Kevin Spacey Returns to Television with Italian Comedy Minimarket
According to CinemaDrame News Agency, Kevin Spacey is set to return to television for the first time since he was accused of sexual assault in 2017 and subsequently fired from Netflix’s House of Cards. The American actor, who has said he has neither money nor a home, has spent recent years struggling to revive his professional life. In this context, he has joined the Italian comedy series Minimarket, produced by RAI.
The star of American Beauty and The Usual Suspects plays himself in the series, appearing as the imaginary mentor of a young man who works in a shop in Rome and dreams of becoming a television star. In promotional teasers for the show, Spacey sings along to songs by Randy Newman (You’ve Got a Friend in Me) and Frank Sinatra (I’ve Got You Under My Skin) together with Italian actor Filippo Laganà, who plays the aspiring performer.
Spacey, who was acquitted in a UK criminal court of sexual assault charges brought by four men, has recently faced three additional sexual assault lawsuits and is expected to appear in a London court next year. The BBC reported last month that Spacey has denied two of the three allegations in court but has not yet submitted a defense for the third.
In November, Spacey told The Telegraph that he currently lives in hotels and Airbnb accommodations but is not homeless “in the conventional sense”: “I go wherever there is work. I really don’t have a home. I want to explain that. Over the past seven years the expenses have been astronomical. I’ve had very little income, and whatever came in was spent.”
Spacey returned to acting in 2021 with the role of a detective in Franco Nero’s independent drama The Man Who Drew God, and later appeared as a character named the Devil in The Contract, directed by another Italian filmmaker, Massimo Paolucci.
In March last year, Peter Five Eight was released in U.S. cinemas, marking Spacey’s first leading role since his acquittal in the London court. Since then, he has appeared in the unreleased action thriller The Awakening and has directed the action-supernatural film Holiguards.
Minimarket consists of ten episodes and will premiere on the RaiPlay platform on December 26.
