Michael Kelly is the Good Kind of Fixer
This year has been a hell of a ride for the cast and crew of House of Cards. (And it doesn't seem like the rollercoaster is quite ready to let them off yet.) In October of 2017, actor Anthony Rapp came forward with allegations that Kevin Spacey, who played the scene-chewing political operator Frank Underwood on the show, made advances towards him when Rapp was only 14 and Spacey was 26. Soon after, more and more allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced. Netflix suspended production on the show and severed ties with Spacey; with its final season mapped out, and the second episode almost in the can, House of Cards' future was suddenly in limbo. Then, last December, it was announced that the show would go on, with Robin Wright's Claire Underwood at its main beltway disruptor. Wright, it turned out, was not only now at the center of the show, but also at the center of a shared crusade to finish the show-on terms of the actors, writers, and crew could be proud of. “We all felt, collectively, like, Let’s not drop this ball,” she told ELLE. “Let’s forge ahead and persevere. Complete the mission.”
Michael Kelly, who played hyper-loyal political fixer Doug Stamper, had been part of the narrative's nucleus alongside Wright and Spacey for all of the show's previous five seasons. "At the end of every season, when I'd read the last episode," says Kelly, "I'd think, Holy shit! I'm still alive?" Over those five seasons, Kelly had also become close with the show's Baltimore-based crew and has since hired them on his own projects, and he joined Wright in aggressively advocating for a solution other than yanking the production from the city.
Onscreen, Kelly, whose character had been so defined by his allegiance to Spacey's Frank, would have to step into his shadow as the male foil-or male agitator-to Wright's Claire. With a largely female ensemble dominating the season (played by the accomplished likes of Diane Lane, Patricia Clarkson, Constance Zimmer, and Jayne Atkinson), Doug became one of few men left standing, the sole remaining devotee to the ghost of Frank Underwood in the revenge tragedy that defined the show. In an apt cautionary tale for the real-life protectors and enablers in our present-day politics, Kelly played Doug as a man whose devotion to an ultimately false idol has eroded his psyche, leaving him conflicted, struggling mightily to cling to some meaning in everything he'd worked so stoically to protect.
Here, Kelly talks about bringing groundedness and nuance to his character, even in the mad dash of the show's final season; how the winds of D.C.'s latest "Year of the Woman" blew through House of Cards; and working with Rachel Brosnahan back when her character didn't even have a name.
When you first heard that the final season of House of Cards was being suspended, what was your reaction?
Robin was the first phone call I made when I heard about what happened. She's directed more episodes than almost anybody, other than [director] James Foley. But as far as her involvement this season? She drove the train. She was a true leader. Both of us had a very strong feeling about this crew, who had been out of work during a very long hiatus. She was instrumental in keeping everybody together. She said, “We're gonna finish this. We're gonna do it.”
What was the mood like on set once you got back to work?
I think everybody was just happy to be back. What happened [with Spacey] wasn't really ever discussed. We were on such a short, gotta-get-it-done, how-are-we-gonna-do-it timeline. They'd say "Cut" and me and Robin and the writers would be huddled over in a corner like, "So if this happens, then this happens, then this happens…" I was honored to be included in those conversations, but at the same time: Holy shit.
House of Cards always had some great female characters, but this season it really became a women-led ensemble. How much of that was the result of reading the political tea leaves?
We have consultants in D.C., we have attorneys, we have political people who advise us. We run a storyline by them, and they tell us whether it could happen. We never tear from the headlines, like Law and Order, but every year something we do on the show plays out in real life-except our writers had written it a year and a half prior. [Co-showrunner] Frank [Pugliese] once said that inevitably, the winds that blow in D.C. are the winds that blow through this show. I'm paraphrasing; he said it far more eloquently than that. But maybe the show was subconsciously influenced by the political rise of women, which we just saw play out in the midterms. To me, it was a great thing. We need more of women in politics.
Well, maybe not the particular women from the show-like Claire and Annette and Jane...
Ha! Robin-she's so for women! But Claire crushed how many women to get to where she was? She destroyed women, she used women. She was an equal-opportunity user.
What did you think about the audience reaction to the season? There were a surprising number of men online who either bemoaned the lack of Frank, protested the narrative ascension of Claire, or both.
A lot of people love it, and a lot of people hate it. I took a look shortly after the season came out. I just wanted to see what people were saying, so I put "#houseofcards" into Twitter. And it was so many men saying, "Fuck this season, I'm not watching this shit." And then so many women saying, "Fuck yeah! Women in power!" It was really interesting to see the absolute divide there. I'm not saying it was all exclusively like that, but either way, it was incredibly ballsy of the writers. They never did anything for the audience. They did it for the challenge.
With Frank gone, Doug steps into the role of Claire's main adversary in many ways. Your character went from serving a president to serving the ghost of one. How did that change this season for you?
This season scared the hell outta me because Doug was lost for the first time. Completely lost in the beginning of the season until he found his focus. Which was to have Frank pardoned, to protect Frank's legacy. And then to see what he actually goes through to protect that legacy-the extent to which he goes is insane. But I've wanted to give him a heart so that he was always dealing with inner conflict when doing the things that he had to do. A "villain" character with nothing underneath is kinda boring to watch. So, for example, killing Rachel [Rachel Brosnahan in season 3] was the hardest thing he had to do. In whatever weird way he had, he loved that woman.
And in the original script he did let her go. He stopped the van on the side of the highway, he thought about it, but then he drove on. That was in episode 13 of that season, and when were shooting episodes 8, 9, 10, Beau [Willimon, House of Cards creator] came up to me and said, "Hey, I need to talk to you, let's go outside." We went outside, he lit up a cigarette, and he said, "You gotta kill her." Because if Heather Dunbar [Elizabeth Marvel] had her own Stamper, he'd find her.
How did Rachel Brosnahan find out?
We were walking to the table read together, me and her and Beau. He said, "I know you haven't read the script yet, but I'm sorry to say we gotta kill you." And she was like, "I knew it was coming."
It's a shame her career never recovered.
Right? Poor kid. [laughs] But, look, the last thing that Beau or anyone else was worried about was the longevity of her career. I knew from the first time I shared the screen with her, this kid's got something special. And so did the writers. In the start, her character's name was just "prostitute." Then they saw her with Corey [Stoll], and then they saw her with me, and they just kept writing more stuff. Then I remember them giving her a name. We were sitting having lunch together and Beau walked up. He said, "I think we're gonna give you a name. What about Rachel?" And she was like, "Well, it's my name, so that'll work." And that was it.
I can honestly say, after sharing the screen with her, she was always the consummate professional. Always wanted to dig deeper. You crave that as an actor, someone who wants to get in there as deep as you do, who wants to work as hard as you do. It's not a wonder that she's doing as well as she's doing [on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel].
Robin Wright directed the final scene of the show, the standoff in the oval office between Doug and Claire. How many times did you have to shoot that grueling scene?
Ten, fifteen times? Because there are different angles-you gotta get it tight, you gotta get it wide, you gotta get a close-up of it. It was a full day-and Robin wanted two days! But it ended up over a holiday weekend and we couldn't pay for another day of filming. So she and I were both just on absolute fumes at the end of the day. Because it's such a highly charged, emotional scene, too, right? He was Frank's attack dog in so many ways, and now he's being put down by Claire.
You said that you and Robin were close with the crew. You recently produced your first movie, All Square, with the help of a lot of House of Cards crew members. How did that happen?
I remember I gave the script to Lorenzo [Millan], our sound guy, and he was like, "Dude, I fucking love this." Lorenzo, he's one of my buddies, and he's incredibly talented at what he does. And he said, "If you shoot it here, I'm in." And then he told a couple of other crew members, so then I got to have so many of the people from House of Cards come and make this movie with me. I got to take a crew member like Tiffany [Zappulla], who was our set designer, and make her the production designer on my film. House of Cards was a joy, and a big part of that was that the crew was the same almost entirely throughout. I love them-they made the last day as fun as our first.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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