Kevin Spacey testifies on House of Cards exit, claims he was booted on false grounds

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Kevin Spacey’s long-running legal saga took another turn this week in a California courtroom.

The Oscar-winning House of Cards star showed up at the Superior Court of California on Tuesday, March 10, 2026, to testify in a trial tied to a massive insurance dispute over his firing from the show’s sixth season. Instead of quietly backing the case of the production company suing its insurer, Spacey raised eyebrows with his testimony.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the actor didn’t shy away from pushing back on claims about why he was booted from the hit series in the first place.

Kevin Spacey pushes back on claims about his exit

The courtroom battle centers on a lawsuit filed by Media Rights Capital (MRC), the production company behind House of Cards, against its insurer, Fireman’s Fund. MRC is seeking to recover $100 million in losses they say resulted from Spacey’s abrupt departure from the show.

But when Spacey took the stand, he didn’t exactly deliver the narrative the plaintiffs might have hoped for.

Instead of reinforcing the claim that he suffered from a diagnosed compulsive disorder (something that would potentially allow the producers to claim insurance coverage), Spacey said the real reason he was forced out had more to do with embarrassment than illness.

Spacey alleged he was ousted because the company was embarrassed by the allegations swirling around him at the time, not because of a medical condition that prevented him from working.

The actor was fired in November 2017 between the fifth and sixth seasons of the Netflix drama. Around the same time, Netflix also canceled its agreement to release Spacey’s film 'Gore,' which had already entered post-production. The streaming giant never publicly clarified its reasons for either decision.

But events unfolding just days earlier dominated the headlines.

The allegations that triggered Hollywood’s fallout

Less than a week before Spacey was dismissed from the show, actor Anthony Rapp came forward with allegations that Spacey made an unwanted advance toward him when Rapp was just 14 years old.

That claim set off a wave of accusations against the actor. Still, Spacey maintained his innocence regarding Rapp’s allegation. Years later, in 2021, a jury cleared him of the specific claim about making inappropriate advances toward a minor Rapp in 1986.

Despite that verdict, the immediate fallout in 2017 was severe.

The decision to fire Spacey shook the production of House of Cards, where he had played political mastermind Frank Underwood for five seasons.

According to MRC, the disruption triggered by the allegations and Spacey’s sudden exit cost the company millions of dollars. That claim eventually led to a private arbitration process.

In 2020, the arbitrator sided with MRC, ruling that Spacey breached his contract by violating the company’s harassment policy. The decision ordered him to pay the production company $31 million.

That figure didn’t ultimately stick.

MRC later reduced the payment to $1 million, but only on the condition that Spacey provide medical records that the company intended to use as a central piece of evidence in its insurance battle with Fireman’s Fund.

Kevin Spacey disputes medical diagnosis

At Tuesday’s trial, lawyers for MRC argued that Spacey had, in fact, been suffering from a legitimate illness that made it impossible for him to continue working on the show.

They said the actor had been diagnosed with a compulsive disorder at a rehabilitation facility in Arizona, where he checked himself in shortly after being fired from House of Cards.

To support that claim, the company brought in psychiatrist Michael Genovese as an expert witness.

Genovese testified that Spacey was “unable to fulfill his duties on the set of House of Cards in 2017 as a result of this disease,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. The doctor added that “there was no way” the actor could have properly returned to the series as Underwood.

Spacey, however, pushed back. He claimed there were “comments attributed to me that I never said” included in his medical records. While he acknowledged he couldn’t "professionally dispute" the medical diagnosis itself, he made it clear he personally rejects it. “I can personally dispute it," he said.

Meanwhile, Spacey is currently also embroiled in another lawsuit involving several misconduct allegations that have surfaced since 2017. In November, three men filed a civil case accusing the actor of multiple instances of assault.

One of the plaintiffs alleges Spacey assaulted him on 12 occasions between 2000 and 2005. Those claims are scheduled to go before the High Court of Justice in October 2026.