House of Cards stalwart Kevin Spacey is no stranger to the Oval Office. But for the actor’s latest role, don’t expect him to break character and address the audience directly – when you’re playing host to the King of Rock & Roll, can you really blame him?
Yes, for Liza Johnson’s “comedy of juxtaposition” Elvis & Nixon, Spacey will be stepping into the shoes of Richard Nixon, who staged a chance meeting with the one and only Elvis Presley (Michael Shannon) one fateful morning in December of 1970. Then at the peak of his glittering music career, The King wanted to speak with the most powerful man on the planet in person so that he could be drafted into the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Stranger than fiction, indeed. Of course, the White House meeting would go on to capture the imagination of a nation and, in reflecting on the core dynamic between Shannon and Spacey’s powerful leads, Johnson told USA Today that “this is a comedy of juxtaposition of the coolest guy on the planet and the Nixon administration, which is working on a very different register. It’s very comic when they come together.”
Also on board for the feature are Alex Pettyfer, Colin Hanks, Evan Peters, Johnny Knoxville, Sky Ferreira and Tracy Letts. Of course, it’s really the chemistry between Kevin Spacey’s POTUS and Shannon’s boisterous musician that has us cautiously optimistic ahead of the film’s arrival this coming weekend.
Elvis & Nixon opens tomorrow, April 22. To get the skinny on Liza Johnson’s political drama, check out our review coming out of Tribeca 2016.
Two men at the height of their powers, conscious they could not stay on top forever, both ripped with fear of the inevitable, sharing one famous private moment in the Oval office. Elvis & Nixon recounts the morning of December 21st 1970, when the King of Rock’ n Roll (Shannon) showed up on the White House lawn to request a meeting with the most powerful man in the world, President Richard Nixon (Spacey). He had a very urgent request: to be sworn in as an undercover Federal Agent at large. This intimate moment in the Oval office between two men at the height of their powers has never been told.