It’s not quite five o’clock, but Darren Criss is sipping his first glass of champagne moments after arriving in a small basement lounge in Park City, Utah.
The Sundance Film Festival is in full swing, accounting for much of the activity in the cramped space, but Criss isn’t here for that. The star of FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace just wrapped a set nearby at the ASCAP Music Café, where he performed angsty songs from his sophomore solo release, Homework.
Though plenty of Hollywood types are in town for the indie film festival, Criss says he recognized no one in the crowd at his gig, save for his fiancée, Mia Swier, who has also been joining him on the ski slopes during the day. It’s a bit of a celebratory trip, given that the pair recently got engaged and Criss just finished shooting the final episode in season two of the American Crime Story anthology series, in which he plays megalomaniacal spree killer Andrew Cunanan.
Belting out tunes for a roomful of strangers can be just as gratifying as heading an ensemble cast for his former Glee boss Ryan Murphy on Versace, where he played (briefly) opposite titular victim Edgar Ramírez and on a parallel but separate track from costars Penélope Cruz (as Donatella Versace) and Ricky Martin (as Gianni’s lover Antonio D’Amico).
The nine-episode storyline moves in reverse chronological order: Criss operates in his own thread, which traces the roots of the Talented Mr. Ripley-esque maniac, once dubbed “most likely to be remembered” by his graduating class at a posh San Diego high school.
“One of the great goals in my career is to keep things as versatile as possible and to confuse and to throw people off,” he says. “So, I like it when you have a room full of Sundance people, you know, music folks, music supervisors, filmmakers that are like, ‘Wait, what? He’s a songwriter?’ That really excites me. The same way that, when I was mostly playing music and booked an acting gig, people would be like, ‘What? You’re an actor?’”
Unlike his famous costars, who have toplined studio movies (Ramírez), won an Oscar (Cruz) and enjoyed huge musical success (Martin), Criss has been waiting for his breakout.
American Tragedy
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