Netflix cuts ties with Spacey as sexual assault allegations snowball

Actor Kevin Spacey
(Image credit: Nicholas Kamm/Getty Images)

Netflix has cut ties with House of Cards star Kevin Spacey as sexual assault allegations against him snowball. Show insiders told Variety they are considering killing off Spacey's lead character, Frank Underwood, halfway through the final season so production can resume without him, focusing the end of the story on Robin Wright's Claire Underwood. However, producers have yet to determine definitively if Spacey's contract will permit the show to film without including him in every episode.

Allegations against Spacey began Sunday evening, when an interview published in which actor Anthony Rapp accused him of sexual assault in 1986. Since then, multiple other men have reported similar experiences, and eight House of Cards staffers said Spacey exhibited sexually "predatory" behavior on set.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.