The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, based on Maureen Orth’s nonfiction book Vulgar Favors, also excelled in true-to-life casting. Actors Darren Criss, Edgar Ramirez and a blonde-wigged Penelope Cruz bear uncanny resemblances to serial killer Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace and Donatella Versace. Director/executive producer Daniel J. Minahan (Deadwood, Game of Thrones), who helmed three episodes, says: “In this day and age, people can Google things and make their own comparisons, so you need to be vigilant about making sure people look correct, between wigs and prosthetics and makeup. Darren looks remarkably like Andrew Cunanan. And people who personally knew Gianni Versace were astounded by the similarity when they saw Edgar in costume, hair and makeup.”
For all it’s verisimilitude in casting, Assassination displeased the Versace family. In a statement, they criticized the series for being an unauthorized “work of fiction” and objected to an early episode insinuating that Versace had AIDS. Series executive producer Ryan Murphy defended Assassination, citing Orth’s fact-vetted book and additional research as foundation for the show’s reenactments.
Later installments directed by Minahan focused squarely on the murderer. “Authenticity was paramount,” says Minahan, who directed the finale detailing Cunanan’s demise. “The houseboat Cunanan hid in after he shot Versace was dismantled and sunk, but it was well documented by police videos and photographs, so we had a great reference,” Minahan says. “We built an exact replica and moored it at the original location, which is where we staged the final siege with the FBI.”
Assassination dramatizes the designer’s slaying minutes into the first episode, eliminating any suspense about who committed the crime. Instead, the mystery has more to do with how Cunanan became a cold-blooded serial killer. Minahan says, “People don’t realize everything that came before in the life of Andrew Cunanan that brought him to the point of wanting to murder Versace for seemingly no reason.” By moving through time in reverse chronological order, Minahan says, “We’re able to look at the making of a sociopathic monster. And the other story is the way [Cunanan’s early murders] were written off as gay-on-gay crimes. The police maybe weren’t equipped to figure out what was happening and maybe didn’t take it as seriously as they could have.”
Minahan understands the tightrope walk that demands a balance between plausible fiction and hard-boiled evidence. “We’re dramatists,” he says. “We have a sense of what these people’s voices are, the things they were interested in, the hurts they had. You try to dramatize all of that around circumstances and events that you know actually happened. With Versace, I felt an obligation to honor these characters and tell the story as best we could in the way that we reimagined it.”
Episodes directed by Minahan feature extensive private dialogue between Cunanan and architect David Madson. Minahan says, “Through Maureen Orth’s research and our own research, we tried to put ourselves in Andrew Cunanan’s shoes and figure out or try to imagine what might have happened when Cunanan took David hostage and went on the road before he murdered him.”
Minahan worked with Criss to shape a subtext for the actor’s chilling performance. “Andrew was a fantasist, but he believes all those lies,” Minahan says. “Rather than have Darren play them as lies, we played them as truths, which produced, I think, a more interesting performance. Based on interviews I’ve read with people who knew Cunanan, he was known to be generous but also lethally damaged. He tried to present an idealized version of himself, and we thought that was more interesting.”
One of the most disturbing “reimaginings” called for Minahan to restage the murders of Cunanan victims Jeffrey Trail and Madson. “We had FBI reports and a lot of crime scene photographs, so I could see the blood spray against the door, where the blood pooled on the floor, where the body was moved,” Minahan says. “That really helped me determine how to block the whole thing.”
But on an emotional level, immersion in true-crime storytelling can exact a toll, says Minahan, who worked on Assassination for eight months. “You try to focus on the details, but there are moments where it’s absolutely exhausting to be living in the mind of a serial killer. I remember after we shot this very long scene where David’s pleading for his life, a kind of a pall went over the crew.”
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