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'House of Cards' star Kevin Spacey takes 'monster' role in 'Richard III' documentary

"House of Cards" fans are used to seeing Kevin Spacey play monstrous President Francis Underwood on his hit Netflix series. But Spacey has played more than one difficult role in his life — including the title character in Shakespeare's "Richard III.""It's a very early play of Shakespeare's, and he had not yet employed the device he employed much later in all of his other plays, which is to give

"House of Cards" fans are used to seeing Kevin Spacey play monstrous President Francis Underwood on his hit Netflix series. But Spacey has played more than one difficult role in his life — including the title character in Shakespeare's "Richard III."

"It's a very early play of Shakespeare's, and he had not yet employed the device he employed much later in all of his other plays, which is to give the leading actor breaks," Spacey said on TODAY Friday. "Out of something like 24 scenes in the play, the character of Richard is in 22 of them. And so it is a monster to do, night after night after night."

Spacey shows just how difficult playing the role of the deformed, power-mad royal is during his new documentary, "NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage," in which he and 20 other British and American actors tour the world for 10 months performing the play.

"It's very unique now for an entire company to go around the world," he explained. "We went across three continents, we did 12 cities around the world."

As for Underwood, other monster in his life, Spacey said he's thrilled with the show's reception and that audiences have been binge-watching the series. "It's been kind of cool to see that audiences like to be in control," he said. "They like to be able to treat it like a book. They put it down when they want to put it down, they pick it up when they want to pick it up."

Seasons one and two of "House of Cards" are available on Netflix, and "NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage" is in theaters.