Pack Beauregard Willimon[1] (born October 26, 1977) is an American playwright and screenwriter. He developed the American version of the series House of Cards, serving as showrunner for the first four seasons. In 2018, Willimon created the drama series The First for Hulu, about the first crewed mission to Mars.[2] He also was a writer on the first season of the Disney+ series Andor.
Willimon attended John Burroughs School, where he took drama classes taught by Jon Hamm[7][8] and graduated in 1995. He majored in history and visual arts and received a BA from Columbia University in 1999.[9][10][11] When he was an undergraduate, he met Jay Carson.[9][12] In 1998, he worked as a volunteer and intern for the Senate campaign of Charles Schumer, which led to jobs with Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign, Bill Bradley's 2000 presidential campaign, and Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign.[13] After graduating, he worked for the ministry of the interior for the Estonian government in Tallinn as part of a fellowship,[5] during which he sorted through and wrote summaries of thousands of pages of E.U.-related documents.[1] Shortly after, he moved to Vietnam to work for a small cultural magazine,[5] and there did research for his first screenplay, based on the life of Tomas Vu, a visual arts professor at Columbia who grew up in Vietnam during the war.[9]
He returned to New York to attend Columbia's School of the Arts. One of his mentors was playwright Eduardo Machado.[6][9] Willimon said, "I was the worst student by far in our group. A lot of these people had known they wanted to be playwrights forever. I didn't know a soul in the theater world, and I didn't have the faintest idea how to truly write a play. But I quit drinking then and really committed myself to this path."[1] During graduate school, he received a visual arts scholarship for a proposal to create 40 lithographs about paranoia, and lived in South Africa for a year.[5] After receiving an MFA in Playwriting from the School of the Arts in 2003, he worked in odd jobs, including gallery and painter's assistant, set builder, finding jobs for the homeless,[12]barista, and an instructor teaching SAT prep classes. He also did an internship with New Dramatists.[6][9][12]
In September 2017, Willimon was elected for a two-year term as President of the Writers Guild of America, East, running unopposed.[23] He was re-elected without opposition in 2019.[24]
Hulu gave a straight-to-series order to The First in May 2017 (co-produced with Channel 4). It debuted in 2018, but was not renewed for a second season.[25] The show portrays members of a team of astronauts as they become the first humans to visit Mars.
In 2019, as WGA-E President, Willimon oversaw the negotiating committee for the "WGA-Agency Agreement", and joined other WGA members in firing his agents as part of the guild's stand against the ATA after the two sides were unable to come to an agreement on a new "Code of Conduct" that addressed the practice of packaging.[26] In 2021, he signed a first look deal with Entertainment One.[27]
Willimon served as the series' showrunner for its first four seasons, stepping down in January 2016.[28]House of Cards premiered its sixth and final season on November 2, 2018.[29]
On November 3, 2017, Netflix fired Spacey from House of Cards and cut all ties with the actor following several allegations of sexual misconduct. Several crew members on the House of Cards set accused Spacey of sexually harassing them.[30] When the accusations first surfaced in late October of that year, Willimon released a statement saying, "During the time I worked with Kevin Spacey on House of Cards, I neither witnessed nor was aware of any inappropriate behavior on set or off".[31] However, three House of Cards crew members have disputed that assertion, commenting anonymously in a Buzzfeed News article that Willimon was aware of Spacey's behavior, including an incident during the show's first season in which Spacey allegedly sexually assaulted a production assistant, and took no action against the actor.[32][33] A "higher-level source" for the article alleged that Willimon witnessed Spacey behaving inappropriately.[32] Willimon denied witnessing or knowing about the alleged assault, but said, “I am heartsick that anyone on the crew had to endure this sort of behavior. Clearly we as an industry, particularly those in a position of power, myself included, need to be more perceptive and proactive. We also need to do a better job at empowering and supporting our colleagues who come forward.”[34]
