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

Speaker 1 following is a conversation with Kevin Spacey, a two-time Oscar-winning actor who has starred in seven The Usual Suspects, American Beauty, and House of Cards.

Speaker 1 He is one of the greatest actors ever, creating haunting performances of characters who often embody the dark side of human nature.

Speaker 1 Seven years ago, he was cut from House of Cards and canceled by Hollywood and the World when Anthony Rapp made an allegation that Kevin Spacey sexually abused him in 1986.

Speaker 1 Anthony Rapp then filed a civil lawsuit seeking $40 million.

Speaker 1 In this trial and all civil and criminal trials that followed, Kevin was acquitted. He has never been found guilty nor liable in the court of law.

Speaker 1 In this conversation, Kevin makes clear what he did and what he didn't do.

Speaker 1 I also encourage you to listen to Kevin's Dan Wooten and Allison Pearson interviews for additional details and responses to the allegations.

Speaker 1 As an aside, let me say that one of the principles I operate under for this podcast and in life is that I will talk with everyone, with empathy and with backbone.

Speaker 1 For each guest, I hope to explore their life's work, life's story, and what and how they think, and do so honestly and fully. The good, the bad, and the ugly, the brilliance and the flaws.

Speaker 1 I won't whitewash their sins, but I won't reduce them to a worst possible caricature of their sins either.

Speaker 1 The latter is what the mass hysteria of internet mobs too often does, often rushing to a final judgment before the facts are in.

Speaker 1 I will try to do better than that, to respect due process, in service of the truth.

Speaker 1 And I hope to have the courage to always think independently and to speak honestly, from the heart, even when the eyes of the outraged mob are on me.

Speaker 1 Again, my goal is to understand human beings at their best and at their worst. And the hope is such understanding leads to more compassion and wisdom in the world.

Speaker 1 I will make mistakes, and when I do, I will work hard to improve.

Speaker 1 I love you all.

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Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 some of the most beautiful products ever designed were designed by Apple.

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Speaker 1 I had a weird experience last night where in my dream I dreamt of 8 sleep

Speaker 1 of the bed going up and down the

Speaker 1 pod for ultra where you can control the positioning of the bed and going up and down. So it's kind of surreal to be on the Aceleep bed dreaming about the Acely bed.
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Speaker 1 It's interesting for me to think about

Speaker 1 the landscape of dreams that people are exploring every night. You're talking about 8 billion people on Earth.
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Speaker 1 I just would love to see all the different worlds that are being explored.

Speaker 1 The darkness and the light from the Jungian shadow emerges, and we get to play with it like a puzzle, try to figure it out like a puzzle in narrative form, as we humans do. It's a cool world.

Speaker 1 I'd love to be able to visualize it. In general, this whole collective intelligence of the human species is an

Speaker 1 interesting organism in itself. I would love to visualize that.

Speaker 1 The power of the collective mind.

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Speaker 1 probably more than 20 years ago. I walked alongside them in trying to understand the history of psychoanalysis and the history of exploring the human mind.
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Speaker 1 That's when I wanted through that lens, through that approach to understand the human mind. In some sense, of course, the reason I love doing this podcast

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Speaker 1 maybe in spirit. the kind of thing that psychoanalysis tried to do is to delve into the depth of of the human mind.

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And now, dear friends, here's Kevin Spacey.

Speaker 1 You played a serial killer in the movie 7. Your performance was one of, if not the greatest portrayal of a murderer on screen ever.
What was your process of becoming him, John Doe, the serial killer?

Speaker 1 The truth is, I didn't get the part.

Speaker 1 I had been in Los Angeles making a couple of films, Swimming of Sharks and Usual Suspects, and then I did a film called Outbreak that Morgan Freeman was in.

Speaker 1 And I went in to audition for David Fincher in probably late November of 94.

Speaker 1 And I auditioned for this part and didn't get it. And I went back to New York.

Speaker 1 And I think they started shooting like December 12th.

Speaker 1 And I'm in New York. I'm back in my wonderful apartment on West 12th Street.
And my mom has come to visit for Christmas. And it's December 23rd.

Speaker 1 And it's like 7 o'clock at night, and my phone rings. And it's Arnold Kopelson, who's the producer of Seven.

Speaker 1 And he's very jovial, and he's very friendly. And he says, how you doing? And I said, fine.
And

Speaker 1 he said, listen, do you remember that film you came in for seven? And I said, yeah, yeah, absolutely. He goes, well, turns out that we hired an actor and we started shooting.

Speaker 1 And then yesterday, David fired him.

Speaker 1 And David would like you to get on a plane on Sunday and come to Los Angeles and start shooting on Tuesday.

Speaker 1 And I was like,

Speaker 1 okay,

Speaker 1 would it be imposing to say, can I read it again? Because it's been a while now, and I'd like to.

Speaker 1 So they sent a script over.

Speaker 1 I read the script that night.

Speaker 1 I thought about it.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I had this feeling.

Speaker 1 I can't even quite describe it, but I had this feeling that

Speaker 1 it would be really good if

Speaker 1 I didn't take billing in the film.

Speaker 1 And the reason I felt that was because I knew that by the time this film would come out, it would be the last one of the three movies that I just shot, the fourth one.

Speaker 1 And if any of those films broke through or did well, if it was going to be Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Peltrow, and Kevin Spacey, and you don't show up for the first 25, 30, 40 minutes, people are going to figure out who you're playing.

Speaker 1 So people should know that you are the serial, you play the serial killer in the movie and the serial killer shows up like more than halfway through the movie. Very latest.

Speaker 1 And when you say billing, it's like the posters, the VHS cover, everything. You're gone.
You're not there. Not there.

Speaker 1 And so New Line Cinema told me to go fuck myself, that they absolutely could use my picture and my image.

Speaker 1 And this became a little bit of a, I'd say, 24-hour conversation.

Speaker 1 And it was Fincher who said, I actually think this is a really cool idea. So the compromise was, I'm the first credit at the end of the movie when the credits start.

Speaker 1 So I got on a plane on that Sunday and I flew to Los Angeles and I went into

Speaker 1 where they were shooting, and I went into the makeup room. David Fincher was there, and we were talking about what I should do,

Speaker 1 how should I look? And

Speaker 1 I just had my hair short for outbreak because I was playing a military character. And I just looked at the

Speaker 1 hairdresser and I said, Do you have a razor? And Fincher went,

Speaker 1 Are you kidding? And I said, No.

Speaker 1 He goes, If you shave your head, I'll shave mine.

Speaker 1 So we both shaved our heads.

Speaker 1 And then I started shooting the next day. So

Speaker 1 my long-winded answer to your question is that I didn't have that much time to

Speaker 1 think about how to build that character.

Speaker 1 What I think

Speaker 1 in the end Fincher was able to do so brilliantly with such terror

Speaker 1 was to set the audience up

Speaker 1 to meet this character.

Speaker 1 I think the

Speaker 1 last scene, the ending scene and the car ride leading up to it where it's mostly on you

Speaker 1 in conversation with Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt

Speaker 1 is one of the greatest scenes in film history.

Speaker 1 So if people somehow didn't see the movie, there's these five murders that happen that are inspired by five of the seven deadly sins and the the ending scene is inspired represents the last two deadly sins

Speaker 1 and there's this

Speaker 1 calm subtlety

Speaker 1 about you in your performance it's just terrifying maybe in contrast with brad piss performance that's also really strong but that the contrast in the contrast is the terrifying uh sense that you get in the audience that builds up to the twist at the end or the surprise at the end

Speaker 1 with the famous what's in the box from Brad Pitt. Right.
That is Brad Pitt's character's wife, her head. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I can really only tell you that while we were shooting that scene in the car, while we were out

Speaker 1 in the desert, in that place where all those electrical wires were, David just kept saying, less.

Speaker 1 Do less.

Speaker 1 And I just tried to, I mean, he, I remember he kept saying to me, remember,

Speaker 1 you're in control.

Speaker 1 Like, you're going to win.

Speaker 1 And knowing that should allow you to have tremendous confidence.

Speaker 1 And I just followed that lead. And

Speaker 1 I just think it's the kind of film that

Speaker 1 so many of the elements that had been at work from the beginning of the movie, in terms of its style, in terms of how he built this terror, in terms of how he built for the audience a sense of this person being one of the scariest people that you might ever encounter.

Speaker 1 It really allowed me to be able to not have to do that much, just say the words and mean them.

Speaker 1 And I think it also is

Speaker 1 an example of what

Speaker 1 makes tragedy so

Speaker 1 difficult.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 you know, very often tragedy is people operating without enough information. They don't have all the facts.
Romeo and Juliet, they don't have all the facts.

Speaker 1 They don't know what we know as an audience.

Speaker 1 And so in the end,

Speaker 1 whether

Speaker 1 Brad Pitt's character ends up

Speaker 1 shooting John Doe or turning the gun on himself, which was a discussion, I mean, there were a number of alternative endings that were discussed.

Speaker 1 Nothing ends up being tied up in a nice little bow.

Speaker 1 It is complicated and shows

Speaker 1 how

Speaker 1 nobody wins in the end

Speaker 1 when you're not operating with all the information.

Speaker 1 When you say say the words and mean them,

Speaker 1 what does mean them?

Speaker 1 Mean.

Speaker 1 I've been very fortunate to be directed by Fincher a couple of times.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he would say to me sometimes,

Speaker 1 I don't believe a thing that is coming out of your mouth shall we try it again

Speaker 1 and you go

Speaker 1 okay yeah we can try it again and sometimes he'll do take

Speaker 1 and then

Speaker 1 you'll look to see if he has any added

Speaker 1 genius to to hand you. And he just goes, let's do it again.
And then let's do it again. And sometimes,

Speaker 1 I say this in all humility, he's literally trying to beat the acting out of you.

Speaker 1 And by continually saying, do it again, do it again, do it again, and not giving you any specifics,

Speaker 1 he is systematically shredding you of all...

Speaker 1 Pretense of all, you know, because look, very often, you know, actors, we come in on the set and we've thought about the scene and we've worked out, you know, I've got this prop and I'm going to do this thing with a can,

Speaker 1 you know, all these things, all the tea, I'm going to do a thing with the thing.

Speaker 1 And David is the kind of director where he just wants you to stop adding all that crap and just say the words and say them quickly and mean them.

Speaker 1 And it takes a while to get to that. place.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you a story.

Speaker 1 This is

Speaker 1 a story I just love because

Speaker 1 it's in exactly the same wheelhouse. So Jack Lemon's first movie was a film called It Should Happen to You, and it was directed by George Cuker.

Speaker 1 And Jack tells this story, and it was just an incredibly charming story to hear Jack tell. He said, so

Speaker 1 I'm doing this picture. And let me tell you, this is a terrific part for me.
And I'm doing a scene. It's on my first day.
It's my first day. And it's a terrific scene.

Speaker 1 And he goes, we do the first take. And George Cuker comes up to me and he says, Jack, I said, yeah.
He said, could you do, let's do another one, but just do a little less in this one. And Jack said,

Speaker 1 a little less, a little less than what I just did. He said, yeah, just a little less.
So he goes, we do another take. And I think, boy, that was it.
I mean, let's just go home.

Speaker 1 And Cuker walked up to him and said, Jack, let's do another one. This time, just a little bit less.

Speaker 1 And Jack said,

Speaker 1 less than what I just did now? He said, yeah, just a little bit less. He goes, oh, okay.
So they did another take. And Cuker came up and he said, Jack, just a little bit less.

Speaker 1 And Jack said, a little less than what I just did. He said, yes.
He goes, well, if I I do any less, I'm not going to be acting. And Cuker said, exactly, Jack.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 I mean, I guess what you're saying is it's extremely difficult to get to the bottom of a little less.

Speaker 1 Because the

Speaker 1 power, if we just think even on seven, of your performance is in the tiniest of subtleties. Like when you say, oh, you didn't know.
And you turn your head a little bit.

Speaker 1 And a little bit like the

Speaker 1 little bit, maybe a glimmer of a smile appears in your face. That's subtlety.
That's less. That's hard to get to, I suppose.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And also because

Speaker 1 I so well remember,

Speaker 1 I think the work that Brad did in, and also Morgan did in that scene, but the work that Brad had to do, where he had to go.

Speaker 1 I remember rehearsing with him as we were all staying at this little hotel nearby that location, and we rehearsed the night before we started shooting that sequence.

Speaker 1 And I just, I mean, it was just incredible to see

Speaker 1 the levels of emotions he had to go through, and then the decision of what do I do?

Speaker 1 Because if I do what he wants me to do, then he wins. But if I don't do it, then I'm what kind of a man, husband, am I?

Speaker 1 I just thought he did really incredible works. It was also not easy to not react to

Speaker 1 the power of what he was throwing at me.

Speaker 1 I just thought it was an extraordinary,

Speaker 1 a really extraordinary scene. So what's it like being in that scene? So it's you, Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, and Brad Pitt is going over the top, just having a mental breakdown

Speaker 1 and is weighing these extremely difficult moral choices, as you're saying. But he's like screaming and in pain and tormented while you're very subtly smiling.

Speaker 1 In terms of the writing and in terms of what the characters had to do, it was an incredible culmination of how this character

Speaker 1 could manipulate in the way that he did and

Speaker 1 in the end

Speaker 1 succeed.

Speaker 1 You mentioned Fincher likes to do a lot of takes. That's the famous thing about David Fincher.
So what are the the pros and cons of that? I think I read that he does

Speaker 1 some crazy amount.

Speaker 1 He averages 25 to 65

Speaker 1 takes and most directors do less than 10.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 yeah, sometimes it's timing. Sometimes it's literally he has a stopwatch and he's timing how long a scene is taking.
And then he'll say,

Speaker 1 You need to take a minute off this scene.

Speaker 1 A minute? Yeah, a minute off this scene. I want it to move like this.
So let's pick it up. Let's pick up the pace.

Speaker 1 Let's see if we can take a minute off. Why the speed? Why say it fast is the important thing for him, you think?

Speaker 1 I think because Fincher hates indulgence.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he wants people to talk the way they do in life.

Speaker 1 Which is, you know, we don't take

Speaker 1 big dramatic pauses. Yeah, right.
You know, before we speak, we speak. We say what we want.
We, you know.

Speaker 1 And I guess actors like the dramatic pauses and the indulge in the dramatic pauses. I didn't always like the dramatic pauses.

Speaker 1 I mean, look, you know, you go back, any student of acting, you go back to the 30s and the 40s, 50s,

Speaker 1 the speed at which actors spoke.

Speaker 1 Not just in the comedies, which, of course, you know, you look at any Preston Sturgis movie and it's incredible how fast people are talking and

Speaker 1 how funny things are when they happen that fast.

Speaker 1 But then, you know,

Speaker 1 acting styles changed. We got into a different kind of thing in the late 50s and 60s.
And,

Speaker 1 you know, a lot of actors are feeling it, which is, I'm not saying it's... It's a bad thing.
It's just that if you want

Speaker 1 to keep an audience engaged, as Fincher does, and I believe successfully does in all of his work,

Speaker 1 pace,

Speaker 1 timing, movement,

Speaker 1 clarity, speed

Speaker 1 are admirable to achieve.

Speaker 1 And all of that, he wants the actor to be as natural as possible, to strip away all the bullshit of acting

Speaker 1 and become human. Look, I've been lucky with other directors.
Sam Mendes is similar.

Speaker 1 I remember when I walked in to maybe the first rehearsal for Richard III that we were doing, and I had brought with me

Speaker 1 a canopy of ailments that my Richard was going to suffer from.

Speaker 1 And Sam, you know, eventually whittled it down to like three, like maybe your arm and maybe your thing and maybe your leg.

Speaker 1 But let's get rid of the other 10 things that you brought into the room because I was, you know, I was so excited to, you know, capture this character. So, you know, very often,

Speaker 1 Trevor Nunn is this way. A lot of wonderful directors I've worked with.
They're really good at helping you trim and edit.

Speaker 1 David Fincher said about you, he was talking in general, I think, but also specifically in the moment of Haas of Cars.

Speaker 1 said that you have exceptional skill both as an actor and as a performer, which he says are different things.

Speaker 1 So he defines the former as dramatization of a text and the latter as the seduction of an audience.

Speaker 1 Do you see

Speaker 1 wisdom in that distinction? And what does it take to do both? The dramatization of a text and the seduction of an audience?

Speaker 1 Those are two very interesting descriptions.

Speaker 1 When I think, I guess when I think performer,

Speaker 1 I tend to think

Speaker 1 entertaining.

Speaker 1 I tend to think comedy. I tend to think winning over an audience.
I tend to think

Speaker 1 that there's something about

Speaker 1 that quality of

Speaker 1 wanting to have people enjoy themselves.

Speaker 1 And when you saddle that against

Speaker 1 what maybe he means as an actor,

Speaker 1 which is more dramatic or more more text-driven, more

Speaker 1 Look, I've always believed that my

Speaker 1 That my job not every actor feels this way, but my job the way that I've looked at it is that my job is to serve the writing

Speaker 1 And that if I serve the writing I will

Speaker 1 in a sense serve myself because I'll be in the right world, I'll be in the right context, I'll be in the right style.

Speaker 1 I'll have embraced what a director's, you know,

Speaker 1 it's not my painting. It's someone else's painting.
I'm a series of colors in someone else's painting.

Speaker 1 And the barometer for me has always been that when people

Speaker 1 stop me and talk to me

Speaker 1 about a character I've played and reference their name as if they actually exist,

Speaker 1 that's when I feel like I've gotten close to doing my job.

Speaker 1 Yeah, one of the challenges for me in this conversation is remembering that your name is Kevin, not

Speaker 1 Frank or John or any of these characters,

Speaker 1 because they live deeply in the psyche. To me, that's the greatest,

Speaker 1 that's the greatest

Speaker 1 compliment for me as an actor.

Speaker 1 I love being able to go. I mean, when I think about

Speaker 1 performers who inspire me,

Speaker 1 and I remember when I was young and I was introduced to Spencer Tracy,

Speaker 1 Henry Fonda, Catherine Hepburn,

Speaker 1 I just believed who they were. I knew nothing about them.
They were just these extraordinary characters doing this extraordinary stuff. And then I think more

Speaker 1 recently contemporary,

Speaker 1 when I think of the work that Philip Seymour Hoffman did and Heath Ledger and people that that

Speaker 1 when I think about what they could be doing, what they could do, what they would have done had they stayed with us,

Speaker 1 I'm so excited when I when I go into a cinema or I go into a play and I completely am taken to some place that

Speaker 1 I believe exists and characters that become real. And those characters become like lifelong

Speaker 1 companions. Like for me, they travel with you.
And even if it's the darkest aspects of human nature, they're always there.

Speaker 1 I feel like I almost met them and gotten to know them and gotten to become like friends with them almost. Hannibal Lecter, whether it's the or Forrest Gump.

Speaker 1 I mean, I've

Speaker 1 I feel like I'm like best friends with Forrest Gump. I know the guy.

Speaker 1 And I guess he's played by some guy named Tom, but like Forrest Gump is the guy I'm friends with. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I think that everybody feels like that when they're in the audience with great characters. They just kind of

Speaker 1 become part of you in some way.

Speaker 1 The good, the bad, and the ugly of them.

Speaker 1 One of the things that

Speaker 1 I feel that I try to do in my work

Speaker 1 is when I read something for the first time, when I read a script or a play,

Speaker 1 and I am absolutely devastated by it, it is the most extraordinary, the most beautiful, the most life-affirming or terrifying.

Speaker 1 It's then a process weirdly of working backwards because

Speaker 1 I want to work in such a way that that's the experience I give to the audience when they first see it. That they have the experience experience I had when I read it.

Speaker 1 I remember that there's been times in the creative process when

Speaker 1 something was pointed out to me or something was, I remember I was doing a play and I was having this really tough time with

Speaker 1 one of the last scenes in the play and I just couldn't figure it out. And I was in rehearsal.

Speaker 1 And although we had a director in that play, I called another, a friend of mine who was also a director, and I had him come over. And I said, look, this scene, I'm just having the toughest.

Speaker 1 I cannot seem to crack this scene. And so we read it through a couple of times.
And then this wonderful director named John Swanbeck, who would eventually direct me in a film called The Big Kahuna.

Speaker 1 But this is before that,

Speaker 1 he said to me the most incredible thing. He just said,

Speaker 1 All right, what's the last line you have in this scene before you fall over and fall asleep? And I said, The last line is that last drink, the old KO.

Speaker 1 And he went,

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 I want you to think about what that line actually means

Speaker 1 and then work backwards.

Speaker 1 And so he left, and I sort of was left with this,

Speaker 1 what? Like, what does that mean? How am I supposed to.

Speaker 1 And then, like, a couple of days went by, a couple of days went by, and I thought, okay, so he said, what does that line actually mean? Well, that last drink, the old KO.

Speaker 1 KO

Speaker 1 is knockout,

Speaker 1 which is a boxing term.

Speaker 1 It's the only boxing term the writer uses in the play.

Speaker 1 And then I went back and I realized, my friend was so smart and so incredible to have, you know, said, ask a question you haven't thought of asking yet.

Speaker 1 I realized that the playwright wrote the last round, the eighth round between these two brothers, and it was a fight,

Speaker 1 physical as well as emotional. And when I brought that into the rehearsal room to the director who was doing that play,

Speaker 1 he liked that idea. And we staged that scene as if it was the eighth round, although the audience wouldn't have known that.
But

Speaker 1 just what I loved about that was that somebody

Speaker 1 said to me,

Speaker 1 Ask yourself a question you haven't asked yourself yet. What does that line mean? And then work backwards.
What is that? Like

Speaker 1 a catalyst for thinking deeply about what is magical about this play, this story, this narrative? That's what that is, like thinking backwards, that's what that does. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But also because it's just, it's this incredible,

Speaker 1 why didn't I think to ask that question myself?

Speaker 1 That's what you have directors for. That's what you have, you know, so many places where ideas can come from.

Speaker 1 But that just illustrates that even though in my brain I go, I always like to work backwards.

Speaker 1 I missed it in that one. And I'm very grateful to

Speaker 1 my friend for having pushed me into

Speaker 1 being able to realize what that meant.

Speaker 1 To ask the interesting question,

Speaker 1 I like the poetry and the humility of I'm just a series of colors in someone else's painting.

Speaker 1 That was a good line.

Speaker 1 That said,

Speaker 1 You've talked about improvisation. You said that it's all about the ability to do it again and again and again and yet never make it the same.

Speaker 1 And you also just said that you're trying to stay true to the text. So where's the room for the

Speaker 1 improvisation that it's never the same? Well, there's two slightly different contexts, I think. One is in the rehearsal room,

Speaker 1 improvisation could be a wonderful device. I mean Sam Andy's, for example, will start.

Speaker 1 He'll start a scene and he does this wonderful thing. He brings rugs and he brings chairs and sofas in, and he says, Well,

Speaker 1 let's put two chairs here and here. You guys, let's start in these chairs far apart from each other.
Let's see what happens with the scene if you're that far apart. And so we'll do the scene that way.

Speaker 1 And then he goes, Okay, let's bring a rug in and let's bring these chairs much closer. And let's see what happens if the space, if the space between you is.

Speaker 1 And so then you try it that way. And then, you know, it's a little harder in Shakespeare to improv,

Speaker 1 but in any situation where you

Speaker 1 want to try and see where

Speaker 1 could a scene go, where would the scene go if I didn't make that choice? Where would the scene go if I made this choice? Where would the scene go if I didn't say that or I said something else?

Speaker 1 So that's how improv can be

Speaker 1 a valuable process to learn

Speaker 1 about

Speaker 1 limits and

Speaker 1 boundaries

Speaker 1 and what's going on with a a character that somehow you discover

Speaker 1 in trying something that isn't on the page.

Speaker 1 Then there's the different thing, which is the trying to make it fresh and trying to make it new. And that is really a reference to theater.

Speaker 1 I'll put it to you this way.

Speaker 1 Anybody loves sports, right? So you go and you watch on a pitch, you watch on a tennis game, you watch basketball, you watch football.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the rules are the same, but it's a different game every time you're out in that court or on that field.

Speaker 1 It's no different in theater.

Speaker 1 Yes, it's the same lines. Maybe even blocking

Speaker 1 is similar.

Speaker 1 But what's different

Speaker 1 is attack, intention,

Speaker 1 how you are growing in a role and watching your fellow actors grow in theirs, and how every night it's a new audience and they're reacting differently.

Speaker 1 And you literally,

Speaker 1 where you can go from week one of performances in a play to week 12

Speaker 1 is extraordinary. And

Speaker 1 the difference between

Speaker 1 theater

Speaker 1 and film is that no matter how good someone might think you are in a movie,

Speaker 1 you'll never be any better.

Speaker 1 It's frozen. Whereas I can be better tomorrow night than I was tonight.
I can be better in a week than I was tonight.

Speaker 1 It is a living,

Speaker 1 breathing,

Speaker 1 shifting, changing, growing thing

Speaker 1 every single day. But also in theater, there's no safety net.
If you fuck it up,

Speaker 1 everybody gets to see you do that. And if you start giggling on stage, everyone gets to see you do that too, which I am very guilty of.

Speaker 1 I mean, there is something

Speaker 1 of a seduction of an audience in theater even more intense than there is when you're talking about film.

Speaker 1 I got a chance to watch the documentary Now in the Wings on a World Stage, which is behind the scenes of, you mentioned

Speaker 1 you teaming up with Sam Mendez in 2011 2011 to stage Richard III

Speaker 1 a play by William Shakespeare I was also surprised to learn you haven't really done much Shakespeare or at least you said that in the in the movie but there's a lot of interesting behind-the-scenes stuff there

Speaker 1 first of all the camaraderie of everybody how like

Speaker 1 the bond theater creates especially when you're traveling But the another interesting thing you mentioned with the chairs of San Mendez trying different stuff It seemed seemed like everybody was really open to trying stuff, embarrassing themselves, taking risks, all of that.

Speaker 1 I suppose that's part of acting in general, but

Speaker 1 theater especially. Just take risks.
It's okay to embarrass the shit out of yourself, including the director. And it's also because

Speaker 1 you become a family.

Speaker 1 You know, it's unlike a movie where, you know, I might have a scene with so-and-so on this day and then another scene with them in a week and a half, and then that's the only scenes we have in the whole movie together.

Speaker 1 Every single day when you show up in the rehearsal room, it's the whole company. You're all up for it every day.
You're learning, you're growing, you're trying, and there is

Speaker 1 an incredible trust that happens.

Speaker 1 And I was, of course, fortunate that some of the... Some of the things I learned and observed about

Speaker 1 being a part of that family, being included in that family, and being a part of creating that family, I was able to observe from people like Jack Lemon,

Speaker 1 who led many companies that I was fortunate to

Speaker 1 work in and be a part of. There's also a sad moment where at the end, everybody is really sad to say goodbye because you do form a family and then it's over.

Speaker 1 I guess somebody said that that's just part of theater. It's like,

Speaker 1 I mean, there's a kind of assumed goodbye and that this is it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and also, there are some times when,

Speaker 1 like six months later, I'll wake up in the middle of the night and I'll go,

Speaker 1 that's how to play that scene.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, God, I just finally figured it out.

Speaker 1 So, maybe you could speak a little bit more to that. What's the difference between film acting and live theater acting?

Speaker 1 I don't really think there is any.

Speaker 1 I think there's just

Speaker 1 you eventually learn about yourself on film. You know, when i

Speaker 1 first

Speaker 1 did like my first

Speaker 1 episode of the equalizer um you know it's just it's just it's horrible it's just so bad um but i didn't know about myself i didn't so slowly you begin to learn about yourself but

Speaker 1 i think good acting is good acting and i think that

Speaker 1 you know if you if a camera's right here you you know that your your front row is also your back row you just don't have to you don't have to do so much.

Speaker 1 There is in theater

Speaker 1 a particular kind of energy, almost like an athlete, that you have to have vocally to be able to get up seven performances a week and never lose your voice and always be there and always be alive and always be doing the best work you can, that you just don't require in film.

Speaker 1 You know, you don't have to have the same,

Speaker 1 it just doesn't require the same same

Speaker 1 kind of stamina that doing a play does.

Speaker 1 It just feels like also in theater, you have to become the character more intensely because

Speaker 1 you can't take a break. You can't take a bath and break.
You're like on stage. There's no, this is you.
Yeah, but you have no idea what's going on on stage with the actors. I mean,

Speaker 1 I have literally laughed through speeches that I had to give because my fellow actors were putting carrots up their nose or broccoli in their ears or doing whatever they were doing to make me laugh.

Speaker 1 So they're just having fun. They're having the time of their life.
And by the way, Judy Dench is the worst giggler of all. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, they had to bring the curtain down on her and Maggie Smith because they were laughing so hard they could not continue the play.

Speaker 1 So even when you're doing like a dramatic monologue, still, they're still fucking with you. There's stuff going on.

Speaker 1 Okay. That's great.

Speaker 1 That's good to know. You also said interesting line that improvisation

Speaker 1 helps you you

Speaker 1 learn about the character.

Speaker 1 Can you explain that? So like through maybe playing with the different

Speaker 1 ways of saying the words or the different ways to bring the words to life, you get to learn about yourself, about the character you're playing. It can be helpful.

Speaker 1 But improv is...

Speaker 1 I'm a big, such a big believer in

Speaker 1 the writing and in serving the writing and doing the the words the writer wrote.

Speaker 1 That improv for for me, unless you're just doing like comedy and you know, like I mean, I love improv and in comedy, it's it's brilliant.

Speaker 1 Um so much fun to watch people just come up with something right there.

Speaker 1 Um but you're you know, that that's where you're looking for laughs and you're you're specifically in a little scene that's being created. Um

Speaker 1 but I think improv is has has had value. Um

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 I have not experienced it as much in doing plays

Speaker 1 as I have sometimes in doing film where you'll start off rehearsing and a director may say, let's just go off book and see what happens.

Speaker 1 And I've had moments in film where someone went off book and it was terrifying.

Speaker 1 There was a scene I had in Glen Gary Glen Ross

Speaker 1 where the character I play has

Speaker 1 fucked something up, just screwed something up, and Pacino is livid.

Speaker 1 And so we had this scene where Al is walking like this, and the camera is moving with him,

Speaker 1 and he is shooing me a new asshole.

Speaker 1 And in the middle of the take, Al starts

Speaker 1 talking about me.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 Kevin,

Speaker 1 you don't think we know how you got this job?

Speaker 1 You don't think we know whose dick you've been sucking on to get this part in this movie? And I'm now,

Speaker 1 I'm literally like,

Speaker 1 I don't know what the hell is happening,

Speaker 1 but I'm reacting.

Speaker 1 We got to the end of that take. Al walked up to me and he went, oh.

Speaker 1 That was so good. Oh my God, that was so good.
Just so you know, the sound. I asked them not to record.
So you have no dialogue. So it's just me.
Oh, that was so good.

Speaker 1 You look like a car wreck. And I was like, yeah.

Speaker 1 And it was actually

Speaker 1 an incredibly generous thing that he gave me so that I would react.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. Did they use that? shot because you were taking shot

Speaker 1 it was my close-up yeah

Speaker 1 yeah And yeah, that's the take. That was an intense interact.
I mean, what was it like? If we can just linger on that, just that intense scene with Al Pacino.

Speaker 1 Well, he's the reason I got the movie. A lot of people might think because Jack was in the film that he had something to do with it.

Speaker 1 But actually, I was doing a play called Lost in Yonkers on Broadway. And we had the same dresser who worked with him, a girl named Laura.
It was wonderful. Laura Beatty.
And

Speaker 1 she told Al that he should come and see this play because she wanted to see me in this play i was playing this gangsters fun fun fun part

Speaker 1 so i didn't know pacino came on some night and saw this play and then like three days later i got a call to come in and audition for this glingre glenn ross which of course i knew is a play david mambitt's play

Speaker 1 and then uh

Speaker 1 I auditioned. Jamie Foley was the director who would eventually direct a bunch of House of Cards.
Wonderful, wonderful guy.

Speaker 1 And I got the part. Well, I didn't quite get the part.
They were going to bring together the actors that they thought they were going to give the parts to on a Saturday at Al's office.

Speaker 1 And they asked me if I would come and do a read-through. And I said, who's going to be there? And they said, well, so-and-so-and-so-and-so-and so.
And Jack Lemon is flying in.

Speaker 1 And I said, don't tell Mr. Lemon.
that I'm doing the read-through. Is that possible? And they were like, sure.
So I'll never forget this.

Speaker 1 Jack was sitting in a chair in Pacino's office doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, as he did every day.

Speaker 1 And I walked in the door and he went, oh, Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 Is it possible you could get a job without me? Jesus Christ. I'm so tired of holding up your end of it.
Oh, my God. Jesus.

Speaker 1 So that's, I got the job because of Pacino. And, you know, I was.

Speaker 1 It was really one of the first major roles that I ever had in a film. And, you know,

Speaker 1 to be working with that group. Yeah, that's like one of the greatest ensemble casts ever.
We got Al Pacino, Jack Lemon, Alec Baldwin, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, you,

Speaker 1 Jonathan Price. It's just incredible.
And I would, I have to say, I mean, maybe you can comment.

Speaker 1 You've talked about how much of a mentor and a friend Jack Lemon has been. That's one of his greatest performances ever.
Ever.

Speaker 1 You have a scene at the the end of the movie with him that was really powerful. Like firing on all cylinders.
You're playing Disdain

Speaker 1 to perfection, and he's playing Desperation to perfection. What a scene.
What was that like? Just like at the top of your game, the two of you.

Speaker 1 Well, by that time, we had done Long Day's Journey Tonight in the theater. We'd done a mini-series called The Murder of Mary Fagan on NBC.
We'd done a film called Dad

Speaker 1 that Gary David Goldberg directed with Ted Danson. So this was the fourth time we were working together and we knew each other.

Speaker 1 He'd become my father figure.

Speaker 1 And I don't know if you know that I originally met Jack Lemon when I was very, very young.

Speaker 1 He was doing a production at the Marteper form of a Sean O'Casey play called Juno and the Paycock with Walter Mathow and Maureen Stapleton.

Speaker 1 And on a Saturday in December of 1974 my junior high school drama class went to a workshop it was called how to audition

Speaker 1 and we did this workshop many schools in southern California were part of this drama teachers association so we got these incredible experiences of being able to go see professional productions and be involved in these workshops or festivals so I had to get up and do a monologue in front of Mr.

Speaker 1 Lemon when I was 13 years old. And he walked up to me at the end of that and he put his hand on my shoulder.
He said, that was just terrific.

Speaker 1 He said, no,

Speaker 1 everything I've been talking about, you just did.

Speaker 1 What's your name? I said, Kevin. He said, well, let me tell you something.

Speaker 1 When you get finished with high school, as I'm sure you're going to go on and do theater, you should go to New York and you should study to be an actor because this is what you're meant to do with your life.

Speaker 1 And he was like an idol.

Speaker 1 And 12 years later,

Speaker 1 I read in the New York Times that he was coming to Broadway to do this production of A Long Day's Journey tonight, a year and some months after I read this article. And I was like,

Speaker 1 I'm going to play Jamie in that production.

Speaker 1 And I then,

Speaker 1 with a lot of opposition,

Speaker 1 because the cast and director didn't want to see me, they said that the director, Jonathan Miller,

Speaker 1 wanted movie actors to play the two sons.

Speaker 1 And ultimately,

Speaker 1 I found out that Jonathan Miller, the director, was coming to New York to do a series of lectures at Alice Tully Hall.

Speaker 1 And I went to try to figure out how I could maybe meet him.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I was sitting in that theater listening to this incredible lecture he was doing. And sitting next to me was an elderly

Speaker 1 woman.

Speaker 1 I mean, elderly, 80-something. And she was asleep.

Speaker 1 But sticking out of her handbag, which was on the floor, was an

Speaker 1 invitation to a cocktail reception in honor of Dr. Jonathan Miller.
And so I

Speaker 1 thought,

Speaker 1 you know, she's tired. She's probably going to go home.
So

Speaker 1 I took that and walked into this cocktail reception and ultimately...

Speaker 1 went over to Dr. Miller, who was incredibly kind and said,

Speaker 1 sit down.

Speaker 1 I'm always very curious, what brings young people to my lectures? And I said to him, Eugene O'Neill brought me here. And he was like, what, what, what? I've always wanted to meet him.
Where is he?

Speaker 1 And I told him that I'd been trying for

Speaker 1 seven months to get an audition for Long Day's Journey, and that his American casting directors were telling my agents that he wanted big American movie stars.

Speaker 1 And at that moment, he turned and he saw one of those casting directors who was there that night. Because I knew he was going to be in New York starting auditions that week.

Speaker 1 And she was staring daggers at me.

Speaker 1 And he just got it.

Speaker 1 And he said, someone have a pen. And he took a little paper and started writing.

Speaker 1 He said, listen, Kevin, there are many situations in which casting directors have a lot of say and a lot of power and a lot of leverage.

Speaker 1 And then there are other situations where they just take directors' messages. And on this one, they're taking my messages.
This is where I'm staying. Make sure you people get to me.

Speaker 1 We start auditions on Thursday.

Speaker 1 And on Thursday, I had an opportunity to come in and audition for this play that I've been working on and preparing.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 at the end of it, I did four scenes. At the end of it,

Speaker 1 he said to me that unless someone else came in and blew him against the wall, like I had just done, as far as he was concerned, I pretty much had the part, but I couldn't tell my agents that yet because I had to come back and read with Mr.

Speaker 1 Lemon.

Speaker 1 And so three months later, in August of 1985, I found myself in a room with Jack Lemon again at 890 Broadway, which is where they rehearse a lot of the Broadway plays.

Speaker 1 And we did four scenes together, and I was toppling over him. I was pushing him.

Speaker 1 I was relentless.

Speaker 1 And I'll never forget at the end of that.

Speaker 1 Lemon came over to me. He put his hand on my shoulder and he said, that was your touch of terrific.
I never thought we'd find the rotten kid, but he's it. Jesus Christ, Christ, what the hell was that?

Speaker 1 And I ended up spending the next year

Speaker 1 of my life with that man.

Speaker 1 So it turns out he was right.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 This world works in mysterious ways. It also speaks to the fact of the power of somebody you look up to.

Speaker 1 giving words of encouragement because those can just reverberate through your whole life and just like

Speaker 1 make the path clear. I've always, we used to, we used to joke that if every contract came with a Jack Lemmon clause, it would be a more beautiful world.

Speaker 1 Beautifully said. Jack Lemon is one of the greatest actors ever.
What do you think makes him so damn good?

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 I think he truly set out

Speaker 1 in his life

Speaker 1 to accomplish what his father said to him on his deathbed.

Speaker 1 His father was, by the way, called the Donut King in Boston.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 not in the entertainment business at all. He was literally owned a donut company.
And

Speaker 1 when he was passing away, Jack said, the last thing my father said to me was, go out there and spread a little sunshine.

Speaker 1 And I truly think that's what Jack

Speaker 1 loved to do.

Speaker 1 I remember this,

Speaker 1 and I don't know if this

Speaker 1 will answer your question, but I think it's revealing about

Speaker 1 what he's able to do and what he was able to do, and how that ultimately influenced what I was able to do.

Speaker 1 Same

Speaker 1 had never directed a film before American Beauty.

Speaker 1 And so what he did was he took the best elements of theater and applied them to the process. So we rehearsed it like a play

Speaker 1 in a soundstage where everything was laid out like it would be in a play, and this couch will be here.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he'd sent me a couple of tapes. He'd sent me two cassette tapes, one that he'd like to call pre-Lester, before he begins to move in a new direction, and then post-Lester.

Speaker 1 And they just were different songs.

Speaker 1 And then he said to me one day, and I always thought this was brilliant of Sam to use Lemon, knowing what Lemon meant to me.

Speaker 1 He said, when was the last time you watched The Apartment?

Speaker 1 And I said, I don't know. I mean, I love that movie so much.
He goes, I want you to watch it again, and then let's talk.

Speaker 1 So I went and I watched the movie again.

Speaker 1 And we sat down and Sam said,

Speaker 1 what Lemon does in that film is incredible

Speaker 1 because there is never a moment in the movie where we see him change.

Speaker 1 He just evolves.

Speaker 1 And he becomes the man he becomes because of the experiences that he has through the course of the film. But there's this remarkable consistency in who he becomes.

Speaker 1 And that's what I need you to do as Lester.

Speaker 1 I don't want the audience to ever see him change.

Speaker 1 I want him to evolve. And so we did some,

Speaker 1 I mean, first of all, it was just a great direction.

Speaker 1 And then second of all, we did some things that people don't know we did to aid that gradual

Speaker 1 shift of that man's character. First of all, I had to be in the best shape from the beginning of the movie because we didn't shoot it in sequence.
So I was in this crazy shape.

Speaker 1 I had this wonderful trainer named Mike Torsha, who just was incredible.

Speaker 1 But so what we did was, in order to then show this gradual shift, was I had three different hair pieces.

Speaker 1 I had three different kinds of costumes of different colors and sizes.

Speaker 1 And I had different makeup.

Speaker 1 So in the beginning, I was wearing a kind of drab, dull,

Speaker 1 slightly,

Speaker 1 you know, uninspired hairpiece. And my makeup was kind of gray and boring.
And I was a little bit, there were times when I was like, too much like this.

Speaker 1 And Sam would go, Kevin, you look like Walter Mathow. Would you please stand up a little bit? We're sort of midway through at this point.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 then at a certain point, the wig changed and it had little highlights in it, a little more color, a little more, the makeup became a little,

Speaker 1 the suits got a little tighter. And then finally, a third wig that was golden highlights and sunshine and

Speaker 1 rosy cheeks and tight fit. And these are what we call theatrical tricks.
You know, this is this is how you, an audience doesn't even know what's happening, but it is this gradual.

Speaker 1 And I just always felt that that was such a

Speaker 1 brilliant way

Speaker 1 because he knew what I felt about Jack. And when you watch the apartment, it is extraordinary that he doesn't ever change.
He just, so I'm, I'm.

Speaker 1 And in fact, I thanked Jack

Speaker 1 when I won the Oscar.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I did my thank you speech and I walked off stage and I remember I had to sit down for a moment because

Speaker 1 I didn't want to go to the press room because I wanted to see if Sam was going to win.

Speaker 1 And so I was waiting and my phone rang and it was Lemon. He said, you're a son of a bitch.

Speaker 1 I said, what? He goes,

Speaker 1 first of all, congratulations and thanks for thanking me because, you know, God knows you couldn't have done it without me.

Speaker 1 He said, second of all, he said you know how long it took me to win uh from supporting actor i won it in it for mr roberts and it took me like 10 12 years to win oscar you did it in four you son of a bitch

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 the apartment was i mean it's widely considered one of the greatest movies ever

Speaker 1 people sometimes refer to it as a comedy which is an interesting kind of classification. I suppose that's a lesson about comedy that the best

Speaker 1 the best comedy is the one that's basically a tragedy. Well, I mean, some people think Clockwork Orange is a comedy.

Speaker 1 And I'm not saying there aren't some good laughs in Clockwork Orange, but yeah, you know, it's.

Speaker 1 I mean, yeah.

Speaker 1 What's that line between

Speaker 1 comedy and tragedy for you?

Speaker 1 Well, if it's a line, it's a line I cross all the time because I've tried always

Speaker 1 to find the humor

Speaker 1 unexpected sometimes,

Speaker 1 maybe inappropriate sometimes, maybe shocking.

Speaker 1 But I've tried in, I think, almost every dramatic role I've had

Speaker 1 to have a sense of humor and to be able to bring that

Speaker 1 along with everything else that is serious.

Speaker 1 Because frankly,

Speaker 1 that's how we deal with stuff in life. You know?

Speaker 1 I think Sam Mendes actually said in the NAW documentary

Speaker 1 something like,

Speaker 1 with great theater, with great stories, you find humor on the journey to the heart of darkness. Something like this.

Speaker 1 Very poetic. Yeah.
Stood out to me.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry, I can't be that poetic.

Speaker 1 I'm very sorry. But it's true.
I mean,

Speaker 1 the people I've interacted in this world have been to a war zone, and

Speaker 1 the ones who have lost the most and have suffered the most are usually the ones who are able to

Speaker 1 make jokes the quickest.

Speaker 1 And the jokes are often dark and absurd and cross every single line, no political correctness, all of that. Sure.
Well, I mean, you know, it's like

Speaker 1 the great Mary Tyler Moore show, where they can't stop giggling at the clown's funeral. I mean,

Speaker 1 it's just one of the great episodes ever. You know, giggling at a funeral is as bad as farting at a funeral.
And, you know,

Speaker 1 I'm sure that there's some people who have done both.

Speaker 1 Oh, man.

Speaker 1 So you mentioned American Beauty

Speaker 1 and the idea of

Speaker 1 not changing, but evolving. That's really interesting because that movie is about

Speaker 1 finding yourself.

Speaker 1 It's a philosophically profound movie. It's about various characters in their own ways finding their own identity in a world where

Speaker 1 maybe

Speaker 1 a system,

Speaker 1 a materialistic system that wants you to be like everyone else. And so, I mean, Lester is really transforms himself throughout the movie.
And you're saying the challenge there is

Speaker 1 to still be the same human being fundamentally.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I also think that the film

Speaker 1 was

Speaker 1 powerful because you had three

Speaker 1 very

Speaker 1 honest and genuine portrayal of young people.

Speaker 1 And then you had Lester behaving like a young person,

Speaker 1 doing things that were unexpected.

Speaker 1 And I think that

Speaker 1 the honesty with which it dealt with those

Speaker 1 issues that those teenagers were going through and the honesty with which it dealt with what Lester was going through. Um,

Speaker 1 I think are

Speaker 1 some of the reasons why the film had the response that it did

Speaker 1 from so many people.

Speaker 1 I mean, I used to get stopped,

Speaker 1 and someone would say to me,

Speaker 1 When I first saw American Beauty, I was married.

Speaker 1 And the second time I saw it, I wasn't.

Speaker 1 And I was like, well, we weren't trying to increase the divorce rate. It wasn't our intention.
But it is interesting how so many people

Speaker 1 have those kinds of crazy fantasies.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 what I

Speaker 1 admired so much about who Lester was as a person, why I wanted to play him, is because in the end, he makes the right decision.

Speaker 1 I think a lot of people live lives of quiet desperation

Speaker 1 in a job they don't like,

Speaker 1 in a marriage they're unhappy in,

Speaker 1 and to see somebody

Speaker 1 living that life and then saying, fuck it,

Speaker 1 in every way possible, and not just in a cynical way, but in a way that opens them,

Speaker 1 opens Lester up to see the beauty in the world. That's, you know, the beauty in American beauty.

Speaker 1 Well, and you know, you may have to blackmail your boss to get there, but you know.

Speaker 1 And in that, there's a bunch of humor also. in the uh in the anger and the

Speaker 1 in the absurdity of sort of taking a stand against the conformity of life

Speaker 1 there there's this humor and um i read somewhere that the scene the dinner scene which is kind of play-like

Speaker 1 where lester

Speaker 1 slams the plate against the wall was improvised by you the uh the slamming of the plate against the wall no no absolutely the internet

Speaker 1 absolutely

Speaker 1 written and directed.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Can't take credit for that.
The plate. Okay.
Well, that was a genius interaction there.

Speaker 1 There's something about the dinner table

Speaker 1 and losing your shit at the dinner table. Having a fight and losing your shit at the dinner table.

Speaker 1 Where else? Like Yellowstone was another situation where it's a family at the dinner table, and then one of them says, Fuck it, I'm not eating this anymore, and I'm going to create a scene.

Speaker 1 It's a beautiful kind of environment for dramatic scenes. Or Nicholson and the Shining.
I mean,

Speaker 1 there's some family scenes gone awry in that movie. The contrast between you and Annette Benning in that scene

Speaker 1 creates the genius of that scene. So, how much of acting is the dance between two actors?

Speaker 1 Well, with Annette,

Speaker 1 I just adored working with her. And we were the two actors that Sam wanted from the very beginning, much against the will of the higher-ups who wanted other actors to play those roles.
But

Speaker 1 I've known Annette.

Speaker 1 Since we

Speaker 1 did a screen test together from Milos Foreman for a film he did of the Les Lives on Dangerous

Speaker 1 movie. It was a different film from that one, but it was the same story.
And

Speaker 1 I've always thought she is just remarkable. And I think that

Speaker 1 the work she did in that film, the relationship that

Speaker 1 we were able to build,

Speaker 1 for me,

Speaker 1 the saddest part of that success was that she didn't win the Oscar. And I felt she should have.

Speaker 1 What kind of interesting direction did you get from Sam Mendez in how you approached playing Lester in the different

Speaker 1 and how to take on the different scenes? There's a lot of just brilliant scenes in that movie. Well, I'll share with you a story that most people don't know.

Speaker 1 Which is

Speaker 1 our first two days of shooting were in Smiley's,

Speaker 1 the place where I get a job in a fast food place. Yeah, it's a burger joint.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I guess it was like maybe

Speaker 1 the third day or the fourth day of shooting. We'd now done that.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I said to Sam, so how are the dailies? You know, how do they look? He goes, which ones? I said, well, the first Smileys. He goes, oh.
um

Speaker 1 they're shit

Speaker 1 and i went yeah no how were they he goes no they're shit. I hate them.
I hate everything about them.

Speaker 1 I hate the costumes. I hate the location.
I hate that you're inside. I hate the way you acted.
I hate

Speaker 1 everything but the script. So I've gone back to the studio and asked them if we can reshoot the first two days.

Speaker 1 And I was like,

Speaker 1 Sam,

Speaker 1 this is your very first movie.

Speaker 1 You're going back to Steven Spielberg and saying, I need to reshoot the first two days entirely? And he went, yeah.

Speaker 1 And that's exactly what we did. A couple of weeks later, they decided that it was now a drive-through because Annette and Peter Gallery used to come into the place and ordered from the counter.

Speaker 1 Now, Sam decided it has to be a drive-through. You have to be in the window of the drive-thru, change the costumes, and we reshot those first two days.
And Sam said,

Speaker 1 it was actually a moment of incredible confidence because he said, the worst thing that could possibly have happened happened in my first two days. And after that,

Speaker 1 I was like, I know what I'm doing. And I knew I had to reshoot it.
And it was absolutely right. And I guess that's what a great director must do is have the guts in that moment to reshoot everything.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's a pretty gutsy move. Two other little things to share with you about Sam, about the way he is.

Speaker 1 You wouldn't know it, but the original script opened and closed with a trial.

Speaker 1 Ricky

Speaker 1 was accused of Lester's murder.

Speaker 1 And the movie was bookended by this trial. It's a very different movie.
Which they shot the entire trial. For weeks.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I used to fly in my dreams.

Speaker 1 You know, those opening shots over the neighborhood? I used to come into those shots in my bathrobe,

Speaker 1 flying. And then when I hit the ground and the newspaper was thrown at me by the newspaper guy and I caught it, the alarm would go off and I wake up in bed.

Speaker 1 I spent five days being hung by wires and filming these sequences of flying through my dreams. And Sam said to me,

Speaker 1 yeah, the flying sequences are all gone and the trial is gone. And I was like, what?

Speaker 1 What are you talking about?

Speaker 1 And here's my other little favorite story about Sam in that when we were shooting in the valley, one of those places I flew, this was an indoor set.

Speaker 1 Sam said to me in the morning, hey, at lunch, I just want to record a guide track of all the dialogue, all of your narration, because they just needed an editing as a guide. And I said, Sure.

Speaker 1 So I remember we came outside of this in this hallway where I had a dressing room in this little studio we were in.

Speaker 1 And Sam had like a cassette tape recorder and like a little microphone.

Speaker 1 And we put it on the floor and he pushed record.

Speaker 1 And I read

Speaker 1 the entire narration.

Speaker 1 And I never did did it again.

Speaker 1 That's the narration in the movie.

Speaker 1 Because Sam said,

Speaker 1 when he listened to it,

Speaker 1 I wasn't trying to do anything. He said, you had no idea where these things were going, where they were going to be placed, what they were going to mean.

Speaker 1 You just read it so innocently, so purely, so directly, that I knew if I brought you into a studio and put headphones on you and had you do it again, it would change

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 ease with which you'd done it. And so they just fixed all of the problems that they had with this little cassette.
And that is the way I did it. And the only time I did it was in this little hallway.

Speaker 1 And once again, a great performance lies in being

Speaker 1 doing less.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. The innocence and the purity of less.
He knew I would have come into the studio and fucked it up.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 What do you think about the notion of beauty that permeates American beauty? What do you think that theme is with the roses, with the rose petals?

Speaker 1 The

Speaker 1 characters that are living this mundane existence slowly opening their eyes up to

Speaker 1 what is beautiful in life.

Speaker 1 See, it's funny. I don't think of the roses and I don't think of her body and the poster and I don't think of those things as the beauty.

Speaker 1 I think of the bag.

Speaker 1 I think that

Speaker 1 there are things we miss

Speaker 1 that are right in front of us

Speaker 1 that are truly beautiful.

Speaker 1 The little things, the simple things. Yeah, and in fact, I'll even tell you something that I always thought was so incredible.

Speaker 1 when we shot the scenes in the office where Lester worked the job he hated there was a bulletin board behind me on a wall

Speaker 1 and someone who was watching a cut or early dailies who was in the marketing department

Speaker 1 saw that someone had cut out a little piece of paper and stuck it and it said look closer

Speaker 1 And they presented that to Sam as the idea of what that should, that could go on the poster. The idea

Speaker 1 of looking closer

Speaker 1 was such a brilliant idea, but it wasn't, I mean, it wasn't like, it wasn't in the script. It was just on a wall behind me.

Speaker 1 And someone happened to zoom in on it and see it and thought, that's what this movie is about. This movie's about taking the time to look closer.

Speaker 1 And I think that in itself is just beautiful. Mortality also permeates the film.
You know, it starts with acknowledging that death is on the way, that

Speaker 1 Lester's time is finite.

Speaker 1 You ever think about your own death?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Scared of it?

Speaker 1 When I was at my lowest point, yes, it scared me.

Speaker 1 What does that fear look like?

Speaker 1 What's the nature of the fear? What are you afraid of?

Speaker 1 That there's no way out.

Speaker 1 That there's no answer.

Speaker 1 That nothing makes sense.

Speaker 1 See, the interesting thing about Lester

Speaker 1 is facing the same fear, he seemed to be somehow liberated

Speaker 1 and accepted everything

Speaker 1 and then saw the beauty of it. Because he got there.
He was given the opportunity

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 reinvent himself and to

Speaker 1 try things he'd never tried, to ask questions he'd never asked,

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 to trust his instincts and to become the best version of himself he could become.

Speaker 1 And so,

Speaker 1 Dick Van Dyke, who

Speaker 1 has become an extraordinary friend of mine.

Speaker 1 Dick is 98 years old.

Speaker 1 And he says, you know, if I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.

Speaker 1 When I spend time with him,

Speaker 1 I'm just moved by

Speaker 1 every day, you know, he gets up and he goes, it's a good day I woke up.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I learn a lot about,

Speaker 1 I have a

Speaker 1 different feeling about death now than I did seven years ago.

Speaker 1 And I'm on the path to being able to be in a place where

Speaker 1 I've resolved the things I needed to resolve. And I won't probably get to all of it in my lifetime, but I certainly would like to be at a place where

Speaker 1 if I were to drop dead tomorrow, it would have been an amazing life.

Speaker 1 So Lester got there. Sounds like Dick Van Dyke got there.
You're trying to get there. Sure.

Speaker 1 You said you feared death at your lowest point.

Speaker 1 What was the lowest point?

Speaker 1 It was

Speaker 1 November 1st of 2017 and then

Speaker 1 Thanksgiving Day of that same year.

Speaker 1 So let's talk about it. Let's talk about this dark time.

Speaker 1 Let's talk about the sexual allegations against you that led to you being canceled by,

Speaker 1 well, the entire world for the last seven years.

Speaker 1 I would like to personally understand the sins, the bad things you did, and the bad things you didn't do.

Speaker 1 So I also should say that the thing I hope to do here is to

Speaker 1 give respect to due process,

Speaker 1 innocent until proven guilty, that the mass hysteria machine of the internet and clickbait journalism doesn't do.

Speaker 1 So here's what I understand.

Speaker 1 There were criminal and civil trials brought against you, including the one that started it all when Anthony Rapp sued you for $40 million.

Speaker 1 In these trials, you were acquitted, found not guilty, and not liable. Is that right? Yes.
I think that's really important, again, in terms of due process.

Speaker 1 And I read a lot and I watched a lot in preparation for this

Speaker 1 on this point,

Speaker 1 including, of course, the recently detailed interviews you did with Dan Wooten and then Allison Pearson of The Telegraph. And those are all focused on this topic.

Speaker 1 And they go in detail where you respond in detail to many of the allegations. If people are interested in the details, they can listen to those.

Speaker 1 So based on that and everything I looked at, as I understand, you never prevented anyone from leaving if they wanted to. Sort of in the sexual context, for example, by blocking the door.

Speaker 1 Is that right? That's correct. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You always respected the explicit no from people, again, in the sexual context. Is that right? That is correct.
You've never done anything sexual with an underage person, right? Never.

Speaker 1 And also, as is sometimes done in Hollywood, let me ask this. You've never explicitly offered to exchange sexual favors for career advancement, correct? Correct.

Speaker 1 In terms of bad behavior, what did you do? What was the worst of it? And how often did you do it? I have heard now quite often, that everybody has a Kevin Spacey story.

Speaker 1 And what that tells me is that I hit on a lot of guys.

Speaker 1 How often did you cross the line? And what does that mean to you?

Speaker 1 I did a lot of horsing around. I did a lot of things that at the time I thought were sort of playful and fun, and I have learned since were not.

Speaker 1 And I have had to recognize that I crossed some boundaries and I did some things that were wrong and I made some mistakes. And that's in my past.

Speaker 1 I mean, I've been working so hard over these last seven years to have the conversations I needed to have, to listen to people, to understand things from a different perspective than the one that I had, and to say, I will never behave that way again for the rest of my life.

Speaker 1 Just to clarify, I think you're often too pushy with the flirting.

Speaker 1 and that manifests itself in multiple ways but just to make clear

Speaker 1 you never prevented anyone from leaving if they wanted to

Speaker 1 you always took the explicit no from people as an answer no stop

Speaker 1 you took that for the answer

Speaker 1 you've never done anything sexual with an underage person And you've never explicitly offered to exchange sexual favors for career advancement.

Speaker 1 These are some of the sort of accusations that have been made and in the court of law multiple times have been shown not to be true.

Speaker 1 But I have had a sexual life and I've fallen in love and I've been so

Speaker 1 admiring of people that I

Speaker 1 mean I'm I'm so romantic. I'm such a romantic person that there's this whole side of me that hasn't been talked about, isn't being discussed.
But

Speaker 1 that's who I know. That's the person I know.

Speaker 1 It's been very upsetting to hear that some people have said, I, I mean, I don't have a violent bone in my body, but to hear people describe things as having been very aggressive is incredibly difficult for me.

Speaker 1 And I'm deeply sorry that I ever offended anyone or hurt anyone in any way.

Speaker 1 It is crushing to me. And I have to work very hard to show and to prove that I I have learned,

Speaker 1 I got the memo, and I will never, ever, ever behave in those ways again. From everything I've seen in public interactions with you, people love you.

Speaker 1 Colleagues love you, coworkers love you.

Speaker 1 There's a flirtatiousness. Another word for that is chemistry.
There's a chemistry between the people you work with.

Speaker 1 And by the way, not to take anything away from my accountability for things I did where I got it wrong, I crossed the line, I pushed some boundaries. I accept all of that.

Speaker 1 But I live in an industry in which

Speaker 1 flirtation,

Speaker 1 attraction,

Speaker 1 people meeting in the workspace and ending up marrying each other and having children. And so

Speaker 1 it is a space and a place where

Speaker 1 these notions of family, these notions of attraction, these notions of...

Speaker 1 It's always complicated if you meet someone in the workspace and find yourselves attracted to each other.

Speaker 1 You have to be mindful of that, and you have to be very mindful that you don't ever want anyone to feel

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 their job is in jeopardy

Speaker 1 or you would punish them in some way if they no longer wanted to be with you. So

Speaker 1 those are important

Speaker 1 things to just acknowledge. Aaron Powell, Jr.: Another complexity to this, as I've seen, is that there's just a huge number of actors that look up to you.

Speaker 1 A huge number of people in the industry that look up to you. So, just and love you.
I've seen just from this documentary, just a lot of people just love being around you,

Speaker 1 learning from you what it means to create great theater,

Speaker 1 great film, great stories. And so, that adds to the complexity.
I wouldn't say it's a power dynamic like a boss-employee relationship, it's an admiration dynamic that

Speaker 1 is easy to miss and easy to take advantage of. Is that something you understand?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 And I also understand that there are people who met me and spent a very brief period of time with me,

Speaker 1 but presumed I was now going to be their mentor

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 then behaved in a way that I was unaware of, that they were

Speaker 1 either participating or flirting along or encouraging me

Speaker 1 without me having any idea that at the end of the day they were expecting something.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 these are about relationships. These are about two people.
These are about people making decisions, people making choices. And

Speaker 1 I accept my accountability in that.

Speaker 1 But there are a number of things that I've been accused of that just simply did not happen.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I can't say,

Speaker 1 and I don't think it would be right for me to say, well, I, you know, everything that's ever been, I've been accused of is true because we've now proved that it isn't and it wasn't.

Speaker 1 But I'm perfectly willing to accept that I had behaviors that were wrong and that I shouldn't have done.

Speaker 1 And I am regretful for.

Speaker 1 I think this also speaks to

Speaker 1 dark side of fame. The sense I got is that there are some people, potentially a lot of people, trying to make friends with you in order to get roles, in order to advance their career.

Speaker 1 So not you using them, but they trying to use you.

Speaker 1 What's that like? How do you know if somebody likes you for you, for Kevin?

Speaker 1 or

Speaker 1 likes you for

Speaker 1 like you said you're romantic you see a person and you're like I like this person

Speaker 1 and they seem to like you how do you know if they like you for you

Speaker 1 well to some degree I would say that I have been able to trust my instincts on that and that I've most of the time been right

Speaker 1 but obviously in the last number of years

Speaker 1 not just with people who've accused me, but just also people in my own industry, you know, to realize that, oh, I thought we had a friendship, but I guess that was about an inch thick and

Speaker 1 not what I thought it was.

Speaker 1 But look,

Speaker 1 one shouldn't be surprised by that. I have to also say, you know, you said a little while ago that the world had canceled me, and I have to disagree with you.
I have to disagree because

Speaker 1 for seven years,

Speaker 1 I've been stopped by people,

Speaker 1 sometimes every day, sometimes multiple, multiple multiple times a day.

Speaker 1 And the conversations that I have with people,

Speaker 1 the generosity that they share, the kindness that they show,

Speaker 1 and how much they want to know when I'm getting back to work,

Speaker 1 tells me that while there may be a very loud minority,

Speaker 1 there is a quieter majority.

Speaker 1 In the industry, have you been betrayed

Speaker 1 in life?

Speaker 1 And how do you not let that make you cynical?

Speaker 1 I think betrayal is a really interesting word.

Speaker 1 But I think if you're going to be betrayed, it has to be by those who truly know you.

Speaker 1 And I can tell you that I have not been betrayed. That's a beautiful way to put it.

Speaker 1 For the times you cross the line,

Speaker 1 do you take responsibility for the wrongs you've done? Yes.

Speaker 1 Are you sorry to the people you may have hurt emotionally? Yes.

Speaker 1 And I have spoken to many of them.

Speaker 1 Privately. Privately, which is where amends should be made.

Speaker 1 Were they able to start finding forgiveness? Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Some of the most moving conversations that I have had

Speaker 1 when I was

Speaker 1 determined to take accountability have been those people who said, thank you so much, and

Speaker 1 I think I can forgive you now.

Speaker 1 If you got a chance to talk to Kevin Spacey of 30 to 40 years ago,

Speaker 1 what would you tell him to change about his ways?

Speaker 1 How would you do it? What would be your approach? Would you be nice about it? Would you smack him around?

Speaker 1 I think if I were to go back that far, I probably would have found a way to

Speaker 1 not have been as concerned about my revealing my sexuality and hiding that for as long as I did. I think that had

Speaker 1 a lot to do with confusion and a lot to do with mistrust,

Speaker 1 both my own and other people's.

Speaker 1 For most of your life, you were not open

Speaker 1 with the public about being gay.

Speaker 1 What was the hardest thing about keeping who you love a secret?

Speaker 1 That I didn't find the right moment

Speaker 1 of celebration

Speaker 1 to be able to share that.

Speaker 1 That must be a thing that weighs on you to not be able to fully

Speaker 1 celebrate your love. You know,

Speaker 1 Ian McKellen said

Speaker 1 after 40, he was 49 when he came out. 27 years he'd been a professional actor, being in the closet.
And he said he felt it was like he was

Speaker 1 living a part of his life

Speaker 1 not being truthful. And that he felt that it affected his work when he did come out.
because he no longer felt like he had anything to hide.

Speaker 1 And I absolutely believe that that is what my experience has been and will continue to be.

Speaker 1 I am sorry about the way I came out,

Speaker 1 but I had all but Evan and I had already had the conversation.

Speaker 1 I had already decided to come out.

Speaker 1 And so it wasn't like, oh, I was forced to come out,

Speaker 1 but it was something I decided to do. And by the way, much against Evan's advice,

Speaker 1 I came out in that statement, and he wishes that I had not done so. Yeah, you made a statement

Speaker 1 when

Speaker 1 the initial accusation happened. There could be up there

Speaker 1 one of the worst social media posts of all time.

Speaker 1 It's like two for one. Don't hold back.
No, come on. Really tell me that.
The first part, you kind of

Speaker 1 implicitly admitted to doing something bad, which was later shown and proved completely to never have happened. It was a lie.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 I basically said that I didn't remember what this person was, Anthony Rapp was claiming from 31 years before.

Speaker 1 I had no memory of it. But if it had happened, if this embarrassing moment had happened, then I would owe him an apology.
That was what I said. And then I said,

Speaker 1 And while I'm at it, I think I'll come out. And, you know, it was definitely not the greatest coming out party ever.
I will admit that. From the public perception, the first part of that.

Speaker 1 So first of all, the second part is a horrible way to come out. Yes, we all agree.
And then the first part, from the public viewpoint,

Speaker 1 they see guilt in that, which also is tragic because at least that particular accusation, and it's a very dramatic one, it's a $40 million lawsuit. It's a big deal.

Speaker 1 And an underage person was shown to be false. Well, but

Speaker 1 you're melding two things together. The lawsuit didn't happen until 2020, and then it didn't get to court until 2022.
We're back in 2017 when it was just an accusation he made in BuzzFeed magazine.

Speaker 1 Look,

Speaker 1 I was backed into a corner. When someone says, you were so drunk, you won't remember this thing happened.

Speaker 1 What's your first instinct? Is your first instinct to say, this person's a liar? Or is your first instinct to go,

Speaker 1 what?

Speaker 1 I was, what?

Speaker 1 31 years at a party I don't even remember throwing. Obviously, a lot of investigation happened after that, in which we were then able to prove

Speaker 1 in that court case that it had never occurred. But at the moment,

Speaker 1 I was sort of being told I couldn't push back.

Speaker 1 You have to be kind. You can't.

Speaker 1 I think, you know, even to me now,

Speaker 1 none of it sounds right. But I don't know that I could have said anything that would have been

Speaker 1 satisfactory to anybody.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 There's an almost convincing explanation for the worst social media post of all time. I almost accept it.
I'm really surprised.

Speaker 1 I guess you haven't read a lot of media posts because I can't believe that's the actual worst one.

Speaker 1 It's beautifully bad, is how bad that social media post is. As you mentioned, Liam Neeson and Sharon Stone came out in support of you recently,

Speaker 1 speaking to your character.

Speaker 1 A lot of people who know you and some of whom I know, who have worked with you privately, show support for you, but are afraid to speak up publicly.

Speaker 1 What do you make of that? I mean, to me personally, this just makes me sad because perhaps that's the nature of the industry

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 it's difficult to do that, but I just wish there would be a little bit more courage in the world. I don't think it's about the industry.
I think it's about our time.

Speaker 1 I think it's the time that we're in. And people are very afraid.
Just afraid. Just a general,

Speaker 1 general.

Speaker 1 Literally afraid that

Speaker 1 they're going to get canceled if they stand up for someone who has been.

Speaker 1 And I think it's, I mean, you know, we've seen this many times in history. This is not the first time it's happened.

Speaker 1 So as you said, your darkest moment. in 2017

Speaker 1 when all of this went down one of the things that happened is you were no longer in the house of cards for the last season.

Speaker 1 Let's go to the beginning of that show. Okay.
One of the greatest TV series of all time.

Speaker 1 A dark, fascinating character in Frank Underwood. A ruthless, cunning, borderline, evil politician.

Speaker 1 What are some interesting aspects to the process you went through for becoming Frank Underwood? Maybe Richard III. There's a lot of elements there in your performance that maybe

Speaker 1 inspired that character. Well, is that fair or no?

Speaker 1 I'll give you one very interesting,

Speaker 1 specific

Speaker 1 education that I got in doing Richard III

Speaker 1 and closing that show

Speaker 1 at BAM in March of 2012 and two months later started shooting House of Cards.

Speaker 1 There is something called direct address.

Speaker 1 In Shakespeare,

Speaker 1 you have Hamlet talks to the world.

Speaker 1 But when Shakespeare wrote Richard III, it was the first time he created something called direct address,

Speaker 1 which is the character looks directly

Speaker 1 at each person

Speaker 1 close by.

Speaker 1 It is a a different kind of

Speaker 1 sharing

Speaker 1 than when a character is doing a monologue, an opening of Henry IV.

Speaker 1 And while there are some people who believe that direct address was invented in Ferris Bueller, it wasn't. It was Shakespeare who invented it.

Speaker 1 So I had just had this experience

Speaker 1 every night in theaters all over the world,

Speaker 1 seeing how people reacted

Speaker 1 to becoming a co-conspirator

Speaker 1 because that's what it's about

Speaker 1 and what i tried to do and what uh fincher

Speaker 1 really helped me with in those beginning days um

Speaker 1 was how to look in that camera

Speaker 1 and imagine i was talking to my best friend

Speaker 1 because you're sharing the secret of the darkness of how this game is played with that best friend. Yeah, and there were many times when

Speaker 1 I suppose the writers thought I was crazy, where I would see a script and I would see like this moment where this direct address would happen. I'd say all this stuff, and I'd go,

Speaker 1 When we do a read-through of the script, I go,

Speaker 1 I don't think I need to say any of that.

Speaker 1 And they were like, What do you mean? I said, Well, the audience knows all of that. All I have to do is look.

Speaker 1 They know exactly what's going on. I don't need to say a thing.

Speaker 1 So I was often cutting dialogue because it just wasn't needed. Because that relationship between, that I'd learned, that I'd experienced doing Richard III

Speaker 1 was so extraordinary. Where I literally watched people, they were like, oh, I'm in on the thing.
And this is, oh, it's so awesome. And then suddenly, wait, he killed the kids.

Speaker 1 He killed those kids in the tower. Oh, maybe it's not so.
And you literally would watch watch them start to reverse

Speaker 1 their having had such a great time with Richard III in the first, you know, three acts.

Speaker 1 And I thought, this is going to happen in this show. If this

Speaker 1 intimacy

Speaker 1 can actually land.

Speaker 1 And I just think there was some brilliant writing, and we always attempted to do it it in one take.

Speaker 1 No matter how long something was, we would try to do it in one take, the direct addresses.

Speaker 1 So there was never a cut.

Speaker 1 When we went on on locations, we started to then find ways to cut it and make it slightly broader.

Speaker 1 That's interesting because you're doing a bunch of with both Richard III and Frank Underwood, a bunch of

Speaker 1 dark, borderline, evil things.

Speaker 1 And then I guess the idea is you're going to be losing the audience and then you win them back over with the addresses. That's the remarkable thing is against

Speaker 1 their instincts and their better sense of what they should and should not do, they still rallied around Frank Underwood.

Speaker 1 And I saw even with the documentary, the glimmers of that with Richard III.

Speaker 1 I mean, you were seducing the audience. Like, there was such a chemistry between you and the audience on stage.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well,

Speaker 1 in that production, that's absolutely true.

Speaker 1 Also, Richard is one of the weirder,

Speaker 1 weird, I mean by weird.

Speaker 1 It's an early play of Shakespeare's.

Speaker 1 And he's basically never off stage. I mean, I remember when we did the first run-through, I had no idea what the next scene was every time I came off stage.
I had no idea what was next.

Speaker 1 They literally had to drag me from one place to another. Say, now it's the scene with Hastings.
Now it's the scene.

Speaker 1 But I now understand these wonderful stories that you can read in old books about Shakespeare's time, that actors grabbed Shakespeare around the cuff and punched him and threw him up against a wall.

Speaker 1 And said, You ever write a part like this again, I'm going to kill you. And that's why in later plays, he started to have a pageant happened.
And then a wedding happened.

Speaker 1 And the main character was offstage resting because the actor had said, you can't do this to us. There's no breaks.
And it's true. There's very few breaks in Richard III.

Speaker 1 You're on stage most of the time. The comedic aspect of Richard III and Frank Underwood,

Speaker 1 is that a component that helps bring out the full complexity of

Speaker 1 the darkness that is Frank Underwood?

Speaker 1 I certainly can't take credit for

Speaker 1 Shakespeare having written something that is funny or

Speaker 1 Williman and his team to have written something that is funny is fundamentally funny.

Speaker 1 It just depends on how I interpret it.

Speaker 1 That's one of the great things why we love.

Speaker 1 You know, in a year's time, we can see five different Hamlets. We can see four Richard IIIs.

Speaker 1 We can see two Richard IIs. That's part of the thrill that we don't own these parts.

Speaker 1 We borrow them and we interpret them. And what Ian McKellen might do with a role could be completely different from what I might do because of the way we perceive it.

Speaker 1 And also, very often in terms of going for humor, it's very often a director will say, why don't you say that with a bit of irony? Why don't you try that with a bit of blah blah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's often that like a wry smile. The line that jumps to me when you're talking about Claire,

Speaker 1 in the early,

Speaker 1 maybe first episode even, I love that woman more than

Speaker 1 sharks love blood.

Speaker 1 I just, there,

Speaker 1 and I mean, I guess there's a lot of ways to read that line, but the way you read it had both humor, had legitimate affection, had all the ambition and narcissism, all of that mixed up together.

Speaker 1 I also think that one should just acknowledge that where he was from,

Speaker 1 there is something that happens when you do an accent.

Speaker 1 And in fact, sometimes when I would say

Speaker 1 to Beau or one of the other writers, this is really good and I love the idea, but it rhythmically doesn't help.

Speaker 1 I need at least two more words to rhythmically make this work in his accent

Speaker 1 because it just doesn't scan.

Speaker 1 And that's not iambic pentameter. I'm not talking about that.
There is that as well in Shakespeare.

Speaker 1 But there were some times when it's too many lines, it's not enough lines in order for me to make this work for the way he speaks, the way he sounds, and what that accent does

Speaker 1 to emphasis.

Speaker 1 How much of that character, in terms of the musicality

Speaker 1 of the way he speaks, is Bill Clinton?

Speaker 1 Not really at all. I mean, Clinton, you know, look, Bill Clinton, he had a way of talking,

Speaker 1 you know, that he was very slow and he felt your pain, you know.

Speaker 1 But Frank Underwood was a deeper,

Speaker 1 more direct,

Speaker 1 and less poetic

Speaker 1 in the way that Clinton would talk. I'll tell you this Clinton story that you'll like.

Speaker 1 So we decided to do a performance of the Iceman Cometh for the Democratic Party on Broadway. And the president is going to come.
He's going to see this four and a half hour play.

Speaker 1 And then we're going to do this event afterward. And a couple weeks before we're going to do this event, someone at the White House calls and says,

Speaker 1 listen, it's very unusual to get the president for like six and a half hours. So we're suggesting that the president come and see the first act, and then he goes.

Speaker 1 And I knew what was happening. Now, first of all, Clinton knows this play.
He knows what this play is about.

Speaker 1 And I, you know, as gently as I could, said, well, if the president is thinking of leaving at intermission, then I'm afraid we're going to have to cancel the event. There's just no way that...

Speaker 1 So anyway, then, oh, no, it's fine, it's fine. Now I know what was happening.
What was happening was that someone had read the play.

Speaker 1 And they were quite concerned. And I'll tell you why.

Speaker 1 Because the play is about this character that I portrayed named Hickey.

Speaker 1 And in the course of the play, as things get more and more revealed, you realize that this man that I'm playing has been a philanderer. He's cheated on his wife quite a lot.

Speaker 1 And by the end of the play, he is arrested and taken off because

Speaker 1 he ended up ending his wife's life because she forgave him too much and he couldn't live with it.

Speaker 1 So now imagine this. There's 2,000 people at the Brooks-Atkinson Theater watching President Clinton watching this play.

Speaker 1 And at the end of the night, we take our curtain call, they bring out the presidential podium. Bill Clinton stands up there and he says,

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I suppose we should all thank Kevin and this extraordinary company of actors

Speaker 1 for giving us all

Speaker 1 way too much to think about.

Speaker 1 And the audience fell over in laughter. And then he gave a great speech.
And I thought that was a pretty good way to handle that.

Speaker 1 Well, in that way, him and Frank Otter would share like a charisma. There's certain presidents that just have politicians that just have this charisma.
You can't stop listening to them.

Speaker 1 Some of it is the accent,

Speaker 1 but some of it is some other magical thing.

Speaker 1 When I

Speaker 1 was starting to do research, I wanted to meet with the whip,

Speaker 1 Kevin McCarthy.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he wouldn't meet with me until I called his office back and said, tell him I'm playing a Democrat, not a Republican.

Speaker 1 And then he met with me.

Speaker 1 Nice. And he was helpful.
He took me to whip meetings.

Speaker 1 Politicians.

Speaker 1 So you worked with David Fincher there. He was the executive producer, but he also directed the first two episodes.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 High level. What was it like working with him again?

Speaker 1 In which ways do you think he helped guide you and the show to become the great show that it was?

Speaker 1 I give him

Speaker 1 a huge amount of

Speaker 1 the credit.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 not just for what he established,

Speaker 1 but the fact that every director after

Speaker 1 stayed within that world.

Speaker 1 I think that's why the series had a very consistent feeling to it.

Speaker 1 It was like watching a very long movie.

Speaker 1 The style, where the camera went, what it did, what it didn't do, how we used this, how we used that, how we didn't do this.

Speaker 1 There were things that he laid the foundation for that

Speaker 1 we managed to maintain pretty much until Bo Willeman left the show. They got rid of Fincher.

Speaker 1 And I was sort of the last man standing in terms of fighting again. Netflix had never had any creative control at all.
We had complete creative control.

Speaker 1 But over time, they started to get themselves involved because look, this is what happens to networks.

Speaker 1 You know, they'd never made a television show before ever and then four years later they they were the best

Speaker 1 and so you know then you're going to get suggestions about casting and about writing and about who

Speaker 1 music and scenes and so there was there was a a considerable amount of pushback that i had to do when they started to get involved in ways that i thought was affecting the quality of the show What are those battles like?

Speaker 1 Like, I heard that there was

Speaker 1 a battle with the execs like you mentioned early on about your name not being on the billing for seven. I heard that there's battles about the ending of seven, which was really

Speaker 1 well,

Speaker 1 it was pretty dark.

Speaker 1 So what's that battle like?

Speaker 1 How often does that happen? And how do you win that battle?

Speaker 1 Because it feels like there's a line.

Speaker 1 where the networks or the

Speaker 1 execs are really afraid of crossing that line into this strange, uncomfortable place. And then the director, great directors and great actors kind of flirt with that line.

Speaker 1 It can happen in different ways. I mean, I remember one

Speaker 1 argument we had was we had specifically shot a scene

Speaker 1 so that there would be no score in that scene, so that there was no music. It was just two people talking.

Speaker 1 And then we end up seeing a cut where they've decided to put music in. And it is against everything that scene is supposed to be about.
And you have to go and say, guys, this was intentional.

Speaker 1 We did not want score. And now you've added score because what you think it's too quiet? You think our audience can't listen to two people talk for two and a half minutes?

Speaker 1 This show has proved anything. It's proved that people have patience and they're willing to watch an entire season over a weekend.

Speaker 1 So there are those kind of

Speaker 1 arguments that can happen.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 the different arguments on different levels, and they sometimes have to do with, I mean, look, go back to The Godfather. They wanted to fire Pacino because they didn't see anything happening.

Speaker 1 They saw nothing happening. So they wanted to fire Pacino.
And then finally, Coppola thought, I'll shoot the scene where he kills the police commissioner, and they'll do that scene now.

Speaker 1 And that was the first scene where they went, yeah, actually, there's something going on there. So Pacino kept the role.

Speaker 1 You think that

Speaker 1 Godfathers weren't Pacino is like the Pacino we know was born? Or is that more like, there's the characters that are really over the top incentive woman? There's like stages, I suppose.

Speaker 1 Yeah, of course. Look, I think that we can't forget that Pacino is also an animal of the theater.

Speaker 1 You know, he does a lot of plays, and he started off doing plays. And,

Speaker 1 you know, movies were, you know, Panic and Needle Park was his first.

Speaker 1 And yeah, I think there's that period of time when he was doing some incredible parts and incredible movies.

Speaker 1 When I did a series called Wise Guy, I got cast on a Thursday and I flew up to Vancouver on a Saturday and I started shooting on Monday.

Speaker 1 And all I had time to do was watch The Godfather and Serpico, and then I went to work.

Speaker 1 Would you say, ridiculous question, Godfather, greatest film of all time?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 certainly, certainly, yes. Yes.

Speaker 1 But I also, look, I'm allowed to change my opinion. I can next week say it's Lawrence of Arabia, or a week after that, I can say

Speaker 1 Sullivan's Travels. I mean,

Speaker 1 that's the wonderful thing about movies, and particularly great movies, is when you see them again,

Speaker 1 it's like seeing them for the first time. Yeah, yeah.
And you pick up things that you didn't see the last time.

Speaker 1 And for that day, you fall in love with that movie. And you might even say

Speaker 1 to a friend that that is the greatest movie of all time. And also, I think

Speaker 1 it's the degree with which directors are daring.

Speaker 1 I mean, Kubrick decided

Speaker 1 to cast one actor to play three major roles in Doctor Strangelove.

Speaker 1 I mean, who who has the balls to do that today?

Speaker 1 I was going to mention when we're talking about seven that

Speaker 1 just

Speaker 1 if you're looking at the greatest performances portrayals of murderers, so obviously, like I mentioned, Hannibal Elector and Silence of the Lambs, that's up there.

Speaker 1 Seven to me is like competing for first place with Silence of the Lambs. But then there's a different one

Speaker 1 with Kubrick and Jack Nicholson, right, with Shine with a Shiny.

Speaker 1 And there's,

Speaker 1 as opposed to a murderer who's always been a murderer, here's a person like an American beauty who becomes that,

Speaker 1 who descends into madness.

Speaker 1 I read also that Jack Nicholson improvised Here's Johnny in that scene. I believe that.
That's a very different performance than yours in 7.

Speaker 1 What do you make of that performance? Nicholson's always been such an incredible actor because...

Speaker 1 He has absolutely no shame

Speaker 1 about being demonstrative and over the top. And he also also has no problem playing characters who are deeply flawed.
And he's interested in that. I have a pretty good Nicholson story, though.

Speaker 1 Nobody knows. You also have a pretty good Nicholson impression, but what's the story?

Speaker 1 Storyism.

Speaker 1 The story was told to me by a sound man,

Speaker 1 Dennis Maitland, who's a great, great, great guy.

Speaker 1 He said he was very excited because he... he got on Pritzy's Honor, which was Jack Nicholson and Angelica Houston directed by John Houston.
He said, I was so excited. It's my first day on the movie.

Speaker 1 And I get told to go into Mr. Nicholson's trailer and mic him up for the first scene.
So I knock on the trailer door and I hear, yes,

Speaker 1 and come on in. And I come inside, and Mr.
Nicholson is changing out of his

Speaker 1 regular clothes, and he's putting on, he's going to put on his costume. And so I'm setting up the mic and I'm getting ready.
And I said, Mr. Nicholson, I just wanted to tell you,

Speaker 1 I'm extremely excited to be working with you again.

Speaker 1 It's a great pleasure. And Jack goes, did we work together before? And he says, yes, yes,

Speaker 1 we did. And he goes, what film did we do together? He says, well, we did Missouri Breaks.
Nicholson goes, oh, my God. Missouri Breaks.
Jesus Christ, we were out of our minds on that film. Holy shit.

Speaker 1 Jesus Christ. It's a wonder I'm alive.
My God, there was so much drugs going on and we were stoned out of our minds. Holy shit.

Speaker 1 just then he folds the pants that he's just taken off over his arm and an eighth of coke drops out on the floor

Speaker 1 dennis looks at it

Speaker 1 nicholson looks at it

Speaker 1 jack goes

Speaker 1 hadn't worn these pants since missouri breaks

Speaker 1 man i love that guy unapologetically himself

Speaker 1 oh yeah

Speaker 1 your impression of him like at the afi was just

Speaker 1 great. Well that was for

Speaker 1 that was for Mike Nichols. Oh yeah, he had a big impact in your career.
He's hugely impressive. He's really important.

Speaker 1 Can you talk about him? Like what role did he play in your life? I think it was

Speaker 1 1984. I went in to audition for the national tour of a play called The Real Thing, which Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close were doing on Broadway that Mr.
Nichols had directed.

Speaker 1 So I went in to read for this character, Brody, who is a Scottish character.

Speaker 1 And I did the audition and Mike Nichols comes down the aisle of the theater and he's asking me questions about where'd you go to school and what have you been doing.

Speaker 1 I just come back from doing a bunch of years of regional theater in different theaters. I was in New York and meeting Mike Nichols was just incredible.
So Mr. Nichols went,

Speaker 1 have you seen the other play that I directed up the block called Hurley Burley? And I said, no, I haven't. He says, why not?

Speaker 1 I said, I can't afford a Broadway ticket. He said, we can arrange that.
I'd like you to go see that play, and then I'd like you to come in next week and audition for that.

Speaker 1 And I was like, oh, okay.

Speaker 1 So I went to see Hurley Burley, William Hurt, Harvey Keitel,

Speaker 1 Chris Walkin, Candace Bergen, Cynthia Nixon,

Speaker 1 Jerry Stiller.

Speaker 1 And I watched this play. It's played David Ray play about Hollywood.
This is crazy. I mean, Bill Hurt was like unbelievable.
And it was extraordinary. Chris Walker, these guys were weird.

Speaker 1 So there's this Harvey Keitel.

Speaker 1 Walking came in later. Harvey Cattell is playing this part.

Speaker 1 And I come in and I audition for it. And Nichols says, I want you to understudy Harvey Keitel.
I want you to understudy Phil.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, Phil? I mean, Harvey Cattell is like in his 40s. He looks like he can beat the shit out of everybody on stage.
I'm this like 24-year-old.

Speaker 1 And Nichols said, it's just all about attitude. If you believe you can beat the shit out of everybody on stage, the audience will too.

Speaker 1 It's like, okay.

Speaker 1 So I then started to learn Phil.

Speaker 1 And the way it works when you're in understudy, unless you're in name, they don't let you rehearse on the stage. You just rehearse in a rehearsal room.

Speaker 1 But I used to sneak onto the stage and rehearse and try to figure out where the props were and yada yada. Anyway, one day I get a call.

Speaker 1 You're going on today. It's Phil.

Speaker 1 So I went on.

Speaker 1 Nichols is told by Peter Lawrence, who's the stage manager, Spacey's going on as Phil. So Nichols comes down and watches the second act, comes backstage.
He says,

Speaker 1 that was really good.

Speaker 1 How soon could you learn Mickey?

Speaker 1 Mickey was the role that Ron Silver was playing, that Chris Walken also played.

Speaker 1 I said,

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Maybe a couple weeks. He goes, learn Mickey too.

Speaker 1 So I learned Mickey.

Speaker 1 And then one day, I'm told, you're going on tomorrow night as Mickey.

Speaker 1 Nichols comes, sees the second act, comes backstage, says,

Speaker 1 That was really good. I mean, that was really funny.
How soon could you learn Eddie?

Speaker 1 And so I became like the pinch hitter on Hurley Burley. I learned all the male parts, including Jerry Stillers, although I never went on as Jerry Stiller's part.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 I left the play.

Speaker 1 And I guess about two months later, I get this phone call from Mike Nichols. He's like, Kevin, how are you? And I'm like, I'm fine.

Speaker 1 What can I do for you? He says, well, I'm going to make a film this summer with Mandy and Meryl. And there's a role I'd like you to come in

Speaker 1 audition for. So I went in, auditioned, cast me as this mugger on a subway.

Speaker 1 Then there's this whole upheaval that happens because he then

Speaker 1 doesn't continue with Mandy Potemkin.

Speaker 1 Mandy leaves the movie and he asks Jack Nicholson to come in and replace Mandy Potemkin. So now

Speaker 1 I had no scenes with him. But I'm in a movie with Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep.
And my first scene in this movie, which I shot on my birthday, July 26th of 85,

Speaker 1 I got to wink at Meryl Streep

Speaker 1 in this scene. And I was so nervous.
I literally couldn't wink. Nichols had to

Speaker 1 calm me down and help me wink.

Speaker 1 But that became

Speaker 1 my very first film.

Speaker 1 And he was incredible. And he let me come and watch when they were shooting scenes I wasn't in.

Speaker 1 And I remember ending up one day in the makeup trailer on the same day we were working.

Speaker 1 Jack and me, we had no scene together, but I remember him coming in and they put him down in the chair and they put cucumbers, frozen cucumbers on his eyes and did his neck.

Speaker 1 And then they raised him up and did his face. And then I remember Nicholson went like this: looked in the mirror and he went,

Speaker 1 Another day,

Speaker 1 another $50,000,

Speaker 1 and walked out of the trailer.

Speaker 1 well what was christopher walking like oh

Speaker 1 so he's a he's the theater guy too oh yeah he started out as a chorus boy dancer

Speaker 1 well i can see that yeah

Speaker 1 the guy

Speaker 1 i've known walking a long time and i did a saturday night live where i did um we did these uh star wars auditions

Speaker 1 i did chris walking as as hans so

Speaker 1 good and uh

Speaker 1 i'll never forget this i was in los angeles about two weeks after, and I was at Chateau Marmall. There's some party happening at Chateau Marmall.
And I saw Chris Walken come out of onto the balcony.

Speaker 1 And I was like, oh, shit. It's Chris Walken.

Speaker 1 And he walked up to me and he went, Kevin,

Speaker 1 I saw your little sketch. It was funny.
Ha ha.

Speaker 1 Oh, man. It was a really good sketch.
And that guy,

Speaker 1 there are certain people that are truly unique and

Speaker 1 unapologetic

Speaker 1 continue being that throughout their whole career the way they talk the musicality of how they talk how they are their way of being he's that yeah and and it somehow works watch

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 and it works in so many different contexts his he plays like a mobster in true romance

Speaker 1 and it's like genius that's genius but he could he could be anything he could could be soft. He could be a badass, all of it.

Speaker 1 And he's always Christopher Walking, but somehow works for all these different characters.

Speaker 1 So I guess we were talking about House of Cards like two hours ago before we took a tangent upon a tangent.

Speaker 1 But there's a moment in episode one where President Walker broke his promise to Frank Underwood that he would make him a Secretary of State.

Speaker 1 Was this when the monster in Frank was born, or was the monster always there? The sort of,

Speaker 1 for you looking at that character,

Speaker 1 was there an idealistic notion to him that there's loyalty and that broke him? Or did he always know that there is

Speaker 1 this whole world is about manipulation and do anything to get power?

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, it might have been the first moment an audience saw him be betrayed, but it certainly was not the first betrayal he'd experienced.

Speaker 1 And once you start to get to know him and learn about his life and learn about his father and learn about his, you know, friends and learn about their relationship and learn what he was like even as a cadet, I think you start to realize that this is a man who has

Speaker 1 very strong beliefs about loyalty.

Speaker 1 And so it wasn't the first. It was just the first moment that

Speaker 1 in terms of the storyline that's being built,

Speaker 1 Knight Takes King was the name of our production company. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What do you think motivated him

Speaker 1 at that moment and throughout the show? Was it all about power and also legacy? Or was there some small part underneath it all where he wanted to actually do good

Speaker 1 in the world?

Speaker 1 No, I think power is

Speaker 1 an afterthought.

Speaker 1 What he loved more than anything was being able to predict how human beings would react.

Speaker 1 He was a behavioral psychologist.

Speaker 1 And he could know,

Speaker 1 like he was 17 moves ahead in a chess game. He could know if he did this at this moment that eventually this would happen.

Speaker 1 He was able to be predictive

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 was usually right.

Speaker 1 He knew just how far he needed to push someone to get them to do what he needed them to do in order to make the next step work.

Speaker 1 You've played a bunch of evil characters. Well, you call them evil.

Speaker 1 But you don't, but the reason I say that, and I don't mean to be snarky about it, but the reason I say it that way is because

Speaker 1 I never judge the people I play.

Speaker 1 And the people that I have played, or that any actor has played, don't necessarily view themselves as

Speaker 1 this label. It's easy to say,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 that's not the way I can think. I cannot judge a character I play and then play them well.

Speaker 1 I have to be free of judgment. I have to just play them and let the cards drop

Speaker 1 where they may. And let an audience judge.

Speaker 1 I mean, the fact that you use that word is perfectly fine that's your you know but it's like people asking me you know was i really from capex or not you know it's just entirely depends on your perspective

Speaker 1 do roles

Speaker 1 like that like seven like frank underwood

Speaker 1 like uh

Speaker 1 lesser from american beauty do they change you psychologically as a person. So walking around in the skin of these

Speaker 1 characters,

Speaker 1 these

Speaker 1 complex characters with very different moral systems.

Speaker 1 I absolutely believe that

Speaker 1 wandering around in someone else's ideas,

Speaker 1 in someone else's clothes,

Speaker 1 in someone else's shoes

Speaker 1 teaches you enormous empathy.

Speaker 1 And that goes to the heart of not judging.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I have found that I have been so moved by, I mean, look, let's,

Speaker 1 yes, you've identified the darker characters, but I picked Clarence Darrow three times.

Speaker 1 I've played a play called National Anthems. I've done movies like Recount.
I've done films like The Ref. I've done films that in which

Speaker 1 there are that isn't that doesn't exist in any of those characters.

Speaker 1 Those qualities. Pay it forward.

Speaker 1 And so it is

Speaker 1 incredible to be able to embrace

Speaker 1 those things that I admire and that are like me and those things that I don't admire and aren't like me.

Speaker 1 I have to put them on an equal footing and say, I have to just play them as best I can

Speaker 1 and not

Speaker 1 decide to wield judgment over them.

Speaker 1 Without judgment. Without judgment.
In Gulag Archipelago,

Speaker 1 Alexander Solzhenitsyn famously writes about the line between good and evil and that it runs to the heart of every man.

Speaker 1 So the full

Speaker 1 paragraph there, when he talks about the line,

Speaker 1 during the life of any heart, this line keeps changing place. Sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil, and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish.

Speaker 1 One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times, he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood.

Speaker 1 But his name doesn't change. And to that name, we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.

Speaker 1 What do you think about this note

Speaker 1 that we're all capable of good and evil? And throughout life, that line moves and shifts throughout the day, throughout every hour.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 1 one of the things that I've been focused on

Speaker 1 very succinctly is the idea that every day is an opportunity.

Speaker 1 It's an opportunity

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 make better decisions, to learn and to grow.

Speaker 1 And I also think that,

Speaker 1 look,

Speaker 1 I grew up not knowing if my parents loved me,

Speaker 1 particularly my father.

Speaker 1 I never had a sense that

Speaker 1 I was loved, and that stayed with me my whole life.

Speaker 1 And when I

Speaker 1 think back at who my father was

Speaker 1 and more succinctly who he became,

Speaker 1 it was a

Speaker 1 gradual and slow and sad

Speaker 1 development.

Speaker 1 When I've gone back, and now I've looked at diaries my father kept and albums he kept, particularly

Speaker 1 when he was a medic in the U.S. Army,

Speaker 1 served our country with distinction.

Speaker 1 When the war was over and they went to Germany, the things my father said, the things that he wrote, the things that he believed were as patriotic as any American soldier who had ever served.

Speaker 1 But then, when he came back to America

Speaker 1 and he had a dream of being a journalist,

Speaker 1 or his big hope was that he was going to be the great American novelist,

Speaker 1 he wanted to be a creative novelist. And so he sat in his office and he wrote

Speaker 1 for 45 years

Speaker 1 and never published anything.

Speaker 1 And somewhere along the way, in order to make money, he

Speaker 1 became what they call a technical procedure writer.

Speaker 1 Which the best way to describe that is that if you built the F-16 aircraft, my father would have written the manual to tell you how to do it.

Speaker 1 I mean, as boring, as technical, as tedious as you can imagine.

Speaker 1 And so, somewhere in the 60s

Speaker 1 and into the 70s,

Speaker 1 my father fell in with groups of people and individuals, pretend intellectuals,

Speaker 1 who started to give him reasons

Speaker 1 why he was not successful as a white Aryan man in the United States.

Speaker 1 And over time,

Speaker 1 my father became a white supremacist.

Speaker 1 And I cannot tell you the amount of times as a young boy that my father would sit me down and lecture me

Speaker 1 for hours and hours and hours about his

Speaker 1 fucked up ideas of America, of prejudice, of white supremacy. And thank God for my sister.
who said, don't listen to a thing he says. He's out of his mind.

Speaker 1 And even though I was young, I knew everything he was saying was against people and I loved people.

Speaker 1 I had so many wonderful friends.

Speaker 1 My best friend Mike,

Speaker 1 who's still my close friend to this day, I was afraid to bring him to my house because I was afraid that my father would find out he was Jewish

Speaker 1 or that my father would leave his office door open and someone would see his Nazi flag or his pictures of Hitler or Nazi books or what he might say.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 when I found theater

Speaker 1 in the eighth grade

Speaker 1 and debate club and choir and festivals and plays and

Speaker 1 everything

Speaker 1 I could do to participate in that wouldn't make me have to come back home.

Speaker 1 I did.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I've had to reconcile

Speaker 1 who he became.

Speaker 1 Because the gap between that man who was in the U.S. Army as a medic and the man he became,

Speaker 1 I could never fill that gap.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I've forgiven him.

Speaker 1 But then at the same time, I've had to look at my mother and say,

Speaker 1 she made excuses for him.

Speaker 1 Oh, he just needs to get it off his chest. Oh, it doesn't matter.
Just let him say.

Speaker 1 So while on the outside, I would say, oh, yeah, my mother loved me,

Speaker 1 but she didn't protect me.

Speaker 1 So was the

Speaker 1 was all the stuff that she expressed and all of the attention and all the

Speaker 1 love that I felt, was that because I became successful and I was able to fulfill an emptiness that she'd lived with her whole life with him?

Speaker 1 I don't know, but I I've had to ask myself

Speaker 1 those questions over these last years

Speaker 1 to try to reconcile that for myself.

Speaker 1 And the thing you wanted from them and for them is less hate and more love.

Speaker 1 Did your dad said he loves you?

Speaker 1 I don't have any memory of that.

Speaker 1 I was in a program and

Speaker 1 they were showing us

Speaker 1 an experiment that they'd done with psychologists and mothers and fathers and their children. And the children were anywhere between six months and a year, sitting in a little crib.

Speaker 1 And the exercise was this. Parents are playing with the baby right there, toys, yada yada, baby's laughing.

Speaker 1 And then the psychologist would say, stop. And the parent would go like this.

Speaker 1 And you would then watch for the next two and a half, three minutes, this child trying to get their parents' attention

Speaker 1 in any possible way. And I remember when I was sitting in this theater watching this,

Speaker 1 I saw myself.

Speaker 1 That was me

Speaker 1 screaming and reaching out and trying to get my parents' attention. That was me.
And that was

Speaker 1 not something I'd ever remembered before, but I knew that what that baby was going through.

Speaker 1 Is there some elements of politics and maybe the private sector

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 are captured by a house of cards? Like, how true to life do you think that is

Speaker 1 from everything you've seen about politics, from everything you've seen about

Speaker 1 the politicians of this particular elections?

Speaker 1 I heard

Speaker 1 so many different reactions from politicians about House of Cards. Some would say, oh, it's not like that at all.

Speaker 1 And then others would say, it's closer to the truth than anyone wants to admit. And I think I fall down on the side of that

Speaker 1 idea.

Speaker 1 I have to

Speaker 1 interview

Speaker 1 some world leaders, some

Speaker 1 big politicians.

Speaker 1 In your understanding of trying to become Frank Underwood, what advice would you give in interviewing Frank Underwood?

Speaker 1 How to get him to say anything that's at all honest?

Speaker 1 Well, in Frank's case, all you have to do is tell him to look into the camera and he'll tell you. He'll tell you what you want to hear.
That's great.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, we don't get that look into the mind of a person the way we do with Frank Underwood in real life, sadly. Well, but you could say to somebody, you like the House of Cards.

Speaker 1 You know, I'd love for you to just look into the camera and tell us what's really going on, what you really feel about blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 That's a good technique.

Speaker 1 I'll try that with Zelensky and with Putin.

Speaker 1 What do you hope your legacy as an actor is and as a human being?

Speaker 1 People ask me now:

Speaker 1 what's your favorite performance you've ever given?

Speaker 1 And my answer is,

Speaker 1 I haven't given it yet.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 there's a lot more that I want to

Speaker 1 be challenged by, be inspired by.

Speaker 1 There's a lot that I don't know.

Speaker 1 There's a lot I have to learn.

Speaker 1 And that is a very exciting place to feel that I'm in.

Speaker 1 You know, it's been interesting because, you know, we're going back, we're talking.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, it's nice to go back every now and then.

Speaker 1 But I'm focused on

Speaker 1 what's next.

Speaker 1 Do you hope the world forgives you?

Speaker 1 People go to church every week to be forgiven.

Speaker 1 And I believe that forgiveness and I believe that redemption are beautiful things. I mean, look, don't forget,

Speaker 1 I live in an industry in which there is a tremendous amount of conversation about redemption from a lot of people who are very serious people in very serious positions

Speaker 1 who believe in it.

Speaker 1 I mean, that guy finally got out of prison. He was wrongly accused.
That guy who served his time and got out of prison.

Speaker 1 We see so many people saying, let's find a path for that person. Let's help that person rejoin society.

Speaker 1 But there is an odd situation if you're in the entertainment industry, you're not offered that kind of a path.

Speaker 1 And I hope that

Speaker 1 the fear that people are experiencing will eventually subside and common sense will get back to the table.

Speaker 1 If it does, do you think you have another Oscar-worthy performance in you?

Speaker 1 Listen, if it would piss off Jack Lemon again for me to win a third time, I absolutely think so, yeah.

Speaker 1 But you have to mention him again.

Speaker 1 You know, Ernest Hemingway once said that the world is a fine place and worth fighting for. And I agree with him on both counts.

Speaker 1 Kevin, thank you so much for for talking today. Thank you.

Speaker 1 Thanks for listening to this conversation with Kevin Spacey. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now, let me leave you with some words from Meryl Streep:

Speaker 1 Acting is not about being someone different,

Speaker 1 it's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, and then finding myself in there.

Speaker 1 Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.