There’s been a lot of talk about how much people in D.C. love Netflix’s House of Cards. This weekend, Netflix had another chance to play to that audience: For Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ dinner, House of Cards star Kevin Spacey was joined by John McCain, Michael Bloomberg, senoir Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, CBS White House Correspondent Major Garrett, Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith and numerous others in an excellent spoof dubbed House of Nerds. Check it out below:
The spot poked fun at both politics and media, and Spacey’s Frank Underwood character didn’t hold back: “It must be so hard to write jokes about a town that already is one,” he said, just minutes after questioning whether NBC is a “real network.” Even Netflix was the butt of a joke, with congressman Steny Hoyer throwing an expletive-laden complaint about the service not working for him.
Of course, the whole clip is also a testament to how much Netflix has changed over the past few months, and how important it has become in Hollywood. Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos, who was in the crowd Saturday night as well, recently told me that his phone has been ringing nonstop since the company first announced its plans for House of Cards.
It looks as if one of those calls may have been about Saturday’s dinner: A Netflix spokesperson confirmed Monday that the company worked together with the House of Cards team to produce the spoof, in a way giving back to the town that made its dark and twisted story lines possible. Or, as Spacey says in the clip:
“Well, you know my motto, Ed. You scratch my back, I won’t lacerate yours.”
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