies ever.
1:02:21 People sometimes refer to it as a comedy, which is an interesting kind of classification.
1:02:26 I suppose that’s a lesson about comedy, that the best comedy is the one that’s basically
1:02:32 a tragedy.
1:02:33 Well, I mean, some people think “Clockwork Orange” is a comedy.
1:02:38 I’m not saying there aren’t some good laughs in “Clockwork Orange,” but yeah, you know,
1:02:42 it’s…
1:02:43 I mean, yeah.
1:02:44 What’s that line between comedy and tragedy for you?
1:02:50 Well, if it’s a line, it’s a line I cross all the time because I’ve tried always to
1:03:00 find the humor unexpected sometimes, maybe inappropriate sometimes, maybe shocking.
1:03:11 But I’ve tried in, I think, almost every dramatic role I’ve had to have a sense of humor and
1:03:20 to be able to bring that along with everything else that is serious.
1:03:28 Because frankly, that’s how we deal with stuff in life, you know?
1:03:33 I think Sam Mendes actually said in the now documentary something like “With great theater,
1:03:41 with great stories, you find humor on the journey to the heart of darkness,” something
1:03:48 like this.
1:03:50 Yeah.
1:03:51 But it’s true.
1:03:52 I’m sorry.
1:03:53 I can’t be that poetic.
1:03:54 I’m very sorry.
1:03:55 But it’s true.
1:03:56 I mean, the people I’ve interacted in this world have been to a war zone and the ones
1:04:03 who have lost the most and have suffered the most are usually the ones who are able to
1:04:10 make jokes the quickest.
1:04:12 And the jokes are often dark and absurd and cross every single line, no political correctness
1:04:17 all of that.
1:04:18 Sure.
1:04:19 I mean, it’s like the Great Mary Tyler Moore Show where they can’t stop giggling it at
1:04:25 the clown’s funeral.
1:04:26 I mean, it’s just one of the great episodes ever.
1:04:31 Giggling at a funeral is as bad as farting at a funeral and I’m sure that there’s some
1:04:36 people who’ve done both.
1:04:38 Oh, man.
1:04:40 So you mentioned American Beauty and the idea of not changing but evolving.
1:04:50 That’s really interesting because that movie is about finding yourself.
1:04:55 So it’s a philosophically profound movie.
1:04:58 It’s about various characters in their own ways, finding their own identity in a world
1:05:02 where maybe a materialistic system that wants you to be like everyone else.
1:05:10 And so, I mean, Lester really transforms himself throughout the movie and you’re saying the
1:05:15 challenge there is to still be the same human being fundamentally.
1:05:20 Yeah, and I also think that the film was powerful because you had three very honest and genuine
1:05:36 portrayal of young people.
1:05:39 And then you had Lester behaving like a young person doing things that were unexpected.
1:05:47 And I think that the honesty with which it dealt with those issues that those teenagers
1:05:56 were going through and the honesty with which it dealt with what Lester was going through
1:06:02 I think are some of the reasons why the film had the response that it did from so many
1:06:10 people.
1:06:11 I mean, I used to get stopped and someone would say to me, “When I first saw American
1:06:18 Beauty, I was married and the second time I saw it, I wasn’t.”
1:06:22 And I was like, “Well, we weren’t trying to increase the divorce rate, you know?
1:06:28 It wasn’t our intention, but it is interesting how so many people have those kinds of crazy
1:06:38 fantasies.”
1:06:40 And what I admired so much about who Lester was as a person, why I wanted to play him
1:06:46 is because in the end, he makes the right decision.
1:06:51 I think a lot of people live lives of quiet desperation in a job they don’t like.
1:07:01 In a marriage, they’re unhappy and to see somebody living that life and then saying,
1:07:10 “Fuck it.”
1:07:11 In every way possible and not just in a cynical way, but in a way that opens Lester up to
1:07:17 see the beauty in the world.
1:07:19 That’s the beauty in American Beauty.
1:07:22 Well, you may have to blackmail your boss to get there, but you know.
1:07:27 And in that, there’s a bunch of humor also.
1:07:30 In the anger and the absurdity of taking a stand against the conformity of life, there’s
1:07:39 this humor.
1:07:41 And I read somewhere that the dinner scene, which is kind of play-like, where Lester slams
1:07:50 the plate against the wall, was improvised by you, the slamming of the plate against
1:07:57 the wall.
1:07:58 No.
1:07:59 Absolutely.
1:08:00 Absolutely, absolutely, written and directed, can’t take credit for that.
1:08:10 The plate.
1:08:11 Okay.
1:08:12 Well, that was a genius interaction there.
1:08:15 There’s something about the dinner table and losing your shit at the dinner table.
1:08:19 Having a fight and losing your shit at the dinner table, where else?
1:08:24 Like Yellowstone was another situation where it’s a family at the dinner table and then
1:08:32 one of them says, “Fuck it, I’m not eating this anymore and I’m going to create a scene.”
1:08:36 Right.
1:08:37 It’s a beautiful kind of environment for dramatic scenes.
1:08:40 Or Nicholson and the Shining.
1:08:42 There’s some family scenes gone awry in that movie.
1:08:47 The contrast between you and Annette Benning in that scene creates the genius of that scene.
1:08:54 So, how much of acting is the dance between two actors?
1:09:00 Well, with Annette, I just adored working with her.
1:09:09 And we were the two actors that Sam wanted from the very beginning, much against the
1:09:14 will of the higher-ups who wanted other actors to play those roles.
1:09:19 I’ve known Annette since we did a screen test together from Miloš Forman for a film
1:09:30 he did of the “Les Liges” on “Dangerous” movie.
1:09:33 It was a different film from that one, but it was the same story.
1:09:37 And I’ve always thought she is just remarkable.
1:09:41 But I think that the work she did in that film, the relationship that we were able to
1:09:50 build, for me, the saddest part of that success was that she didn’t win the Oscar.
1:10:00 And I felt she should have.
1:10:04 What kind of interesting direction did you get from Sam Mendes in how you approached
1:10:09 playing Lester in how to take on the different scenes?
1:10:13 There’s a lot of just brilliant scenes in that movie.
1:10:16 Well, I’ll share with you a story that most people don’t know, which is our first two
1:10:25 days of shooting were in Smiley’s, the place where I get a job in a fast food place.
1:10:33 Yeah, it’s a burger joint.
1:10:35 And I guess it was like maybe the third day or the fourth day of shooting, we’d now done
1:10:41 that and I said to Sam, “So how are the dailies, you know, how do they look?”
1:10:50 He goes, “Which ones?”
1:10:51 I said, “Well, the first Smiley’s.”
1:10:53 He goes, “Oh, they’re shit.”
1:10:57 And I went, “Yeah, no, how were they?”
1:10:59 He goes, “No, they’re shit.
1:11:00 I hate them.
1:11:02 I hate everything about them.
1:11:05 I hate the costumes.
1:11:06 I hate the location.
1:11:07 I hate that you’re inside.
1:11:09 I hate the way you acted.
1:11:12 I hate everything but the script.”
1:11:17 So I’ve gone back to the studio and asked them if we can reshoot the first two days.
1:11:23 And I was like, “Sam, this is your very first movie.
1:11:29 You’re going back to Steven Spielberg and saying, ‘I need to reshoot the first two days
1:11:34 entirely.'”
1:11:35 And he went, “Yeah.”
1:11:38 And that’s exactly what we did.
1:11:40 A couple of weeks later, they decided that it was now a drive-through because Annette
1:11:46 and Peter Galler used to come into the place and ordered from the counter.
1:11:50 Now Sam had decided it has to be a drive-through.
1:11:54 You have to be in the window of the drive-through, change the costumes, and we reshot those first
1:11:59 two days.
1:12:00 Sam said, “It was actually a moment of incredible confidence because he said the worst thing
1:12:09 that could possibly have happened happened in my first two days.”
1:12:13 And after that, I was like, “I know what I’m doing and I knew I had to reshoot it.”
1:12:19 And it was absolutely right.
1:12:21 And I guess that’s what a great director must do is have the guts in that moment to
1:12:26 reshoot everything.
1:12:27 I mean, that’s a pretty gutsy move.
1:12:29 Two other little things to share with you about Sam, but the way he is, you wouldn’t
1:12:35 know it, but the original script opened and closed with a trial.
1:12:42 Ricky was accused of Lester’s murder, and the movie was bookended by this trial, a very
1:12:50 different movie, which they shot the entire trial for weeks.
1:12:56 Okay?
1:12:57 And I used to fly in my dreams.
1:13:04 You know those opening shots over the neighborhood?
1:13:07 I used to come into those shots in my bathrobe flying, and then when I hit the ground and
1:13:14 the newspaper was thrown at me by the newspaper guy and I caught it, the alarm would go off
1:13:19 and I’d wake up in bed.
1:13:20 I spent five days being hung by wires and filming these sequences of flying through
1:13:28 my dreams.
1:13:29 And Sam said to me, “Yeah, the flying sequences are all gone and the trial is gone.”
1:13:35 And I was like, “What?
1:13:38 What are you talking about?”
1:13:39 And here’s my other little favorite story about Sam and that.
1:13:45 When we were shooting in the valley, one of those places I flew, this was an indoor set.
1:13:53 Sam said to me in the morning, “Hey, at lunch, I just want to record a guide track of all
1:13:59 the dialogue, all of your narration, because they just needed an editing as a guide.”
1:14:03 And I said, “Sure.”
1:14:05 So I remember we came outside in this hallway where I had a dressing room in this little
1:14:10 studio we were in and Sam had like a cassette tape recorder and like a little microphone.
1:14:19 And we put it on the floor and he pushed record.
1:14:23 And I read the entire narration and I never did it again.
1:14:31 That’s the narration in the movie.
1:14:35 As Sam said, when he listened to it, I wasn’t trying to do anything.
1:14:42 He said, “You had no idea where these things were going, where they were going to be placed,
1:14:46 what they were going to mean.
1:14:47 You just read it so innocently, so purely, so directly that I knew if I brought you into
1:14:56 a studio and put headphones on you and had you do it again, it would change the ease
1:15:05 with which you’d done it.”
1:15:07 And so they just fixed all of the problems that they had with this little cassette.
1:15:12 And that is the way I did it and the only time I did it was in this little hallway.
1:15:18 And once again, a great performance lies in being doing less.
1:15:25 Yeah.
1:15:26 Yeah.
1:15:27 The innocence and the purity of less.
1:15:28 He knew I would have come into the studio and fucked it up.
1:15:32 Yeah.
1:15:33 What do you think about the notion of beauty that permeates American beauty?
1:15:38 What do you think that theme is with the roses, with the rose petals, the characters that
1:15:46 are living this mundane existence slowly opening their eyes up to what is beautiful
1:15:52 in life?
1:15:53 See, it’s funny, I don’t think of the roses and I don’t think of her body in the poster
1:15:58 and I don’t think of those things as the beauty.
1:16:03 I think of the bag.
1:16:07 I think that there are things we miss that are right in front of us that are truly beautiful.
1:16:20 The little things, the simple things.
1:16:22 Yeah.
1:16:23 And I’ll even tell you something that I always thought was so incredible.
1:16:30 When we shot the scenes in the office where Lester worked, the job he hated, there was
1:16:35 a bulletin board behind me on a wall.
1:16:41 And someone who was watching a cut or early dailies who was in the marketing department
1:16:50 saw that someone had cut out a little piece of paper and stuck it and it said, “Look
1:16:57 closer.”
1:17:00 And they presented that to Sam as the idea of what that could go on the poster.
1:17:05 The idea of looking closer was such a brilliant idea, but it wasn’t like it wasn’t in the
1:17:14 script.
1:17:15 It was just on a wall behind me and someone happened to zoom in on it and see it and thought,
1:17:21 “That’s what this movie is about.
1:17:24 This movie is about taking the time to look closer.”
1:17:30 And I think that in itself is just beautiful.
1:17:35 Mortality also permeates the film.
1:17:37 It starts with acknowledging that death is on the way, that Lester’s time is finite.
1:17:45 You ever think about your own death?
1:17:48 Yeah.
1:17:49 Yeah.
1:17:50 Scared of it?
1:17:56 When I was at my lowest point, yes, it scared me.
1:18:01 What does that fear look like?
1:18:03 What’s the nature of the fear?
1:18:06 What are you afraid of?
1:18:11 That there’s no way out.
1:18:15 That there’s no answer.
1:18:23 That nothing makes sense.
1:18:26 See, the interesting thing about Lester is facing the same fear.
1:18:33 He seemed to be somehow liberated and accepted everything and then saw the beauty of it.
1:18:40 Because he got there.
1:18:41 He was given the opportunity to reinvent himself and to try things he’d never tried,
1:18:52 to ask questions he’d never asked, to trust his instincts and to become the best version
1:19:03 of himself he could become.
1:19:06 And so, Dick Van Dyke, who has become an extraordinary friend of mine, Dick is 98 years old.
1:19:17 And he says, “You know, if I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have taken
1:19:20 better care of myself.”
1:19:24 When I spend time with him, I’m just moved by every day, you know?
1:19:30 He gets up and he goes, “It’s a good day.
1:19:32 I woke up and I learned a lot about…
1:19:39 I have a different feeling about death now than I did seven years ago.
1:19:54 And I’m on the path to being able to be in a place where I’ve resolved the things I needed
1:20:02 to resolve and won’t probably get to all of it in my lifetime, but I certainly would
1:20:08 like to be in a place where if I were to drop dead tomorrow, it would have been an amazing
1:20:14 life.”
1:20:15 So, Lester got there, sounds like Dick Van Dyke got there, he tried to get there.
1:20:21 Sure.
1:20:22 You said you feared death at your lowest point.
1:20:26 What was the lowest point?
1:20:28 It was November 1st of 2017 and then Thanksgiving Day of that same year.
1:20:41 So let’s talk about it.
1:20:42 Let’s talk about this dark time.
1:20:45 Let’s talk about the sexual allegations against you that led to you being canceled by, well,
1:20:51 the entire world for the last seven years.
1:20:55 I would like to personally understand the sins, the bad things you did and the bad things
1:21:01 you didn’t do.
1:21:02 So, I also should say that the thing I hope to do here is to give respect to due process,
1:21:12 innocent until proven guilty that the mass hysteria machine of the internet and click
1:21:19 pay journalism doesn’t do.
1:21:22 So here’s what I understand.
1:21:26 There were criminal and civil trials brought against you, including the one that started
1:21:31 it all when Anthony Rapp sued you for $40 million.
1:21:36 In these trials, you were acquitted, found not guilty and not liable.
1:21:41 Is that right?
1:21:42 Yes.
1:21:43 I think that’s really important, again, in terms of due process.
1:21:49 And I read a lot and I watched a lot in preparation for this on this point, including, of course,
1:21:57 the recently detailed interviews you did with Dan Wooten and then Allison Pearson of the
1:22:03 Telegraph and those are all focused on this topic and they go in detail where you respond
1:22:09 in detail to many of the allegations.
1:22:11 If people are interested in the details, they can listen to those.
1:22:14 So based on that and everything I looked at, as I understand, you never prevented anyone
1:22:19 from leaving if they wanted to, sort of in the sexual context, for example, by blocking
1:22:24 the door.
1:22:25 Is that right?
1:22:26 That’s correct, yeah.
1:22:28 You always respected the explicit no from people, again, in the sexual context.
1:22:33 Is that right?
1:22:34 That is correct.
1:22:35 You’ve never done anything sexual with an underage person, right?
1:22:39 Never.
1:22:40 But also, as is sometimes done in Hollywood, let me ask this, you’ve never explicitly
1:22:46 offered to exchange sexual favors for career advancement, correct?
1:22:50 Correct.
1:22:51 In terms of bad behavior, what did you do?
1:22:54 What was the worst of it?
1:22:56 And how often did you do it?
1:22:58 I have heard, and now quite often, that everybody has a Kevin Spacey story and what that tells
1:23:05 me is that I hit on a lot of guys.
1:23:08 How often did you cross the line, and what does that mean to you?
1:23:12 I did a lot of horsing around, I had a lot of things that at the time I thought were
1:23:16 sort of playful and fun, and I have learned since we’re not.
1:23:21 And I have had to recognize that I crossed some boundaries and I did some things that
1:23:28 were wrong and I made some mistakes.
1:23:30 And that’s in my past.
1:23:33 I mean, I’ve been working so hard over these last seven years to have the conversations
1:23:38 I needed to have to listen to people, to understand things from a different perspective than the
1:23:44 one that I had, and to say, I will never behave that way again for the rest of my life.
1:23:51 Just to clarify, I think you’re often too pushy with the flirting, and that manifests
1:24:00 itself in multiple ways, but just to make clear, you never prevented anyone from leaving
1:24:08 if they wanted to.
1:24:10 You always took the explicit no from people as an answer, no stop.
1:24:17 You took that for the answer.
1:24:20 You’ve never done anything sexual with an underage person, and you’ve never explicitly
1:24:24 offered to exchange sexual favors for career advancement.
1:24:29 These are some of the sort of accusations that have been made, and in the court of law, multiple
1:24:34 times have been shown not to be true.
1:24:38 But I have had a sexual life, and I’ve fallen in love, and I’ve been so admiring of people
1:24:45 that I, I mean, I’m so romantic, I’m such a romantic person that there’s this whole
1:24:52 side of me that hasn’t been talked about, isn’t being discussed, but that’s who I know.
1:24:58 That’s the person I know.
1:24:59 It’s been very upsetting to hear that some people have said, I mean, I don’t have a
1:25:05 violent bone in my body, but to hear people describe things as having been very aggressive
1:25:12 is incredibly difficult for me.
1:25:16 And I’m deeply sorry that I ever offended anyone or hurt anyone in any way.
1:25:22 Because it is crushing to me, and I have to work very hard to show and to prove that I
1:25:30 have learned, I got the memo, and I will never, ever, ever behave in those ways again.
1:25:36 From everything I’ve seen in public interactions with you, people love you.
1:25:42 Colleagues love you.
1:25:43 Coworkers love you.
1:25:44 They, there’s a flirtatiousness, another word for that is chemistry.
1:25:48 There’s a chemistry between the people you work with.
1:25:50 And by the way, not to take anything away from my accountability for things I did where
1:25:55 I got it wrong, I crossed the line, I pushed some boundaries.
1:25:59 I accept all of that, but I live in an industry in which flirtation, attraction, people meeting
1:26:08 in the workspace and ending up marrying each other and having children.
1:26:15 And so it is a space and a place where these notions of family, these notions of attraction,
1:26:25 these notions of, it’s always complicated if you meet someone in the workspace and find
1:26:31 yourselves attracted to each other.
1:26:34 You have to be mindful of that, and you have to be very mindful that you don’t ever want
1:26:38 anyone to feel that their job is in jeopardy, or you would punish them in some way if they
1:26:47 no longer wanted to be with you.
1:26:49 So those are important things to just acknowledge.
1:26:54 Another complexity to this, as I’ve seen is that there’s just a huge number of actors
1:26:59 that look up to you, a huge number of people in the industry that look up to you, so just
1:27:05 and love you.
1:27:06 I’ve seen just from this documentary, just a lot of people just love being around you,
1:27:11 learning from you what it means to create great theater, great film, great stories.
1:27:18 And so that adds to the complexity.
1:27:20 I wouldn’t say it’s a power dynamic, like a boss-employee relationship, it’s an admiration
1:27:25 dynamic that is easy to miss and easy to take advantage of.
1:27:31 Is that something you understand?
1:27:33 Yes.
1:27:34 And I also understand that there are people who met me and spent a very brief period of
1:27:40 time with me, but presumed I was now going to be their mentor, and then behaved in a
1:27:48 way that I was unaware of, that they were either participating or flirting along or
1:27:56 encouraging me without me having any idea that at the end of the day they were expecting
1:28:03 something.
1:28:07 So these are about relationships, these are about two people.
1:28:12 These are about people making decisions, people making choices, and I accept my accountability
1:28:21 in that.
1:28:22 But there are a number of things that I’ve been accused of that just simply did not happen.
1:28:29 And I can’t say, and I don’t think it would be right for me to say, “Well, everything
1:28:37 that’s ever been, I’ve been accused of is true because we’ve now proved that it isn’t
1:28:41 and it wasn’t, but I am perfectly willing to accept that I had behaviors that were wrong
1:28:49 and that I shouldn’t have done and I am regretful for.”
1:28:55 I think that also speaks to a dark side of fame.
1:29:00 The sense I got is that there are some people, potentially a lot of people, trying to make
1:29:06 friends with you in order to get roles, in order to advance their career.
1:29:10 So not you using them, but they trying to use you.
1:29:18 What’s that like?
1:29:19 How do you know if somebody likes you for you for Kevin or likes you for, like you said
1:29:29 you’re romantic, you see a person and you’re like, “I like this person,” and they seem
1:29:35 to like you.
1:29:36 How do you know if they like you for you?
1:29:39 Well, to some degree, I would say that I have been able to trust my instincts on that and
1:29:46 know that I’ve most of the time been right.
1:29:51 But obviously in the last number of years, not just with people who’ve accused me, but
1:29:56 just also people in my own industry, to realize that, “Oh, I thought we had a friendship,
1:30:01 but I guess that was about an inch thick and not what I thought it was.”
1:30:08 But look, one shouldn’t be surprised by that.
1:30:12 I have to also say, you said a little while ago that the world had canceled me and I have
1:30:18 to disagree with you.
1:30:20 I have to disagree because for seven years, I’ve been stopped by people sometimes every
1:30:28 day, sometimes multiple, multiple times a day.
1:30:32 And the conversations that I have with people, the generosity that they share, the kindness
1:30:37 that they show, and how much they want to know when I’m getting back to work tells me that
1:30:44 while there may be a very loud minority, there is a quieter majority.
1:30:51 In the industry, have you been betrayed in life and how do you not let that make you
1:30:58 cynical?
1:31:04 I think betrayal is a really interesting word.
1:31:09 But I think if you’re going to be betrayed, it has to be by those who truly know you.
1:31:16 And I can tell you that I have not been betrayed.
1:31:18 That’s a beautiful way to put it.
1:31:23 For the times you cross the line, do you take responsibility for the wrongs you’ve done?
1:31:29 Yes.
1:31:31 Are you sorry to the people you may have hurt emotionally?
1:31:34 Yes.
1:31:38 And I have spoken to many of them privately, which is where a man should be made.
1:31:47 Were they able to start finding forgiveness?
1:31:50 Absolutely.
1:31:52 Some of the most moving conversations that I have had when I was determined to take accountability
1:32:03 have been those people who said, “Thank you so much, and I think I can forgive you now.”
1:32:12 If you got a chance to talk to the Kevin Spacey of 30 to 40 years ago, what would you tell
1:32:19 him to change about his ways?
1:32:22 How would you do it?
1:32:23 What would be your approach?
1:32:24 Would you be nice about it?
1:32:26 Would you smack him around?
1:32:28 I think if I were to go back that far, I probably would have found a way to not have been as
1:32:36 concerned about revealing my sexuality and hiding that for as long as I did.
1:32:42 I think that had a lot to do with confusion and a lot to do with mistrust, both my own
1:32:52 and other people’s.
1:32:54 For most of your life, you were not open with the public about being gay.
1:32:59 What was the hardest thing about keeping who you love a secret?
1:33:07 That I didn’t find the right moment of celebration to be able to share that.
1:33:17 There must be a thing that weighs on you to not be able to fully celebrate your love.
1:33:28 Ian McKellen said, after he was 49 when he came out, 27 years, he’d been a professional
1:33:37 actor being in the closet, and he said he felt it was like he was living a part of his
1:33:44 life not being truthful, and that he felt that it affected his work when he did come
1:33:52 out because he no longer felt like he had anything to hide.
1:33:56 I absolutely believe that that is what my experience has been and will continue to be.
1:34:05 I am sorry about the way I came out, but Evan and I had already had the conversation.
1:34:14 I had already decided to come out, and so it wasn’t like, “Oh, I was forced to come
1:34:19 out,” but it was something I decided to do.
1:34:23 By the way, much against Evan’s advice, I came out in that statement, and he wishes
1:34:28 that I had not done so.
1:34:29 Yeah, you made a statement when the initial accusation happened.
1:34:37 There could be, up there, one of the worst social media posts of all time, two for one.
1:34:49 Don’t hold back.
1:34:50 No, come on.
1:34:51 Really tell me how you feel.
1:34:52 The first part, you kind of implicitly admitted to doing something bad, which was later shown
1:34:59 and proved completely to never have happened, and it was a lie.
1:35:03 No, I basically said that I didn’t remember what this person was that Anthony Rapp was
1:35:09 claiming from 31 years before.
1:35:13 I had no memory of it, but if it had happened, if this embarrassing moment had happened,
1:35:17 then I would owe him an apology.
1:35:19 That was what I said, and then I said, “And while I’m at it, I think I’ll come out.”
1:35:24 It was definitely not the greatest coming-out party ever, I will admit that.
1:35:28 From the public perception, the first part of that, so first of all, the second part
1:35:32 is a horrible way to come out, yes, we all agree, and then the first part, from the public
1:35:38 viewpoint, they see guilt in that, which also is tragic because at least that particular
1:35:46 accusation, and it’s a very dramatic one, it’s a $40 million lawsuit, it’s a big deal,
1:35:51 and an underage person was shown to be false.
1:35:54 But you’re melding two things together, the lawsuit didn’t happen until 2020, and then
1:36:00 it didn’t get to court until 2022.
1:36:02 We’re back in 2017 when it was just an accusation he made in BuzzFeed Magazine.
1:36:08 Look, I was backed into a corner.
1:36:13 When someone says, “You were so drunk, you won’t remember this thing happened,” what’s
1:36:19 your first instinct?
1:36:20 Is your first instinct to say this person’s a liar, or is your first instinct to go, “What?
1:36:26 I was, what, 31 years at a party I don’t even remember throwing?”
1:36:32 Obviously, a lot of investigation happened after that in which we were then able to prove
1:36:37 in that court case that it had never occurred.
1:36:40 But at the moment, I was sort of being taught, I couldn’t push back, you have to be kind,
1:36:48 you can’t, I think, even to me now, none of it sounds right, but I don’t know that I could
1:36:55 have said anything that would have been satisfactory to anybody.
1:37:00 Okay.
1:37:01 There’s an almost convincing explanation for the worst social media post of all time.
1:37:07 I almost accept it.
1:37:08 I’m really surprised.
1:37:09 I guess you haven’t read a lot of media posts because I can’t believe that’s the actual
1:37:13 worst one.
1:37:14 This is beautifully bad, is how bad that social media post is.
1:37:18 As you mentioned, Liam Neeson and Sharon Stone came out in support of you recently speaking
1:37:24 to your character.
1:37:27 A lot of people who know you, and some of whom I know, who have worked with you privately
1:37:33 show support for you, but are afraid to speak up publicly, what do you make of that?
1:37:38 I mean, to me personally, this just makes me sad because perhaps that’s the nature of
1:37:42 the industry that it’s difficult to do that, but I just wish there would be a little bit
1:37:49 more courage in the world.
1:37:50 I don’t think it’s about the industry.
1:37:52 I think it’s about our time.
1:37:53 I guess the time that we’re in, and people are very afraid.
1:37:59 Just afraid, just a general fear of me as a pop-up.
1:38:02 No, they’re literally afraid that they’re going to get canceled if they stand up for
1:38:08 someone who has been.
1:38:12 And I think it’s, I mean, we’ve seen this many times in history.
1:38:17 This is not the first time it’s happened.
1:38:20 So as you said, your darkest moment in 2017, when all of this went down, one of the things
1:38:28 that happened is you were no longer in the house of cards for the last season.
1:38:34 Let’s go to the beginning of that show.
1:38:37 One of the greatest TV series of all time, a dark, fascinating character in Frank Underwood,
1:38:43 a ruthless, cunning, borderline, evil politician.
1:38:47 What are some interesting aspects to the process you went through for becoming Frank Underwood?
1:38:55 Maybe Richard III, there’s a lot of elements there in your performance that maybe inspired
1:39:01 that character.
1:39:02 Well.
1:39:03 Is that fair or no?
1:39:04 I’ll give you one very interesting specific education that I got in doing Richard III
1:39:20 and closing that show at BAM in March of 2012 and two months later started shooting house
1:39:28 of cards.
1:39:32 There is something called direct address.
1:39:37 In Shakespeare, you have Hamlet talks to the world.
1:39:43 But when Shakespeare wrote Richard III, it was the first time he created something called
1:39:49 direct address, which is the character looks directly at each person close by.
1:39:59 It is a different kind of sharing than when a character is doing a monologue, opening
1:40:06 of Henry IV.
1:40:11 And while there are some people who believe that direct address was invented in Ferris
1:40:14 Bueller, it wasn’t.
1:40:16 It was Shakespeare who invented it.
1:40:19 So I had just had this experience every night in theaters all over the world, seeing how
1:40:28 people reacted to becoming a co-conspirator because that’s what it’s about.
1:40:38 And what I tried to do and what Fincher really helped me with in those beginning days was
1:40:48 how to look in that camera and imagine I was talking to my best friend.
1:40:58 Because you’re sharing the secret of the darkness of how this game is played with that best
1:41:02 friend.
1:41:03 Yeah, and there were many times when I suppose the writers thought I was crazy where I would
1:41:10 see a script and I would see like this moment where this direct address would happen and
1:41:14 say all this stuff and I’d go, when we do a read through of the script, I go, “I don’t
1:41:19 think I need to say any of that.”
1:41:21 And they were like, “What do you mean?”
1:41:23 I said, “Well, the audience knows all of that.
1:41:25 All I have to do is look.
1:41:27 They know exactly what’s going on.
1:41:29 I don’t need to say a thing.”
1:41:32 So I was often cutting dialogue because it just wasn’t needed.
1:41:38 Because that relationship that I’d learned that I’d experienced doing Richard III was
1:41:45 so extraordinary where I literally watched people.
1:41:49 They were like, “Oh, I’m in on the thing and this is so awesome.”
1:41:53 And then suddenly he killed the kids.
1:41:55 He killed those kids in the tower.
1:41:57 Oh, maybe it’s not so.
1:41:58 And you literally would watch them start to reverse their having had such a great time
1:42:05 with Richard III and the first three acts and I thought, “This is going to happen in
1:42:12 this show.”
1:42:14 If this intimacy can actually land and I think just think there was some brilliant writing
1:42:28 and we always attempted to do it in one take, no matter how long something was, we would
1:42:33 try to do it in one take, the direct addresses, so there was never a cut.
1:42:38 When we went out on locations, we started to then find ways to cut it and make it slightly
1:42:45 broader.
1:42:46 That’s interesting because you’re doing a bunch of with both Richard III and Frank
1:42:50 Underwood, a bunch of dark, borderline, evil things and then I guess the idea is you’re
1:42:57 going to be losing the audience and then you win them back over with the addresses.
1:43:02 Once the remarkable thing is against their instincts and their better sense of what they
1:43:10 should and should not do, they still rallied around Frank Underwood.
1:43:15 And I saw even with the documentary, the glimmers of that with Richard III, I mean, you were
1:43:22 seducing the audience.
1:43:23 Like, there was such a chemistry between you and the audience on stage.
1:43:27 Yeah.
1:43:28 Yeah.
1:43:29 What is that?
1:43:30 Well, in that production, that’s absolutely true.
1:43:31 Also, Richard is one of the weirder, weird, I mean by weird, was an early play of Shakespeare’s.
1:43:44 And he’s basically never offstage.
1:43:48 I mean, I remember when we did the first run-through, I had no idea what the next scene was every
1:43:53 time I came offstage.
1:43:54 I had no idea what was next.
1:43:56 They literally had to drag me from one place to another scene.
1:43:58 Now it’s the scene with Hastings.
1:44:03 But I now understand these wonderful stories that you can read in old books about Shakespeare’s
1:44:09 time, that actors grabbed Shakespeare around the cuff and punched him and threw him up
1:44:16 against the wall.
1:44:17 So you ever write a part like this again, I’m going to kill you.
1:44:20 And that’s why in later plays, he started to have a pageant happened and then a wedding
1:44:26 happened.
1:44:27 And the main character was offstage resting because the actor had said, “You can’t do
1:44:31 this to us.
1:44:32 There’s no breaks.”
1:44:33 And it’s true.
1:44:35 There’s very few breaks in Richard III.
1:44:37 You’re onstage most of the time.
1:44:39 The comedic aspect of Richard III and Frank Underwood, is that a component that helps
1:44:45 bring out the full complexity of the darkness that is Frank Underwood?
1:44:51 I certainly can’t take credit for Shakespeare having written something that is funny or
1:44:59 Bo Williman and his team to have written something that is funny, is fundamentally funny.
1:45:05 It just depends on how I interpret it.
1:45:12 That’s one of the great things, why we love.
1:45:17 In a year’s time, we can see five different Hamlets.
1:45:20 We can see four Richard IIIs.
1:45:23 We can see two Richard IIs.
1:45:25 That’s part of the thrill that we don’t own these parts.
1:45:29 We borrow them and we interpret them.
1:45:33 And what Ian McKellen might do with a role could be completely different from what I
1:45:38 might do because of the way we perceive it.
1:45:42 And also, very often in terms of going for humor, it’s very often a director will say,
1:45:48 “Why don’t you say that with a bit of irony?
1:45:50 Why don’t you try that with a bit of boba?”
1:45:53 Yeah, there’s often like a rye smile, a line that jumps to me when you’re talking about
1:45:59 Claire in the early, maybe first episode even, “I love that woman more than sharks love blood.”
1:46:14 I mean, I guess there’s a lot of ways to read that line, but the way you read it had both
1:46:19 humor, had legitimate affection, had all the ambition and narcissism, all of that mixed
1:46:26 up together.
1:46:27 I also think that one should just acknowledge that where he was from, there is something
1:46:34 that happens when you do an accent.
1:46:38 And in fact, sometimes when I would say to Bo or one of the other writers, “This is really
1:46:45 good and I love the idea,” but it rhythmically doesn’t help.
1:46:48 I need at least two more words to rhythmically make this work in his accent because it just
1:46:57 doesn’t scan.
1:47:00 And that’s not iambic pentameter.
1:47:01 I’m not talking about that.
1:47:03 There is that as well in Shakespeare, but there was sometimes when it’s too many lines,
1:47:08 it’s not enough lines in order for me to make this work for the way he speaks, the way he
1:47:14 sounds and what that accent does to emphasis.
1:47:20 How much of that character in terms of the musicality of the way he speaks is Bill Clinton?
1:47:28 Not really at all.
1:47:29 I mean, Bill Clinton, he had a way of talking, that he was very slow and he felt your pain.
1:47:41 But Frank Underwood was a deeper, more direct and less poetic in the way that Clinton would
1:47:52 talk.
1:47:53 I’ll tell you this Clinton story that you like.
1:47:59 So we decided to do a performance of “The Iceman” cometh for the Democratic Party on
1:48:04 Broadway and the president is going to come.
1:48:06 He’s going to see this four and a half hour play and then we’re going to do this event
1:48:09 afterward.
1:48:10 And a couple weeks before we’re going to do this event, someone at the White House calls
1:48:15 and says, “Listen, it’s very unusual to get the president for like six and a half hours,
1:48:21 so we’re suggesting that the president come and see the first act and then he goes.”
1:48:28 And I knew what was happening.
1:48:30 Now first of all, Clinton knows this play.
1:48:33 He knows what this play is about.
1:48:36 And I, you know, as gently as I could, said, “Well, if the president is thinking of leaving
1:48:42 at intermission, then I’m afraid we’re going to have to cancel the event.”
1:48:46 There’s just no way that, so anyway, then I knew, “Oh, no, it’s fine, it’s fine.”
1:48:50 Now I know what was happening.
1:48:51 What was happening was that someone had read the play and they were quite concerned.
1:48:56 And I’ll tell you why.
1:48:58 There’s the plays about this character that I portrayed named Hickey.
1:49:03 And in the course of the play, as things get more and more revealed, you realize that this
1:49:07 man that I’m playing has been a flanderer and he’s cheated on his wife quite a lot.
1:49:13 And by the end of the play, he is arrested and taken off because he ended up ending his
1:49:21 wife’s life because she forgave him too much and he couldn’t live with it.
1:49:27 So now imagine this.
1:49:28 There’s 2,000 people at the Brooks Actonson Theater watching President Clinton watching
1:49:34 this play.
1:49:37 And at the end of the night, we take our curtain call.
1:49:40 They bring out the presidential podium.
1:49:42 Bill Clinton stands up there and he says, “Well, I suppose we should all thank Kevin and this
1:49:52 extraordinary company of actors for giving us all way too much to think about.”
1:50:01 And the audience fell over and laughed her and then he gave a great speech.
1:50:09 And I thought, “That was a pretty good way to handle that.”
1:50:13 On that way, him and Frank Arnold would share like a charisma.
1:50:16 There are certain presidents that just have politicians that just have this charisma.
1:50:20 You can’t stop listening to them.
1:50:23 Some of it is the accent, but some of it is some other magical thing.
1:50:29 When I was starting to do research, I wanted to meet with the whip, Kevin McCarthy.
1:50:38 And he wouldn’t meet with me until I called his office back and said, “Tell him I’m playing
1:50:44 a Democrat, not a Republican.”
1:50:48 And then he met with me and he was helpful.
1:50:52 He took me to whip meetings.
1:50:55 Politicians, so you worked with David Fincher, he was the executive producer, but you also
1:51:03 directed the first two episodes.
1:51:06 High level, what was it like working with him again?
1:51:10 In which ways do you think he helped guide you and the show to become the great show
1:51:17 that it was?
1:51:20 I give him a huge amount of the credit and not just for what he established, but the
1:51:34 fact that every director after stayed within that world.
1:51:41 I think that’s why the series had a very consistent feeling to it.
1:51:45 It was like watching a very long movie.
1:51:50 The style, where the camera went, what it did, what it didn’t do, how we used this,
1:51:55 how we used that, how we didn’t do this, there were things that he laid the foundation for
1:52:01 that we managed to maintain pretty much until Bo Williman left the show.
1:52:10 They got rid of Fincher and I was sort of the last man standing in terms of fighting
1:52:17 again.
1:52:18 Netflix had never had any creative control at all.
1:52:21 We had complete creative control, but over time they started to get themselves involved
1:52:27 because look, this is what happens to networks.
1:52:30 They never made a television show before ever, and then four years later, they were the best.
1:52:38 Then you’re going to get suggestions about casting and about writing and about who’s
1:52:42 music and scenes.
1:52:43 There was a considerable amount of pushback that I had to do when they started to get
1:52:51 involved in ways that I thought was affecting the quality of the show.
1:52:55 What are those battles like?
1:52:56 I heard that there was a battle of the execs like you mentioned early on about your name
1:53:03 not being on the billing for Seven.
1:53:06 I heard that there’s battles about the ending of Seven, which was really, well, it was pretty
1:53:14 dark.
1:53:15 What’s that battle like?
1:53:18 How often does that happen?
1:53:19 How do you win that battle?
1:53:22 It feels like there’s a line where the networks or the execs are really afraid of crossing
1:53:29 that line into this strange, uncomfortable place, and then the great directors and great
1:53:37 actors kind of flirt with that line.
1:53:41 It can happen in different ways.
1:53:43 I remember one argument we had was we had specifically shot a scene so that there would
1:53:51 be no score in that scene so that there was no music.
1:53:54 It was just two people talking, and then we end up seeing a cut where they’ve decided
1:54:01 to put music in, and it is against everything that scene is supposed to be about, and you
1:54:07 have to go and say, “Guys, this was intentional.
1:54:10 We did not want score, and now you’ve added score because you think it’s too quiet.
1:54:14 You think our audience can’t listen to two people talk for two and a half minutes?”
1:54:19 This show has proved anything.
1:54:20 This proves that people have patience, and they’re willing to watch an entire season
1:54:24 over a weekend.
1:54:26 There are those kind of arguments that can happen.
1:54:35 Different arguments on different levels sometimes have to do with, “Look, go back to the Godfather.
1:54:41 They wanted to fire Pacino because they didn’t see anything happening.
1:54:44 They saw nothing happening, so they wanted to fire Pacino.”
1:54:49 Then finally, Coppola thought, “I’ll shoot the scene where he kills the police commissioner,
1:54:54 and they’ll do that scene now.”
1:54:56 That was the first scene where they went, “Yeah, actually, there’s something going on
1:54:59 there.”
1:55:00 So, Pacino kept the role.
1:55:02 Do you think that Godfather’s when Pacino was like the Pacino we know was born, or is
1:55:08 that more like there’s the character that really over the top, in Central Woman, there’s
1:55:14 like stages, I suppose.
1:55:15 Yeah, of course.
1:55:16 Look, I think that we can’t forget that Pacino is also an animal of the theater.
1:55:22 He does a lot of plays, and he started off doing plays.
1:55:28 Movies where Panic and Needle Park was his first, and yeah, I think there’s that period
1:55:34 of time when he was doing some incredible parts and incredible movies.
1:55:40 When I did a series called Wise Guy, I got cast on a Thursday, and I flew up to Vancouver
1:55:45 on a Saturday, and I started shooting on Monday.
1:55:48 And all I had time to do was watch The Godfather in Superco, and then I went to work.
1:55:53 Would you say, ridiculous question, Godfather’s greatest film of all time?
1:55:59 Well, certainly, yes, yes.
1:56:05 But I also, look, I’m allowed to change my opinion.
1:56:09 I can next week say it’s Lawrence of Arabia, or a week after that I can say Sullivan’s
1:56:14 Travels.
1:56:15 I mean, that’s the wonderful thing about movies, and particularly great movies, is when you
1:56:20 see them again, it’s like singing them for the first time, and you pick up things that
1:56:25 you didn’t see the last time.
1:56:27 And for that day, you fall in love with that movie, you might even say to a friend that
1:56:33 that is the greatest movie of all time.
1:56:34 And also, I think it’s the degree with which directors are daring.
1:56:39 I mean, Kubrick decided to cast one actor to play three major roles in Dr. Strangelove.
1:56:50 I mean, who has the balls to do that today?
1:56:56 I was going to mention when we were talking about Seven that just if you’re looking at
1:57:01 the greatest performances portrayals of murderers, so obviously, like I mentioned, handle the
1:57:08 lectern in Silence of the Lambs, that’s up there.
1:57:10 Seven, to me, is like competing for first place with Silence of the Lambs.
1:57:14 But then there’s a different one with Kubrick and Jack Nicholson, right, with the shine.
1:57:23 And there’s, as opposed to a murderer who’s always been a murderer, here’s a person like
1:57:30 an American beauty who becomes that, who descends into madness.
1:57:36 I read also that Jack Nicholson improvised here’s Johnny in that scene.
1:57:40 I believe that.
1:57:41 That’s a very different performance than yours in Seven.
1:57:45 What do you make of that performance?
1:57:48 Nicholson’s always been such an incredible actor because he has absolutely no shame about
1:57:56 being demonstrative and over-the-top, and he also has no problem playing characters
1:58:01 who are deeply flawed, and he’s interested in that.
1:58:05 I have a pretty good Nicholson story, though.
1:58:07 Nobody knows.
1:58:08 You also have a pretty good Nicholson impression, but what’s the story?
1:58:13 Story is, the story was told to me by a sound man, Dennis Maitland, who’s a great, great,
1:58:20 great guy.
1:58:21 He said he was very excited because he got on Pritzze’s Honor, which was Jack Nicholson,
1:58:27 Angelica Houston, directed by John Houston.
1:58:29 He said, “I was so excited. It was my first day on the movie, and I get told to go into
1:58:34 Mr. Nicholson’s trailer and mic him up for the first scene, so I knock on the trailer
1:58:40 door and I hear, ‘Yes!’ and, ‘Come on in!’
1:58:44 I come inside, and Mr. Nicholson is changing out of his regular clothes, and he’s going
1:58:51 to put on his costume, and so I’m setting up the mic, and I’m getting ready.
1:58:55 I said, ‘Mr. Nicholson, I just wanted to tell you, I’m extremely excited to be working
1:59:00 with you again.
1:59:01 It’s a great pleasure,’ and Jack goes, ‘Did we work together before?’
1:59:05 And he says, ‘Yes, yes, we did,’ and he goes, ‘What film did we do together?’
1:59:11 He says, ‘Well, we did Missouri Breaks,’ and Nicholson goes, ‘Oh, my God!
1:59:16 Missouri Breaks!
1:59:17 Jesus Christ!
1:59:18 We were out of our minds on that film.
1:59:20 Holy shit!
1:59:21 Jesus Christ!
1:59:22 Wonder I’m Alive!
1:59:23 My God!
1:59:24 There was so much drugs going on, and we were stoned out of our minds.
1:59:28 Holy shit!’
1:59:29 And just then, he folds the pants that he’s just taken off over his arm, and an eighth
1:59:35 of coke drops out on the floor.
1:59:40 Dennis looks at it.
1:59:43 Nicholson looks at it.
1:59:45 Jack goes, ‘Have more in these pants since Missouri Breaks.’
1:59:50 Man, I love that guy.
1:59:54 John apologetically himself.
1:59:56 Oh yeah.
1:59:58 Your impression of him at the AFI was just great.
2:00:01 Well, that was for Mike Nichols.
2:00:04 Oh yeah, he had a big impact on your career.
2:00:07 It’s really important.
2:00:08 Can you talk about him?
2:00:11 What role did he play in your life?
2:00:12 I think it was, yeah, it was 1984.
2:00:17 I went into audition for the national tour of a play called The Real Thing, which Jeremy
2:00:23 Irons and Glenn Close were doing on Broadway that Mr. Nichols had directed, so I went
2:00:27 in to read for this character Brody, who was a Scottish character.
2:00:33 And I did the audition, and Mike Nichols comes down the aisle of the theater, and he’s
2:00:38 asking me questions about where’d you go to school, and what have you been doing.
2:00:41 And I’d just come back from doing a bunch of years of regional theater and different
2:00:45 theaters, so I was in New York, and meeting Mike Nichols was just incredible.
2:00:50 So Mr. Nichols went, “Have you seen the other play that I directed up the block called Hurley
2:00:56 Burley?”
2:00:57 And I said, “No, I haven’t.”
2:00:58 He says, “Why not?”
2:01:00 I said, “I can’t afford a Broadway ticket.”
2:01:03 He said, “We can arrange that.
2:01:04 I’d like you to go see that play, and then I’d like you to come in next week and audition
2:01:07 for that.”
2:01:08 And I was like, “Okay.”
2:01:11 So I went to see Hurley Burley, William Hurt, Harvick Eitel, Chris Walken, Candace Bergen,
2:01:20 Cynthia Nixon, Jerry Stiller, and I watched this play.
2:01:27 It’s a play David Ray play about Hollywood, and this is crazy.
2:01:31 I mean, Bill Hurt was, like, unbelievable, and it was extraordinary, Chris Walken.
2:01:38 So there’s this Harvick Eitel, Walken came in later, Harvick Eitel’s playing this part.
2:01:44 And I come in and I audition for it, and Nichols says, “I want you to understudy Harvick
2:01:49 Eitel.
2:01:50 I want you to understudy Phil.”
2:01:51 And I’m like, “Phil?”
2:01:53 I mean, Harvick Eitel is, like, in his 40s.
2:01:56 He looks like he can beat the shit out of everybody on stage.
2:01:58 I’m just, like, 24-year-old, and Nichols said, “It’s all about attitude.
2:02:05 If you believe you can beat the shit out of everybody on stage, the audience will, too.”
2:02:11 So I then started to learn Phil, and the way it works when you’re an understudy, unless
2:02:18 you’re in name, they don’t let you rehearse on the stage.
2:02:21 You just rehearse in a rehearsal room, but I used to sneak onto the stage and rehearse
2:02:26 and try to figure out where the props were, and, yeah, yeah.
2:02:28 Anyway, one day I get a call.
2:02:32 You’re going on today, it’s Phil.
2:02:36 So I went on.
2:02:38 Nichols is told by Peter Lawrence, who’s the stage manager.
2:02:42 Spacey’s going on as Phil.
2:02:43 So Nichols comes down and watches the second act, comes backstage.
2:02:47 He says, “That was really good.”
2:02:50 “How soon could you learn Mickey?”
2:02:55 Mickey was the role that Ron Silver was playing, that Chris Walken also played.
2:03:01 I said, “I don’t know, maybe a couple of weeks?”
2:03:05 He goes, “Learn Mickey, too.”
2:03:08 So I learned Mickey.
2:03:11 And then one day, I’m told, “You’re going on tomorrow night as Mickey.”
2:03:16 Nichols comes, sees the second act, comes backstage, says, “That was really good.
2:03:23 I mean, that was really funny.
2:03:25 How soon could you learn Eddie?”
2:03:29 And so I became like the pinch-hitter on Hurley Burley.
2:03:32 I learned all the male parts, including Jerry Stillers, although I never went on as Jerry
2:03:36 Stillers’ part.
2:03:39 And then I left the play, and I guess about two months later I get this phone call from
2:03:46 Mike Nichols.
2:03:47 He’s like, “Kevin, how are you?”
2:03:49 And I’m like, “I’m fine.
2:03:51 What can I do for you?”
2:03:52 He says, “Well, I’m going to make a film this summer with Mandy and Merrill, and there’s
2:03:57 a role I’d like you to come in and audition for.”
2:04:01 So I went in, auditioned, cast me as this mugger on a subway.
2:04:08 Then there’s this whole upheaval that happens because he then doesn’t continue with Mandy
2:04:14 Pitemkin, Mandy leaves the movie, and he asks Jack Nicholson to come in and replace Mandy
2:04:20 Pitemkin.
2:04:21 So now, I had no scenes with him, but I’m in a movie with Jack Nicholson and Merrill
2:04:27 Streep.
2:04:28 And my first scene in this movie, which I shot on my birthday, July 26th of ’85, I got
2:04:36 to wink at Merrill Streep in this scene, and I was so nervous.
2:04:40 I literally couldn’t wink, Nicholson had to calm me down and help me wink.
2:04:48 But that became my very first film.
2:04:52 And he was incredible, and he let me come and watch when they were shooting scenes.
2:04:56 I wasn’t in, and I remember ending up one day in the makeup trailer.
2:05:01 On the same day we were working, Jack and me, we had no scene together, but I remember
2:05:06 him coming in, and they put him down in the chair, and they put frozen cucumbers on his
2:05:10 eyes and did his neck, and then they raised him up and did his face, and then I remember
2:05:16 Nicholson went like this, looked in the mirror and he went, “Another day, another $50,000.”
2:05:28 And walked out of the trailer.
2:05:30 Well, what was Christopher walking like?
2:05:33 Oh.
2:05:34 So he’s a theater guy, too.
2:05:36 Oh, yeah.
2:05:37 He started out as a course boy, dancer.
2:05:40 Well, I can see that.
2:05:42 Yeah.
2:05:43 The guy tells how to move.
2:05:44 Well, it was fun.
2:05:45 I know I’ve been walking a long time, and I did a Saturday Live where we did these Star
2:05:50 Wars auditions.
2:05:53 I did Chris Walken as Hans.
2:05:55 It’s so good.
2:05:56 And I’ll never forget this.
2:05:58 I was in Los Angeles about two weeks after, and I was at Chateau Marmal, there’s some
2:06:03 party happening at Chateau Marmal, and I saw Chris Walken come out onto the balcony, and
2:06:08 I was like, “Oh, it’s Chris Walken.”
2:06:11 And he walked up to me and he went, “Kevin, I saw you little sketch.
2:06:17 It was funny.
2:06:18 Ha-ha.”
2:06:19 Oh, man.
2:06:20 It was a really good sketch, and that guy, there’s certain people that are truly unique,
2:06:32 and unapologetic, continue being that throughout their whole career.
2:06:38 The way they talk, the musicality of how they talk, how they are, their way of being,
2:06:42 he’s that.
2:06:43 Yeah.
2:06:44 And it somehow works.
2:06:45 His watch.
2:06:46 Yeah.
2:06:47 I mean, it works in so many different contexts.
2:06:53 He plays like a mobster in true romance, and it’s like genius.
2:06:57 That’s genius.
2:06:58 But he could be anything.
2:06:59 He could be soft.
2:07:00 He could be a badass.
2:07:01 All of it.
2:07:02 And he’s always Christopher Walken, but somehow works for all these different characters.
2:07:09 So I guess we were talking about House of Cards like two hours ago before we took a
2:07:14 tangent upon a tangent, but there’s a moment in episode one where President Walker broke
2:07:20 his promise to Frank Underwood that he would make him a Secretary of State.
2:07:26 Was this when the monster in Frank was born, or was the monster always there?
2:07:31 The sort of, for you looking at that character, was there an idealistic notion to him that
2:07:38 there’s loyalty and that broke him, or did he always know that there is, this whole world
2:07:44 is about manipulation and do anything to get power?
2:07:48 Well, I mean, it might have been the first moment an audience saw him be betrayed, but
2:07:54 it certainly was not the first betrayal he had experienced.
2:07:57 And once you start to get to know him and learn about his life and learn about his father
2:08:01 and learn about his friends and learn about their relationship and learn what he was like
2:08:08 even as a cadet, I think you start to realize that this is a man who has very strong beliefs
2:08:18 about loyalty.
2:08:21 And so it wasn’t the first.
2:08:23 It was just the first moment that in terms of the storyline that’s being built, Night
2:08:30 Takes King was the name of our production company.
2:08:33 Yeah.
2:08:34 What do you think motivated him at that moment and throughout the show?
2:08:40 Was it all about power and also legacy?
2:08:43 Or was there some small part underneath it all where he wanted to actually do good in
2:08:50 the world?
2:08:51 No.
2:08:52 I think power is a afterthought.
2:08:57 What he loved more than anything was being able to predict how human beings would react.
2:09:05 He was a behavioral psychologist and he could know like he was 17 moves ahead in the chess
2:09:14 game.
2:09:16 He could know if he did this at this moment that eventually this would happen.
2:09:23 He was able to be predictive and was usually right.
2:09:30 He knew just how far he needed to push someone to get them to do what he needed them to do
2:09:35 in order to make the next step work.
2:09:40 You’ve played a bunch of evil characters.
2:09:43 Well you call them evil, but the reason I say that and I don’t mean to be snarky about
2:09:49 it, but the reason I say it that way is because I never judge the people I play.
2:09:57 The people that I have played or that any actor has played don’t necessarily view themselves
2:10:02 as this label.
2:10:04 It’s easy to say, but that’s not the way I can think.
2:10:11 I cannot judge a character I play and then play them well.
2:10:17 I have to be free of judgment.
2:10:21 I have to just play them and let the cards drop where they may and let an audience judge.
2:10:27 I mean the fact that you use that word is perfectly fine.
2:10:32 But it’s like people asking me, “Was I really from K-Pax or not?”
2:10:36 It just entirely depends on your perspective.
2:10:40 Do roles like that, like Frank Underwood, like a lesser from American beauty, they change
2:10:52 you psychologically as a person?
2:10:55 So walking around in the skin of these characters, these complex characters with very different
2:11:05 moral systems?
2:11:11 I absolutely believe that wandering around in someone else’s ideas, in someone else’s
2:11:20 clothes, in someone else’s shoes teaches you enormous empathy and that goes to the heart
2:11:32 of not judging.
2:11:35 I have found that I have been so moved by, I mean look, yes, you’ve identified the darker
2:11:43 characters.
2:11:44 But I’ve played Clarence Darrow three times.
2:11:48 I’ve played a play called National Anthems.
2:11:50 I’ve done movies like Recount, I’ve done films like The Ref, I’ve done films that doesn’t
2:11:59 exist in any of those characters, those qualities, pay it forward.
2:12:05 And so it is incredible to be able to embrace those things that I admire and that are like
2:12:17 me and those things that I don’t admire and aren’t like me.
2:12:21 But I have to put them on an equal footing and say, “I have to just play them as best
2:12:27 I can and not decide to wield judgment over them.”
2:12:36 Without judgment.
2:12:37 Without judgment.
2:12:39 In Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn famously writes about the line between good
2:12:45 and evil and that it runs to the heart of every man.
2:12:49 So the full paragraph there, when he talks about the line, “During the life of any heart,
2:12:58 this line keeps changing place.
2:13:01 Sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough
2:13:06 space for good to flourish.
2:13:08 One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally
2:13:14 different human being.
2:13:16 At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood, but his name doesn’t
2:13:22 change.
2:13:23 And to that name, we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.
2:13:27 What do you think about this note that we’re all capable of good and evil?
2:13:34 And throughout life, that line moves and shifts throughout the day, throughout every hour?
2:13:40 Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I’ve been focused on very succinctly is the idea
2:13:51 that every day is an opportunity.
2:13:54 It’s an opportunity to make better decisions, to learn and to grow.
2:14:09 And I also think that, look, I grew up not knowing if my parents loved me, particularly
2:14:20 my father.
2:14:25 I never had a sense that I was loved and that stayed with me my whole life.
2:14:35 And when I think back at who my father was and more succinctly who he became, it was
2:14:49 a gradual and slow and sad development.
2:15:00 When I’ve gone back, and now I’ve looked at diaries my father kept and albums he kept,
2:15:07 particularly when he was a medic in the U.S. Army, served our country with distinction.
2:15:16 When the war was over and they went to Germany, the things my father said, the things that
2:15:23 he wrote, the things that he believed were as patriotic as any American soldier who
2:15:28 had ever served.
2:15:32 But then when he came back to America and he had a dream of being a journalist or his
2:15:39 big hope was that he was going to be the great American novelist, he wanted to be a creative
2:15:45 novelist.
2:15:46 And so he sat in this office and he wrote for 45 years and never published anything.
2:15:57 And somewhere along the way, in order to make money, he became what they call a technical
2:16:03 procedure writer, which the best way to describe that is that if you built the F-16 aircraft,
2:16:12 my father would have written the manual to tell you how to do it.
2:16:16 I mean as boring, as technical, as tedious as you can imagine.
2:16:22 And so somewhere in the 60s and into the 70s, my father fell in with groups of people and
2:16:31 individuals, pretend intellectuals who started to give him reasons why he was not successful
2:16:39 as a white Aryan man in the United States.
2:16:45 And over time, my father became a white supremacist.
2:16:56 And I cannot tell you the amount of times as a young boy that my father would sit me
2:17:04 down and lecture me for hours and hours and hours about his fucked up ideas of America,
2:17:18 of prejudice, of white supremacy.
2:17:22 And thank God for my sister who said, “Don’t listen to a thing he says, he’s out of his
2:17:28 mind.”
2:17:29 And even though I was young, I knew everything he was saying was against people, and I loved
2:17:35 people.
2:17:39 I had so many wonderful friends.
2:17:43 My best friend, Mike, who’s still my close friend to this day, I was afraid to bring
2:17:51 him to my house because I was afraid that my father would find out he was Jewish.
2:17:58 Or that my father would leave his office door open and someone would see his Nazi flag or
2:18:03 his pictures of Hitler or Nazi books, or what he might say.
2:18:10 So when I found theater in the eighth grade, and debate club, and choir, and festivals,
2:18:25 and plays, and everything I could do to participate in that wouldn’t make me have to come back
2:18:33 home, I did.
2:18:40 And I had to reconcile who he became.
2:18:50 Because the gap between that man who was in the U.S. Army as a medic and the man he became,
2:19:00 I could never fill that gap.
2:19:03 But I’d forgiven him.
2:19:11 But then at the same time, I’ve had to look at my mother and say, “She made excuses for
2:19:17 him.
2:19:18 Oh, he just needs to get it off his chest, or it doesn’t matter, just let him say.”
2:19:25 So while on the outside, I would say, “Oh yeah, my mother loved me, but she didn’t protect
2:19:31 me.”
2:19:36 So was all the stuff that she expressed and all of the attention and all the love that
2:19:45 I felt, was that because I became successful and I was able to fulfill an emptiness that
2:19:52 she’d lived with her whole life with him?
2:19:57 I don’t know, but I’ve had to ask myself those questions over these last years to try
2:20:07 to reconcile that for myself.
2:20:10 And the thing you wanted from them and for them is less hate and more love.
2:20:16 Did your dad say he loves you?
2:20:20 I don’t have any memory of that.
2:20:23 I was in a program and they were showing us an experiment that they’d done with psychologists
2:20:32 and mothers and fathers and their children, and the children were anywhere between six
2:20:35 months and a year, sitting in a little crib.
2:20:39 And the exercise was this.
2:20:41 Parents are playing with the baby right there, toys, yadda yadda, babies laughing at him.
2:20:45 And then the psychologists would say, “Stop,” and the parent would go like this.
2:20:53 And you would then watch for the next two and a half, three minutes, this child trying
2:20:59 to get their parents’ attention in any possible way.
2:21:04 And I remember when I was sitting in this theater watching this, I saw myself.
2:21:13 That was me screaming and reaching out and trying to get my parents’ attention.
2:21:19 That was me.
2:21:20 And that was not something I’d ever remembered before, but I knew that what that baby was
2:21:28 going through.
2:21:32 Is there some elements of politics and maybe the private sector that are captured by the
2:21:41 house of cards?
2:21:43 How true to life do you think that is from everything you’ve seen about politics, from
2:21:48 everything you’ve seen about the politicians of this particular elections?
2:21:56 I heard so many different reactions from politicians about house of cards.
2:22:02 Some would say, “Oh, it’s not like that at all.”
2:22:05 And then others would say, “It’s closer to the truth than anyone wants to admit.”
2:22:10 And I think I fall down on the side of that idea.
2:22:15 I have to interview some world leaders, some big politicians.
2:22:27 In your understanding of trying to become Frank Underwood, what advice would you give
2:22:33 in interviewing Frank Underwood?
2:22:38 How to get it to say anything that’s at all honest?
2:22:41 Well, in Frank’s case, all you have to do is tell him to look into the camera and he’ll
2:22:45 tell you what you want to hear.
2:22:48 That’s the secret.
2:22:49 Unfortunately, we don’t get that look into the mind of a person the way we do with Frank
2:22:53 Underwood in real life, sadly.
2:22:56 Well, but you could say to somebody, “You like the series House of Cards.
2:23:01 I’d love for you to just look into the camera and tell us what’s really going on, what you
2:23:05 really feel about blah, blah, blah.”
2:23:09 That’s a good technique.
2:23:11 I’ll try that with Zelensky with Putin.
2:23:16 What do you hope your legacy as an actor is and as a human being?
2:23:22 People ask me now, “What’s your favorite performance you’ve ever given?”
2:23:29 And my answer is, “I haven’t given it yet.”
2:23:34 So there’s a lot more that I want to be challenged by, be inspired by.
2:23:48 There’s a lot that I don’t know.
2:23:52 There’s a lot I have to learn.
2:23:57 And that is a very exciting place to feel that I’m in.
2:24:04 You know, it’s been interesting because we’re going back, we’re talking, and it’s nice to
2:24:11 go back every now and then, but I’m focused on what’s next.
2:24:19 Do you hope the world forgives you?
2:24:28 People go to church every week to be forgiven.
2:24:33 And I believe that forgiveness and I believe that redemption are beautiful things.
2:24:37 I mean, look, don’t forget, I live in an industry in which there is a tremendous amount of conversation
2:24:45 about redemption from a lot of people who are very serious people in very serious positions,
2:24:53 who believe in it.
2:24:55 I mean, that guy who finally got out of prison, he was wrongly accused, that guy who served
2:25:01 his time and got out of prison.
2:25:04 We see so many people saying, “Let’s find a path for that person.
2:25:09 Let’s help that person rejoin society.”
2:25:14 But there is an odd situation if you’re in the entertainment industry, you’re not offered
2:25:20 that kind of a path.
2:25:22 And I hope that the fear that people are experiencing will eventually subside and common-sense will
2:25:32 get back to the table.
2:25:36 If it does, do you think you have another Oscar-worthy performance in you?
2:25:40 Listen, if it would piss off Jack Lemmon again for me to win a third time, I absolutely
2:25:45 think so, yeah.
2:25:46 But you have to mention him again.
2:25:49 You know, Ernest Hemingway once said that the world is a fine place and worth fighting
2:25:53 for, and I agree with him on both counts.
2:25:58 Kevin, thank you so much for talking to me.
2:26:00 Thank you.
2:26:02 Thanks for listening to this conversation with Kevin Spacey.
2:26:05 To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
2:26:09 And now, let me leave you with some words from Meryl Streep.
2:26:13 Acting is not about being someone different.
2:26:17 It’s finding the similarity in what is apparently different, and then finding myself in there.
2:26:26 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
2:26:28 [MUSIC]
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2:26:42 you