A Chat with House of Cards Showrunner
Beau Willimon has approached White House correspondents, Pulitzer Prize winners and little-known bloggers about the portrayal of journalists in his show“ House of Cards,” the Netflix series about the lurid underground of our nation’ s capitol starring Kevin Spacey.
The one-time press officer for a number of politicians is particularly sensitive to this subject, not least of which because one of the show’ s main characters, Zoe Barnes( Kate Mara), is a journalist who sleeps with her primary informant.
When Willimon stopped by TheWrap, we had to ask the guy in charge of one of the year’ s most buzzed-about series a few questions of our own.
One of the most controversial things about“ House of Cards” in Hollywood is that Netflix won’ t reveal how many people are watching. What do you make of that?
When you’ re not selling advertising, is the idea of a hit an antiquated notion? If you’ re a company like Netflix, the goal is to provide something for everyone.
They’ ll make a show knowing that it won’ t cause crazy ratings but feed underserved fans and make them loyal Netflix subscribers. Instead of trying to hit as many people with one thing, you try to hit everyone with lots of little things.
Do you get the numbers?
by LUCAS SHAW
‘ I don’ t give a sh * t whether anyone likes my characters’
I have a certain amount of knowledge about the numbers, but I held off as much as I could. I’ d be happy with Netflix saying,“ We’ re happy.” I don’ t really want to know much more than that.
Was there any sort of line that you couldn’ t cross in terms of what you could show-- language, violence?
No, I never had a documentation that said,“ You can’ t do these things.” If we had a guy raping a cow with a swastika tattooed on his forehead, then would someone maybe have said,“ We are a little bit concerned about this?” Potentially.
Look at“ Game of Thrones.” You have full-on pornography, like incest pornography. We have Kevin Spacey giving Kate Mara cunnilingus in a tasteful way for 30 seconds, and it’ s more about the psychology of that moment-- which makes it feel, probably, darker and more twisted than what we see in“ Game of Thrones,” which is just outright sex.
So what do you do that’ s darker?
Beau Willimon
I’ ll give you a good example. I wanted to kill a dog in the first 30 seconds of the show. I wanted a moviestar entrance for Kevin, where he literally walks through double doors in a tuxedo because he’ s a f---ng movie star and we’ re starting a show! But I also wanted an anti-movie-star entrance [ to ] establish that this guy is capable of killing in the first 30 seconds.
There were a couple of people on the production side
62 | WGSA MAG July 2013