Gene Fallaize, the director behindKevin Spacey’s latest film,Control, says casting the actor while he was awaiting trial for sexual abuse a “risk worth taking.” On Wednesday,Spacey was acquitted of sexual assault chargesin a London court after a four-week trial. Last October, Spacey faced a Manhattan court for sexual battery charges stemming from a 1986 incident; he was found not liable. As allegations against Spacey, which date back to 2017, began to trickle in, the Academy Award winner’s career began to suffer. Most notably, the actor was fired fromHouse of Cardsafter reports alleging inappropriate behavior towards several young men on set.
Spacey now has a couple of projects in the works, including Fallaize’sControl, an indie thriller also starring Lauren Metcalfe and Mark Hampton.Controlfollows British Home Secretary Stella Simmons as she drives home one night while engaging in an affair with the Prime Minister. A mysterious man remotely hijacks her self-driving car, forcing her on a rampage through London. Spacey does not physically appear in the thriller but voices the mysterious man. Spacey’s part was recorded last December, just weeks after several sexual misconduct charges were filed against him.
In a recent conversation, Fallaize toldVarietythat casting Spacey came to down to looking at pros and cons and weighing the options.
“Well, I mean it was a risk and we knew it was a risk at the time. We had no shortage of people saying to us, ‘Ooh that’s a risky move.’ But a good friend of mine, who used to be an exec at one of the studios, I had a frank discussion with him, and I said, ‘Look, what do you think? Is this going to be a bad career move, because people are saying to me that it could affect my career forever?’ And he said that he thought it was genius casting because if he gets found not guilty you will have got a clean Kevin Spacey in a way that you would never normally have been able to get him.”
Fallaize said that after making the decision to meet with Spacey, theControlteam felt “nothing but good vibes and positivity,” so they decided to move forward: “So we said, ‘Okay, let’s go for it.’ It’s a risk but feel it’s a risk worth taking.”
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Kevin Spacey Has An ‘Aggressively Positive Fan Base’
While Fallaize admitted that there were negative responses to Spacey’s casting, theControlteam was surprised by Spacey’s loyal fan base:
“He has got an extremely, aggressively positive fan base, which I didn’t know about before we cast him. I didn’t know that existed. There’s a huge fan base out there that reached out to us, that were congratulating us and thanking us for giving him an opportunity. I get many messages every day from these fans, completely random people I’ve never, ever met or had anything to do with before that have reached out via social media and things to ask for updates, [to say they’re] looking forward to seeing the film. It’s huge.”
Of course, despite the outcomes of Spacey’s trials, there is still the court of public opinion, which may prove a more complex process for the actor. Fallaize is adamant that the only people fully aware of the facts of the case were the jurors involved and does not regret casting Spacey:
“The only people that know everything are the ones that were in that courtroom and they decided he was not guilty. These people that are saying – if they’re saying – that we’re whitewashing him or enabling him to come back, what facts have they got to contradict the jury? I don’t regret casting Kevin and I would do it all over again.”
