House of Cards : Conway… Looks 25 years old… No charisma… HORRIBLE casting..

Terrible casting
looks WAY too young for a presidential candidate.
Has ZERO charisma.

I agree. Smug and obnoxious.

Which is too bad because Joel Kinneman is pretty rad in a lot of other things. They cast him poorly, and the character was written very, VERY poorly.

I agree - way too young looking to be a realistic candidate. It bothers me enough to be distracted while watching his scenes. And he's not a good public speaker thus far. Presidential candidates have to be the very best of the best public speakers.

You should watch some Republican debates

You have no idea what you're talking about. George W Bush Jr and the current leading GOP candidate Donald Trump. Neither can put 5 words together on their own without looking like an idiot. One of them can't even formulate a sentence without insulting someone.

yeah it's pretty distracting. I liked him in Robocop but he's just not believable for a presidential candidate. he looks like secret service agent standing next to kevin spacey :/

This is what caught me. I was telling my friend something similar. He doesn't seem the least bit comfortable with monologues, which makes him being a political candidate at his age in such high profile venues laughable. They are saying his character is 39 years old. I mean Kinnaman could easily pass for early late 20's-early 30's.

I think he represent that at first a charming, dreamy figure; i think youre right, it lacks a certain moral centre that such a role deserves (like FU or not his protrary of cynism and ruthlessness comes across as value driven, and could rivals the hope based moral centrw shown by West wing's Martain Sheen); for Conway, and underneath as you look closer beneath his charming vaneers, are the the less refined, less substantance, once you look deeper the shallowness shows. Where as Underwoods are value driven, 'Conways are more surface politics driven, hence easier to disregard. The wife's intellectual incompatiblity will only show more.

Just a bad actor tbh. The age itself is not a problem. My issue is the way he delivers his lines and how his facial expressions are "all over the place" when he speaks or tries to relate to any other actor in the scene. I also think the actor had some butox or some extensive plastic makeup for this, and it went south.

Agree 100% - HORRIBLE casting.

Well, he doesn't even look or pass as the Governor of New York to begin with.

So true. And the Underwoods don't look like the Obamas. In fact, they all were miscast. What is happening?

Have you seen him in the Killing? He's a GREAT actor, and I think he does a great job here. A surface charming candidate who is shallow and narcissistic underneath and really does not care about any of the issues.

He is indeed good in the Killing but nonetheless bad in HoC, as for me.

He is not believable in his portrayal of a charismatic politician/public speaker. The lines don't flow from him but seem forced.

It is not because he's a bad actor but rather because he was miscast. His natural area of expertise is exactly what he plays in the Killing, a street-smart-urban-loving-hip-hop-listening detective who understands the hood and its youth because he grew up in one-kinda guy. Not an educated fancy well-spoken manipulator!

A great role is always a mix of casting and actual acting skills, but no actor can play any role and even the best actor in the wrong movie can deliver a horrendous performance.

Great actors aren't only great actors, but are also great at picking the right roles. Put di Caprio, Hanks, Hardy, Day-Lewis or Washington in the wrong shoes and there's nothing even they could do about it.

My point being, Kinnaman is not a bad actor, just miscast in my opinion.


People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs

Actually he did a great job, was convincing, has charisma. A fine anti-Frank and it worked very well.

His wife, Hannah, is also fantastic.

THIS. It's a delicate thing, finding reasons to give people to dislike a guy more than they already disliked FRANK. But they pulled it off.

Frankly, I agree with you. I'm not sure what everyone else is talking about here? I think the choice of casting and how the characters were to be portrayed was well decided. I've never seen the Killing so I of course come into this with no biased or opinion of this actor. But I think it was well done.

One more episode to watch when I get out of work today.

I love Joel Kinnaman. He was great in The Killing. But I agree he seems out of place here. And playing a lousy republican? Even worse.

Was coming here to post basically the same thing.

The whole storyline this season is off.

Clearly they cast Joel on purpose since they were looking for the opposite of Frank. They wanted a younger, taller, tech savvy person with kids but something didn't work with the whole Conway story for me.

Joel Kinnaman is 36 in real life and the minimum age is 35 to be eligible for President of the United States. He is supposed to be what 39-40? He isn't that far off the age he is playing and I doubt the actor will look that much different in 3-4 years. To fault him for how young he looks is idiotic considering it isn't like he is a 22 year old playing a 39-40 year old. They wanted a young looking candidate.

I will say I agree about no charisma though and a poor casting. I had no idea who was going to be cast as the Republican opposition to Frank this season as I don't like to spoil things. When I saw him first appear I was like "Oh god, not him. Kinnaman is supposed to play off of Spacey?". Not a fan of the guy.

I believe he says he's 36 in the flashback to 2013. So the character may be 39. I may be mixing things up and he said he's 36 in the present day though.

Agree! His dialogue delivery was also fake and cringeworthy

The problem is we have another foreign actor trying to fake an American accent and failing. I thought Kinnaman was good in the Killing, even his accent was passable. But here, you can clearly tell he is struggling. No Governor of New York would ever sound like that.

The funny thing is they let the actress playing his wife speak in her natural British accent. Even though I saw her in a show over the summer on ABC and she did a pretty good job faking an American accent.

Speaking of that, do they ever quite explain how he met his British wife? Perhaps I missed it, but knowing American politics this would be a huge story and commented on endlessly. But it is never brought up in the show.

I only have one episode left to watch but yea so far they havent mentioned anything about her being a foreigner which I found funny. No way you have a brit as a possible first lady and no one points it out.

I just figured that maybe they wanted to focus on other things for their limited 13 episodes rather than filling up time with obvious politics, which I'm fine with. I think where they have gone with this seasons story plot has been entertaining so far.

I find the actress playing his wife far more insufferable. The forced British accent, painfully over the top "acting"just awful

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I find the actress playing his wife far more insufferable. The forced British accent

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The actress was born in Ireland, so I don't know if it's that forced.

The most unbelievable Presidential candidate since Jamie Foxx. I may be biased due to the actor's ghetto/hood talk in "The Killing" however.

He was very bad. He felt like a replacement for Meechum then a presidential candidate

I don't know why exactly, but Joel Kinnaman makes my "skin crawl".
The way he talks, the way he looks out his eyes he crept me out in Robocop and he creeps me out in this series.
If they ever gonna make a remake of "Henry, portrait of a.'.Kinnaman is your man for the lead !

Nah, not 25. Conway's demeanor seems immature and inexperienced, but he looks about late 30's to me.

I partially agree. He looks young. However, he's supposed to be young and a bit naive. Also, there are real presidential candidates who look pretty young this cycle. For instance Marco Rubio.

I disagree about the charisma. He seems fine to me. I can imagine people wanting to vote for him, especially since he's a war veteran and can play up that angle.

He looks like he's in his 30s, not 20s.

Also I feel like he improved as the episodes progressed, but his introduction he was definitely not charismatic.

If he's supposed to be a conservative version of Obama it certainly wasn't working

He does look young, but no younger than Marco Rubio in my opinion. So it's not that unrealistic. I think it was stated or assumed that he was supposed to be in his mid forties (I think he left the military and went into politics at 36 years of age). If that's the case, then yeah, he looks too young for a 40 something white dude. He's supposed to be a seasoned individual but he looks like he is just getting started.

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but he looks like he is just getting started

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Tell that to President Obama.

That entire family was horrendous despite his age, he lacked charisma. His lines were wooden and did not seem believable at all. I enjoyed his role in The Killing and I'm surprised he did such a bad job here. Everything he tried did not look good - even down to that famous way politicians use their thumbs when speaking.
Ugh, he was bad.

And then there was the wife. The accent was terrible, she was pointless and added nothing. If anything, she reminded me of those wives who left their husbands after 3 years.

Then the son - what an annoying little sh*t - I was waiting for Claire to scare the p!ss out of him when the family spent the night.

The only character I could tolerate was the daughter - and that's because she was basically mute.

The wife's accent was terrible? First time I've ever heard a British accent described that way.

Speaking as as an Englishman (her accent is English not British) she sounds perfectly fine as a well brought up and well educated person, he on the other hand sounds like a complete dork. They seem to be trying to emulate the Kennedys and are equally shallow.

LOL. Thought we Englishwomen were Brits.

Joel Kinnaman is 38 years old, which means Conway meets the age requirement for POTUS.

I didn't have a problem with his looks, I believe they wanted the character to look young. I disliked everything about his acting though, it's really the only performance on the TV show that I don't care for. Usually they nail the casting on HoC, but here they allowed Kinnaman to practically ruin what could've been a great and interesting character.

Episode 5, season 1
I realuze the character is not as filthy-rich as most of the others, but to go to the Cotesworth gala in that $2, cheap-ass spandex dress and clunky black shoes looking like a complete schlump??? And yes, I'd say that about a shoddily-dressed male character as well. Style does NOT equal moneyyeeccch

His youth and smugness is why I actually think it was good casting. I find him unlikeable and easy to root against, which is perfect since I find myself rooting for Frank (no matter how dark and disturbing he gets).

I love Jole but he looks terrible in his suits.

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