The Inquisition: Hollywood maverick Kevin Spacey dishes the dirt to Edmund Lee
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[ ] First of all, I'm very pleased to hear that has become so popular in China and Hong Kong. In just the last few days that I've been here, so many people have been surprised to see me — and when they find themselves in the elevator with me, they go, "My goodness, Francis!" In many ways, they're telling you that they kind of dig what you're doing. It's very satisfying.
Do you have a thing with coffee?
You know, I don't really connect all those dots. Look, it's a little bit like this: sometimes people try to find connections that really don't exist. Someone can say to me, "Well you drink coffee in that movie, and then you drink coffee in that other movie, and then you drink … Do you have a thing with coffee?" I'm exaggerating, but sometimes there's an attempt to make sense out of the chaos of decisions in an acting career. And the truth is, I've just taken parts that have come along, I was available to do, I got offered, and were of interest to me. Other people can find that, "Oh, there must have been some grand plan." I don't really think of it that way.
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Well, I suppose I just like being a little disruptive. While others may not have thought of it, I try to look down the road and say: What's going to happen in 10 years? Seven or eight years ago, I knew that the film industry was going to have a shift and that things were going to move towards Silicon Valley and Asia. The reason I did the film in Guangzhou, (2011), is because I saw this coming. And it made complete sense to me that one of these companies making all this money — Google, Yahoo, Hulu, Netflix — was going to stand up and say: "We want to get in the original-content business." I couldn't have imagined that I would have a series on Netflix, but it didn't surprise me that they stood up and said, "We're going to do it."
Oh, thank you. I had a great time. And I'm very excited about this documentary [ ] that's coming out and about that whole experience.
[ ] Yeah, it was a long tour. We were out on the road for six months and the whole experience was a 10-month experience from the time we started at the Old Vic. It was a real help and, in a big way, a precursor to playing Francis Underwood [in ] because he is based on Richard III. So the fact that I got a chance to do that play [was a great help] — particularly for the 'direct address' stuff, because I was looking right into the audiences' eyes in . And now I'm just looking down the barrel of a lens, so my memory of that experience around the world has been very, very helpful for me in doing .
[ ] Listen, it just seemed to me like a perfect moment to do a photo bomb. It was one of those photos that when I saw it happening I thought, "I have to get in this picture!" So I was very glad I did it.
