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Horwitch was preparing to leave for the Baltimore set for production on the third episode, which he had written, when Gibson called him and said, “Don’t get on the plane.” He knew what that meant.
#HOUSE OF CARDS SEASON 4 CAST SERIES#
“On a meta level, it just didn’t seem right to let things happening outside the show end the series that way,” Pugliese said.Ĭo-executive producer Jason Horwitch had traveled to Los Angeles for his wife’s birthday the weekend that Rapp’s accusations were published. Gibson thought it would be especially “perverse” for the story of a woman in power to be denied because of the actions of a man. The fifth season had ended with Claire’s total rejection of Frank and her declaration to viewers: “My turn.” For months, the story the writers were building around Claire was that of a female president confronting misogyny head-on and enduring hit after hit from the patriarchy, including death threats. To close out the story in full, the way we had always intended.” “It was very important to all of us to keep the show going,” she said. Wright, who is also an executive producer on the show, agreed. “It felt so unfair to the story, in a way, we had to defend the world of the show,” Gibson said. It was a “gut punch,” Pugliese said, but the prospect of tossing out five months of work and having to rebuild the season without the show’s corrupt central figure actually emboldened him and his partner. Supervising producer-writer Jerome Hairston described working in a “fugue state.” Story editor Tian Jun Gu, who started out on the show as a writer’s assistant in the third season, remembers how rattled the group was by the uncertainty, and how angered they felt by the notion that one man’s actions could topple the show and erase their hard work. By November 3, the streaming giant cut all ties with Spacey, and the future of Netflix’s signature drama was in limbo. Netflix halted production on the series immediately. In less than a week’s time, more than a dozen men had accused Spacey, the two-time Oscar winner, of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and attempted rape. “Writers’ rooms are usually very insular it’s an intimate, familial place in the best circumstances. “It was very surreal because, at the time, it was the very beginning of the #MeToo movement which was influencing our story and what it was like to be president and female,” story editor Sharon Hoffman said.
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The stunned writers, accustomed to working in isolation, were aware of every painful development in the news. Three weeks later, BuzzFeed broke the news that Star Trek Discovery actor Anthony Rapp had accused Spacey of making unwanted sexual advances toward him in 1986, when Rapp was 14. As news alerts buzzed on their phones daily, the writers wondered what other high-profile figure would tumble next. The writers were still debating one crucial detail - which Underwood would be left standing at the end of the season? - when rape and sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein broke in the New York Times and The New Yorker in October.
#HOUSE OF CARDS SEASON 4 CAST FREE#
A powerful woman was the leader of the free world, and though it was fictional, there was a heightened energy on set because of it. About 200 miles away in Baltimore, the first two episodes of the final season had been filmed. While they hadn’t figured out how exactly the epic power battle between Claire (Robin Wright) and Frank (Kevin Spacey) would conclude, they were close. They had finished writing 9 episodes and outlined 11 out of the 13 overall. Co-showrunners Melissa James Gibson, Frank Pugliese, and the show’s five writers had been convening at their New York office since June 2017. The House of Cards writers were in the middle of crafting the final chapters of the show’s operatic showdown between President Claire Underwood and her estranged husband, former President Frank Underwood, when their real world collapsed.
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Photo-Illustration: Maya Robinson/Vulture and Netflix