Buzzfeed has a report up today based on several anonymous sources who worked on Netflix’s House of Cards. According to these sources, Kevin Spacey’s behavior toward young men was an open secret, with Spacey frequently making flirtatious comments toward male crew members in front of the entire cast and crew:
All three sources, as well as two other people who spent time on the set, described an atmosphere in which Spacey was sexually inappropriate with young men who worked on the show. “He would be on set and he would make tons of jokes at young boys’ expense about them in flirtatious ways,” said a higher-level source who worked on House of Cards early on. “If it was wanted attention, it would still be inappropriate, because you’re making flirtatious comments in front of a group of 150 people; ‘Come sit on my lap, you know you want to’ — not to a gay man, but to a young, pretty-looking guy. That happened all the time.”…
One source, who was in his mid-twenties when he worked on the show’s second season, said he was warned about Spacey by a friend. “He told me that if Kevin asks you to play video games in his trailer, you have to bring someone with you,” this source said. “I didn’t even need to ask any more.”
“He touches and feels anyone he wants to,” said the higher-level staffer.
The creator of the show issued a statement on Twitter last week, after the Anthony Rapp accusation was published, saying he was completely unaware of any inappropriate behavior by Spacey:
My statement regarding Anthony Rapp and Kevin Spacey: pic.twitter.com/8z6zotHWE5
— Beau Willimon (@BeauWillimon) October 30, 2017
Is it possible that the directors and producers working on the show had no idea what was really going on? One source told Buzzfeed that was, “Bulls**t. Utter bulls**t. 100%.” A crew member said, “I saw that Beau said he had no idea, which I know is completely false.” He added, “They had production meetings about Spacey’s flirtatious behavior toward crew and cast, and it never made it any further than that. It was like a joke.”
This really is Harvey Weinstein all over again. You have hundreds of people over several years who know about Spacey’s behavior, at least enough to wonder what else was going on. People from the very bottom rung of the crew up to the show’s creator knew something. And yet, no one wanted to kill the golden goose, so they just did their best to ignore it.
People keep saying that this sort of behavior happens in every field and I’m sure that’s true, but there aren’t many jobs where one person has as much unassailable power over success or failure as is the case in Hollywood. These people aren’t just key employees, they’re international stars. Everyone involved knows that their brand is far too big to be taken down by some crew member with complaints. At least that’s how it was until a few weeks ago. Things seem to be operating differently now, at least for the time being.
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