‘Kill them with kindness’: Kevin Spacey brings back Frank Underwood in puzzling Christmas message

Disgraced actor Kevin Spacey has emerged from reclusion to post a cryptic Christmas video message, in which he channels the subtle malice of ‘House of Cards’ politician Frank Underwood.

The video, entitled ‘KTWK’ and posted to Spacey’s YouTube channel on Christmas Eve, resembles a similar clip published almost exactly one year ago. In the latest one, Spacey appears as a genial old man, stoking a roaring fire as Christmas stockings hang from the mantelpiece.

“You didn’t really think I was going to miss the opportunity to wish you a merry Christmas, did you?” Spacey asks, turning to the camera with Underwood’s sinister half-smile.

With 2020 just around the corner, he continued, “I want to cast my vote for more good in this world… I’m dead serious, and it’s not that hard, trust me.”

The next time someone does something you don’t like, you can go on the attack. But you can also hold your fire and do the unexpected. You can... kill them with kindness.

The video ends with a dramatic pan to the fireplace, as the film-noir suspense music builds to a climax. Naturally, viewers were left confused.

Unlike last year’s offering, which indirectly referenced the sexual assault allegations against him, Spacey’s most recent video addresses none of the issues surrounding the actor’s personal life.

These issues have made Spacey, once renowned for his roles in ‘American Beauty’, ‘The Usual Suspects’, and Netflix’s ‘House of Cards’, a Hollywood pariah. The actor kept his head down in 2019 even as the legal cases against him wrapped up in his favor. Los Angeles prosecutors dropped a sexual assault case against Spacey in October, when his accuser – a professional masseur – died.

Prosecutors in a separate Massachusetts indecent assault and battery case dropped their charges against Spacey in July, citing “unavailability of the complaining witness.” 

Police in London, however, are still investigating allegations of sexual misconduct against the actor, and more than two dozen men have accused the actor of groping, harassment, unwanted sexual advances, and sexual assault.

Spacey’s fall from grace was one of the most dramatic of the #MeToo era, during which a number of powerful men in the entertainment industry were slammed with accusations of impropriety. While the movement brought about the downfall and prosecution of alleged abusers like film mogul Harvey Weinstein, it has also been criticized for imposing puritanical standards on how men should behave.

In one instance of public backlash against the movement, 100 prominent French women criticized #MeToo for forcing men “out of their jobs when all they did was touch someone’s knee or try to steal a kiss.”

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