Kevin Spacey has been ordered to pay $31 million to the studio behind House of Cards following his firing from the hit TV show.
The 62-year-old actor played politician Frank Underwood in House of Cards for five seasons, but was written out of the sixth and final season after sexual misconduct allegations halted production, and the actor was ultimately fired.
Arbitrators have now ruled in favour of MRC, the production company behind the Netflix production, finding that Spacey violated the terms of his contract – ruling that the actor will have to pay $31 million for this breach of contract.
According to Deadline, arbitrator Bruce Friedman ruled in favour of MRC over a year ago, but the details of his rulings remained confidential until Spacey was denied his motion for appeal.
The ruling states: “The Arbitrator found that Spacey’s conduct constituted a material breach of his acting and executive producing agreements with MRC, and that his breaches excused MRC’s obligations to pay him any further compensation in connection with the Show.
“The Arbitrator further found that Spacey’s egregious breaches of contract proximately caused and rendered him (and his affiliated entities) liable for the tens of millions of dollars in losses MRC suffered when it had no choice, upon the revelations of Spacey’s pattern of harassment, to halt the production of Season 6 of the Show, to rewrite the entire season to omit Spacey’s character, and to shorten season 6 from 13 episodes to 8 to meet delivery deadlines.”
Kevin Spacey’s acting career effectively ended after fellow actor Anthony Rapp accused the actor of making sexual advances towards him when Rapp was just 14 years old. Spacey quickly apologised, and in a statement via Twitter, said he was “beyond horrified to hear his story.”
“I want to deal with this honestly and openly, and that starts with examining my own behavior,” said Spacey. Following these accusations, fifteen others came forward alleging similar misconduct.
In a statement, MRC said: “The safety of our employees, sets and work environments is of paramount importance to MRC and why we set out to push for accountability.”
According to MRC, the arbitration included eight full days of live testimony and twenty hours of videotaped testimony from those involved. “With one exception, the Arbitrator found the third-party witnesses to be credible, and found the allegations against Spacey to be true,” said MRC’s filing.
However, Spacey filed a counterclaim, stating that he was owed money from MRC after he was fired from House of Cards, and he did not breach his contract. His claim was rejected.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.