If this were 2017, I’d say “Big Little Lies,” no contest. This year, I’ve enjoyed the ’90s tunes of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” and the era-transporting hybrid mixes on “Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G.”, which had to tell the story without Pac’s and Biggie’s music.
Edgar Ramirez, The Assassination of Gianni Versace
In some ways, much like in the first season of Crime Story, the title character ended up playing second fiddle to far more brilliant suns. But its hard to imagine the series working as well as it did without Ramirez to anchor it. As he played an iconic fashion designer, struggling with his relationship, deal with being HIV positive, trying to find a way for his sister to find her muse, and slowly climb himself back to life all the while knowing that he would face a horrible demise, Ramirez managed to hit all the right notes as this man who was born too early and died too soon. It’s hard to imagine the rest of the leads won’t get nominated, but Ramirez earned it.
It’s been awhile. But with the Emmy Nominations being announced next week (July 12th) myself, Michael Schwartz and the returning Ryan C. Showers are back with our final Emmy Nomination Predictions for Next Best Series Episode 4. | 5 July 2018
Darren Criss barely looks like he’s aged a day since “Glee,” but the “Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” star is 31 years old — definitely not old, but not a whippersnapper either. But if he takes home the Emmy for Best Limited Series/TV Movie Actor, he’d be the second youngest to prevail in the category.
Criss wouldn’t come close to dethroning the youngest winner, Anthony Murphy, who was 17 when he won for “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” in 1973. It was Murphy’s first and only acting role; he’s now a painter. No one has won the category in their 20s. Eleven people have won in their 30s, including reigning champ Riz Ahmed(“The Night Of”), who was 34. Criss would bump down Peter Strauss (“The Jericho Mile”) and Powers Boothe (“Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones”), who were both 32 when they won in 1979 and 1980, respectively.
Not unlike the Oscars, the Emmys favor older actors, and one-off programs like miniseries and TV movies tend to attract or are written for veterans or established stars. Most limited series/TV movie actor champs are middle-aged or older.
Criss has been sitting pretty atop our predictions for his turn as Andrew Cunanan, who was 27 when he went on his cross-country murder spree, culminating with the killing of Gianni Versace. It’s a haunting, unnerving performance that’s a complete 180 from Blaine Anderson, but could age bias — not to mention the “Slap the Stud” syndrome — hurt him? In 2014, his fellow Ryan Murphy player Matt Bomer, then 36, was favored to win for his supporting turn in “The Normal Heart,” but was upset by Martin Freeman, then 42, for “Sherlock: His Last Vow.”
That same year, Freeman’s co-star Benedict Cumberbatch, then 38, won in lead. Cumberbatch is back in the hunt this year for “Patrick Melrose” and has risen to fourth in our predictions, with multiple Experts, Editors and Top 24 Users picking his performance as the title character, a suicidal drug addict, to triumph.
But maybe Ahmed’s victory last year — over the likes of Cumberbatch, Robert De Niro, Geoffrey Rush, Ewan McGregor and John Turturro — will usher in a new era of younger actors claiming Emmy gold. They’re no less deserving than older and/or bold-named stars. In fact, if all goes as predicted, Criss wouldn’t even be the youngest nominee in the category: Michael B. Jordan (“Fahrenheit 451”), currently in fifth place, is four days younger than him.
Let’s be honest here. How many of us actually know who Andrew Cunanan is? Not many, I’d assume. Now how about this man called Versace, ring any bells? Forgets the instrument that goes ding-a-ling when you shake it, the aforementioned name deserves banging of drums. People my age should be well aware of the fact that this iconic fashion designer got assassinated a couple of decades back.
But how was he killed, why was he killed, and more pertinently, at least considering the relevance of our current discussion, who was the killer? Which brings us back to this man named Cunanan, who, as fate would have it, is the assassin of Giovanni Maria Gianni Versace, or Versace as we all probably know him as. And much to our morbid delight, it is all serialised in a new show currently doing the rounds.
American Crime Story is a true crime anthology series, where each season is presented as a self-contained mini-series. They managed to hit the ball straight out of the park with People versus OJ Simpson, their first foray into the murky world of real life crimes, and their second season, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, is not bad either.
The year is 1997 and Cunanan (Darren Criss), a 27-year-old man with homoerotic proclivities, shoots and murders everyone’s favourite designer Versace (Édgar Ramírez) in front of his South Beach mansion. This takes place at the end of a killing spree that has secured Cunanan’s place on the FBI’s Most Wanted list at the time, after committing four other murders around the country.
The show kicks off with the aforesaid incident and proceeds to unravel in a reverse chronological order. Making its way backwards, the quadruple deaths that Cunanan was responsible for are covered in great detail in individual episodes. The reverse gear comes to a halt at his uniquely disturbed childhood, with his father shown to be playing a major role in developing his quirky personality.
Versace’s boyfriend, Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin), and his sister, Donatella (Penélope Cruz), also play supporting characters during the show, but the writers leave no doubt in anyone’s mind as to the identity of their lead performer.
Cunanan as a character is a treasure trove of so many different emotive shades, and Criss has a field day nailing down the nuances of each and every one of it. From being deceptively charming to eccentrically volatile, the range of emotions that Criss manages to display during this nine-episode mini-series, to show how he embarked on this monstrous path, is just truly remarkable.
The support cast is also wholly in their element, with Ramirez, Martin and Cruz demonstrating why the show would be shoe-in to be nominated for the ‘Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series’ category for the Screen Actors Guild Award next year.
The production design and the accompanying camera work is an eye candy and a half. The best part about the period detailing in The Assassination of Gianni Versace is the fact that we rarely get to watch history being recreated from the 80s and the 90s. Nowadays, there are plenty of shows showing late 19th century till mid-20th century.
Fantastic writing is another feather in the cap for the series. Considering how a clear motive was never completely found for the real life murder of Versace, the creative license which was afforded to the writers was taken full advantage of in order to create a compelling character study of the assassin weaved within an intriguing narrative; not to forget, some truly memorable dialogues thrown in the mix, for good measure.
Cunanan might not have been a household name, a potential distinction that our lead character craved and actually led him to commit the high-profile slaughter. But with The Assassination of Gianni Versace having him as the lead character, he is once again, at least for a short while, the talk of the town.
The primary incentive to watch The Assasination of Gianni Versace is inserted in the title itself. Personally, the designer was too iconic a name and his murder was too historic an event for me to give this show a watch. But the significance of the act aside, the show in itself is a riveting piece of drama and that alone should help make it to the top of everyone’s ‘to-binge’ list.
Dan Fienberg is a TV critic for The Hollywood Reporter and The Fien Print.
In this conversation he discusses the TV shows he thinks should get Emmy nominations and the shows that got nominated by the Television Critics Association (of which Dan is president.) | 28 June 2018
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