House Of Cards has returned for its third season. The political drama series starring Kevin Spacey as the 46th President of the United States has thrilled fans with its intense writing and backroom intrigue. After two successful seasons, the series now faces the challenge of keeping the momentum going.
After binge-watching the entire third season in three days, Life talked to Beau Willimon, showrunner and executive producer of the award-winning series. The series started this week on RTL CBS Entertainment (Channel 337, 146). It is on every Wednesday at 8.55pm.
The show was written to be released all at once. Does that influence how you let the drama unfold in each episode?
When we were developing Season 1, we didn't know whether we were going to release it all in one day or more traditionally week to week. Even when we knew episodes would be released in one day, we were not proposing that viewers watch it all. We gave people the choice. The story has to work either way. It's not written to be binged on but it can be watched that way.
Generally, we give the audience the benefit of the doubt. We assume that audiences are smart and have good memories so we don't repeat information over and over. I think shows that are released week to week sometimes deal with the necessity of repeating things or creating cliffhangers. We don't do that as much, just because we don't want to do that. We want to tell the story that we want to tell and assume that the audience will remain invested in it.
With the first two seasons so immensely successful, how challenging was it to continue the story in Season 3?
Every season is challenging. We're always trying to do new things that we haven't attempted before. In Season 3, we have a different dynamic. The previous seasons were about ascending to the White House and now the question becomes what do they do once they are there and more importantly, what does the White House do to their marriage. Their marriage has always been the core of the story for us, much more so than the politics even. In Season 3, the problem we had was how to shift from the political intrigue to the emotional journey of the characters in a way that would reveal new things to us about their marriage and themselves. That's what we did and that resulted in a different tone and style.
So the character Tom, commissioned by Frank to write his story, encapsulates the theme of the season, whether it's personal or political...
Absolutely. In a way, he arrives at what the core of the show is all about. The most compelling thing about them is their marriage. It's not the book that Frank Underwood wants. He wants the book to get him elected but Thomas Yates wants a book that's going to be the most compelling. And this mirrors, in some ways, our journey in the writers' room.
What about the occasional homoeroticism in Frank's character found in each season? What are you trying to communicate with that?
If you are trying to see it through Frank Underwood's eyes, he's not really interested in labels. Plenty of people have asked me, is he gay? Is he bisexual? I would say that Frank wouldn't adhere to any label. He told us in the first season that if someone is attractive to him, he acts upon that, whether it's a man or woman. I think the most important thing to know about Frank Underwood is that it's very difficult for him to have intimacy because there are very few people he can trust. When he does achieve intimacy, it's with someone that, at least momentarily, he can trust. And he doesn't relegate that to one gender or the other. We're not trying to say anything in particular about sexual preference or try to make a big point about it. But he is a man who defies labels and acts from his attractions, whatever they might be.
This season deals with the most immediate and perennial international issues that the US government is dealing with in real life. How did you come to choose to write about them?
Well, this is interesting. We started writing Season 3 over a year ago and at that time, Russia wasn't much in the news other than for the Sochi Olympics. In fact, our concern at that time was that people wouldn't be that interested in Russia because it wasn't very newsworthy. Then the situation with Ukraine and the Crimea happened. That's not something we could have anticipated and it's a coincidence that mirrors our fictional world. As for Palestine and Israel, those are perennial issues that the American government has engaged with for decades. Many presidents before Frank Underwood sought peace in the Middle East and he's trying to succeed where others have failed.
How far and how deep do you have to go with the issues, because the show is ultimately about a relationship, rather than politics?
It's a constant battle between how much politics we want to see and how much of their emotional journey is featured. Ideally, we would do both at the same time. But in Season 2, you saw a lot of political manoeuvring, sometimes at the expense of giving the emotional journey the same depth that we have been able to give it in this season. Some viewers may miss the political manoeuvring. They may want to see the Frank and Claire that are invincible but I think that if we simply did that, we would be repeating ourselves and doing a disservice to the story. It's our job to challenge ourselves and our audience and take the story to places it's never been before.
