Bring on the era of Robin Wright.
After Netflix fired Kevin Spacey from House of Cards last November over a surge of sexual harassment allegations, fans of the dark political drama were left in the lurch as he took Frank Underwood with him. While the show will proceed without Spacey and his onscreen wife Robin Wright will be taking centre stage this season, Netflix has cast two new actors to shake up its eighth season.
Under the Tuscan Sun’s Diane Lane and Little Miss Sunshine’s Greg Kinnear will be donning American flag pins this season and entering the show’s political fray. While Netflix has been quite secretive about the specifics of their characters, The New York Times has said that they will be playing siblings on the show.
Actor Anthony Rapp came forwards with allegations against Kevin Spacey last October in an interview with BuzzFeed News, where he described how Spacey made advances on him when he was just fourteen years old. More allegations followed, culminating in multiple ongoing criminal investigations and an additional inquiry by Bristol Old Vic where he was appointed artistic director in 2004 for over a decade.
Netflix later announced they were firing him from the show, despite the fact that they had already filmed two full episodes and would have to scrap multiple scripts - a move that The Hollywood Reporter has said cost them USD$39 million. The show is expected to follow in the original book’s footsteps and kill off Spacey’s character, explaining his absence from the show.
Actor Joel Kinnaman, who played governor Will Conway on House of Cards season 5, has since spoken out about Kevin Spacey. He said in an interview with Skavlan, ‘I have five or six friend I know who have told stories about Kevin about when they were young and had just arrived in Hollywood.’
He continued, ‘And he tried to...he gave me a very warm welcome in Baltimore. But later, when you learnt that he had supposedly behaved this way with 14 year olds then it’s like ‘thank you and goodbye’.’
