‘House of Cards’ actor Michael Kelly: When it does mirror real life it’s always a coincidence
Actor Michael Kelly appeared on the FOX Business Network Monday to discuss the new season of the Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) political drama “House of Cards,” the show’s success and how it has impacted his investments.
On preparing for his role, Kelly told host Maria Bartiromo, “I did meet with a prominent chief of staff in New York and, just to sort of understand the daily workings of a chief of staff and then of course our show is nothing like the real world.”
Despite any similarities between what is happening in the show and what is going on in real life, Kelly explained that the show doesn’t take its storylines from the political headlines.
“We’ve never been a tear from the headlines kind of show, you know, it’s not like a ‘Law and Order’ where you can say ‘oh, look, there’s the murder of the week,’ and rip it out and write a story about it.”
Kelly pointed out that whenever the show does mirror what is happening in U.S. politics it’s always a coincidence, telling Bartiromo, “Keep in mind that what the audience views on 'House of Cards' is shot almost a year prior to, or at least the beginning stories are in form at that point, a year before it’s ever even out, so they’re breaking down the arch of the season that far away.”
Kelly then weighed in on the markets, telling Bartiromo the show helped his portfolio as well.
“I remember when we first started the show, I was like ‘oh, I’m going to invest a little in this company (Netflix),’ that all I know it as was the place I got my DVDs, but I was like, they’re going to do, try this new thing and I bought in and then ended up selling them at like triple or quadruple.”
Kelly said that despite getting on board with the show, Netflix’ first original series, he didn’t realize how successful the company would become.
“I don’t think any of us ever really knew, like I certainly didn’t know when we started what Netflix would become or really what, when you think about it, is how we all now are consuming our content, you know Hulu jumped on board and Amazon, it’s just sort of become how people want, they want everything right now.”