[imagesource: Netflix]

During the course of the #MeToo movement, Kevin Spacey has faced numerous lawsuits filed against him for sexual assault and sexual harassment.

Although it was dismissed by prosecutors in 2019, Spacey had one criminal case brought against him, when he was charged for assault and battery for allegedly groping an 18-year-old man.

Actor Anthony Rapp also filed a lawsuit against Spacey, accusing him of sexual assaults in the 1980s when they were teenagers.

That seemed to spawn many more current and former members of the House of Cards production to come forward with allegations of sexual harassment, too.

Media Rights Capital, the production studio behind the Netflix drama which starred Spacey as central character Frank Underwood, took quite a knock after all these allegations, reports Sky News:

The studio – MRC – had to fire Spacey from the show in its sixth season, re-writing the script to remove his central character and cutting the season from 13 to eight episodes so it could still meet deadlines.

These changes caused a huge monetary loss for the studio, which sought to recover costs via a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court against Spacey.

Spacey has been ordered to pay almost $31 million (that’s around R492 million) to the studio for the “damage” he had caused.

CNN has more about the lawsuit:

Spacey and MRC have been battling in the years since the actor was dismissed from the production over allegations of misconduct on and off the set.

In its filing, MRC states that in October of 2020, an arbitrator found Spacey “repeatedly breached his contractual obligations” while starring as Frank Underwood on the Emmy-winning show and that his behaviour “rendered him (and his affiliated entities) liable” for the millions of dollars lost by MRC.

MRC claimed that they had no idea about Spacey’s behaviour towards the cast and crew over the five seasons until he was fired in 2017.

They immediately set to “address any concerns of the show’s cast and crew” when Rapp came out with his allegations, though:

Following the arbitrator’s decision, MRC released a statement on the ruling, “The safety of our employees, sets and work environments is of paramount importance to MRC and why we set out to push for accountability.”

Spacey denies all allegations and chalked up the claims set out by Rapp as “deeply inappropriate drunken behaviour”.

[sources:cnn&skynews]