‘House of Cards’ employees allege sexual harassment, assault by Kevin Spacey
November 3, 2017 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
Comments Off
Kevin Spacey made the set of Netflix’s “House of Cards” into a “toxic” work environment through a pattern of sexual harassment, eight people who currently work on the show or worked on it in the past tell CNN. One former employee told CNN that Spacey sexually assaulted him.
The former production assistant, whose account has never previously been disclosed, told CNN that Spacey sexually assaulted him during one of the show’s early seasons. All eight people, each of whom spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional repercussions for speaking out, described Spacey’s behavior as “predatory,” saying it included nonconsensual touching and crude comments and targeted production staffers who were typically young and male.
The new accusations follow an explosive article published less than a week ago by BuzzFeed News, in which actor Anthony Rapp said Spacey made sexual advances toward him in 1985, when Rapp was 14 years old.
On Monday, Spacey released an apology in response to Rapp’s account. “I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago,” Spacey said. “But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years.”
Spacey’s publicist said in a statement on Wednesday that the actor is seeking unspecified treatment following Rapp’s allegations.
Production of Season 6 of the series was shut down this week. Netflix and the production company Media Rights Capital issued a joint statement Tuesday to say that they are reviewing the “situation and to address any concerns of our cast and crew.” Spacey is also one of the show’s executive producers.
The former production assistant who spoke with CNN said Spacey sexually assaulted him one afternoon when the assistant was assigned to drive to an offsite location to pick up Spacey and bring him to the “House of Cards” set, which is located about 30 miles outside of Baltimore.
The production assistant says that when he and Spacey were just minutes away from the set and while the car was moving, Spacey, who was driving, put his hands down the production assistant’s pants. The production assistant told CNN that the touching was nonconsensual.
“I was in a state of shock,” he said. “He was a man in a very powerful position on the show and I was someone very low on the totem pole and on the food chain there.”
The production assistant asked that what happened next in the car not be described, for fear that it would identify him.
Once they had arrived on set, the production assistant says he helped the actor take his belongings from the car to Spacey’s trailer on set. While the two men were in the trailer, the production assistant says, Spacey cornered him, blocked his exit and made inappropriate contact with him.
“I told him, ‘I don’t think I’m ok with this, I don’t think I’m comfortable with this,’” the production assistant said. That’s when the actor became “visibly flustered,” fled the trailer, got in his car and left for the remainder of the day, according to the production assistant.
The production assistant did not report the incident to any managers of the series or the police, but he did tell a coworker at the time. CNN has spoken to the coworker to corroborate the production assistant’s story.
The alleged sexual assault came months after the production assistant had, he told CNN, complained to a supervisor that Spacey was sexually harassing him. The supervisor’s solution was to never let the production assistant be alone with Spacey while they were on set, the production assistant says.
The assistant said the harassment then stopped for long enough for him to feel comfortable driving with Spacey to the set.
“I have no doubt that this type of predatory behavior was routine for him and that my experience was one of many and that Kevin had few if any qualms about exploiting his status and position,” he said. “It was a toxic environment for young men who had to interact with him at all in the crew, cast, background actors.”
The other people who worked on “House of Cards” with whom CNN spoke all supported the idea that the set could be toxic for young men because of Spacey.
A crew member who worked on the show for all six seasons said that Spacey routinely harassed and touched him.
“He would put his hands on me in weird ways,” the crew member said. “He would come in and massage my shoulders from behind or put his hands around me or touch my stomach sometimes in weird ways that in normal everyday conversation would not be appropriate.”
This crew member said he did not “feel comfortable” telling Spacey to stop. “That’s the worst part about this whole thing. I would love to be able to speak out about this kind of stuff and not fear.”
CNN spoke to a close friend of the crew member, who says that the crew member had told him about Spacey’s behavior over the course of the six seasons of the show that it happened.
When asked on Thursday about the new allegations, Netflix said in a statement to CNN that they sent a representative to the “House of Cards” set on Monday. Spacey did not respond to CNN’s request for comment about the new allegations.
“Netflix was just made aware of one incident, five years ago, that we were informed was resolved swiftly,” the statement said. “On Tuesday, in collaboration with MRC, we suspended production, knowing that Kevin Spacey wasn’t scheduled to work until Wednesday. Netflix is not aware of any other incidents involving Kevin Spacey on-set. We continue to collaborate with MRC and other production partners to maintain a safe and respectful working environment. We will continue to work with MRC during this hiatus time to evaluate our path forward as it relates to the production, and have nothing further to share at this time.”
MRC, the production company behind “House of Cards,” told CNN in a separate statement on Thursday that they have implemented “an anonymous complaint hotline, crisis counselors, and sexual harassment legal advisors for the crew.”
“We are deeply troubled to learn about these new allegations that are being made to the press concerning Kevin Spacey’s interaction with members of the crew of House of Cards,” the MRC statement said. “As the producer of the show, creating and maintaining a safe working environment for our cast and crew has always been our top priority. We have consistently reinforced the importance of employees reporting any incident without fear of retaliation and we have investigated and taken appropriate actions following any complaints. For example, during our first year of production in 2012, someone on the crew shared a complaint about a specific remark and gesture made by Kevin Spacey. Immediate action was taken following our review of the situation and we are confident the issue was resolved promptly to the satisfaction of all involved. Mr. Spacey willingly participated in a training process and since that time MRC has not been made aware of any other complaints involving Mr. Spacey.”
MRC did not elaborate about the complaint it cited in the statement. They added that they will continue to investigate all claims brought to their attention.
Other people with whom CNN spoke describe behavior similar to that recounted by the crew member.
A former camera assistant, who said he witnessed Spacey’s behavior but was never harassed by Spacey, said the touching largely occurred in an open space and that “everybody saw.”
“All the crew members commented on his behavior,” the former camera assistant said. “What gets me is we have to sign sexual harassment paperwork before the start of the show and apparently [Kevin Spacey] doesn’t have to do anything and he gets away scott-free with this behavior.” CNN confirmed that Spacey was given guidelines regarding sexual harassment in the workplace.
Colleagues never complained because they were afraid of losing their jobs, the former camera assistant said.
“Who is going to believe crew members?” he said. “You’re going to get fired.”
A former female production assistant who worked on several seasons of “House of Cards” said she witnessed Spacey’s sexual misconduct with crew members on set.
“It was very known that Kevin was inappropriate, and males I worked with complained to me about how they felt uncomfortable,” she said. “Kevin does this thing which was play fights with them in order to touch them.” She said she saw Spacey approach “multiple people” to “say hello, greet them, shake their hand and pull their hand down to his crotch and touch their crotch. I have friends say he reached up their shorts on set.”
Spacey also made sexually-charged comments on set, according to a former crew member.
“There was one instance [when] a grip bent over to pick something up and his ass crack was showing, and Kevin Spacey made a sexual comment about it,” he recalled, adding that the comment Spacey made was “nice ass.”
The allegations about Spacey also come as the entertainment world is reckoning with fallout from the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal. Dozens of women have accused him of sexual harassment and police are investigating assault claims. Weinstein has apologized for his behavior, but he denies all allegations of nonconsensual sex.
Share and Enjoy
Answering the big questions around Deshaun Watson’s injury
November 3, 2017 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
Comments Off
If you’re an NFL fan with a pulse, your heart sank a bit on Thursday as you read about Deshaun Watson going down for the year with a torn ACL. Every injury is bad, of course, but Watson may very well have been the most pleasant surprise of an often-dour 2017 season. As an exciting young player playing in a city that has been through a roller coaster through tragedy to the joy of Wednesday night’s World Series victory, there might be no player in the league neutral fans would have wanted to see stay healthy more than Clemson’s national champion quarterback.
Watson’s injury raises all kinds of questions. Let’s try and answer a few of them here.
Is there a rash of injuries going around the NFL this season?
It’s difficult to say. The attrition rate in the NFL is remarkably and frustratingly high on a year-to-year basis, of course, but it’s fair to wonder if this season seems particularly bad. As I mentioned when I was recording my podcast with Mina Kimes, all you need to do to imagine an injury crisis in the NFL is to watch one or two commercial breaks during an NFL game. You’re bound to see ads with Odell Beckham Jr., Aaron Rodgers, and J.J. Watt, two of whom are done for the year with the other out indefinitely (Rodgers).
In terms of quarterbacks, let’s try to contextualize the problem. As of Week 9, there are six starting signal-callers on the shelf: Watson, Rodgers, Sam Bradford, Andrew Luck, Carson Palmer, and Ryan Tannehill. Jay Cutler, filling in for Tannehill, would qualify as the seventh if he’s unable to play Sunday.
That’s a high number, but not remarkably so. Last season in Week 9, for example, four starting quarterbacks were out injured: Cutler, Robert Griffin, Tony Romo, and Alex Smith, the latter of whom would return the following week. At this time 10 years ago, in a 2007 season held up as the peak of football, six would-be starters were out of the lineup. A 1988 Washington Post article complaining about the lack of available quarterbacks noted how 18 passers had gone down with injuries by the end of Week 6, although some of them were not starters.
Strictly as a passer, Watson was fifth in passer rating and seventh in the league in ANY/A, but even that sells him short. He had drawn eight pass interference calls for a league-leading 173 yards of hidden offense. Watson had thrown eight interceptions, but most of them had come in irrelevant or hopeless situations, as five of them changed Houston’s win expectancy by 2.4 percent or less.
Watson threw 204 passes before suffering his knee injury in practice on Thursday. We have to adjust quarterback stats for the era in which they came, which Pro Football Reference does with its index statistics, as 100 represents era-adjusted league-average.
Ninety-eight quarterbacks have thrown 200 passes or more during their debut campaigns since the merger. Of those 98 passers, Watson posted the best touchdown percentage index (152), the fourth-best yards per attempt index (124), and the ninth-best adjusted yards per attempt index (113). The closest rookie quarterback Watson resembles is Mark Rypien, who was actually making his debut in 1988 after two seasons on injured reserve. Rypien started six games during his rookie campaign, and their era-adjusted stats are remarkably similar:
Rypien was already 27 by the time he took over as a full-time starter and only really spent five years as a full-time No. 1 quarterback, but he made it to two Pro Bowls and won Super Bowl MVP for his exploits in leading Washington to the Super Bowl in 1991 during those five years in D.C. Watson has shown similar ability in terms of creating big plays downfield, although he’s far more effective as a runner.
Watson’s touchdown percentage would have regressed to the mean over a larger sample, but given how both he and the Texans offense were improving week after week, it seems likely the rest of his game would have kept up. It’s impossible to make a perfect comparison because of the smaller sample, but Watson’s campaign is certainly in line with that of great recent rookies like Prescott, Matt Ryan, and Russell Wilson as among the best in football.
Does this impact his long-term future?
It’s too early to say, but quarterbacks have been able to return from ACL tears without any notable dropoff in performance. This is the second time Watson has torn his ACL after doing so in college, but that was an injury to his left knee, while this injury is to his right knee. The promising news is that we haven’t heard anything about damage beyond the ACL, which should decrease the complexity of Watson’s rehab.
Barring any further news on the injury, it seems likely Watson will be ready to return in time for Week 1 next season. While fans might think about Robert Griffin as a worrisome comp for Watson, given that Griffin looked brilliant as a rookie before going down with a knee injury and failing to live up to his previous heights, there are more positive comparables for mobile quarterbacks of the past, too. Randall Cunningham tore his ACL in 1991 and remained effective as both a passer and runner upon returning. Rich Gannon required an ACL repair after going down with a knee injury as a backup in 1988, and the future Raiders standout remained an effective scrambler, though he didn’t see serious game time until 1990.
Should the Texans keep Watson from running as frequently when he returns?
I think Watson would be able to succeed without the threat of the read-option by virtue of his ability as a pure passer, but I also don’t see any reason to dramatically change the offense in an attempt to keep Watson healthy. Watson’s ACL tears have both come in practice; this most recent injury saw him go down without being touched. If he was getting injured as a scrambler in games, it might be a different story, but the Texans shouldn’t need to put any restraints on Watson when he returns.
How much of a dropoff is there from Watson to Tom Savage?
Obviously, there’s an enormous difference between Watson and the quarterback he took over for after a dismal Week 1. Savage has yet to show any sign that he’s likely to become a competent NFL quarterback. The former Pittsburgh and Rutgers passer failed to show pro-level accuracy as an amateur, and his 105 pro passes have produced a passer rating of 73.9, nearly 30 points worse than Watson’s 103.0 mark. Furthermore, it’s telling that the Texans drafted Savage in 2014 and yet repeatedly looked outside the organization to add Brock Osweiler and then Watson in lieu of giving Savage the starting job.
The immediate impact in Vegas was significant. The line for Houston’s Sunday game against the Colts at the Westgate Las Vegas sportsbook moved by 5.5 points, with the Texans 12.5-point favorites before the Watson injury and seven-point favorites after. Houston was 40-1 to win their first championship before the Watson injury, but they were dropped to 100-1 once news broke.
Should the Texans sign another quarterback?
They already have, at least as an emergency measure. Savage was the only other quarterback besides Watson on the active roster, as Brandon Weeden was cut after training camp and caught on with the Titans. Bill O’Brien went back to his Penn State days and signed former Raider Matt McGloin, who played under O’Brien in State College during the 2012 season. McGloin posted a 75.3 passer rating over four years as a Raiders backup, throwing 11 picks on what amounts to about a half-season’s worth of pass attempts.
The name that will inevitably pop up in connection with this vacancy, of course, is Colin Kaepernick. If we lived in a world in which NFL owners were acting rationally, the Texans would have already signed Kaepernick to fill in. McGloin and Savage haven’t been effective in any NFL system and don’t have anything resembling the athleticism required to succeed in the offense O’Brien has installed with Watson, which has employed read-option concepts from Watson’s playbook at Clemson.
Those ideas require the quarterback to be a threat to run and the ability to throw downfield, both of which Kaepernick can do. Much has been made of Kaepernick’s supposed inability to throw in the pocket, but his career passer rating in the pocket is 90.3, comfortably better than that of Savage (79.8) or McGloin (78.3). Watson also spent plenty of time bootlegging and scrambling out of the pocket. The rookie threw 45 passes outside of the pocket before going down, second-most in the league behind Russell Wilson.
Two obstacles stand in the way of Kaepernick, who O’Brien called “a good football player” in March. One is Kaepernick’s ongoing collusion lawsuit against the league. The other is the presence of owner Bob McNair, who inspired a near-mutiny within the Texans locker room by referring to the league’s players as “inmates” during a meeting with players in New York City.
It’s perhaps telling that Texans players essentially appointed left tackle Duane Brown as their representative in light of McNair’s comments, only for Houston to subsequently deal Brown to the Seahawks at the trade deadline in lieu of giving their longtime left tackle a contract extension. Could McNair bring himself to sign Kaepernick? Would McNair attempt to sign Kaepernick in an attempt to repair his name? Would Kaepernick even be willing to play for an owner who made such an insensitive remark? We’ll see in the weeks to come, but there’s no football-related reason to play Savage, McGloin, or any other publicly-available quarterback over Kaepernick.
Can the Texans still win the AFC South?
Even with Watson, Houston’s chances of claiming a third straight division title weren’t great. The Texans were 3-4 and a game back of both the Jaguars and Titans in the AFC South, with the Jaguars holding the head-to-head tiebreaker over Houston after that blowout in Week 1. According to the Football Power Index, the Texans had just a 29.7 percent chance of making the playoffs and a 12.4 percent of winning their division.
Those divisional titles have come with Brian Hoyer (who probably wouldn’t have returned to Houston even if the Watson injury had come before he signed with the Patriots) and Osweiler as primary quarterbacks, so it’s hardly as if the Texans have needed great quarterback play to succeed. The difference between those teams and this one, of course, is injuries on defense. The Texans are already without Watt and Whitney Mercilus, who are done for the year. Brian Cushing is suspended until Week 14, and replacement Dylan Cole is already out Sunday.
Houston’s defense has still impressed for stretches this season — it ranks eighth in DVOA — but it has only played what amounts to nearly three games without Watt and Mercilus. With the two star edge rushers going down early against the Chiefs, the Houston defense allowed Alex Smith and the Kansas City offense to score 35 points. The Texans then held the lowly Browns to 14 points, but the Seahawks exploded for 34 more points on offense in their classic win over Houston last Sunday.
O’Brien will likely slow down the pace with Savage in the lineup, hoping to win by running the ball and playing sound defense with the guys he has left. Anything’s possible, but the Texans have lost two of their best players over the last week with Brown and Watson no longer in the lineup, which will dramatically impact their running game. Unless their defense takes a big leap forward from what we’ve seen against non-Browns competition, it’s hard to find a path in which the Texans compete for the division title.
Who does the Watson injury help?
Obviously, while nobody wants to see a star quarterback get injured, Watson’s absence could turn the AFC South into a battle between the Jaguars and Titans. The other team in line to benefit from a Watson injury is the Browns, which acquired Houston’s 2018 first-round pick in the trade that netted the Browns Watson in the first place. Cleveland also holds Houston’s second-round pick as part of the Osweiler salary dump. Those picks looked likely to come toward the second half of the first round, but with Savage replacing Watson, the Browns could luck their way into another top-10 pick.