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

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Kevin Spacey,

00:00:03.040 | a two-time Oscar-winning actor who has starred

00:00:05.640 | in "Seven," "The Usual Suspects," "American Beauty,"

00:00:09.000 | and "House of Cards."

00:00:11.160 | He is one of the greatest actors ever,

00:00:14.360 | creating haunting performances of characters

00:00:16.640 | who often embody the dark side of human nature.

00:00:20.600 | Seven years ago, he was cut from "House of Cards"

00:00:23.480 | and canceled by "Hollywood and the World"

00:00:25.760 | when Anthony Rapp made an allegation

00:00:28.240 | that Kevin Spacey sexually abused him in 1986.

00:00:32.480 | Anthony Rapp then filed a civil lawsuit

00:00:35.960 | seeking $40 million.

00:00:38.800 | In this trial and all civil and criminal trials that followed,

00:00:43.840 | Kevin was acquitted.

00:00:46.120 | He has never been found guilty nor liable in a court of law.

00:00:52.160 | In this conversation, Kevin makes clear what he did

00:00:55.800 | and what he didn't do.

00:00:57.880 | I also encourage you to listen to Kevin's Dan Wooten

00:01:01.120 | and Alison Pearson interviews for additional details

00:01:05.200 | and responses to the allegations.

00:01:09.240 | As an aside, let me say that one of the principles

00:01:12.280 | I operate under for this podcast and in life

00:01:16.320 | is that I will talk with everyone,

00:01:19.280 | with empathy and with backbone.

00:01:22.360 | For each guest, I hope to explore their life's work,

00:01:25.560 | life's story, and what and how they think,

00:01:29.200 | and do so honestly and fully.

00:01:31.800 | The good, the bad, and the ugly.

00:01:33.800 | The brilliance and the flaws.

00:01:36.840 | I won't whitewash their sins,

00:01:39.000 | but I won't reduce them to a worst possible caricature

00:01:43.160 | of their sins either.

00:01:45.080 | The latter is what the mass hysteria of internet mobs

00:01:47.680 | too often does,

00:01:49.240 | often rushing to a final judgment before the facts are in.

00:01:53.120 | I will try to do better than that,

00:01:55.080 | to respect due process, in service of the truth.

00:01:59.440 | And I hope to have the courage to always think independently

00:02:03.400 | and to speak honestly from the heart,

00:02:06.720 | even when the eyes of the outrage mob are on me.

00:02:09.920 | Again, my goal is to understand human beings

00:02:14.000 | at their best and at their worst.

00:02:16.840 | And hope is such understanding leads to more compassion

00:02:20.440 | and wisdom in the world.

00:02:23.280 | I will make mistakes.

00:02:25.920 | And when I do, I will work hard to improve.

00:02:29.200 | I love you all.

00:02:32.280 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:02:36.640 | To support it, please check out our sponsors

00:02:38.720 | in the description.

00:02:39.920 | And now, dear friends, here's Kevin Spacey.

00:02:43.520 | You played a serial killer in the movie "Seven."

00:02:48.280 | Your performance was one of, if not the greatest portrayal

00:02:53.080 | of a murderer on screen ever.

00:02:55.160 | What was your process of becoming him,

00:02:57.560 | John Doe, the serial killer?

00:02:59.840 | - The truth is I didn't get the part.

00:03:02.160 | I had been in Los Angeles making a couple of films,

00:03:08.880 | "Swimming with Sharks" and "Usual Suspects."

00:03:11.320 | And then I did a film called "Outbreak"

00:03:15.320 | that Morgan Freeman was in.

00:03:16.840 | And I went in to audition for David Fincher

00:03:22.320 | in probably late November of '94.

00:03:27.320 | And I auditioned for this part and didn't get it.

00:03:33.040 | And I went back to New York.

00:03:35.280 | And I think they started shooting like December 12th.

00:03:42.000 | And I'm in New York.

00:03:44.840 | I'm back in my wonderful apartment on West 12th Street.

00:03:48.760 | And my mom has come to visit for Christmas.

00:03:51.480 | And it's December 23rd.

00:03:54.240 | And it's like seven o'clock at night and my phone rings.

00:03:58.840 | And it's Arnold Copelson, who's the producer of "Seven."

00:04:02.720 | And he's very jovial and he's very friendly.

00:04:06.600 | And he says, "How you doing?"

00:04:07.800 | And I said, "Fine."

00:04:08.800 | And he said, "Listen, do you remember that film

00:04:11.200 | "you came in for, 'Seven'?"

00:04:12.520 | I said, "Yeah, yeah, absolutely."

00:04:13.960 | He goes, "Well, turns out that we hired an actor

00:04:18.280 | "and we started shooting.

00:04:19.920 | "And then yesterday, David fired him.

00:04:22.520 | "And David would like you to get on a plane on Sunday

00:04:27.440 | "and come to Los Angeles and start shooting on Tuesday."

00:04:30.440 | And I was like, "Okay, would it be imposing to say,

00:04:37.200 | "can I read it again?

00:04:41.280 | "'Cause it's been a while now and I'd like to..."

00:04:45.400 | So they sent a script over.

00:04:49.000 | I read the script that night.

00:04:50.480 | I thought about it.

00:04:53.120 | And I had this feeling, I can't even quite describe it,

00:05:01.400 | but I had this feeling that it would be really good

00:05:08.720 | if I didn't take billing in the film.

00:05:14.280 | And the reason I felt that was because I knew

00:05:16.560 | that by the time this film would come out,

00:05:18.600 | it would be the last one of the three movies

00:05:20.600 | that I just shot, the fourth one.

00:05:23.240 | And if any of those films broke through or did well,

00:05:28.480 | if it was gonna be Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman,

00:05:30.480 | Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kevin Spacey,

00:05:32.640 | and you don't show up for the first 25, 30, 40 minutes,

00:05:36.800 | people are gonna figure out who you're playing.

00:05:38.760 | - So people should know that you are the serial,

00:05:41.480 | you play the serial killer in the movie

00:05:43.800 | and the serial killer shows up more than halfway

00:05:48.560 | through the movie. - Very late in the movie.

00:05:50.040 | - And when you say billing, it's like the posters,

00:05:53.560 | the VHS cover, everything, you're gone, you're not there.

00:05:56.560 | - Not there.

00:05:57.400 | And so New Line Cinema told me to go fuck myself,

00:06:02.400 | that they absolutely could use my picture and my image.

00:06:06.160 | And this became a little bit of a,

00:06:08.120 | I'd say 24-hour conversation.

00:06:11.960 | And it was Fincher who said,

00:06:13.760 | "I actually think this is a really cool idea."

00:06:16.600 | So the compromise was I'm the first credit

00:06:20.200 | at the end of the movie when the credits start.

00:06:24.680 | So I got on a plane on that Sunday

00:06:26.320 | and I flew to Los Angeles and I went into

00:06:31.320 | where they were shooting and I went into the makeup room

00:06:33.800 | and David Fincher was there and we were talking about

00:06:36.640 | what should I do, how should I look?

00:06:39.680 | And I just had my hair short for "Outbreak"

00:06:44.400 | 'cause I was playing a military character.

00:06:48.200 | And I just looked at the hairdresser and I said,

00:06:51.720 | "Do you have a razor?"

00:06:53.000 | And Fincher went, "Are you kidding?"

00:06:56.440 | And I said, "No."

00:06:58.040 | He goes, "If you shave your head, I'll shave mine."

00:07:01.040 | So we both shaved our heads.

00:07:03.760 | And then I started shooting the next day.

00:07:09.180 | - So my long-winded answer to your question

00:07:13.960 | is that I didn't have that much time

00:07:16.000 | to think about how to build that character.

00:07:21.000 | What I think in the end Fincher was able

00:07:26.120 | to do so brilliantly with such terror

00:07:30.760 | was to set the audience up to meet this character.

00:07:37.680 | I think the last scene, the ending scene

00:07:40.580 | and the car ride leading up to it,

00:07:42.820 | where it's mostly on you in conversation

00:07:47.160 | with Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt,

00:07:48.960 | is one of the greatest scenes in film history.

00:07:53.500 | So if people somehow didn't see the movie,

00:07:55.820 | there's these five murders that happen

00:07:57.660 | that are inspired by five of the seven deadly sins

00:08:01.140 | and the ending scene is inspired,

00:08:03.980 | represents the last two deadly sins.

00:08:07.540 | And there's this calm subtlety about you

00:08:12.540 | in your performance that's just terrifying.

00:08:15.940 | Maybe in contrast with Brad Pitt's performance

00:08:19.580 | that's also really strong, but that is a contrast.

00:08:23.220 | In the contrast is the terrifying sense

00:08:27.060 | that you get in the audience that builds up

00:08:29.320 | to the twist at the end or the surprise at the end

00:08:32.220 | with the famous what's in the box from Brad Pitt.

00:08:36.420 | That is Brad Pitt's character's wife, her head.

00:08:41.260 | - Yeah, I can really only tell you

00:08:44.900 | that while we were shooting that scene in the car,

00:08:47.380 | while we were out in the desert

00:08:50.860 | in that place where all those electrical wires were,

00:08:54.740 | David just kept saying, "Less, do less."

00:08:59.240 | And I just tried to, I remember he kept saying to me,

00:09:05.460 | "Remember, you're in control.

00:09:09.100 | "Like you're going to win.

00:09:12.200 | "And knowing that should allow you

00:09:16.320 | "to have tremendous confidence."

00:09:18.740 | And I just followed that lead.

00:09:23.620 | And I just think it's the kind of film

00:09:28.580 | that so many of the elements that had been at work

00:09:34.380 | from the beginning of the movie in terms of its style,

00:09:37.240 | in terms of how he built this terror,

00:09:39.220 | in terms of how he built for the audience

00:09:41.980 | a sense of this person being one of the scariest people

00:09:45.540 | they might ever encounter.

00:09:47.280 | It really allowed me to be able to not have to do that much,

00:09:53.920 | just say the words and mean them.

00:09:57.600 | And I think it also is,

00:10:02.380 | it's an example of what makes tragedy so difficult.

00:10:07.380 | Very often tragedy is people operating

00:10:17.660 | without enough information.

00:10:18.880 | They don't have all the facts.

00:10:20.460 | Romeo and Juliet, they don't have all the facts.

00:10:22.940 | They don't know what we know as an audience.

00:10:28.140 | And so in the end,

00:10:30.020 | whether Brad Pitt's character ends up shooting John Doe

00:10:36.820 | or turning the gun on himself, which was a discussion.

00:10:42.580 | I mean, there were a number of alternative endings

00:10:45.460 | that were discussed.

00:10:47.220 | Nothing ends up being tied up in a nice little bow.

00:10:52.840 | It is complicated and shows

00:10:56.700 | how nobody wins in the end

00:11:01.500 | when you're not operating with all the information.

00:11:04.920 | - When you say say the words and mean them,

00:11:08.540 | what does mean them mean?

00:11:13.300 | - I've been very fortunate to be directed

00:11:18.620 | by Fincher a couple of times.

00:11:22.380 | And he would say to me sometimes,

00:11:27.160 | "I don't believe a thing that is coming out of your mouth.

00:11:33.220 | "Shall we try it again?"

00:11:34.740 | And you go, "Okay, yeah, we can try it again."

00:11:42.220 | And sometimes he'll do take

00:11:45.660 | and then you'll look to see if he has any

00:11:50.940 | added genius to hand you.

00:11:55.100 | And he just goes, "Let's do it again.

00:11:56.900 | "And then let's do it again."

00:11:58.460 | And sometimes, I say this in all humility,

00:12:03.460 | he's literally trying to beat the acting out of you.

00:12:06.760 | And by continually saying, "Do it again, do it again,

00:12:11.620 | "do it again," and not giving you any specifics,

00:12:16.500 | he is systematically shredding you of all pretense.

00:12:21.500 | 'Cause look, very often actors,

00:12:27.260 | we come in on the set and we've thought about the scene

00:12:30.140 | and we've worked out, "I've got this prop

00:12:31.980 | "and I'm gonna do this thing with a can.

00:12:34.060 | "All these things, all the tea,

00:12:35.360 | "I'm gonna do a thing with the thing."

00:12:37.260 | And David is the kind of director

00:12:40.100 | where he just wants you to stop adding all that crap

00:12:44.780 | and just say the words and say them quickly and mean them.

00:12:49.780 | And it takes a while to get to that place.

00:12:54.620 | I'll tell you a story, this is a story I just love

00:12:58.540 | because it's in exactly the same wheelhouse.

00:13:01.940 | So Jack Lemmon's first movie was a film

00:13:04.180 | called "It Should Happen to You"

00:13:06.140 | and it was directed by George Cukor.

00:13:07.860 | And Jack tells this story

00:13:09.660 | and it was just an incredibly charming story

00:13:11.780 | to hear Jack tell.

00:13:12.740 | He said, "So I'm doing this picture

00:13:15.600 | "and let me tell you, this is a terrific part for me.

00:13:18.680 | "And I'm doing a scene, it's on my first day.

00:13:20.460 | "It's my first day and it's a terrific scene."

00:13:22.740 | And he goes, "We do the first take."

00:13:24.500 | And George Cukor comes up to me and he says,

00:13:26.840 | "Jack," I said, "Yeah."

00:13:27.780 | He said, "Could you do, let's do another one,

00:13:29.740 | "but just do a little less in this one."

00:13:32.180 | And Jack said, "A little less,

00:13:33.780 | "a little less than what I just did?"

00:13:34.940 | He said, "Yeah, just a little less."

00:13:36.220 | So he goes, "We do another take."

00:13:37.820 | And I think, "Boy, that was it.

00:13:39.320 | "I mean, let's just go home."

00:13:41.140 | And Cukor walked up to him and he said,

00:13:42.940 | "Jack, I'd like to do another one,

00:13:44.200 | "this time just a little bit less."

00:13:46.860 | And Jack said, "Less than what I just did now?"

00:13:50.100 | He said, "Yeah, just a little bit less."

00:13:51.460 | He goes, "Oh, okay."

00:13:52.420 | So they did another take and Cukor came up and he said,

00:13:54.440 | "Jack, just a little bit less."

00:13:56.140 | And Jack said, "A little less than what I just did?"

00:13:59.060 | He said, "Yes."

00:13:59.880 | He goes, "Well, if I do any less,

00:14:00.860 | "I'm not gonna be acting."

00:14:02.540 | And Cukor said, "Exactly, Jack, exactly."

00:14:06.860 | - I mean, I guess what you're saying

00:14:08.900 | is it's extremely difficult to get to the bottom

00:14:12.540 | of a little less, because the power,

00:14:16.980 | if we just stick even on seven,

00:14:18.940 | of your performance is in the tiniest of subtleties.

00:14:22.180 | Like when you say, "Oh, you didn't know,"

00:14:24.780 | and you turn your head a little bit,

00:14:26.820 | and a little bit like the little bit,

00:14:30.900 | maybe a glimmer of a smile appears in your face.

00:14:35.340 | That's subtlety, that's less.

00:14:37.920 | That's hard to get to, I suppose.

00:14:40.100 | - Yeah, and also because I so well remember,

00:14:44.640 | I think the work that Brad did,

00:14:48.060 | and also Morgan did in that scene,

00:14:49.720 | but the work that Brad had to do, where he had to go.

00:14:52.940 | I remember rehearsing with him

00:14:54.260 | as we were all staying at this little hotel

00:14:56.540 | nearby that location, and we rehearsed the night

00:14:58.660 | before we started shooting that sequence.

00:15:00.500 | And I just, I mean, it was just incredible

00:15:04.380 | to see the levels of emotions he had to go through,

00:15:09.380 | and then the decision of, "What do I do?

00:15:14.020 | "Because if I do what he wants me to do, then he wins.

00:15:17.760 | "But if I don't do it, then I'm,

00:15:19.460 | "what kind of a man, husband am I?"

00:15:21.420 | I just thought he did really incredible work.

00:15:24.900 | So it was also not easy to not react

00:15:28.180 | to the power of what he was throwing at me.

00:15:34.180 | I just thought it was an extraordinary,

00:15:36.140 | a really extraordinary scene.

00:15:39.500 | - So what's it like being in that scene?

00:15:41.080 | So it's you, Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman,

00:15:43.260 | and Brad Pitt is going over the top,

00:15:46.860 | just having a mental breakdown,

00:15:49.540 | and is weighing these extremely difficult moral choices,

00:15:53.540 | as you're saying.

00:15:54.380 | But he's screaming and in pain and tormented

00:15:58.960 | while you're very subtly smiling.

00:16:02.620 | - In terms of the writing and in terms of what

00:16:04.940 | the characters had to do, it was an incredible culmination

00:16:08.300 | of how this character

00:16:10.340 | could manipulate in the way that he did,

00:16:15.700 | and in the end, succeed.

00:16:21.040 | - You mentioned Fincher likes to do a lot of takes.

00:16:25.580 | That's the famous thing about David Fincher.

00:16:29.740 | So what are the pros and cons of that?

00:16:31.900 | - I think I read that he does some crazy amount.

00:16:36.180 | He averages 25 to 65 takes,

00:16:40.860 | and most directors do less than 10.

00:16:43.100 | - Yeah, sometimes it's timing.

00:16:46.820 | Sometimes it's literally he has a stopwatch

00:16:49.420 | and he's timing how long a scene is taking.

00:16:53.060 | And then he'll say,

00:16:54.400 | "You need to take a minute off this scene."

00:17:00.260 | - Like a minute?

00:17:01.380 | - Yeah, a minute off the scene.

00:17:03.220 | I want it to move like this.

00:17:05.420 | So let's pick it up.

00:17:06.420 | Let's pick up the pace.

00:17:07.540 | Let's see if we can take a minute off.

00:17:09.940 | - Why the speed?

00:17:10.980 | Why say fast is the important thing for him, you think?

00:17:13.780 | - I think because Fincher hates indulgence.

00:17:19.120 | And he wants people to talk the way they do in life,

00:17:26.620 | which is we don't take big dramatic pauses

00:17:31.620 | before we speak.

00:17:33.020 | We speak.

00:17:33.860 | We say what we want.

00:17:34.700 | - And I guess actors like the dramatic pauses

00:17:38.620 | and the indulge in the dramatic pauses.

00:17:40.460 | - Well, they didn't always like the dramatic pauses.

00:17:42.500 | I mean, look, you go back, any student of acting,

00:17:46.100 | you go back to the '30s and the '40s, '50s,

00:17:49.440 | the speed at which actors spoke,

00:17:55.620 | not just in the comedies, which of course,

00:17:57.900 | you look at any Preston Sturges movie

00:17:59.540 | and it's incredible how fast people are talking

00:18:02.540 | and how funny things are when they happen that fast.

00:18:07.540 | But then, acting styles changed.

00:18:12.380 | We got into a different kind of thing

00:18:14.540 | in the late '50s and '60s.

00:18:16.780 | And a lot of actors are feeling it,

00:18:21.500 | which is, I'm not saying it's a bad thing.

00:18:25.220 | It's just that if you want to keep an audience engaged,

00:18:30.220 | as Fincher does, and I believe successfully does

00:18:35.780 | in all of his work, pace, timing, movement,

00:18:40.780 | clarity, speed are admirable to achieve.

00:18:48.380 | - And all of that, he wants the actor

00:18:51.140 | to be as natural as possible,

00:18:53.020 | to strip away all the bullshit of acting and become human.

00:18:58.020 | - Look, I've been lucky with other directors.

00:19:00.220 | Sam Mendes is similar.

00:19:02.220 | I remember when I walked in to maybe the first rehearsal

00:19:05.140 | for "Richard III" that we were doing,

00:19:07.660 | I had brought with me a canopy of ailments

00:19:12.660 | that my Richard was going to suffer from.

00:19:15.340 | And Sam eventually whittled it down to three.

00:19:21.980 | Maybe your arm, and maybe your leg.

00:19:25.340 | But let's get rid of the other 10 things

00:19:27.260 | that you brought into the room,

00:19:28.740 | because I was so excited to capture this character.

00:19:32.900 | So very often, Trevor Nunn is this way,

00:19:37.900 | a lot of wonderful directors I've worked with,

00:19:40.260 | they're really good at helping you trim and edit.

00:19:45.260 | - David Fincher said about you,

00:19:48.860 | he's talking in general, I think,

00:19:50.780 | but also specifically in the moment of "House of Cards,"

00:19:54.500 | said that you have exceptional skill

00:19:56.580 | both as an actor and as a performer,

00:19:59.940 | which he says are different things.

00:20:02.780 | So he defines the former's dramatization of a text

00:20:05.940 | and the latter as the seduction of an audience.

00:20:08.580 | Do you see wisdom in that distinction?

00:20:14.420 | And what does it take to do both,

00:20:16.420 | the dramatization of a text

00:20:17.940 | and the seduction of an audience?

00:20:20.900 | - Those are two very interesting descriptions.

00:20:23.300 | When I think, I guess when I think performer,

00:20:27.980 | I tend to think entertaining,

00:20:32.060 | I tend to think comedy,

00:20:35.060 | I tend to think winning over an audience,

00:20:36.860 | I tend to think that there's something about

00:20:40.820 | that quality of wanting to have people enjoy themselves

00:20:49.100 | and when you saddle that against what maybe he means

00:20:54.100 | as an actor, which is more dramatic or more text driven,

00:21:02.100 | more, look, I've always believed that my job,

00:21:07.900 | not every actor feels this way,

00:21:13.380 | but my job, the way that I've looked at it

00:21:15.340 | is that my job is to serve the writing.

00:21:18.300 | And that if I serve the writing,

00:21:20.580 | I will, in a sense, serve myself

00:21:24.260 | because I'll be in the right world,

00:21:25.900 | I'll be in the right context,

00:21:27.500 | I'll be in the right style,

00:21:29.860 | I'll have embraced what a director's,

00:21:32.900 | it's not my painting, it's someone else's painting,

00:21:37.100 | I'm a series of colors in someone else's painting.

00:21:40.380 | And the barometer for me has always been

00:21:43.700 | that when people stop me and talk to me

00:21:48.700 | about a character I've played and reference their name

00:21:55.660 | as if they actually exist,

00:21:58.660 | that's when I feel like I've gotten close to doing my job.

00:22:01.580 | - Yeah, one of the challenges for me in this conversation

00:22:05.780 | is remembering that your name is Kevin,

00:22:08.820 | not Frank or John or any of these characters

00:22:13.820 | because they live deeply in the psyche.

00:22:17.380 | - To me, that's the greatest compliment

00:22:20.380 | for me as an actor.

00:22:25.780 | I love being able to go,

00:22:29.700 | I mean, when I think about performers who inspire me

00:22:37.300 | and I remember when I was young

00:22:40.020 | and I was introduced to Spencer Tracy,

00:22:43.420 | Henry Fonda, Katherine Hepburn,

00:22:46.340 | I just, I believed who they were.

00:22:48.780 | I knew nothing about them.

00:22:49.820 | They were just these extraordinary characters

00:22:53.100 | doing this extraordinary stuff.

00:22:55.180 | And then I think more recently contemporary,

00:22:58.180 | when I think of the work that Philip Seymour Hoffman did

00:23:06.060 | and Heath Ledger and people that when I think about

00:23:10.980 | what they could be doing, what they could do,

00:23:12.860 | what they would have done had they stayed with us,

00:23:16.580 | I'm so excited when I go into a cinema or I go into a play

00:23:23.460 | and I completely am taken to someplace that I believe exists

00:23:28.900 | and characters that become real.

00:23:32.900 | And those characters become like lifelong companions.

00:23:36.900 | Like for me, they travel with you.

00:23:38.980 | And even if it's the darkest aspects of human nature,

00:23:41.860 | they're always there.

00:23:42.900 | I feel like I almost met them and gotten to know them

00:23:47.940 | and gotten to become like friends with them almost.

00:23:51.740 | Hannibal Lecter, whether it's the, or Forrest Gump.

00:23:54.460 | I mean, I feel like I'm like best friends with Forrest Gump.

00:23:59.100 | I know the guy.

00:24:00.620 | And I guess he's played by some guy named Tom,

00:24:03.220 | but like Forrest Gump is the guy I'm friends with.

00:24:05.700 | And I think that everybody feels like that

00:24:09.100 | when they're in the audience with great characters.

00:24:10.860 | They just kind of, they become part of you in some way,

00:24:14.540 | the good, the bad and the ugly of them.

00:24:17.100 | - One of the things that I feel that I try to do in my work

00:24:23.100 | is when I read something for the first time,

00:24:27.340 | when I read a script or play,

00:24:30.100 | and I am absolutely devastated by it.

00:24:37.180 | It is the most extraordinary, the most beautiful,

00:24:40.940 | the most life affirming or terrifying.

00:24:44.140 | It's then a process weirdly of working backwards

00:24:49.940 | because I wanna work in such a way

00:24:54.020 | that that's the experience I give to the audience

00:24:56.700 | when they first see it,

00:24:58.620 | that they have the experience I had when I read it.

00:25:02.420 | I remember that there's been times in the creative process

00:25:06.260 | when something was pointed out to me or something was,

00:25:10.300 | I remember I was doing a play

00:25:12.780 | and I was having this really tough time

00:25:14.620 | with one of the last scenes in the play.

00:25:17.980 | And I just couldn't figure it out.

00:25:20.100 | I was in rehearsal.

00:25:21.980 | And although we had a director in that play,

00:25:23.780 | I called another, a friend of mine who was also director.

00:25:26.220 | And I had him come over and I said,

00:25:27.780 | "Look, this scene I'm just having the toughest.

00:25:30.460 | "I cannot seem to crack this scene."

00:25:33.460 | And so we read it through a couple of times.

00:25:36.260 | And then this wonderful director named John Swanbeck

00:25:39.540 | who would eventually direct me in a film

00:25:40.860 | called "The Big Kahuna."

00:25:42.460 | But this is before that.

00:25:43.660 | He said to me the most incredible thing.

00:25:46.500 | He just said, "All right, what's the last line

00:25:49.900 | "you have in this scene before you fall over

00:25:52.260 | "and fall asleep?"

00:25:53.100 | And I said, "The last line is that last drink, the old KO."

00:25:58.100 | And he went, "Okay, I want you to think about

00:26:02.740 | "what that line actually means and then work backwards."

00:26:07.740 | And so he left and I sort of was left with this,

00:26:13.940 | what, like, what does that mean?

00:26:15.900 | How am I supposed to?

00:26:17.860 | And then like a couple of days went by,

00:26:19.540 | a couple of days went by and I thought,

00:26:20.860 | okay, so I said, "What does that line actually mean?"

00:26:23.220 | "Well, that last drink, the old KO."

00:26:27.500 | KO is knockout, which is a boxing term.

00:26:32.500 | It's the only boxing term the writer uses in the play.

00:26:40.100 | And then I went back and I realized my friend was so smart

00:26:45.100 | and so incredible to have said,

00:26:48.420 | "Ask a question you haven't thought of asking yet."

00:26:51.820 | I realized that the playwright wrote the last round,

00:26:55.060 | the eighth round between these two brothers

00:26:57.420 | and it was a fight, physical as well as emotional.

00:27:01.820 | And when I brought that into the rehearsal room

00:27:03.980 | to the directors during that play, he liked that idea

00:27:07.500 | and we staged that scene as if it was the eighth round,

00:27:11.420 | although the audience wouldn't have known that.

00:27:13.580 | But just what I loved about that was that somebody

00:27:18.020 | said to me, "Ask yourself a question

00:27:21.540 | "you haven't asked yourself yet.

00:27:22.780 | "What does that line mean?"

00:27:24.180 | And then worked backwards.

00:27:25.700 | - What is that, like a catalyst for thinking deeply

00:27:30.700 | about what is magical about this play,

00:27:33.920 | this story, this narrative?

00:27:35.060 | That's what that is, like thinking backwards,

00:27:37.060 | that's what that does?

00:27:37.900 | - Yeah, but also because it's just, it's this incredible,

00:27:41.880 | why didn't I think to ask that question myself?

00:27:45.980 | That's what you have directors for,

00:27:47.100 | that's what you have, you know,

00:27:48.620 | so many places where ideas can come from.

00:27:50.860 | But that just illustrates that even though in my brain,

00:27:54.620 | I go, I always like to work backwards,

00:27:56.500 | I missed it in that one and I'm very grateful to my friend

00:28:01.620 | for having pushed me into being able to realize

00:28:06.620 | what that meant and--

00:28:08.700 | - To ask the interesting question.

00:28:10.460 | I like the poetry and the humility of just a series

00:28:16.260 | of colors in someone else's painting.

00:28:18.180 | That was a good line.

00:28:20.220 | That said, you've talked about improvisation,

00:28:24.700 | you said that it's all about the ability to do it again

00:28:27.860 | and again and again and yet never make it the same.

00:28:31.380 | And you also just said that you're trying to stay true

00:28:34.460 | to the text.

00:28:35.860 | So where's the room for the improvisation,

00:28:40.500 | that it's never the same?

00:28:41.940 | - Well, there's two slightly different contexts, I think.

00:28:44.740 | One is in the rehearsal room.

00:28:47.140 | Improvisation could be a wonderful device.

00:28:51.740 | I mean, Sam Mendes, for example, will start,

00:28:54.740 | he'll start a scene and he does this wonderful thing.

00:28:58.220 | He brings rugs and he brings chairs and sofas in

00:29:02.460 | and he says, well, let's put two chairs here and here.

00:29:05.780 | You guys, let's start in these chairs

00:29:07.620 | far apart from each other.

00:29:09.100 | Let's see what happens with the scene

00:29:10.420 | if you're that far apart.

00:29:12.180 | And so we'll do the scene that way.

00:29:13.500 | And then he goes, okay, let's bring a rug in

00:29:16.100 | and let's bring these chairs much closer

00:29:18.460 | and let's see what happens if the space,

00:29:21.260 | if the space between you is...

00:29:23.300 | And so then you try it that way.

00:29:24.820 | And then, you know, it's a little harder

00:29:26.980 | in Shakespeare to improv,

00:29:28.620 | but in any situation where you wanna try and see where,

00:29:34.940 | where could a scene go?

00:29:36.660 | Where would the scene go if I didn't make that choice?

00:29:39.100 | Where would the scene go if I made this choice?

00:29:40.900 | Where would the scene go if I didn't say that

00:29:42.860 | or I said something else?

00:29:44.060 | So that's how improv can be a valuable process

00:29:49.060 | to learn about limits and boundaries

00:29:54.420 | and what's going on with a character

00:30:01.260 | that somehow you discover in trying something

00:30:05.340 | that isn't on the page.

00:30:06.700 | Then there's the different thing,

00:30:09.420 | which is the trying to make it fresh

00:30:12.100 | and trying to make it new.

00:30:13.340 | And that is really a reference to theater.

00:30:16.100 | I'll put it to you this way.

00:30:22.060 | Anybody loves sports, right?

00:30:26.220 | So you go and you watch on a pitch,

00:30:28.140 | you watch on a tennis game,

00:30:30.660 | you watch basketball, you watch football.

00:30:33.020 | Yeah, the rules are the same,

00:30:36.380 | but it's a different game every time you're out

00:30:38.060 | on that court or on that field.

00:30:41.460 | It's no different in theater.

00:30:43.900 | Yes, it's the same lines.

00:30:48.860 | Maybe even blocking is similar,

00:30:53.860 | but what's different is attack, intention,

00:31:00.320 | how you are growing in a role

00:31:02.940 | and watching your fellow actors grow in theirs

00:31:06.620 | and how every night it's a new audience

00:31:08.780 | and they're reacting differently.

00:31:11.140 | And you literally, where you can go

00:31:14.620 | from week one of performances in a play

00:31:17.900 | to week 12 is extraordinary.

00:31:22.160 | And the difference between theater and film

00:31:27.160 | is that no matter how good someone might think you are

00:31:31.500 | in a movie, you'll never be any better.

00:31:35.200 | It's frozen.

00:31:38.060 | Whereas I can be better tomorrow night than I was tonight.

00:31:40.840 | I can be better in a week than I was tonight.

00:31:43.520 | It is a living, breathing, shifting,

00:31:49.580 | changing, growing thing every single day.

00:31:54.840 | But also in theater, there's no safety net.

00:31:57.300 | If you fuck it up, everybody gets to see you do that.

00:32:00.980 | And if you start giggling on stage,

00:32:02.620 | everyone gets to see you do that too,

00:32:04.160 | which I am very guilty of.

00:32:07.460 | I mean, there is something of a seduction of an audience

00:32:12.460 | in theater even more intense

00:32:14.440 | than there is when you're talking about film.

00:32:18.800 | I got a chance to watch the documentary

00:32:21.360 | "Now in the Wings" on a world stage,

00:32:23.860 | which is behind the scenes of, you mentioned,

00:32:27.380 | you teaming up with Sam Mendes in 2011

00:32:30.680 | to stage Richard III, a play by William Shakespeare.

00:32:35.940 | I was also surprised to learn

00:32:37.400 | you haven't really done much Shakespeare,

00:32:40.200 | or at least you said that in the movie.

00:32:43.180 | But there's a lot of interesting

00:32:44.800 | behind the scenes stuff there.

00:32:46.300 | First of all, the camaraderie of everybody,

00:32:48.800 | how the bond theater creates,

00:32:52.600 | especially when you're traveling.

00:32:54.760 | But another interesting thing,

00:32:56.480 | you mentioned with the chairs of Sam Mendes

00:32:58.240 | trying different stuff.

00:32:59.780 | It seemed like everybody was really open to trying stuff,

00:33:03.040 | embarrassing themselves, taking risks, all of that.

00:33:06.240 | I suppose that's part of acting in general,

00:33:09.340 | but theater especially.

00:33:12.400 | Just take risks.

00:33:13.460 | It's okay to embarrass the shit out of yourself,

00:33:15.300 | including the director.

00:33:16.560 | - And it's also because you become a family.

00:33:21.140 | It's unlike a movie where I might have a scene

00:33:25.200 | with so-and-so on this day,

00:33:26.960 | and then another scene with them in a week and a half,

00:33:29.420 | and then that's the only scenes

00:33:30.500 | we have in the whole movie together.

00:33:33.260 | Every single day, when you show up in the rehearsal room,

00:33:36.700 | it's the whole company.

00:33:37.940 | You're all up for it every day.

00:33:40.820 | You're learning, you're growing, you're trying.

00:33:43.100 | And there is an incredible trust that happens.

00:33:48.100 | And I was, of course, fortunate

00:33:51.880 | that some of the things I learned and observed

00:33:55.460 | about being a part of that family,

00:33:59.140 | being included in that family,

00:34:00.300 | and being a part of creating that family,

00:34:02.300 | I was able to observe from people like Jack Lemmon,

00:34:05.260 | who led many companies that I was fortunate

00:34:08.860 | to work in and be a part of.

00:34:12.420 | - There's also a sad moment where, at the end,

00:34:15.460 | everybody is really sad to say goodbye.

00:34:18.340 | 'Cause you do form a family, and then it's over.

00:34:20.740 | I guess somebody said that that's just part of theater.

00:34:24.820 | It's like, I mean, there's a kind of assumed goodbye

00:34:28.260 | and that this is it.

00:34:29.320 | - Yeah, and also, there are some times when,

00:34:33.020 | like six months later, I'll wake up in the middle

00:34:35.380 | of the night and I'll go,

00:34:36.220 | "Ah, that's how to play that scene."

00:34:40.100 | - Yeah.

00:34:41.620 | - "Oh, God, I just finally figured it out."

00:34:44.580 | - So maybe you could speak a little bit more to that.

00:34:47.620 | What's the difference between film acting

00:34:49.400 | and live theater acting?

00:34:51.980 | - I don't really think there is any.

00:34:54.180 | I think there's just, you eventually learn

00:34:58.740 | about yourself on film.

00:35:00.140 | When I first did my first episode of "The Equalizer,"

00:35:05.140 | it's just horrible.

00:35:09.860 | It's just so bad.

00:35:11.100 | But I didn't know about myself.

00:35:13.500 | I didn't.

00:35:14.340 | So slowly, you begin to learn about yourself.

00:35:16.900 | But I think good acting is good acting.

00:35:19.900 | And I think that if a camera's right here,

00:35:23.540 | you know that your front row is also your back row.

00:35:27.300 | You just don't have to do so much.

00:35:30.580 | There is, in theater, a particular kind of energy,

00:35:36.420 | almost like an athlete, that you have to have,

00:35:41.780 | vocally, to be able to get up seven performances a week

00:35:45.300 | and never lose your voice and always be there

00:35:47.180 | and always be alive and always be doing

00:35:48.620 | the best work you can,

00:35:50.180 | that you just don't require in film.

00:35:52.060 | You don't have to have the same,

00:35:54.260 | it just doesn't require the same kind of stamina

00:36:02.660 | that doing a play does.

00:36:04.500 | - It just feels like, also in theater,

00:36:06.420 | you have to become the character more intensely

00:36:09.260 | because you can't take a break.

00:36:11.740 | You can't take a bathroom break.

00:36:13.420 | You're on stage.

00:36:15.260 | There's no, this is you.

00:36:16.500 | - Yeah, but you have no idea what's going on

00:36:18.360 | on stage with the actors.

00:36:19.500 | I mean, I have literally laughed through speeches

00:36:24.500 | that I had to give because my fellow actors

00:36:27.420 | were putting carrots up their nose

00:36:28.900 | or broccoli in their ears

00:36:30.700 | or doing whatever they were doing to make me laugh.

00:36:33.620 | - So they're just having fun.

00:36:34.620 | - They're having the time of their life.

00:36:36.060 | And by the way, Judi Dench is the worst giggler of all.

00:36:40.100 | I mean, they had to bring the curtain down

00:36:41.780 | on her and Maggie Smith because they were laughing so hard,

00:36:45.540 | they could not continue the play.

00:36:47.220 | - So even when you're doing like a dramatic monologue,

00:36:49.420 | still, they're still fucking with you.

00:36:50.860 | - There's stuff going on.

00:36:52.200 | - Okay, that's great.

00:36:54.100 | That's good to know.

00:36:55.020 | You also said, interesting line,

00:36:56.580 | that improvisation helps you learn about the character.

00:37:01.580 | Can you explain that?

00:37:07.340 | So like through maybe playing with the different ways

00:37:12.020 | of saying the words or the different ways

00:37:14.300 | to bring the words to life,

00:37:16.140 | you get to learn about yourself,

00:37:18.220 | about the character you're playing.

00:37:19.700 | - It can be helpful.

00:37:20.960 | But improv is, I'm such a big believer in the writing

00:37:28.040 | and in serving the writing

00:37:29.380 | and doing the words the writer wrote.

00:37:31.520 | That improv, for me,

00:37:35.420 | unless you're just doing like comedy,

00:37:36.820 | and I mean, I love improv and comedy.

00:37:39.620 | It's brilliant.

00:37:41.740 | So much fun to watch people

00:37:43.220 | just come up with something right there.

00:37:46.540 | But that's where you're looking for laughs

00:37:48.860 | and you're specifically in a little scene

00:37:51.980 | that's being created.

00:37:53.260 | But I think improv has had value,

00:37:57.300 | but I have not experienced it as much in doing plays

00:38:04.580 | as I have sometimes in doing film

00:38:09.620 | where you'll start off rehearsing

00:38:12.580 | and a director may say,

00:38:13.540 | "Let's just go off book and see what happens."

00:38:16.100 | And I've had moments in film where someone went off book

00:38:19.460 | and it was terrifying.

00:38:22.120 | There was a scene I had in "Glengarry Glen Ross"

00:38:27.860 | where the character I play has fucked something up,

00:38:34.220 | has just screwed something up,

00:38:35.460 | and Pacino is livid.

00:38:39.140 | And so we had the scene where Al is walking like this

00:38:43.780 | and the camera is moving with him

00:38:46.740 | and he is shooing me a new asshole.

00:38:49.620 | And in the middle of the take,

00:38:53.060 | Al starts talking about me.

00:38:56.540 | "Oh, Kevin, you don't think we know how you got this job?

00:39:03.220 | You don't think we know whose dick you've been sucking on

00:39:08.180 | to get this part in this movie?"

00:39:10.500 | And I'm now, I'm literally like,

00:39:13.540 | "I don't know what the hell is happening, but I'm reacting."

00:39:18.540 | We got to the end of that take,

00:39:23.060 | Al walked up to me and he went, "Oh, that was so good.

00:39:27.980 | Oh my God, that was so good.

00:39:29.500 | Just so you know, the sound, I asked them not to record.

00:39:33.140 | So you have no dialogue, so it's just me.

00:39:35.980 | Oh, that was so good.

00:39:37.620 | You look like a car wreck."

00:39:39.980 | And I was like, "Yeah."

00:39:42.140 | And it was actually an incredibly generous thing

00:39:48.100 | that he gave me so that I would react.

00:39:51.700 | - Oh, wow.

00:39:53.300 | Did they use that shot?

00:39:55.180 | Because you were in the shot.

00:39:57.340 | - It was my closeup.

00:39:58.820 | And yeah, that's the take.

00:40:01.660 | - That was an intense interaction.

00:40:02.860 | I mean, what was it like,

00:40:04.660 | if we can just linger on that,

00:40:06.060 | just that intense scene with Al Pacino.

00:40:08.740 | - Well, he's the reason I got the movie.

00:40:12.100 | A lot of people might think because Jack was in the film

00:40:15.020 | that he had something to do with it.

00:40:16.900 | But actually I was doing a play

00:40:18.220 | called "Lost in Yonkers" on Broadway.

00:40:20.420 | And we had the same dresser who'd worked with him,

00:40:23.060 | a girl named Laura, it was wonderful, Laura Beattie.

00:40:26.580 | And she told Al that he should come and see this play

00:40:31.580 | because she wanted to see me in this play.

00:40:34.300 | I was playing this gangster's fun, fun, fun part.

00:40:37.260 | So I didn't know Pacino came on some night

00:40:41.100 | and saw this play.

00:40:42.180 | And then like three days later,

00:40:43.980 | I got a call to come in and audition

00:40:45.660 | for this "Glengarry Glen Ross,"

00:40:47.780 | which of course I knew is a play, David Mamet's play.

00:40:50.420 | And then I auditioned.

00:40:56.340 | Jamie Foley was the director

00:40:58.540 | who would eventually direct a bunch of "House of Cards."

00:41:01.380 | Wonderful, wonderful guy.

00:41:04.260 | And I got the part.

00:41:05.660 | Well, I didn't quite get the part.

00:41:07.340 | They were gonna bring together the actors

00:41:09.740 | that they thought they were gonna give the parts to

00:41:12.060 | on a Saturday at Al's office.

00:41:14.540 | And they asked me if I would come and do a read-through.

00:41:16.620 | And I said, "Who's gonna be there?"

00:41:18.380 | And they said, "Well, so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so."

00:41:20.260 | And Jack Lemmon is flying in.

00:41:21.500 | And I said, "Don't tell Mr. Lemmon

00:41:24.180 | that I'm doing the read-through, is that possible?"

00:41:26.900 | They were like, "Sure."

00:41:28.260 | So I'll never forget this.

00:41:29.260 | Jack was sitting in a chair in Pacino's office

00:41:33.340 | doing the "New York Times" crossword puzzle

00:41:35.460 | as he did every day.

00:41:36.460 | And I walked in the door and he went, "Oh, Jesus Christ.

00:41:41.300 | "Is it possible you could get a job without me?

00:41:43.540 | "Jesus Christ, I'm so tired of holding up your end of it.

00:41:45.940 | "Oh my God, Jesus."

00:41:47.300 | So I got the job because of Pacino.

00:41:51.340 | And it was really one of the first major roles

00:41:56.340 | that I ever had in a film.

00:41:58.420 | And to be working with that group.

00:42:02.460 | - Yeah, that's like one of the greatest ensemble casts ever.

00:42:06.900 | We got Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin,

00:42:11.900 | Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, you, Jonathan Price.

00:42:17.540 | It's just incredible.

00:42:18.860 | And I have to say, I mean, maybe you can comment.

00:42:21.420 | You've talked about how much of a mentor

00:42:24.060 | and a friend Jack Lemmon has been.

00:42:26.700 | That's one of his greatest performances ever.

00:42:28.660 | - Ever.

00:42:29.500 | - You have a scene at the end of the movie with him

00:42:31.060 | that was really powerful, like firing on all cylinders.

00:42:35.100 | You're playing disdain to perfection.

00:42:40.100 | And he's playing desperation to perfection.

00:42:42.780 | What a scene.

00:42:44.500 | What was that like?

00:42:45.460 | Just like at the top of your game, the two of you.

00:42:48.300 | - Well, by that time we had done

00:42:50.020 | "Long Day's Journey Tonight" in the theater.

00:42:52.980 | We'd done a mini series called

00:42:54.380 | "The Murder of Mary Fagan" on NBC.

00:42:56.980 | We'd done a film called "Dad"

00:42:58.660 | that Gary David Goldberg directed with Ted Danson.

00:43:03.740 | So this was the fourth time we were working together

00:43:07.260 | and we knew each other.

00:43:08.420 | We'd become, he'd become my father figure.

00:43:10.660 | And I don't know if you know

00:43:13.460 | that I originally met Jack Lemmon when I was very, very young.

00:43:18.260 | He was doing a production at the Mark Taper Forum

00:43:21.620 | of a Sean O'Casey play called "Juno and the Paycock"

00:43:24.620 | with Walter Matthau and Maureen Stapleton.

00:43:26.900 | And on a Saturday in December of 1974,

00:43:31.540 | my junior high school drama class went to a workshop.

00:43:36.140 | It was called "How to Audition."

00:43:39.020 | And we did this workshop.

00:43:40.940 | Many schools in Southern California

00:43:42.740 | were part of this Drama Teachers Association.

00:43:44.700 | So we got these incredible experiences

00:43:46.420 | of being able to go see professional productions

00:43:48.940 | and be involved in these workshops or festivals.

00:43:51.780 | So I had to get up and do a monologue in front of Mr. Lemmon

00:43:55.660 | when I was 13 years old.

00:43:57.780 | And he walked up to me at the end of that

00:43:59.860 | and he put his hand on my shoulder and he said,

00:44:01.260 | "That was such a terrific."

00:44:03.340 | He said, "No, everything I've been talking about,

00:44:05.420 | "you just did, what's your name?"

00:44:07.300 | I said, "Kevin."

00:44:08.140 | He said, "Wait, let me tell you something.

00:44:09.220 | "When you get finished with high school,

00:44:10.580 | "as I'm sure you're gonna go on and do theater,

00:44:12.420 | "you should go to New York

00:44:13.420 | "and you should study to be an actor

00:44:14.620 | "'cause this is what you're meant to do with your life."

00:44:17.740 | And he was like an idol.

00:44:22.020 | And 12 years later, I read in the New York Times

00:44:25.740 | that he was coming to Broadway

00:44:26.980 | to do this production of "A Long Day's Journey Tonight"

00:44:29.260 | a year and some months after I read this article.

00:44:32.980 | And I was like, "I'm gonna play Jamie in that production."

00:44:36.940 | And I then, with a lot of opposition,

00:44:42.180 | 'cause the cast and director didn't wanna see me,

00:44:45.100 | they said that the director, Jonathan Miller,

00:44:49.100 | wanted movie actors to play the two sons.

00:44:52.460 | And ultimately, I found out that Jonathan Miller,

00:44:58.460 | the director, was coming to New York

00:44:59.980 | to do a series of lectures at Alice Tully Hall.

00:45:04.580 | And I went to try to figure out how I could maybe meet him.

00:45:08.880 | And I was sitting in that theater

00:45:13.700 | listening to this incredible lecture he was doing.

00:45:16.060 | And sitting next to me was an elderly woman.

00:45:20.160 | I mean, elderly, 80-something, and she was asleep.

00:45:25.480 | But sticking out of her handbag, which was on the floor,

00:45:31.780 | was an invitation to a cocktail reception

00:45:36.780 | in honor of Dr. Jonathan Miller.

00:45:38.460 | And so I thought, "You know, she's tired.

00:45:44.580 | "She's probably gonna go home."

00:45:46.140 | So I took that and walked into this cocktail reception,

00:45:51.140 | and ultimately went over to Dr. Miller,

00:45:55.880 | who was incredibly kind, and said,

00:45:58.580 | "Sit down, I'm always very curious.

00:46:00.680 | "What brings young people to my lectures?"

00:46:02.340 | And I said to him, "Eugene O'Neill brought me here."

00:46:06.060 | And he was like, "What, what, what?

00:46:07.060 | "I've always wanted to meet him.

00:46:07.900 | "Where is he?"

00:46:09.060 | And I told him that I'd been trying for seven months

00:46:13.780 | to get an audition for "A Long Day's Journey,"

00:46:16.900 | and that his American cast directors were telling my agents

00:46:19.480 | that he wanted big American movie stars.

00:46:22.620 | And at that moment, he turned and he saw

00:46:25.880 | one of those cast directors who was there that night.

00:46:29.580 | 'Cause I knew he was gonna be in New York

00:46:31.620 | starting auditions that week.

00:46:33.260 | And she was staring daggers at me, and he just got it.

00:46:39.640 | And he said, "Does someone have a pen?"

00:46:42.180 | And he took a little paper and started writing.

00:46:45.020 | He said, "Listen, Kevin, there are many situations

00:46:47.460 | "in which casting directors have a lot of say

00:46:49.280 | "and a lot of power and a lot of leverage.

00:46:50.980 | "And then there are other situations

00:46:52.660 | "where they just take directors' messages.

00:46:54.580 | "And on this one, they're taking my messages.

00:46:56.220 | "This is where I'm staying.

00:46:57.060 | "Make sure your people get to me.

00:46:58.380 | "We start auditions on Thursday."

00:47:00.360 | And on Thursday, I had an opportunity to come in

00:47:04.740 | and audition for this play

00:47:06.860 | that I'd been working on and preparing.

00:47:10.500 | And at the end of it, I did four scenes at the end of it.

00:47:15.500 | He said to me that unless someone else came in

00:47:17.940 | and blew him against the wall like I had just done,

00:47:20.340 | as far as he was concerned, I pretty much had the part,

00:47:22.780 | but I couldn't tell my agents that yet

00:47:24.900 | 'cause I had to come back and read with Mr. Lemon.

00:47:27.820 | And so three months later, in August of 1985,

00:47:32.520 | I found myself in a room with Jack Lemon again

00:47:35.900 | at 890 Broadway, which is where they rehearse

00:47:37.820 | a lot of the Broadway plays.

00:47:40.100 | And we did four scenes together,

00:47:41.620 | and I was toppling over him, I was pushing him.

00:47:44.300 | I was relentless.

00:47:46.640 | And I'll never forget at the end of that,

00:47:50.240 | Lemon came over to me, he put his hand on my shoulder,

00:47:56.220 | and he said, "That was a touch of terrific.

00:47:57.680 | "I never thought we'd find the rotten kid,

00:47:59.100 | "but he's it, Jesus Christ, what the hell was that?"

00:48:01.700 | And I ended up spending the next year

00:48:06.140 | of my life with that man.

00:48:09.500 | - So it turns out he was right.

00:48:11.780 | - Yeah.

00:48:15.560 | - This world works in mysterious ways.

00:48:17.860 | It also speaks to the fact of the power

00:48:21.420 | of somebody you look up to giving words of encouragement,

00:48:25.980 | 'cause those can just reverberate through your whole life

00:48:28.620 | and just make the path clear.

00:48:31.780 | - I've always, we used to joke that if every contract

00:48:35.660 | came with a Jack Lemon clause,

00:48:37.180 | it would be a more beautiful world.

00:48:38.980 | - Beautifully said.

00:48:41.540 | Jack Lemon is one of the greatest actors ever.

00:48:43.980 | What do you think makes him so damn good?

00:48:46.840 | - Wow.

00:48:50.040 | I think he truly set out in his life

00:49:00.700 | to accomplish what his father said to him on his deathbed.

00:49:06.760 | His father was dying, his father was, by the way,

00:49:09.120 | called the Donut King in Boston,

00:49:11.340 | and not in the entertainment business at all.

00:49:15.640 | He literally owned a donut company.

00:49:18.440 | And when he was passing away, Jack said,

00:49:22.520 | "The last thing my father said to me was,

00:49:25.200 | "go out there and spread a little sunshine."

00:49:27.400 | And I truly think that's what Jack loved to do.

00:49:34.840 | I remember this, and I don't know if this is,

00:49:39.840 | will answer your question, but I think it's revealing

00:49:46.040 | about what he's able to do and what he was able to do

00:49:49.920 | and how that ultimately influenced what I was able to do.

00:49:54.660 | Sam Mendes had never directed a film before "American Beauty."

00:50:02.200 | And so what he did was he took the best elements of theater

00:50:07.080 | and applied them to the process.

00:50:09.360 | So we rehearsed it like a play in a soundstage

00:50:13.180 | where everything was laid out like it would be in a play,

00:50:15.640 | and this couch will be here.

00:50:17.040 | And he'd sent me a couple of tapes.

00:50:23.000 | He'd sent me two cassette tapes,

00:50:25.020 | one that he'd like to call pre-Lester

00:50:28.280 | before he begins to move in a new direction,

00:50:31.580 | and then post-Lester, and they just were different songs.

00:50:34.640 | And then he said to me one day,

00:50:39.000 | and I always thought this was brilliant of Sam

00:50:41.280 | to use "Lemon," knowing what "Lemon" meant to me.

00:50:45.580 | He said, "When was the last time you watched 'The Apartment'?"

00:50:50.320 | And I said, "I don't know, I love that movie so much."

00:50:53.440 | He goes, "I want you to watch it again, and then let's talk."

00:50:56.440 | So I went and I watched the movie again.

00:51:01.540 | And we sat down, and Sam said,

00:51:03.860 | "What 'Lemon' does in that film is incredible,

00:51:10.860 | "because there is never a moment in the movie

00:51:14.100 | "where we see him change.

00:51:15.960 | "He just evolves, and he becomes the man he becomes

00:51:22.300 | "because of the experiences that he has

00:51:26.400 | "through the course of the film,

00:51:28.140 | "but there's this remarkable consistency in who he becomes,

00:51:33.020 | "and that's what I need you to do as Lester.

00:51:36.140 | "I don't want the audience to ever see him change.

00:51:40.520 | "I want him to evolve."

00:51:42.300 | And so we did some, I mean, first of all,

00:51:45.100 | it was just a great direction.

00:51:47.600 | And then second of all, we did some things

00:51:50.100 | that people don't know we did

00:51:52.720 | to aid that gradual shift,

00:51:58.280 | of that man's character.

00:51:59.920 | First of all, I had to be in the best shape

00:52:02.680 | from the beginning of the movie,

00:52:03.840 | 'cause we didn't shoot it in sequence.

00:52:05.880 | So I was in this crazy shape.

00:52:08.880 | I had this wonderful trainer named Mike Torsha,

00:52:11.760 | who just was incredible.

00:52:13.320 | But so what we did was, in order to then show

00:52:18.120 | this gradual shift, was I had three different hair pieces.

00:52:22.880 | I had three different kinds of costumes

00:52:25.600 | of different colors and sizes.

00:52:28.680 | And I had different makeup.

00:52:31.560 | So in the beginning, I was wearing a kind of drab,

00:52:34.960 | dull, slightly, you know, uninspired hair piece.

00:52:39.960 | And my makeup was kind of gray and boring.

00:52:44.160 | And I was a little bit,

00:52:45.200 | there were times when I was like too much like this,

00:52:47.280 | and Sam would go, "Kevin, you look like Walter Matthau.

00:52:50.200 | "Would you please stand up a little bit?

00:52:51.460 | "We're sort of midway through at this point."

00:52:54.640 | And then at a certain point, the wig changed,

00:52:59.560 | and it had little highlights in it,

00:53:02.240 | a little more color, a little more,

00:53:03.880 | the makeup became a little, the suits got a little tighter.

00:53:08.200 | And then finally, a third wig that was golden highlights

00:53:11.920 | and sunshine and, you know, rosy cheeks and tight fit.

00:53:16.920 | And these are what we call theatrical tricks.

00:53:19.160 | You know, this is how you,

00:53:21.360 | an audience doesn't even know it's happening,

00:53:23.520 | but it is this gradual.

00:53:26.160 | And I just always felt that that was such a brilliant way,

00:53:31.160 | because he knew what I felt about Jack.

00:53:36.760 | And when you watch "The Apartment,"

00:53:38.040 | it is extraordinary that he doesn't ever change.

00:53:42.480 | He just, so I'm,

00:53:45.040 | and in fact, I thanked Jack when I won the Oscar.

00:53:54.080 | And I did my thank you speech and I walked off stage.

00:53:59.080 | And I remember I had to sit down for a moment

00:54:05.920 | because I didn't want to go to the press room

00:54:08.440 | because I wanted to see if Sam was gonna win.

00:54:11.060 | And so I was waiting and my phone rang and it was Lemon.

00:54:17.240 | He said, "You're a son of a bitch."

00:54:20.240 | I said, "What?"

00:54:22.080 | He goes, "First of all, congratulations

00:54:24.840 | and thanks for thanking me.

00:54:25.920 | 'Cause you know, God knows

00:54:27.240 | you couldn't have done it without me."

00:54:28.680 | He said, "Second of all," he said,

00:54:30.420 | "Do you know how long it took me to win

00:54:32.320 | from supporting actor?

00:54:33.440 | I won it for Mr. Roberts and it took me like 10, 12 years

00:54:37.340 | to win an Oscar.

00:54:38.180 | You did it in four, you son of a bitch."

00:54:40.080 | - Yeah, "The Apartment" was,

00:54:45.660 | I mean, it's widely considered

00:54:47.880 | one of the greatest movies ever.

00:54:50.960 | People sometimes refer to it as a comedy,

00:54:53.080 | which is an interesting kind of classification.

00:54:56.400 | I suppose that's a lesson about comedy

00:54:58.880 | that the best comedy is the one that's basically a tragedy.

00:55:03.880 | - Well, I mean, some people think

00:55:05.280 | "Clockwork Orange" is a comedy.

00:55:06.840 | And I'm not saying there aren't some good laughs

00:55:10.280 | in "Clockwork Orange," but yeah, you know, it's.

00:55:12.880 | - I mean, yeah.

00:55:14.280 | What's that line between comedy and tragedy for you?

00:55:19.280 | (exhaling)

00:55:21.520 | - Well, if it's a line, it's a line I cross all the time

00:55:26.560 | because I've tried always to find the humor

00:55:31.560 | unexpected sometimes, maybe inappropriate sometimes,

00:55:39.560 | maybe shocking, but I've tried,

00:55:42.360 | and I think almost every dramatic role I've had

00:55:48.240 | to have a sense of humor and to be able to bring that

00:55:53.240 | along with everything else that is serious.

00:55:57.040 | Because frankly, that's how we deal with stuff in life.

00:56:02.680 | You know?

00:56:04.040 | - I think Sam Mendes actually said in the "Now" documentary,

00:56:07.540 | something like, "With great theater, with great stories,

00:56:13.200 | "you find humor on the journey to the heart of darkness."

00:56:17.880 | Something like this.

00:56:18.880 | Very poetic.

00:56:20.920 | - Yeah.

00:56:21.740 | - But it's true.

00:56:22.580 | - I'm sorry I can't be that poetic.

00:56:24.440 | I'm very sorry.

00:56:25.280 | - But it's true.

00:56:26.100 | I mean, the people I've interacted in this world

00:56:28.880 | have been to a war zone, and the ones who have lost the most

00:56:33.880 | and have suffered the most are usually the ones

00:56:37.440 | who are able to make jokes the quickest.

00:56:41.960 | And the jokes are often dark and absurd

00:56:44.460 | and cross every single line.

00:56:46.520 | No political correctness, all of that.

00:56:48.440 | - Sure.

00:56:49.320 | Well, I mean, it's like the "Great Mary Tyler Moore Show"

00:56:53.240 | where they can't stop giggling at the clown's funeral.

00:56:56.880 | I mean, it's just one of the great episodes ever.

00:56:59.780 | Giggling at a funeral is as bad as farting at a funeral.

00:57:03.760 | And I'm sure that there's some people who've done both.

00:57:07.700 | - Oh, man.

00:57:10.580 | So you mentioned "American Beauty."

00:57:14.620 | And the idea of not changing but evolving,

00:57:19.620 | that's really interesting,

00:57:21.020 | because that movie is about finding yourself.

00:57:25.220 | It's a philosophically profound movie.

00:57:28.020 | It's about various characters in their own ways

00:57:30.540 | finding their own identity in a world

00:57:32.500 | where maybe a system, a materialistic system

00:57:37.500 | that wants you to be like everyone else.

00:57:40.900 | And so, I mean, Lester just really transforms himself

00:57:43.780 | throughout the movie.

00:57:44.620 | And you're saying the challenge there

00:57:46.420 | is to still be the same human being fundamentally.

00:57:50.080 | - Yeah, and I also think that the film was powerful

00:57:57.860 | because you had three very honest

00:58:05.460 | and genuine portrayal of young people.

00:58:08.640 | And then you had Lester behaving like a young person.

00:58:13.740 | Doing things that were unexpected.

00:58:15.740 | And I think that the honesty with which it dealt

00:58:20.740 | with those issues that those teenagers were going through

00:58:27.900 | and the honesty with which it dealt

00:58:29.180 | with what Lester was going through,

00:58:31.340 | I think are some of the reasons why the film

00:58:36.260 | had the response that it did from so many people.

00:58:41.780 | I mean, I used to get stopped.

00:58:43.860 | And someone would say to me,

00:58:47.300 | "When I first saw 'American Beauty,' I was married.

00:58:50.940 | "And the second time I saw it, I wasn't."

00:58:53.280 | And I was like,

00:58:56.300 | "Well, we weren't trying to increase the divorce rate.

00:58:58.580 | "It wasn't our intention."

00:58:59.620 | But it is interesting how so many people

00:59:03.820 | have those kinds of crazy fantasies.

00:59:10.380 | And what I admired so much about who Lester was

00:59:15.380 | as a person, why I wanted to play him,

00:59:17.020 | is because in the end, he makes the right decision.

00:59:20.360 | - I think a lot of people live lives of quiet desperation

00:59:24.900 | in a job they don't like,

00:59:29.780 | in a marriage they're unhappy in.

00:59:34.860 | And to see somebody living that life

00:59:38.460 | and then saying, "Fuck it," in every way possible.

00:59:42.620 | And not just in a cynical way,

00:59:44.540 | but in a way that opens them,

00:59:46.900 | opens Lester up to see the beauty in the world.

00:59:49.700 | That's, you know, the beauty in "American Beauty."

00:59:52.660 | - Well, and you know, you may have to blackmail your boss

00:59:54.860 | to get there, but, you know.

00:59:56.260 | - And in that, there's a bunch of humor also.

01:00:00.400 | In the anger, in the absurdity of sort of taking a stand

01:00:06.700 | against the conformity of life, there's this humor.

01:00:11.180 | And I read somewhere that the scene, the dinner scene,

01:00:14.820 | which is kind of play-like, where Lester slams the plate

01:00:19.820 | against the wall, was improvised by you,

01:00:24.820 | the slamming of the plate against the wall?

01:00:27.740 | - No. - No?

01:00:28.980 | - Absolutely. - The internet

01:00:30.140 | lies on the stand. - Absolutely.

01:00:34.060 | - Written and directed.

01:00:36.620 | Yeah, can't take credit for that.

01:00:40.620 | - The plate, okay.

01:00:41.460 | Well, that was a genius interaction there.

01:00:43.860 | There's something about the dinner table

01:00:47.060 | and losing your shit at the dinner table.

01:00:49.740 | Having a fight and losing your shit at the dinner table.

01:00:52.540 | Where else?

01:00:54.580 | Like, "Yellowstone" was another situation

01:00:57.940 | where it's a family at the dinner table,

01:01:01.900 | and then one of them says, "Fuck it,

01:01:03.380 | "I'm not eating this anymore,

01:01:04.860 | "and I'm going to create a scene."

01:01:06.900 | It's a beautiful kind of environment for dramatic scenes.

01:01:10.900 | - Or "Nicholson and the Shining."

01:01:12.500 | I mean, there's some family scenes gone awry in that movie.

01:01:17.420 | - The contrast between you and Annette Bening in that scene

01:01:20.860 | creates the genius of that scene.

01:01:25.140 | So how much of acting is the dance between two actors?

01:01:30.320 | (exhaling)

01:01:32.600 | - Well, with Annette, I just adored working with her.

01:01:37.600 | And we were the two actors that Sam wanted

01:01:41.800 | from the very beginning, much against the will

01:01:45.520 | of the higher-ups who wanted other actors

01:01:48.720 | to play those roles.

01:01:49.600 | But I've known Annette since we did a screen test together

01:01:58.240 | for Milos Forman for a film he did

01:02:01.400 | of the "Les Livres Endangerous" movie.

01:02:04.200 | It was a different film from that one,

01:02:05.760 | but it was the same story.

01:02:07.400 | And I've always thought she is just remarkable.

01:02:11.340 | And I think that the work she did in that film,

01:02:15.880 | the relationship that we were able to build,

01:02:20.880 | for me, the saddest part of that success

01:02:27.980 | was that she didn't win the Oscar.

01:02:30.320 | And I felt she should have.

01:02:34.120 | - What kind of interesting direction did you get

01:02:36.440 | from Sam Mendes in how you approached playing Lester

01:02:40.080 | and how to take on the different scenes?

01:02:44.400 | There's a lot of just brilliant scenes in that movie.

01:02:46.760 | - Well, I'll share with you a story

01:02:48.520 | that most people don't know,

01:02:50.000 | which is our first two days of shooting

01:02:57.220 | were in Smiley's, the place where I get a job,

01:03:02.220 | at a fast food place.

01:03:03.640 | - Yeah, it's a burger joint, yeah.

01:03:05.560 | - And I guess it was like maybe the third day

01:03:10.200 | or the fourth day of shooting, we'd now done that.

01:03:13.400 | And I said to Sam, "So how are the dailies?

01:03:18.400 | How do they look?"

01:03:20.600 | He goes, "Which ones?"

01:03:21.840 | I said, "Well, the first Smiley's."

01:03:23.960 | He goes, "Oh, they're shit."

01:03:27.540 | And I went, "Yeah, no, how were they?"

01:03:29.700 | He goes, "No, they're shit.

01:03:31.100 | I hate them.

01:03:32.180 | I hate everything about them.

01:03:34.340 | I hate the costumes.

01:03:36.780 | I hate the location.

01:03:38.040 | I hate that you're inside.

01:03:40.120 | I hate the way you acted.

01:03:42.860 | I hate everything but the script."

01:03:47.340 | So I've gone back to the studio

01:03:48.940 | and asked them if we can reshoot the first two days.

01:03:54.080 | And it was like, "Sam, this is your very first movie.

01:03:59.080 | You're going back to Steven Spielberg and saying,

01:04:02.320 | 'I need to reshoot the first two days entirely?'"

01:04:05.600 | And he went, "Yeah."

01:04:06.860 | And that's exactly what we did.

01:04:10.960 | A couple of weeks later,

01:04:12.600 | they decided that it was now a drive-thru

01:04:15.460 | because Annette and Peter Geller used to come into the place

01:04:19.000 | and order from the counter.

01:04:20.720 | Now, Sam had decided it has to be a drive-thru.

01:04:24.440 | You have to be in the window of the drive-thru,

01:04:26.480 | change the costumes.

01:04:28.120 | And we reshot those first two days.

01:04:30.120 | And Sam said it was actually a moment

01:04:34.760 | of incredible confidence because he said,

01:04:38.820 | "The worst thing that could possibly have happened

01:04:41.400 | happened in my first two days."

01:04:43.520 | And after that, I was like, "I know what I'm doing."

01:04:47.960 | And I knew I had to reshoot it.

01:04:49.320 | And it was absolutely right.

01:04:51.000 | - And I guess that's what a great director must do

01:04:53.320 | is have the guts in that moment to reshoot everything.

01:04:58.100 | I mean, that's a pretty gutsy move.

01:04:59.720 | - Two other little things to share with you about Sam,

01:05:02.120 | about the way he is.

01:05:03.300 | You wouldn't know it,

01:05:06.240 | but the original script opened and closed with a trial.

01:05:10.300 | Ricky was accused of Lester's murder.

01:05:18.000 | And the movie was book-ended by this trial.

01:05:20.280 | - It's a very different movie.

01:05:21.800 | - Which they shot the entire trial for weeks.

01:05:26.800 | Okay? - Wow, yeah.

01:05:29.720 | - And I used to fly in my dreams.

01:05:32.840 | You know, those opening shots over the neighborhood?

01:05:37.200 | I used to come into those shots in my bathrobe, flying.

01:05:42.200 | And then when I hit the ground and the newspaper

01:05:45.640 | was thrown at me by the newspaper guy

01:05:47.680 | and I caught it,

01:05:48.520 | the alarm would go off and I'd wake up in bed.

01:05:50.640 | I spent five days being hung by wires

01:05:55.320 | and filming these sequences of flying through my dreams.

01:05:59.280 | And Sam said to me, "Yeah, the flying sequences

01:06:03.960 | "are all gone, and the trial is gone."

01:06:05.880 | And I was like, "What, what are you talking about?"

01:06:09.800 | And here's my other little favorite story about Sam.

01:06:15.480 | When we were shooting in the valley,

01:06:17.180 | one of those places I flew, this was an indoor set.

01:06:21.740 | Sam said to me in the morning, "Hey, at lunch,

01:06:26.960 | "I just wanna record a guide track of all the dialogue,

01:06:30.360 | "all of your narration, 'cause they just needed

01:06:32.760 | "an editing as a guide."

01:06:34.040 | And I said, "Sure."

01:06:35.200 | So I remember we came outside in this hallway

01:06:38.280 | where I had a dressing room in this little studio

01:06:41.320 | we were in, and Sam had a cassette tape recorder

01:06:46.840 | and like a little microphone.

01:06:48.340 | And we put it on the floor and he pushed record.

01:06:53.440 | And I read the entire narration,

01:06:56.920 | and I never did it again.

01:07:00.800 | That's the narration in the movie.

01:07:03.820 | Because Sam said, when he listened to it,

01:07:08.840 | "I wasn't trying to do anything."

01:07:13.360 | He said, "You had no idea where these things were going,

01:07:15.420 | "where they were gonna be placed,

01:07:16.640 | "what they were gonna mean.

01:07:18.240 | "You just read it so innocently, so purely,

01:07:22.780 | "so directly that I knew if I brought you into a studio

01:07:27.120 | "and put headphones on you and had you do it again,

01:07:30.360 | "it would change the ease with which you'd done it."

01:07:35.360 | And so they just fixed all of the problems

01:07:40.320 | that they had with this little cassette.

01:07:42.560 | And that is the way I did it,

01:07:45.240 | and the only time I did it was in this little hallway.

01:07:47.940 | - And once again, a great performance

01:07:52.200 | lies in being, doing less.

01:07:55.500 | - Yeah, yeah.

01:07:57.440 | - The innocence and the purity of lust.

01:07:58.920 | - He knew I would've come into the studio and fucked it up.

01:08:01.280 | (laughing)

01:08:02.600 | - Yeah.

01:08:03.440 | What do you think about the notion of beauty

01:08:06.320 | that permeates American beauty?

01:08:08.760 | What do you think that theme is with the roses,

01:08:11.160 | with the rose petals, the characters

01:08:16.080 | that are living this mundane existence

01:08:18.080 | slowly opening their eyes up to what is beautiful in life?

01:08:23.080 | - See, it's funny, I don't think of the roses

01:08:26.400 | and I don't think of her body in the poster

01:08:28.400 | and I don't think of those things as the beauty.

01:08:30.800 | I think of the bag.

01:08:38.040 | And I think that there are things we miss

01:08:43.040 | that are right in front of us that are truly beautiful.

01:08:48.800 | - The little things, the simple things.

01:08:52.680 | - Yeah, and in fact, I'll even tell you something

01:08:54.560 | that I always thought was so incredible.

01:08:56.660 | When we shot the scenes in the office

01:09:03.500 | where Lester worked, the job he hated,

01:09:05.800 | there was a bulletin board behind me on a wall.

01:09:08.560 | And someone who was watching a cut or early dailies

01:09:16.600 | who was in the marketing department

01:09:19.000 | saw that someone had cut out a little piece of paper

01:09:24.120 | and stuck it and it said, "Look closer."

01:09:28.260 | And they presented that to Sam as the idea

01:09:33.240 | of what that could go on the poster.

01:09:36.000 | The idea of looking closer was such a brilliant idea,

01:09:41.000 | but it wasn't in the script,

01:09:45.360 | it was just on a wall behind me

01:09:47.560 | and someone happened to zoom in on it and see it

01:09:51.040 | and thought, that's what this movie's about.

01:09:54.240 | This movie's about taking the time to look closer.

01:10:00.400 | And I think that in itself is just beautiful.

01:10:04.680 | - Mortality also permeates the film.

01:10:07.440 | You know, it starts with acknowledging

01:10:09.240 | that death is on the way, that Lester's time is finite.

01:10:14.240 | You ever think about your own death?

01:10:18.520 | - Yeah, yeah.

01:10:20.600 | - Scared of it?

01:10:21.440 | - When I was at my lowest point, yes, it scared me.

01:10:30.880 | - What does that fear look like?

01:10:32.880 | What's the nature of the fear?

01:10:36.280 | What are you afraid of?

01:10:37.520 | - That there's no way out.

01:10:42.620 | That there's no answer.

01:10:46.620 | That nothing makes sense.

01:10:58.000 | - See, the interesting thing about Lester

01:11:00.320 | is facing the same fear,

01:11:03.820 | he seemed to be somehow liberated and accepted everything.

01:11:08.680 | - Yeah. - And then saw the beauty of it.

01:11:10.120 | - 'Cause he got there.

01:11:11.800 | He was given the opportunity to reinvent himself

01:11:16.800 | and to try things he'd never tried,

01:11:21.880 | to ask questions he'd never asked,

01:11:25.600 | to trust his instincts

01:11:30.600 | and to become the best version of himself he could become.

01:11:35.240 | And so Dick Van Dyke,

01:11:38.880 | who has become an extraordinary friend of mine,

01:11:42.240 | Dick is 98 years old.

01:11:46.880 | And he says, "You know, if I'd known

01:11:49.080 | "I was gonna live this long,

01:11:50.040 | "I would've taken better care of myself."

01:11:54.200 | When I spend time with him,

01:11:55.840 | I'm just moved by every day, you know?

01:12:00.800 | He gets up and he goes, "It's a good day, I woke up."

01:12:04.400 | And I learn a lot about,

01:12:08.320 | I have a different feeling about death now

01:12:15.040 | than I did seven years ago.

01:12:17.540 | (silence)

01:12:19.700 | And I'm on the path to being able to be in a place

01:12:28.820 | where I've resolved the things I needed to resolve.

01:12:33.180 | And I won't probably get to all of it in my lifetime,

01:12:36.300 | but I certainly would like to be in a place

01:12:39.820 | where if I were to drop dead tomorrow,

01:12:44.060 | it would've been an amazing life.

01:12:46.700 | - So Lester got there, sounds like Dick Van Dyke got there,

01:12:49.980 | you're trying to get there.

01:12:51.020 | - Sure.

01:12:51.860 | - You said you feared death at your lowest point.

01:12:56.620 | What was the lowest point?

01:12:57.940 | - It was November 1st of 2017,

01:13:03.860 | and then Thanksgiving Day of that same year.

01:13:08.980 | - So let's talk about it, let's talk about this dark time.

01:13:15.340 | Let's talk about the sexual allegations against you

01:13:17.660 | that led to you being canceled by, well,

01:13:21.980 | the entire world for the last seven years.

01:13:24.380 | I would like to personally understand the sins,

01:13:29.020 | the bad things you did, and the bad things you didn't do.

01:13:32.660 | So I also should say that the thing I hope to do here

01:13:37.260 | is to give respect to due process,

01:13:42.820 | innocent until proven guilty,

01:13:44.420 | that the mass hysteria machine of the internet

01:13:49.100 | and clickbait journalism doesn't do.

01:13:52.940 | So here's what I understand.

01:13:54.800 | There were criminal and civil trials brought against you,

01:14:00.700 | including the one that started it all

01:14:02.540 | when Anthony Rapp sued you for $40 million.

01:14:05.020 | In these trials, you were acquitted,

01:14:08.760 | found not guilty, and not liable.

01:14:12.300 | Is that right?

01:14:13.140 | - Yes.

01:14:14.140 | - I think that's really important,

01:14:15.900 | again, in terms of due process.

01:14:18.180 | And I read a lot, and I watched a lot

01:14:22.940 | in preparation for this on this point,

01:14:25.440 | including, of course, the recently detailed interviews

01:14:29.620 | you did with Dan Wooten,

01:14:31.420 | and then Alison Pearson of The Telegraph,

01:14:34.820 | and those are all focused on this topic,

01:14:37.260 | and they go in detail where you respond in detail

01:14:40.400 | to many of the allegations.

01:14:41.660 | If people are interested in the details,

01:14:43.100 | they can listen to those.

01:14:44.300 | So based on that and everything I looked at,

01:14:46.880 | as I understand, you never prevented anyone from leaving

01:14:50.820 | if they wanted to, sort of in a sexual context,

01:14:53.740 | for example, by blocking the door, is that right?

01:14:55.940 | - That's correct, yeah.

01:14:57.100 | - You always respected the explicit no from people,

01:15:02.100 | again, in the sexual context, is that right?

01:15:04.140 | - That is correct.

01:15:05.380 | - You've never done anything sexual

01:15:07.220 | with an underage person, right?

01:15:09.620 | - Never.

01:15:10.580 | - And also, as is sometimes done in Hollywood,

01:15:13.820 | let me ask this, you've never explicitly offered

01:15:17.200 | to exchange sexual favors for career advancement, correct?

01:15:20.500 | - Correct.

01:15:21.620 | - In terms of bad behavior, what did you do?

01:15:24.640 | What was the worst of it, and how often did you do it?

01:15:28.620 | - I have heard, and now, quite often,

01:15:31.340 | that everybody has a Kevin Spacey story,

01:15:33.640 | and what that tells me is that I hit on a lot of guys.

01:15:37.660 | - How often did you cross the line,

01:15:40.480 | and what does that mean to you?

01:15:43.020 | - I did a lot of horsing around.

01:15:44.460 | I did a lot of things that, at the time,

01:15:45.900 | I thought were sort of playful and fun,

01:15:48.580 | and I have learned since we're not,

01:15:51.420 | and I have had to recognize that I crossed some boundaries,

01:15:56.420 | and I did some things that were wrong,

01:15:59.020 | and I made some mistakes, and that's in my past.

01:16:03.260 | I mean, I've been working so hard

01:16:05.540 | over these last seven years to have the conversations

01:16:09.100 | I needed to have, to listen to people,

01:16:11.760 | to understand things from a different perspective

01:16:14.440 | than the one that I had, and to say,

01:16:17.840 | I will never behave that way again for the rest of my life.

01:16:21.340 | - Just to clarify, I think you're often too pushy

01:16:26.340 | with the flirting, and that manifests itself

01:16:31.380 | in multiple ways, but just to make clear,

01:16:35.120 | you never prevented anyone from leaving

01:16:38.560 | if they wanted to, you always took the explicit no

01:16:43.480 | from people as an answer, no, stop.

01:16:47.460 | You took that for the answer.

01:16:48.960 | You've never done anything sexual with an underage person,

01:16:53.700 | and you've never explicitly offered

01:16:55.800 | to exchange sexual favors for career advancement.

01:16:59.120 | These are some of the sort of accusations

01:17:01.480 | that have been made, and in the court of law,

01:17:04.560 | multiple times have been shown not to be true.

01:17:08.040 | But I have had a sexual life, and I've fallen in love,

01:17:11.920 | and I've been so admiring of people that I,

01:17:16.760 | I mean, I'm so romantic, I'm such a romantic person

01:17:20.960 | that there's this whole side of me

01:17:23.400 | that hasn't been talked about, isn't being discussed,

01:17:26.480 | but that's who I know, that's the person I know.

01:17:29.840 | It's been very upsetting to hear that some people

01:17:33.840 | have said, I mean, I don't have a violent bone in my body,

01:17:37.260 | but to hear people describe things

01:17:38.960 | as having been very aggressive

01:17:42.920 | is incredibly difficult for me.

01:17:46.440 | And I'm deeply sorry that I ever offended anyone

01:17:50.480 | or hurt anyone in any way.

01:17:52.040 | It is crushing to me, and I have to work very hard

01:17:57.040 | to show and to prove that I have learned,

01:18:01.180 | I got the memo, and I will never, ever,

01:18:05.000 | ever behave in those ways again.

01:18:06.840 | From everything I've seen in public interactions with you,

01:18:10.220 | people love you.

01:18:11.060 | Colleagues love you, coworkers love you.

01:18:14.340 | There's a flirtatiousness, another word for that

01:18:17.820 | is chemistry, there's a chemistry

01:18:19.180 | between the people you work with.

01:18:20.540 | - And by the way, not to take anything away

01:18:22.720 | from my accountability for things I did

01:18:25.660 | where I got it wrong, I crossed the line,

01:18:28.100 | I pushed some boundaries, I accept all of that,

01:18:30.560 | but I live in an industry in which flirtation,

01:18:36.300 | attraction, people meeting in the workspace

01:18:40.700 | and ending up marrying each other and having children,

01:18:45.400 | and so it is a space and a place

01:18:50.400 | where these notions of family,

01:18:53.520 | these notions of attraction, these notions of,

01:18:56.460 | it's always complicated if you meet someone

01:18:59.840 | in the workspace and find yourselves

01:19:02.680 | attracted to each other.

01:19:04.260 | You have to be mindful of that,

01:19:05.720 | and you have to be very mindful

01:19:07.680 | that you don't ever want anyone to feel

01:19:10.480 | that their job is in jeopardy,

01:19:14.280 | or you would punish them in some way

01:19:16.500 | if they no longer wanted to be with you.

01:19:19.480 | So those are important things to just acknowledge.

01:19:24.480 | - Another complexity to this, as I've seen,

01:19:27.360 | is that there's just a huge number of actors

01:19:30.100 | that look up to you, a huge number of people

01:19:33.320 | in the industry that look up to you,

01:19:34.520 | so just, and love you.

01:19:36.960 | I've seen just from this documentary,

01:19:38.680 | just a lot of people just love being around you,

01:19:41.800 | learning from you what it means to create great theater,

01:19:45.680 | great film, great stories,

01:19:48.520 | and so that adds to the complexity.

01:19:50.400 | I wouldn't say it's a power dynamic

01:19:52.040 | like a boss-employee relationship.

01:19:54.020 | It's a admiration dynamic that is easy to miss

01:19:59.020 | and easy to take advantage of.

01:20:02.040 | Is that something you understand?

01:20:03.640 | - Yes, and I also understand that there are people

01:20:06.900 | who met me and spent a very brief period of time with me,

01:20:11.440 | but presumed I was now going to be their mentor,

01:20:14.960 | and then behaved in a way that I was unaware of,

01:20:20.920 | that they were either participating or flirting along

01:20:26.280 | or encouraging me without me having any idea

01:20:30.400 | that at the end of the day they were expecting something.

01:20:33.880 | So these are about relationships.

01:20:41.200 | These are about two people.

01:20:42.800 | These are about people making decisions,

01:20:45.680 | people making choices, and I accept my accountability

01:20:50.680 | in that, but there are a number of things

01:20:55.200 | that I've been accused of that just simply did not happen,

01:20:58.200 | and I can't say, and I don't think it would be right

01:21:03.200 | for me to say, well, everything that I've been accused of

01:21:08.400 | is true because we've now proved that it isn't,

01:21:11.480 | and it wasn't, but I'm perfectly willing to accept

01:21:15.680 | that I had behaviors that were wrong

01:21:20.000 | and that I shouldn't have done, and I am regretful for.

01:21:26.080 | I think that also speaks to a dark side of fame.

01:21:30.360 | The sense I got is that there are some people,

01:21:33.520 | potentially a lot of people, trying to make friends

01:21:36.920 | with you in order to get roles,

01:21:38.600 | in order to advance their career.

01:21:40.840 | So not you using them, but they trying to use you.

01:21:44.560 | What's that like?

01:21:50.320 | How do you know if somebody likes you for you, for Kevin,

01:21:54.240 | or likes you for, like you said, you're romantic.

01:21:59.240 | You see a person, and you're like, I like this person,

01:22:03.700 | and they seem to like you.

01:22:07.160 | How do you know if they like you for you?

01:22:09.200 | - Well, to some degree, I would say that I have been able

01:22:15.200 | to trust my instincts on that,

01:22:16.740 | and that I've most of the time been right,

01:22:21.840 | but obviously in the last number of years,

01:22:24.880 | not just with people who've accused me,

01:22:26.560 | but just also people in my own industry,

01:22:28.760 | to realize that, oh, I thought we had a friendship,

01:22:31.560 | but I guess that was about an inch thick

01:22:33.720 | and not what I thought it was.

01:22:37.240 | But look, one shouldn't be surprised by that.

01:22:42.520 | I have to also say, you said a little while ago

01:22:46.360 | that the world had canceled me,

01:22:47.760 | and I have to disagree with you.

01:22:50.440 | I have to disagree because for seven years,

01:22:54.140 | I've been stopped by people, sometimes every day,

01:22:58.680 | sometimes multiple, multiple times a day,

01:23:01.100 | and the conversations that I have with people,

01:23:05.000 | the generosity that they share, the kindness that they show,

01:23:08.720 | and how much they wanna know when I'm getting back to work,

01:23:12.640 | tells me that while there may be a very loud minority,

01:23:19.020 | there is a quieter majority.

01:23:21.800 | - In the industry, have you been betrayed in life?

01:23:26.800 | And how do you not let that make you cynical?

01:23:29.840 | - I think betrayal is a really interesting word,

01:23:37.540 | but I think if you're going to be betrayed,

01:23:41.340 | it has to be by those who truly know you,

01:23:44.680 | and I can tell you that I have not been betrayed.

01:23:49.540 | - That's a beautiful way to put it.

01:23:51.300 | For the times you crossed the line,

01:23:55.740 | do you take responsibility for the wrongs you've done?

01:23:59.740 | - Yes.

01:24:01.140 | - Are you sorry to the people you may have hurt emotionally?

01:24:05.180 | - Yes, yes.

01:24:06.000 | And I have spoken to many of them.

01:24:11.000 | - Privately.

01:24:13.580 | - Privately, which is where amends should be made.

01:24:17.220 | - Were they able to start finding forgiveness?

01:24:20.120 | - Absolutely.

01:24:21.140 | Some of the most moving conversations that I have had

01:24:26.080 | when I was determined to take accountability

01:24:33.480 | have been those people who said, thank you so much,

01:24:35.720 | and I think I can forgive you now.

01:24:40.720 | - If you got a chance to talk to the Kevin Spacey

01:24:44.720 | of 30 to 40 years ago,

01:24:46.980 | what would you tell him to change about his ways?

01:24:51.700 | How would you do it, what would be your approach?

01:24:54.860 | Would you be nice about it, would you smack him around?

01:24:57.980 | - I think if I were to go back that far,

01:25:00.880 | I probably would have found a way to

01:25:03.300 | not have been as concerned about revealing my sexuality

01:25:10.420 | and hiding that for as long as I did.

01:25:12.580 | I think that had a lot to do with confusion

01:25:17.580 | and a lot to do with mistrust,

01:25:20.540 | both my own and other people's.

01:25:24.240 | - For most of your life, you were not open

01:25:26.940 | with the public about being gay.

01:25:29.820 | What was the hardest thing about keeping

01:25:33.100 | who you love a secret?

01:25:34.680 | - That I didn't find the right moment

01:25:41.260 | of celebration to be able to share that.

01:25:46.260 | - That must be a thing that weighs on you

01:25:49.420 | to not be able to fully

01:25:52.020 | yeah, celebrate your love.

01:25:56.980 | - You know, Ian McKellen said,

01:26:00.300 | after 40, he was 49 when he came out,

01:26:05.460 | 27 years he'd been a professional actor,

01:26:08.660 | being in the closet.

01:26:10.420 | And he said he felt it was like he was

01:26:12.500 | living a part of his life, not being truthful.

01:26:18.260 | And that he felt that it affected his work

01:26:21.540 | when he did come out because he no longer felt

01:26:24.420 | like he had anything to hide.

01:26:26.020 | And I absolutely believe that that is what my experience

01:26:31.020 | has been and will continue to be.

01:26:35.300 | I am sorry about the way I came out,

01:26:38.220 | but Evan and I had already had the conversation.

01:26:44.660 | I had already decided to come out.

01:26:46.380 | And so it wasn't like, oh, I was forced to come out,

01:26:50.540 | but it was something I decided to do.

01:26:53.460 | And by the way, much against Evan's advice,

01:26:56.260 | I came out in that statement

01:26:57.780 | and he wishes that I had not done so.

01:27:00.340 | - Yeah, you made a statement

01:27:03.740 | when the initial accusation happened.

01:27:07.700 | That could be up there as one of the worst

01:27:12.300 | social media posts of all time.

01:27:14.220 | It's like two for one.

01:27:19.860 | - Don't hold back, no, come on.

01:27:21.300 | Really tell me how you feel.

01:27:22.140 | - The first part, you kind of implicitly admitted

01:27:26.860 | to doing something bad, which was later shown

01:27:29.900 | and proved completely to never have happened.

01:27:32.340 | It was a lie.

01:27:34.060 | - No, I basically said that I didn't remember

01:27:37.740 | what this person was, that Anthony Rapp was claiming

01:27:40.900 | from 31 years before.

01:27:43.380 | I had no memory of it, but if it had happened,

01:27:45.460 | if this embarrassing moment had happened,

01:27:47.420 | then I would owe him an apology.

01:27:49.260 | That was what I said.

01:27:50.500 | And then I said, and while I'm at it,

01:27:53.500 | I think I'll come out.

01:27:54.500 | And it was definitely not the greatest

01:27:56.660 | coming out party ever, I will admit that.

01:27:58.820 | - From the public reception, the first part of that,

01:28:01.900 | so first of all, the second part is a horrible way

01:28:04.020 | to come out, yes, we all agree.

01:28:05.860 | And then the first part, from the public viewpoint,

01:28:09.180 | they see guilt in that, which also is tragic

01:28:13.340 | because at least that particular accusation,

01:28:17.300 | and it's a very dramatic one,

01:28:18.420 | it's a $40 million lawsuit, it's a big deal,

01:28:21.100 | and an underage person was shown to be false.

01:28:23.860 | - Well, but you're melding two things together.

01:28:28.060 | The lawsuit didn't happen until 2020,

01:28:30.380 | and then it didn't get to court until 2022.

01:28:32.860 | We're back in 2017 when it was just an accusation

01:28:35.460 | he made in "Buzzfeed" magazine.

01:28:37.660 | Look, I was backed into a corner.

01:28:43.020 | When someone says, "You were so drunk,

01:28:44.980 | you won't remember this thing happened,"

01:28:47.180 | what's your first instinct?

01:28:50.340 | Is your first instinct to say, "This person's a liar,"

01:28:52.700 | or is your first instinct to go, "What?

01:28:56.500 | I was, what, 31 years at a party

01:29:00.380 | I don't even remember throwing?"

01:29:02.340 | Obviously, a lot of investigation happened after that

01:29:05.780 | in which we were then able to prove in that court case

01:29:09.020 | that it had never occurred.

01:29:10.740 | But at the moment, I was sort of being told

01:29:14.860 | I couldn't push back, you have to be kind, you can't...

01:29:19.860 | I think even to me now, none of it sounds right,

01:29:25.100 | but I don't know that I could have said anything

01:29:27.220 | that would have been satisfactory to anybody.

01:29:31.300 | - Okay, there's an almost convincing explanation

01:29:34.780 | for the worst social media posts of all time.

01:29:36.940 | I almost accept it.

01:29:38.460 | - I'm really surprised.

01:29:39.820 | I guess you haven't read a lot of media posts

01:29:41.660 | 'cause I can't believe that's the actual worst one.

01:29:44.300 | - It's beautifully bad is how bad that social media post is.

01:29:48.460 | As you mentioned, Liam Neeson and Sharon Stone

01:29:51.520 | came out in support of you recently,

01:29:54.500 | speaking to your character.

01:29:55.900 | A lot of people who know you, and some of whom I know,

01:30:01.500 | who have worked with you privately, show support for you,

01:30:04.460 | but are afraid to speak up publicly.

01:30:06.380 | What do you make of that?

01:30:08.820 | I mean, to me personally, this just makes me sad

01:30:10.980 | because perhaps that's the nature of the industry,

01:30:13.580 | that it's difficult to do that,

01:30:17.460 | but I just wish there would be

01:30:19.500 | a little bit more courage in the world.

01:30:21.100 | - I don't think it's about the industry,

01:30:22.620 | I think it's about our time.

01:30:25.020 | I think it's the time that we're in,

01:30:26.940 | and people are very afraid.

01:30:29.180 | - Just afraid, just a general fear.

01:30:31.980 | - No, they're literally afraid

01:30:33.660 | that they're gonna get canceled

01:30:36.620 | if they stand up for someone who has been.

01:30:39.820 | And I think it's, I mean, we've seen this many times

01:30:46.860 | in history, this is not the first time it's happened.

01:30:50.260 | - So as you said, your darkest moment in 2017,

01:30:54.980 | when all of this went down,

01:30:58.100 | one of the things that happened is you were no longer

01:31:01.620 | in the House of Cards for the last season.

01:31:04.500 | Let's go to the beginning of that show.

01:31:07.100 | One of the greatest TV series of all time,

01:31:10.620 | a dark, fascinating character in Frank Underwood,

01:31:14.180 | a ruthless, cunning, borderline evil politician.

01:31:17.820 | What are some interesting aspects to the process

01:31:22.220 | you went through becoming Frank Underwood?

01:31:25.060 | Maybe Richard III, there's a lot of elements there

01:31:27.940 | in your performance that maybe inspired that character?

01:31:32.220 | - Well-- - Is that fair or no?

01:31:34.100 | - I'll give you one very interesting,

01:31:38.620 | specific education that I got

01:31:46.020 | in doing Richard III and closing that show at BAM

01:31:51.020 | in March of 2012, and two months later

01:31:56.220 | started shooting House of Cards.

01:31:57.940 | There is something called direct address.

01:32:03.020 | In Shakespeare, you have Hamlet talks to the world,

01:32:12.420 | but when Shakespeare wrote Richard III,

01:32:15.580 | it was the first time he created something

01:32:17.740 | called direct address, which is the character

01:32:21.140 | looks directly at each person close by.

01:32:26.140 | It is a different kind of sharing

01:32:32.740 | than when a character's doing a monologue,

01:32:35.020 | a opening of Henry IV.

01:32:40.260 | And while there are some people who believe

01:32:43.140 | that direct address was invented in Ferris Bueller,

01:32:45.540 | it wasn't, it was Shakespeare who invented it.

01:32:47.900 | So I had just had this experience every night

01:32:53.860 | in theaters all over the world,

01:32:55.700 | seeing how people reacted to becoming a co-conspirator,

01:33:01.860 | because that's what it's about.

01:33:08.180 | And what I tried to do and what Fincher

01:33:11.420 | really helped me with in those beginning days

01:33:15.940 | was how to look in that camera

01:33:20.300 | and imagine I was talking to my best friend.

01:33:24.100 | - Because you're sharing the secret of the darkness

01:33:30.740 | of how this game is played with that best friend.

01:33:33.820 | - Yeah, and there were many times when,

01:33:37.020 | I suppose the writers thought I was crazy,

01:33:39.420 | where I would see a script and I would see this moment

01:33:42.660 | where this direct address would happen.

01:33:44.180 | I'd say all this stuff and I'd go,

01:33:46.500 | when we do a read through of the script, I go,

01:33:49.740 | I don't think I need to say any of that.

01:33:52.460 | And they were like, what do you mean?

01:33:53.300 | I said, well, the audience knows all of that.

01:33:55.420 | All I have to do is look.

01:33:57.700 | They know exactly what's going on.

01:33:59.980 | I don't need to say a thing.

01:34:02.020 | So I was often cutting dialogue

01:34:05.620 | because it just wasn't needed.

01:34:08.220 | Because that relationship that I'd learned

01:34:10.940 | that I'd experienced doing Richard III

01:34:12.980 | was so extraordinary, where I literally watched people,

01:34:19.380 | they were like, oh, I'm in on the thing,

01:34:21.620 | and this is so awesome.

01:34:23.180 | And then suddenly, wait, he killed the kids.

01:34:25.500 | He killed those kids in the tower.

01:34:27.340 | Oh, maybe it's not so.

01:34:28.620 | And you literally would watch them start to reverse

01:34:33.420 | their having had such a great time with Richard III

01:34:36.940 | in the first three acts.

01:34:39.180 | And I thought, this is gonna happen in this show.

01:34:44.060 | If this intimacy

01:34:47.380 | can actually land.

01:34:52.020 | And I just think there was some brilliant writing,

01:34:58.260 | and we always attempted to do it in one take.

01:35:01.700 | No matter how long something was,

01:35:03.020 | we would try to do it in one take,

01:35:04.460 | the direct addresses, so there was never a cut.

01:35:07.900 | When we went out on locations,

01:35:10.220 | we started to then find ways to cut it

01:35:13.660 | and make it slightly broader.

01:35:16.380 | - That's interesting, 'cause you're doing a bunch of,

01:35:18.380 | with both Richard III and Frank Underwood,

01:35:20.580 | a bunch of dark, borderline evil things.

01:35:25.580 | And then I guess the idea is you're going to be

01:35:28.020 | losing the audience, and then you win them back over

01:35:31.060 | with the addresses.

01:35:32.380 | - That's the remarkable thing, is against their instincts

01:35:37.380 | and their better sense of what they should and should not do,

01:35:42.580 | they still rallied around Frank Underwood.

01:35:45.580 | - And I saw, even with the documentary,

01:35:48.500 | the glimmers of that with Richard III.

01:35:50.740 | I mean, you were seducing the audience.

01:35:54.500 | Like, there was such a chemistry

01:35:55.660 | between you and the audience on stage.

01:35:57.700 | - Yeah, yeah.

01:35:58.540 | Well, in that production, that's absolutely true.

01:36:01.700 | Also, Richard is one of the weirder, weird,

01:36:06.980 | I mean by weird.

01:36:07.980 | It was an early play of Shakespeare's.

01:36:12.780 | And he's basically never offstage.

01:36:18.300 | I mean, I remember when we did the first run-through,

01:36:21.140 | I had no idea what the next scene was

01:36:23.420 | every time I came offstage.

01:36:24.460 | I had no idea what was next.

01:36:26.420 | They literally had to drag me from one place to another,

01:36:28.700 | saying, "Now it's the scene with Hastings.

01:36:30.540 | Now it's the scene."

01:36:31.540 | But I now understand these wonderful stories

01:36:35.460 | that you can read in old books about Shakespeare's time,

01:36:40.300 | that actors grabbed Shakespeare around the cuff

01:36:45.300 | and punched him and threw him up against a wall

01:36:47.580 | and said, "If you ever write a part like this again,

01:36:49.500 | I'm gonna kill you."

01:36:50.340 | And that's why in later plays,

01:36:52.300 | he started to have a pageant happen,

01:36:54.980 | and then a wedding happened,

01:36:56.700 | and the main character was offstage resting

01:36:58.780 | because the actor had said, "You can't do this to us.

01:37:02.740 | There's no breaks."

01:37:04.180 | And it's true.

01:37:05.180 | There's very few breaks in Richard III.

01:37:07.580 | You're onstage most of the time.

01:37:09.660 | - The comedic aspect of Richard III and Frank Underwood,

01:37:12.580 | is that a component that helps bring out

01:37:15.900 | the full complexity of the darkness

01:37:20.700 | that is Frank Underwood?

01:37:22.020 | - I certainly can't take credit

01:37:24.500 | for Shakespeare having written something that is funny,

01:37:29.060 | or Bill Willimon and his team

01:37:31.420 | to have written something that is funny.

01:37:33.140 | It's fundamentally funny.

01:37:34.780 | It just depends on how I interpret it.

01:37:38.820 | That's one of the great things, why we love...

01:37:44.940 | In a year's time, we can see five different Hamlets.

01:37:50.260 | We can see four Richard III's.

01:37:53.100 | We can see two Richard II's.

01:37:55.540 | That's part of the thrill that we don't own these parts.

01:37:59.900 | We borrow them, and we interpret them.

01:38:03.380 | And what Ian McKellen might do with a role

01:38:06.780 | could be completely different from what I might do

01:38:09.860 | because of the way we perceive it.

01:38:12.220 | And also, very often in terms of going for humor,

01:38:16.300 | it's very often a director will say,

01:38:18.340 | "Why don't you say that with a bit of irony?

01:38:21.140 | "Why don't you try that with a bit of blah-blah-blah?"

01:38:23.340 | - Yeah, there's often a wry smile,

01:38:26.380 | the line that jumps to me when you're talking about Claire,

01:38:30.500 | in the early, maybe first episode even,

01:38:35.780 | "I love that woman more than sharks love blood."

01:38:40.780 | I mean, I guess there's a lot of ways to read that line,

01:38:47.780 | but the way you read it had both humor,

01:38:51.140 | had legitimate affection,

01:38:53.460 | had all the ambition and narcissism,

01:38:56.060 | all of that mixed up together.

01:38:58.300 | - I also think that one should just acknowledge

01:39:00.260 | that where he was from,

01:39:02.460 | there is something that happens when you do an accent.

01:39:06.960 | And in fact, sometimes when I would say to Beau

01:39:12.620 | or one of the other writers,

01:39:14.680 | "This is really good, and I love the idea,"

01:39:16.700 | but it rhythmically doesn't help.

01:39:18.660 | I need at least two more words

01:39:21.940 | to rhythmically make this work in his accent,

01:39:26.120 | because it just doesn't scan.

01:39:28.540 | And that's not iambic pentameter.

01:39:31.860 | I'm not talking about that.

01:39:33.300 | There is that as well in Shakespeare,

01:39:35.020 | but there was sometimes when it's too many lines,

01:39:38.820 | it's not enough lines in order for me to make this work

01:39:43.060 | for the way he speaks, the way he sounds,

01:39:45.580 | and what that accent does to emphasis.

01:39:49.240 | - How much of that character,

01:39:51.860 | in terms of the musicality of the way he speaks,

01:39:55.940 | is Bill Clinton?

01:39:56.860 | - Not really at all.

01:40:00.140 | I mean, Clinton, you know, look, Bill Clinton,

01:40:03.180 | he had a way of talking.

01:40:04.460 | You know, that he was very slow,

01:40:07.380 | and he felt your pain, you know?

01:40:11.400 | But Frank Underwood was deeper, more direct,

01:40:16.400 | and less poetic in the way that Clinton would talk.

01:40:23.600 | I'll tell you this Clinton story that you'll like.

01:40:26.600 | So we decide to do a performance of "The Iceman Cometh"

01:40:33.040 | for the Democratic Party on Broadway,

01:40:35.480 | and the president is gonna come.

01:40:36.720 | He's gonna see this four-and-a-half-hour play,

01:40:39.040 | and then we're gonna do this event afterward.

01:40:41.360 | And a couple weeks before we're gonna do this event,

01:40:44.120 | someone at the White House calls and says,

01:40:46.240 | listen, it's very unusual to get the president

01:40:49.200 | for like six-and-a-half hours,

01:40:51.200 | so we're suggesting that the president come

01:40:53.920 | and see the first act, and then he goes.

01:40:57.720 | And I knew what was happening.

01:41:00.400 | Now, first of all, Clinton knows this play.

01:41:03.160 | He knows what this play's about.

01:41:04.760 | And I, you know, as gently as I could said,

01:41:09.240 | well, if the president is thinking

01:41:11.400 | of leaving at intermission,

01:41:13.480 | then I'm afraid we're gonna have to cancel the event.

01:41:16.080 | There's just no way that...

01:41:18.080 | So anyway, then we're, oh, no, it's fine, it's fine.

01:41:20.080 | Now, I know what was happening.

01:41:21.360 | What was happening was that someone had read the play,

01:41:24.400 | and they were quite concerned, and I'll tell you why.

01:41:27.200 | Because the play is about this character

01:41:29.920 | that I portrayed named Hickey.

01:41:33.400 | And in the course of the play,

01:41:35.160 | as things get more and more revealed,

01:41:36.840 | you realize that this man that I'm playing

01:41:39.200 | has been a philanderer.

01:41:41.200 | He's cheated on his wife quite a lot.

01:41:44.160 | And by the end of the play, he is arrested and taken off

01:41:49.000 | because he ended up ending his wife's life

01:41:52.720 | because she forgave him too much,

01:41:54.880 | and he couldn't live with it.

01:41:56.320 | So now imagine this.

01:41:58.960 | There's 2,000 people at the Brooks Acres Theatre

01:42:02.440 | watching President Clinton, watching this play.

01:42:07.800 | And at the end of the night, we take our curtain call.

01:42:10.480 | They bring out the presidential podium.

01:42:12.720 | Bill Clinton stands up there, and he says,

01:42:15.040 | "Well, I suppose we should all thank Kevin

01:42:22.160 | "and this extraordinary company of actors

01:42:24.400 | "for giving us all way too much to think about."

01:42:30.460 | (both laughing)

01:42:34.800 | And the audience fell over in laughter,

01:42:38.260 | and then he gave a great speech.

01:42:39.840 | And I thought that was a pretty good way to handle that.

01:42:43.560 | - Well, in that way, him and Frank Gunter

01:42:45.160 | would share a charisma.

01:42:47.240 | There's certain presidents that just have politicians

01:42:49.760 | that just have this charisma.

01:42:50.800 | You can't stop listening to them.

01:42:53.280 | Some of it is the accent,

01:42:54.540 | but some of it is some other magical thing.

01:42:58.340 | - When I was starting to do research,

01:43:03.960 | I wanted to meet with the whip, Kevin McCarthy.

01:43:07.260 | And he wouldn't meet with me

01:43:11.000 | 'til I called his office back and said,

01:43:14.100 | "Tell him I'm playing a Democrat, not a Republican."

01:43:16.700 | And then he met with me.

01:43:19.960 | - Nice. - And he was helpful.

01:43:23.040 | He took me to whip meetings.

01:43:24.440 | - Politicians.

01:43:27.320 | So you worked with David Fincher there.

01:43:29.760 | He was the executive producer,

01:43:31.600 | but he also directed the first two episodes.

01:43:35.980 | - Yeah.

01:43:37.000 | - High level, what was it like working with him again?

01:43:40.520 | In which ways do you think he helped guide you

01:43:45.000 | in the show to become the great show that it was?

01:43:48.140 | - I give him a huge amount of the credit,

01:43:59.680 | and not just for what he established,

01:44:03.100 | but the fact that every director after

01:44:07.240 | stayed within that world.

01:44:10.560 | I think that's why the series

01:44:12.640 | had a very consistent feeling to it.

01:44:14.960 | It was like watching a very long movie.

01:44:18.120 | The style, where the camera went,

01:44:22.980 | what it did, what it didn't do,

01:44:24.760 | how we used this, how we used that, how we didn't do this.

01:44:27.540 | There were things that he laid the foundation for

01:44:31.360 | that we managed to maintain pretty much

01:44:36.360 | until Bo Willimon left the show.

01:44:40.640 | They got rid of Fincher,

01:44:42.640 | and I was sort of the last man standing

01:44:45.600 | in terms of fighting again.

01:44:47.960 | Netflix had never had any creative control at all.

01:44:51.140 | We had complete creative control.

01:44:53.040 | But over time, they started to get themselves involved

01:44:57.780 | because, look, this is what happens to networks.

01:45:00.060 | They'd never made a television show before ever,

01:45:03.540 | and then four years later, they were the best.

01:45:06.520 | And so then you're gonna get suggestions

01:45:09.540 | about casting and about writing

01:45:11.040 | and about music and scenes.

01:45:13.480 | And so there was a considerable amount of pushback

01:45:18.340 | that I had to do when they started to get involved

01:45:21.860 | in ways that I thought was affecting

01:45:23.560 | the quality of the show.

01:45:25.520 | - What are those battles like?

01:45:27.060 | Like, I heard that there was a battle with the execs,

01:45:31.400 | like you mentioned early on about your name

01:45:33.280 | not being on the billing for "Se7en."

01:45:36.280 | I heard that there was battles about the ending of "Se7en,"

01:45:39.120 | which was really, well, it was pretty dark.

01:45:44.120 | So what's that battle like?

01:45:48.060 | How often does that happen, and how do you win that battle?

01:45:51.780 | 'Cause it feels like there's a line

01:45:53.760 | where the networks or the execs are really afraid

01:45:59.360 | of crossing that line into this strange,

01:46:03.320 | uncomfortable place, and then the director,

01:46:06.360 | great directors and great actors

01:46:08.880 | kind of flirt with that line.

01:46:10.680 | - It can happen in different ways.

01:46:13.040 | I mean, I remember one argument we had was

01:46:17.120 | we had specifically shot a scene

01:46:20.620 | so that there would be no score in that scene,

01:46:23.080 | so that there was no music, it was just two people talking.

01:46:26.680 | And then we end up seeing a cut

01:46:29.860 | where they've decided to put music in,

01:46:33.200 | and it is against everything

01:46:35.140 | that scene's supposed to be about.

01:46:37.200 | And you have to go and say, "Guys, this was intentional.

01:46:40.160 | "We did not want score, and now you've added score

01:46:42.240 | "because what, you think it's too quiet?

01:46:44.380 | "You think our audience can't listen to two people talk

01:46:47.560 | "for two and a half minutes?

01:46:49.020 | "This show has proved anything.

01:46:50.460 | "It's proved that people have patience

01:46:52.600 | "and they're willing to watch an entire season

01:46:54.360 | "over a weekend."

01:46:55.400 | So there are those kind of arguments that can happen.

01:47:00.360 | There are different arguments on different levels,

01:47:06.880 | and they sometimes have to do with,

01:47:09.840 | I mean, look, go back to "The Godfather."

01:47:11.400 | They wanted to fire Pacino

01:47:12.880 | 'cause they didn't see anything happening.

01:47:14.980 | They saw nothing happening, so they wanted to fire Pacino.

01:47:19.180 | And then finally Coppola thought,

01:47:20.740 | "I'll shoot the scene where he kills the police commissioner

01:47:23.900 | "and they'll do that scene now."

01:47:26.580 | And that was the first scene where they went,

01:47:27.840 | "Yeah, actually, there's something going on there."

01:47:30.580 | So Pacino kept the role.

01:47:32.440 | - You think that "Godfather" is when Pacino was,

01:47:36.580 | like, the Pacino we know was born?

01:47:38.860 | Or is that more like, there's the character

01:47:41.020 | that really over the top, in "Scent of a Woman."

01:47:44.460 | There's like stages, I suppose.

01:47:46.300 | - Yeah, of course.

01:47:47.220 | Look, I think that we can't forget

01:47:50.060 | that Pacino is also an animal of the theater.

01:47:52.560 | He does a lot of plays, and he started off doing plays,

01:47:56.260 | and movies were, "Panic in Needle Park" was his first.

01:48:01.260 | And yeah, I think there's that period of time

01:48:05.000 | when he was doing some incredible parts, incredible movies.

01:48:09.620 | When I did a series called "Wise Guy,"

01:48:12.580 | I got cast on a Thursday,

01:48:14.620 | and I flew up to Vancouver on a Saturday.

01:48:16.980 | I started shooting on Monday.

01:48:18.320 | And all I had time to do was watch

01:48:19.940 | "The Godfather" and "Surfaco."

01:48:21.740 | And then I went to work. (laughs)

01:48:25.180 | - Would you say, ridiculous question,

01:48:26.740 | "Godfather," greatest film of all time?

01:48:28.780 | - Well, certainly. - Gun to your head,

01:48:32.740 | right now. - Certainly, yes, yes.

01:48:34.680 | But I also, look, I'm allowed to change my opinion.

01:48:39.340 | I can next week say it's "Lawrence of Arabia,"

01:48:41.340 | or a week after that, I can say, "Sullivan's Travels."

01:48:45.940 | I mean, that's the wonderful thing about movies,

01:48:48.900 | and particularly great movies,

01:48:50.100 | is when you see them again,

01:48:51.660 | it's like seeing them for the first time.

01:48:54.660 | And you pick up things that you didn't see the last time.

01:48:57.740 | - And for that day, you fall in love with that movie.

01:48:59.900 | You might even say to a friend

01:49:03.260 | that that is the greatest movie of all time.

01:49:04.980 | - And also, I think it's the degree

01:49:07.740 | with which directors are daring.

01:49:10.820 | I mean, Kubrick decided to cast one actor

01:49:16.820 | to play three major roles in "Dr. Strangelove."

01:49:20.440 | I mean, who has the balls to do that today?

01:49:25.300 | - I was gonna mention, when we're talking about "Seven,"

01:49:28.420 | that just, if you're looking at the greatest performances,

01:49:33.220 | portrayals of murderers,

01:49:35.900 | so obviously, like I mentioned,

01:49:37.820 | Hannibal Lecter in "Silence of the Lambs,"

01:49:39.940 | that's up there.

01:49:40.760 | "Seven," to me, is like competing for first place

01:49:43.400 | with "Silence of the Lambs."

01:49:45.340 | But then there's a different one

01:49:46.940 | with Kubrick and Jack Nicholson, right, with "The Shining."

01:49:52.980 | And there's, as opposed to a murderer

01:49:57.380 | who's always been a murderer,

01:49:59.180 | here's a person, like in "American Beauty,"

01:50:02.100 | who becomes that, who descends into madness.

01:50:06.700 | I read also that Jack Nicholson improvised

01:50:09.100 | "Here's Johnny" in that scene.

01:50:10.860 | - I believe that.

01:50:11.840 | - That's a very different performance than yours in "Seven."

01:50:15.400 | What do you make of that performance?

01:50:17.920 | - Nicholson's always been such an incredible actor

01:50:21.160 | because he has absolutely no shame

01:50:26.160 | about being demonstrative and over-the-top,

01:50:29.520 | and he also has no problem playing characters

01:50:32.160 | who are deeply flawed, and he's interested in that.

01:50:35.680 | I have a pretty good Nicholson story, though.

01:50:37.320 | Nobody knows.

01:50:38.920 | - You also have a pretty good Nicholson impression,

01:50:41.400 | but what's the story?

01:50:42.840 | - Story is, the story was told to me

01:50:45.920 | by a sound man, Dennis Maitland,

01:50:48.960 | who's a great, great, great guy.

01:50:50.560 | He said he was very excited

01:50:53.440 | because he got on "Pritzy's Honor,"

01:50:56.040 | which was Jack Nicholson and Angelica Houston

01:50:58.120 | directed by John Houston.

01:50:59.620 | He said, "I was so excited.

01:51:01.640 | "It's my first day on the movie,

01:51:03.400 | "and I get told to go into Mr. Nicholson's trailer

01:51:06.700 | "and mic him up for the first scene.

01:51:08.960 | "So I knock on the trailer door,

01:51:10.660 | "and I hear, 'Yes, come on in!'

01:51:15.160 | "I come inside, and Mr. Nicholson is changing

01:51:17.440 | "out of his regular clothes,

01:51:20.320 | "and he's gonna put on his costume,

01:51:22.300 | "and so I'm setting up the mic, and I'm getting ready,

01:51:25.060 | "and I said, 'Mr. Nicholson, I just wanted to tell you,

01:51:29.400 | "'I'm extremely excited to be working with you again.

01:51:32.160 | "'It's a great pleasure.'

01:51:33.440 | "And Jack goes, 'Did we work together before?'

01:51:36.320 | "And he says, 'Yes, yes, we did.'

01:51:38.920 | "And he goes, 'What film did we do together?'

01:51:41.860 | "He says, 'Well, we did Missouri Breaks.'

01:51:44.720 | "Nicholson goes, 'Oh, my God, Missouri Breaks.

01:51:47.880 | "'Jesus Christ, we were out of our minds on that film.

01:51:50.800 | "'Holy shit, Jesus Christ, I wonder I'm alive.

01:51:54.080 | "'My God, there was so much drugs going on,

01:51:56.520 | "'and we were stoned out of our minds.

01:51:58.660 | "'Holy shit.'

01:52:00.000 | "And just then, he folds the pants

01:52:02.640 | "that he's just taken off over his arm,

01:52:04.780 | "and an eighth of Coke drops out on the floor."

01:52:07.100 | (laughing)

01:52:09.340 | Dennis looks at it, Nicholson looks at it.

01:52:14.560 | Jack goes, "Haven't worn these pants since Missouri Breaks."

01:52:20.480 | (laughing)

01:52:22.900 | - Man, I love that guy, unapologetically himself.

01:52:25.860 | - Oh, yeah.

01:52:28.140 | - Your impression of him at the AFI was just great.

01:52:31.980 | - Well, that was for Mike Nichols.

01:52:35.420 | - Oh, yeah, he had a big impact on your career.

01:52:37.500 | - Huge impact on my career. - He's really important.

01:52:39.440 | Can you talk about him?

01:52:40.280 | Like, what role did he play in your life?

01:52:43.060 | - I think it was, yeah, it was 1984.

01:52:47.780 | I went in to audition for the national tour

01:52:50.940 | of a play called "The Real Thing,"

01:52:53.140 | which Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close were doing on Broadway

01:52:55.880 | that Mr. Nichols had directed.

01:52:57.200 | So I went in to read for this character,

01:52:59.540 | Brody, who is a Scottish character.

01:53:03.060 | And I did the audition, and Mike Nichols comes down

01:53:06.340 | the aisle of the theater, and he's asking me questions

01:53:09.740 | about where'd you go to school, and what have you been doing?

01:53:11.820 | I'd just come back from doing a bunch of years

01:53:14.540 | of regional theater and different theaters,

01:53:16.100 | so I was in New York, and meeting Mike Nichols

01:53:18.780 | was just incredible.

01:53:20.700 | So Mr. Nichols went, "Have you seen the other play

01:53:24.920 | "that I directed up the block called 'Hurley Burley'?"

01:53:27.780 | And I said, "No, I haven't."

01:53:28.860 | He says, "Why not?"

01:53:30.820 | I said, "I can't afford a Broadway ticket."

01:53:33.220 | He said, "We can arrange that.

01:53:34.680 | "I'd like you to go see that play,

01:53:36.140 | "and then I'd like you to come in next week

01:53:37.540 | "and audition for that."

01:53:39.620 | I was like, "Oh, okay."

01:53:41.700 | So I went to see "Hurley Burley."

01:53:44.380 | William Hurt, Harvey Keitel, Chris Walken,

01:53:49.260 | Candice Bergen, Cynthia Nixon, Jerry Stiller.

01:53:54.260 | And I watched this play, it's a play,

01:53:57.900 | David Ray play about Hollywood.

01:54:00.160 | This is crazy.

01:54:01.220 | I mean, Bill Hurt was like unbelievable,

01:54:05.780 | and it was extraordinary.

01:54:07.020 | Chris Walken, this guy's weird.

01:54:08.660 | So Harvey Keitel, Walken came in later.

01:54:12.260 | Harvey Keitel's playing this part.

01:54:14.420 | And I come in, and I audition for it,

01:54:16.260 | and Nichols says, "I want you to understudy Harvey Keitel.

01:54:19.540 | "I want you to understudy Phil."

01:54:21.980 | And I'm like, "Phil?"

01:54:24.060 | I mean, Harvey Keitel is like in his 40s.

01:54:26.540 | He looks like he can beat the shit out of everybody

01:54:28.340 | on stage.

01:54:29.180 | He's like 24-year-old.

01:54:31.580 | And Nichols said, "It's all about attitude.

01:54:35.500 | "If you believe you can beat the shit

01:54:36.700 | "out of everybody on stage, the audience will too."

01:54:39.300 | So I then started to learn Phil.

01:54:43.280 | And the way it works when you're in understudy,

01:54:47.940 | unless you're a name,

01:54:49.460 | they don't let you rehearse on the stage.

01:54:51.900 | You just rehearse in a rehearsal room.

01:54:53.980 | But I used to sneak onto the stage and rehearse

01:54:56.560 | and try to figure out where the props were and yadda yadda.

01:54:58.900 | Anyway, one day I get a call.

01:55:02.220 | "You're going on today as Phil."

01:55:04.220 | So I went on.

01:55:07.140 | Nichols is told by Peter Lawrence,

01:55:10.660 | who's the stage manager, "Spacey's going on as Phil."

01:55:13.380 | So Nichols comes down and watches the second act,

01:55:17.060 | comes backstage.

01:55:18.140 | He says, "That was really good.

01:55:20.700 | "How soon could you learn Mickey?"

01:55:23.360 | Mickey was the role that Ron Silver was playing,

01:55:27.820 | that Chris Walken also played.

01:55:29.920 | I said, "I don't know, maybe a couple of weeks."

01:55:35.380 | He goes, "Learn Mickey too."

01:55:37.100 | So I learned Mickey.

01:55:40.260 | And then one day I'm told,

01:55:43.500 | "You're going on tomorrow night as Mickey."

01:55:45.660 | Nichols comes, sees the second act,

01:55:49.420 | comes backstage and says, "That was really good.

01:55:53.500 | "I mean, that was really funny.

01:55:55.740 | "How soon could you learn Eddie?"

01:55:57.520 | (chuckles)

01:55:59.200 | And so I became like the pinch hitter on "Hurley Burley."

01:56:03.000 | I learned all the male parts, including Jerry Stiller's,

01:56:05.200 | although I never went on as Jerry Stiller's part.

01:56:07.700 | And then I left the play.

01:56:11.940 | I guess about two months later,

01:56:14.960 | I get this phone call from Mike Nichols.

01:56:18.240 | He's like, "Kevin, how are you?"

01:56:19.280 | And I'm like, "I'm fine.

01:56:20.680 | "What can I do for you?"

01:56:22.360 | He says, "Well, I'm gonna make a film this summer

01:56:25.000 | "with Mandy and Meryl,

01:56:26.520 | "and there's a role I'd like you to come in

01:56:28.720 | "and audition for."

01:56:31.760 | So I went in, auditioned,

01:56:35.040 | cast me as this mugger on a subway.

01:56:38.600 | Then there's this whole upheaval that happens

01:56:41.040 | because he then doesn't continue with Mandy Potemkin.

01:56:45.120 | Mandy leaves the movie,

01:56:47.560 | and he asked Jack Nicholson to come in

01:56:49.960 | and replace Mandy Potemkin.

01:56:51.680 | So now I had no scenes with him,

01:56:54.920 | but I'm in a movie with Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep,

01:56:57.920 | and my first scene in this movie,

01:57:00.840 | which I shot on my birthday, July 26th of '85,

01:57:04.960 | I got to wink at Meryl Streep in this scene,

01:57:09.680 | and I was so nervous.

01:57:10.960 | I literally couldn't wink.

01:57:12.720 | Nichols had to calm me down and help me wink,

01:57:17.160 | but that became my very first film.

01:57:22.680 | And he was incredible, and he let me come and watch

01:57:25.880 | when they were shooting scenes I wasn't in.

01:57:28.040 | And I remember ending up one day in the makeup trailer

01:57:31.920 | on the same day we were working, Jack and me.

01:57:34.600 | We had no scene together.

01:57:36.200 | But I remember him coming in,

01:57:37.360 | and they put him down in the chair,

01:57:38.720 | and they put cucumbers, frozen cucumbers on his eyes,

01:57:41.920 | and did his neck.

01:57:43.080 | And then they raised him up and did his face,

01:57:45.960 | and then I remember Nicholson went like this,

01:57:47.640 | looked in the mirror, and he went.

01:57:49.800 | (sighing)

01:57:51.960 | Another day, another $50,000.

01:57:57.600 | (laughing)

01:57:58.920 | And walked out of the trailer.

01:58:01.120 | - Well, what was Christopher Walken like?

01:58:03.520 | - Ah.

01:58:04.960 | - So he's a theater guy too.

01:58:07.120 | - Oh yeah, he started out as a chorus boy, dancer.

01:58:09.960 | - Well, I can see that.

01:58:12.360 | - Yeah, yeah.

01:58:13.760 | - The guy knows how to move.

01:58:14.920 | - I've known Walken a long time,

01:58:16.040 | and I did a Saturday Night Live where I did,

01:58:18.920 | we did these Star Wars auditions.

01:58:21.560 | (laughing)

01:58:23.320 | I did Chris Walken as Han Solo.

01:58:25.320 | - So good.

01:58:26.160 | - And I'll never forget this.

01:58:29.080 | I was in Los Angeles about two weeks after,

01:58:31.720 | and I was at Chateau Marmont.

01:58:33.200 | There was some party happening at Chateau Marmont,

01:58:34.880 | and I saw Chris Walken come out onto the balcony,

01:58:38.720 | and I was like, "Oh shit, it's Chris Walken."

01:58:42.120 | And he walked up to me and he went,

01:58:43.680 | "Kevin, I saw your little sketch.

01:58:47.520 | "It was funny, ha-ha."

01:58:49.480 | (laughing)

01:58:51.720 | - Oh man, it was a really good sketch.

01:58:55.600 | And that guy, there's certain people that are truly unique

01:59:00.600 | and unapologetic, continue being that

01:59:07.120 | throughout their whole career.

01:59:08.200 | The way they talk, the musicality of how they talk,

01:59:10.720 | how they are, their way of being, he's that.

01:59:13.560 | - Yeah.

01:59:14.400 | - And it somehow works.

01:59:15.840 | - His watch.

01:59:16.680 | (laughing)

01:59:18.520 | - Yeah.

01:59:19.360 | - I mean, it works in so many different contexts.

01:59:23.240 | He plays like a mobster in "True Romance,"

01:59:26.320 | and it's like genius, that's genius.

01:59:28.600 | But he could be anything.

01:59:29.920 | He could be soft, he could be a badass, all of it.

01:59:32.720 | And he's always Christopher Walken,

01:59:35.020 | but somehow works for all these different characters.

01:59:37.680 | So I guess we were talking about "House of Cards"

01:59:42.400 | two hours ago before we took a tangent upon a tangent,

01:59:45.840 | but there's a moment in episode one

01:59:49.240 | where President Walker broke his promise to Frank Underwood

01:59:53.080 | that he would make him a Secretary of State.

01:59:56.080 | Was this when the monster in Frank was born,

01:59:59.560 | or was the monster always there?

02:00:01.560 | The sort of, for you looking at that character,

02:00:04.980 | was there an idealistic notion to him

02:00:08.600 | that there's loyalty and that broke him,

02:00:11.260 | or did he always know that there is,

02:00:13.680 | this whole world is about manipulation

02:00:16.160 | and do anything to get power?

02:00:19.000 | - Well, I mean, it might've been the first moment

02:00:21.000 | an audience saw him be betrayed,

02:00:24.480 | but it certainly was not the first betrayal

02:00:26.280 | he'd experienced.

02:00:27.480 | And once you start to get to know him

02:00:29.840 | and learn about his life and learn about his father

02:00:32.160 | and learn about his friends

02:00:34.000 | and learn about their relationship

02:00:36.360 | and learn what he was like even as a cadet,

02:00:40.040 | I think you start to realize that this is a man

02:00:42.840 | who has very strong beliefs about loyalty.

02:00:47.840 | And so it wasn't the first,

02:00:53.120 | it was just the first moment that,

02:00:54.920 | in terms of the storyline that's being built,

02:00:58.480 | Knight Takes King was the name of our production company.

02:01:03.240 | - Yeah, what do you think motivated him

02:01:06.200 | at that moment and throughout the show?

02:01:10.040 | Was it all about power and also legacy,

02:01:13.880 | or was there some small part underneath it all

02:01:16.360 | where he wanted to actually do good in the world?

02:01:21.360 | - No, I think power is a afterthought.

02:01:26.720 | What he loved more than anything

02:01:30.240 | was being able to predict how human beings would react.

02:01:33.720 | He was a behavioral psychologist.

02:01:39.440 | And he could know,

02:01:42.040 | like he was 17 moves ahead in a chess game,

02:01:46.120 | he could know if he did this at this moment

02:01:49.760 | that eventually this would happen.

02:01:52.280 | He was able to be predictive and was usually right.

02:01:58.160 | He knew just how far he needed to push someone

02:02:03.920 | to get them to do what he needed them to do

02:02:06.200 | in order to make the next step work.

02:02:09.440 | - You've played a bunch of evil characters.

02:02:13.720 | - Well, you call them evil.

02:02:15.080 | But you don't, but the reason I say that,

02:02:18.480 | and I don't mean to be snarky about it,

02:02:19.760 | but the reason I say it that way

02:02:21.000 | is because I never judge the people I play.

02:02:25.440 | And the people that I have played

02:02:28.760 | or that any actor has played

02:02:30.120 | don't necessarily view themselves as this label.

02:02:35.160 | It's easy to say, but that's not the way I can think.

02:02:40.160 | I cannot judge a character I play and then play them well.

02:02:46.280 | I have to be free of judgment.

02:02:51.160 | I have to just play them

02:02:53.000 | and let the cards drop where they may,

02:02:56.040 | and let an audience judge.

02:02:57.820 | I mean, the fact that you use that word is perfectly fine.

02:03:00.920 | That's your, you know, but it's like people asking me,

02:03:03.760 | you know, was I really from K-Pax or not?

02:03:05.760 | You know, it's just entirely depends on your perspective.

02:03:09.000 | - Do roles like that, like Seven, like Frank Underwood,

02:03:15.320 | like Lester from American Beauty,

02:03:22.080 | do they change you psychologically as a person?

02:03:25.760 | So walking around in the skin of these characters,

02:03:31.400 | these complex characters

02:03:34.080 | with very different moral systems?

02:03:36.200 | - I absolutely believe that wandering around

02:03:47.040 | in someone else's ideas, in someone else's clothes,

02:03:51.380 | in someone else's shoes teaches you enormous empathy.

02:04:00.680 | And that goes to the heart of not judging.

02:04:03.200 | And I have found that I have been so moved by,

02:04:09.320 | I mean, look, let's,

02:04:11.200 | yes, you've identified the darker characters,

02:04:15.200 | but I played Clarence Darrow three times.

02:04:17.660 | I've played a play called "National Anthems."

02:04:21.040 | I've done movies like "Recount."

02:04:23.400 | I've done films like "The Ref."

02:04:25.080 | I've done films that in which there are,

02:04:28.420 | that doesn't exist in any of those characters.

02:04:30.820 | - Paid forward. - Those qualities.

02:04:32.140 | Paid forward.

02:04:32.980 | And so it is incredible to be able

02:04:40.740 | to embrace those things that I admire

02:04:45.780 | and that are like me,

02:04:47.900 | and those things that I don't admire and aren't like me.

02:04:51.460 | But I have to put them on an equal footing

02:04:55.020 | and say I have to just play them as best I can

02:04:58.900 | and not decide to wield judgment over them.

02:05:04.820 | - Without judgment. - Without judgment.

02:05:09.020 | - In "Gulag Archipelago,"

02:05:11.180 | Alexander Solzhenitsyn famously writes about the line

02:05:15.580 | between good and evil

02:05:16.420 | and that it runs through the heart of every man.

02:05:19.100 | So the full paragraph there,

02:05:23.940 | when he talks about the line,

02:05:25.580 | "During the life of any heart,

02:05:28.820 | this line keeps changing place.

02:05:30.620 | Sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil,

02:05:33.820 | and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space

02:05:36.620 | for good to flourish.

02:05:38.420 | One in the same human being is, at various ages,

02:05:42.220 | under various circumstances,

02:05:43.940 | a totally different human being.

02:05:46.220 | At times, he is close to being a devil,

02:05:49.420 | at times, to sainthood.

02:05:51.700 | But his name doesn't change,

02:05:53.420 | and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil."

02:05:58.300 | What do you think about this note

02:05:59.940 | that we're all capable of good and evil,

02:06:04.500 | and throughout life, that line moves and shifts

02:06:07.780 | throughout the day, throughout every hour?

02:06:09.860 | - Yeah, I mean, one of the things

02:06:15.340 | that I've been focused on very succinctly

02:06:21.060 | is the idea that every day is an opportunity.

02:06:23.460 | It's an opportunity to make better decisions,

02:06:30.540 | to learn, and to grow.

02:06:36.900 | And I also think that, look,

02:06:42.900 | I grew up not knowing if my parents loved me,

02:06:50.260 | particularly my father.

02:06:51.660 | I never had a sense that I was loved,

02:06:59.580 | and that stayed with me my whole life.

02:07:02.500 | And when I think back at who my father was,

02:07:10.220 | and more succinctly, who he became,

02:07:19.460 | it was a gradual and slow and sad development.

02:07:24.460 | When I've gone back, and now I've looked at diaries

02:07:34.380 | my father kept and albums he kept,

02:07:37.020 | particularly when he was a medic in the US Army,

02:07:41.240 | served our country with distinction.

02:07:46.580 | When the war was over and they went to Germany,

02:07:50.820 | the things my father said, the things that he wrote,

02:07:54.500 | the things that he believed were as patriotic

02:07:56.700 | as any American soldier who had ever served.

02:07:59.400 | But then when he came back to America,

02:08:04.340 | and he had a dream of being a journalist,

02:08:07.620 | or his big hope was that he was gonna be

02:08:11.880 | the great American novelist.

02:08:13.660 | He wanted to be a creative novelist,

02:08:16.140 | and so he sat in his office and he wrote for 45 years,

02:08:21.140 | and never published anything.

02:08:24.940 | And somewhere along the way, in order to make money,

02:08:29.940 | he became what they call a technical procedure writer,

02:08:34.940 | which the best way to describe that

02:08:38.540 | is that if you built the F-16 aircraft,

02:08:42.600 | my father would have written the manual

02:08:44.140 | to tell you how to do it.

02:08:46.260 | I mean, as boring, as technical,

02:08:48.520 | as tedious as you can imagine.

02:08:50.200 | And so somewhere in the '60s and into the '70s,

02:08:57.140 | my father fell in with groups of people

02:09:01.420 | and individuals, pretend intellectuals,

02:09:04.120 | who started to give him reasons why he was not successful

02:09:09.880 | as a white Aryan man in the United States.

02:09:14.560 | And over time, my father became a white supremacist.

02:09:19.560 | And I cannot tell you the amount of times,

02:09:30.580 | as a young boy, that my father would sit me down

02:09:35.580 | and lecture me for hours and hours and hours

02:09:42.340 | about his fucked up ideas of America,

02:09:47.340 | of prejudice, of white supremacy.

02:09:51.840 | And thank God for my sister, who said,

02:09:55.340 | "Don't listen to a thing he says, he's out of his mind."

02:09:58.140 | And even though I was young, I knew everything he was saying

02:10:03.800 | was against people and I loved people.

02:10:09.600 | I had so many wonderful friends.

02:10:12.060 | My best friend, Mike, who's still my close friend

02:10:18.320 | to this day, I was afraid to bring him to my house

02:10:23.320 | because I was afraid that my father would find out

02:10:26.060 | he was Jewish or that my father would leave

02:10:30.640 | his office door open and someone would see his Nazi flag

02:10:34.080 | or his pictures of Hitler or Nazi books

02:10:36.900 | or what he might say.

02:10:39.360 | So, when I found theater in the eighth grade

02:10:44.360 | and debate club and choir and festivals and plays

02:10:56.160 | and everything I could do to participate in

02:11:02.200 | that wouldn't make me have to come back home,

02:11:06.360 | I did and I had to reconcile who he became

02:11:11.360 | because the gap between that man who was in the US Army

02:11:24.900 | as a medic and the man he became,

02:11:28.120 | I could never fill that gap.

02:11:33.260 | But, I've forgiven him.

02:11:37.800 | But then at the same time, I've had to look at my mother

02:11:43.960 | and say, "She made excuses for him.

02:11:47.700 | "Oh, he just needs to get it off his chest.

02:11:50.600 | "Oh, it doesn't matter, just let him say."

02:11:52.700 | So, while on the outside, I would say,

02:11:57.980 | "Oh yeah, my mother loved me, but she didn't protect me.

02:12:03.580 | "So, was all the stuff that she expressed

02:12:08.580 | "and all of the attention and all the love that I felt,

02:12:16.360 | "was that because I became successful

02:12:18.400 | "and I was able to fulfill an emptiness

02:12:22.200 | "that she'd lived with her whole life with him?"

02:12:25.200 | I don't know, but I've had to ask myself,

02:12:32.360 | those questions over these last years

02:12:35.240 | to try to reconcile that for myself.

02:12:39.380 | - And the thing you wanted from them and for them

02:12:43.700 | is less hate and more love.

02:12:46.400 | Did your dad say he loves you?

02:12:50.560 | - I don't have any memory of that.

02:12:52.580 | I was in a program and they were showing us

02:12:59.680 | an experiment that they'd done with psychologists

02:13:02.520 | and mothers and fathers and their children.

02:13:04.560 | And the children were anywhere between six months and a year

02:13:07.400 | sitting in a little crib.

02:13:08.780 | And the exercise was this,

02:13:11.680 | parents are playing with the baby right there,

02:13:13.800 | toys, yadda yadda, baby's laughing.

02:13:15.840 | And then the psychologists would say, "Stop."

02:13:18.780 | And the parent would go like this.

02:13:20.480 | And you would then watch for the next two and a half,

02:13:25.960 | three minutes, this child trying to get

02:13:29.720 | their parents' attention in any possible way.

02:13:34.720 | And I remember when I was sitting in this theater

02:13:37.480 | watching this, I saw myself.

02:13:42.480 | That was me screaming and reaching out

02:13:47.520 | and trying to get my parents' attention.

02:13:49.160 | That was me.

02:13:50.520 | And that was not something I'd ever remembered before.

02:13:56.280 | But I knew what that baby was going through.

02:13:59.620 | - Is there some elements of politics

02:14:05.280 | and maybe the private sector

02:14:06.720 | that are captured by the house of cards?

02:14:12.880 | Like how true to life do you think that is?

02:14:15.940 | From everything you've seen about politics,

02:14:18.680 | from everything you've seen about the politicians

02:14:23.700 | of this particular elections.

02:14:26.200 | - I heard so many different reactions

02:14:30.160 | from politicians about house of cards.

02:14:32.120 | Some would say, "Oh, it's not like that at all."

02:14:35.820 | And then others would say, "It's closer to the truth

02:14:38.440 | "than anyone wants to admit."

02:14:40.800 | And I think I fall down on the side of that idea.

02:14:44.720 | - I have to interview some world leaders,

02:14:51.760 | some big politicians.

02:14:55.020 | In your understanding of trying to become Frank Underwood,

02:15:02.220 | what advice would you give in interviewing Frank Underwood?

02:15:05.580 | (laughing)

02:15:08.260 | How do you get him to say anything that's at all honest?

02:15:12.580 | - Well, in Frank's case, all you have to do

02:15:14.140 | is tell him to look into the camera and he'll tell you.

02:15:16.680 | He'll tell you what you want to hear.

02:15:17.520 | - That's the secret.

02:15:18.760 | Unfortunately, we don't get that look

02:15:20.720 | into the mind of a person the way we do

02:15:23.780 | with Frank Underwood in real life, sadly.

02:15:26.700 | - Well, but you could say to somebody,

02:15:29.340 | "You like the series House of Cards.

02:15:31.700 | "I'd love for you to just look into the camera

02:15:33.600 | "and tell us what's really going on,

02:15:35.840 | "what you really feel about blah, blah, blah."

02:15:39.600 | - That's a good technique.

02:15:41.280 | I'll try that with Zelensky and with Putin.

02:15:46.580 | - What do you hope your legacy as an actor is

02:15:49.460 | and as a human being?

02:15:51.200 | - People ask me now,

02:15:53.680 | what's your favorite performance you've ever given?

02:15:57.380 | And my answer is, I haven't given it yet.

02:16:02.560 | So, there's a lot more that I wanna be challenged by,

02:16:09.340 | be inspired by.

02:16:14.340 | There's a lot that I don't know.

02:16:19.340 | There's a lot I have to learn.

02:16:23.860 | And that is a very exciting place to feel that I'm in.

02:16:31.860 | It's been interesting 'cause we're going back,

02:16:37.860 | we're talking, and it's nice to go back every now and then.

02:16:43.860 | But I'm focused on what's next.

02:16:48.260 | - Do you hope the world forgives you?

02:16:51.840 | - People go to church every week to be forgiven.

02:17:01.660 | And I believe that forgiveness and I believe that redemption

02:17:07.000 | are beautiful things.

02:17:08.540 | I mean, look, don't forget,

02:17:11.180 | I live in an industry in which there is

02:17:14.220 | a tremendous amount of conversation about redemption

02:17:18.380 | from a lot of people who are very serious people

02:17:21.180 | in very serious positions, who believe in it.

02:17:24.940 | I mean, that guy who finally got out of prison,

02:17:28.340 | he was wrongly accused.

02:17:30.980 | That guy who served his time and got out of prison.

02:17:33.540 | We see so many people saying,

02:17:36.940 | let's find a path for that person.

02:17:39.420 | Let's help that person rejoin society.

02:17:41.740 | But there is an odd situation

02:17:46.960 | if you're in the entertainment industry,

02:17:49.300 | you're not offered that kind of a path.

02:17:51.500 | And I hope that the fear that people are experiencing

02:17:57.980 | will eventually subside and common sense

02:18:02.060 | will get back to the table.

02:18:03.540 | - If it does, do you think you have

02:18:07.940 | another Oscar-worthy performance in you?

02:18:09.940 | - Listen, if it would piss off Jack Lemmon again

02:18:13.700 | for me to win a third time, I absolutely think so, yeah.

02:18:16.580 | - Well, you have to mention him again.

02:18:20.040 | You know, Ernest Hemingway once said

02:18:22.020 | that the world is a fine place and worth fighting for.

02:18:25.140 | And I agree with him on both counts.

02:18:28.120 | Kevin, thank you so much for talking today.

02:18:30.860 | - Thank you.

02:18:31.700 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation

02:18:34.380 | with Kevin Spacey.

02:18:35.660 | To support this podcast,

02:18:36.900 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

02:18:39.500 | And now let me leave you with some words from Meryl Streep.

02:18:43.660 | Acting is not about being someone different.

02:18:46.500 | It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different

02:18:51.380 | and then finding myself in there.

02:18:54.700 | Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

02:18:59.260 | (upbeat music)

02:19:01.840 | (upbeat music)

02:19:04.420 | you

02:19:06.480 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #432

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