American actor Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay $ 31 million to the company that produced the series House of Cards, in which he played the main character until he was fired on charges of sexual harassment, according to legal documents released Monday, November 22.
MRC, the production company behind the hit series on political intrigue in Washington, sought damages for lost earnings attributed to the actor’s exit from the series after charges against him of sexual harassment and abuse.
In the published legal document, MRC explains that after these harassment accusations, the company suspended the actor and launched an internal investigation which revealed that the star of the film American Beauty had indeed been guilty of such acts.
This wave of accusations had put an abrupt end to the career of the actor, aged 62, in the middle of the campaign of the movement #Metoo denouncing sexual abuse in Hollywood after the revelations concerning the producer Harvey Weinstein.
The actor, who won two Oscars, played the role of an unscrupulous politician in all five seasons of the series House of Cards before accusations of sexual harassment appeared in the press.
The actor’s departure forced the producers to revamp the series which resulted in “substantial losses“, argued MRC, who also indicates that he never had knowledge of wrongdoing on the part of Kevin Spacey before these accusations of harassment were revealed. The script had to be reworked to exclude the character played by Kevin Spacey and revamp the entire sixth season, reduced from thirteen to eight episodes.
MRC had started this procedure in 2019. The same year, the lawsuits against the American actor, indicted for indecent assault and sexual assault in the US state of Massachusetts, were dropped.