Is this really the best image for Kevin Spacey right now? After all he just got off the hook from a sexual assault case and he’s talking about ‘killing them with kindness’? Even if he has no intention of admitting that it’s about anything to do with the case, this is kind of creepy and yes, ill-advised. The fact that he’s performing this short piece as Frank Underwood from House of Cards is even more confusing since it’s already been seen that the former president from that show passed on and his wife took over the duties of the president eventually. So really, what was the purpose of this? If nothing else it feels as though this is in very poor taste as Marianne Garvey from CNN might agree with. It’s almost as though Spacey is taking a victory lap since one of his accusers can no longer push a case against him despite how he pleaded his innocence again and again. It’s fair to say that Spacey is a great actor but this kind of goes beyond the pale and makes it evident that he’s not quite as humble as he wants people to think he is sometimes. Maybe the Underwood persona wasn’t the best idea for short greeting since really it appears more antagonistic than anything.
You’ve almost got to think that Spacey is staging a comeback though, since from 2017 until now his career has been pretty quiet. He was fired from House of Cards before the final season after all and like it or not, that show was made better by the undeniably evil and vile acts of Frank Underwood. Whether Spacey is guilty or not he was the heart of that show and once he left it was kind of blah from the start of the last season until the end. Frank was for the most part someone that people detested but he kept it interesting all the same since he would do or say just about anything that would keep him in the seat of power and firmly in control of a country that was just about as divided on the show as it’s been in real life. Following the assault charges though his career went down the tubes in a big way since no one wanted to deal with him again, and it’s hard to blame anyone since a sexual assault charge is a hard thing to shake or to deal with when it comes to the negative publicity that it’s packaged with. Some folks wanted to believe it was just fallout from the MeToo movement since a lot of men in Hollywood were brought to task for their behavior over the years, some rightfully and others simply because they’d done something that another person perceived of as being wrong.
Spacey is kind of a hard actor to like anyway given the perspectives of a few people that have labeled him as difficult. Chloe Melas of CNN has more to offer on this matter. It’s been said of many actors though that they were difficult for one reason or another, but Spacey has been labeled as something of a jerk by some people and a nice guy by others so it’s hard to know where to stand on the matter. In my personal opinion he’s a great actor, and that’s all I tend to care about since if he did the crime then he should do the time, and if he’s found innocent then leave the guy alone. But this Christmas Eve video, huh boy. It’s almost as though Spacey is painting the target and saying “C’mon, gimme your best shot” with a big smile on his face. In fact that is kind of what he’s doing at this point since he doesn’t seem to care that people are going to look at this and draw their own conclusions based on the short video he’s released. It’s definitely gutsy but it doesn’t feel wise to do such a thing when one has narrowly escaped an assault charge based on the fact that the accuser has passed away. In fact it feels as though he’s daring anyone to come after him again and doing so without much thought as to whether or not the next accusation might be successful.
At this point it might not be though since if there are any other people waiting in the wings they’re bound to suffer the same criticism as those that ran with the MeToo and TimesUp movements did, a general amount of scorn and the continued question “Why did you wait so long?”. Shaila Dewan of The New York Times has more on this subject. People hate that question don’t they? Yet despite the fear, despite the shame, wouldn’t it have been better to get it off their chest and end up moving forward by now? It’d be great if people would admit that waiting to reveal their stories was a bad idea, and if Spacey would have thought this through before deciding to get on with it.
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