FX’s “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” was a long and grueling shoot that stretched from May to January, hopscotched the country from Miami to Minnesota to Chicago to San Francisco, and was lensed virtually all on location. The houseboat where Versace killer Andrew Cunanan was trapped as he met his end was rebuilt from scratch on Miami’s Collins Avenue by the production team, based on crime scene photographs and other footage from the era of the 1997 slaying of the famed fashion designer.
But all of the time, energy and money devoted to “Versace” paid off for uber-executive producer Ryan Murphy, once he saw how star Darren Criss, writer/exec producer Tom Rob Smith, and director/exec producer Dan Minahan pulled off the final hour of the nine-episode series.
“It was that moment when you’re shooting the series that you’re waiting for. We knew the stuff Darren was going to have to do would be very, very emotional and upsetting, when he was finally caged and trapped,” Murphy told Variety. “It was hard for him. Darren had nobody to react to other than himself for most of the episode. He really arced the character so well and stripped it down to the bare essence at the end. It was very emotional and difficult material. Darren gave the performance of the year.”
Murphy said he’s gratified to see Criss receive generally strong reviews for the extremely demanding role that he hopes will open more more doors for the former “Glee” player.
“When you get stereotyped as a writer or an actor it’s hard to break out of that lane and show people you’re capable of so much more,” said Murphy. “I’m excited for him about what opens up for him.”
Murphy also hailed Minahan and Smith for taking the extra step of intense rehearsals for the climactic scenes of Cunanan alone as a squatter in a houseboat as the FBI’s manhunt closed in on him. “Versace’s” narrative unfolded as a backward chronology from the moment of Cunanan’s July 1997 murder of Versace on the steps of his Miami mansion. Smith immersed himself in research to write all episodes of the series in that challenging format — an accomplishment that drew a thumbs up via Twitter earlier this week from none other than Stephen King.
The final hour of the series, “Alone,” depicted the moment of reckoning for the deranged protagonist as well as some closure for other characters, including Donatella Versace (Penelope Cruz), Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light), Cunanan’s hustler friend Donnie (Max Greenfield), and Versace’s lover Antonio (Ricky Martin). Murphy said those sequences were designed as “arias” to give the supporting characters a final bow in the spotlight.
“Max Greenfield came back with this thesis statement about homophobia, Judith Light gave us this insane operatic monologue,” Murphy said. “We spent time with the victims, the people who lost things because of Cunanan’s murders.”
“Versace” did not land with the same pop culture punch as the inaugural “American Crime Story” series, 2016’s “The People V. O.J. Simpson.” To date the series has averaged about 3 million total viewers in Nielsen’s live-plus-7 ratings, compared to about 7.7 million for “People V. O.J. Simpson.”
Murphy said he knew that the “Versace” would draw a more modest crowd given the subject matter and the fact that the Simpson saga was so much more well known by the general public. But the larger message of “Versace’s” effort to demonstrate the homophobia and discrimination that hampered the police investigation of Cunanan’s killings has touched a nerve, based on the reactions Murphy has received.
“I can always tell if something is working or landing by how many people stop me on the street to tell me they’re binge-watching it and loving it,” he said. “I’m so proud about the message of the show. It meant a lot to people.”
The conclusion of “Versace” comes on the same night that another new Murphy production wraps its freshman year. Fox’s “9-1-1,” a fast-paced procedural about first-responders and dispatchers, couldn’t be more different than “Versace.” Murphy admits he was reluctant to do a traditional network TV procedural, but prodding from Fox Television Group chairman Dana Walden made Murphy’s team pull together a strong cast — anchored by Angela Bassett, Connie Britton, and Peter Krause — and deliver “9-1-1” for debut sooner than they expected in January.
“Dana was really adamant in saying ‘You have another procedural in you’ and that Jan. 3 was the time to premiere it,” Murphy said. “And she was right. Dana is the reason why this has all worked.”
“9-1-1” has inched up steadily in viewership, winning its Wednesday 9 p.m. time slot for most of its run with an average of 10 million viewers. Murphy said there’s already discussions of potential spinoffs — every major city has a first-responder hub, after all — but nothing formally set in stone. In the near term, the focus is on expanding the show in season two with “more people in the call center and more stars,” he said.
With “9-1-1,” Murphy has launched a hit for Fox in his waning months as a producer on the lot before he segues to a mammoth Netflix overall deal on July 1. Murphy hasn’t had time to hatch any brand-new ideas for his new network home — he’ll have his hands full during the next year delivering the four new shows — two for Netflix — that he already has in the pipeline in his soon-to-expire 20th Century Fox TV deal.
At present Murphy is in New York shooting the 1980s-set drama “Pose” for FX. In July he’s slated to begin work on the political satire “The Politician” and the eighth season of FX’s “American Horror Story.” When those shows wind down in January, he’ll reunite with Sarah Paulson on Netflix’s “Ratched,” the origin story of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’s” Nurse Ratched.
So while he won’t be actively developing new projects for at least a few months, Murphy won’t exactly be idle.
“There’s going to be a lot of extensive legwork and a lot of traveling for these shows. They all shoot in different cities,” Murphy said. “For the first time in a long time, I can tell you I feel pretty content. For now, I’m good.”
The second season of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story anthology series, titled The Assassination of Gianni Versace, explores the titular designer’s brutal 1997 murder at the hands of serial killer Andrew Cunanan. We’ve been walking through all nine episodes with Miami Herald editorial board member Luisa Yanez — who reported on the crime and its aftermath over several years for the Sun-Sentinel’s Miami bureau — in an effort to identify what ACS: Versace handles with care versus when it deviates from documented fact and common perception. The intention has been less to debunk an explicitly dramatized version of true events than to help viewers piece together a holistic picture of the circumstances surrounding Versace’s murder. In other words, these weekly digests are best considered supplements to each episode rather than counterarguments. Below are Yanez’s insights — as well as our independent research — into the veracity and potency of events and characterizations presented in the season finale, “Alone.”
What They Got Right
The Manhunt For however law enforcement fell short of corralling Cunanan after his previous four killings, Versace’s death brought out all the literal big guns (and helicopters and so on). “It was an out-and-out manhunt like you would see in a movie,” Yanez recalls. “Everybody was very nervous. It was checkpoints, tips coming in. It was intense. I don’t think it’s ever been as intense as that week was for looking for somebody in south Florida.”
Andrew Cunanan’s suicide While the premiere featured a potential inaccuracy in precisely how and where Versace was shot, “Alone” plays it straight with Cunanan’s fateful moments. Despite a recent ABC News retrospective that suggests Andrew shot himself in the chin, numerous reports — most notably, that of the Dade County Medical Examiner — verify that he placed the gun directly into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
The houseboat The idea that Cunanan stumbled on a bottle of expensive Champagne while he squatted wasn’t implausible (though that particular item was absent from the FBI’s inventory, ditto for dog food), as the houseboat’s owner, German businessman Torsten Reineck, reputedly enjoyed the finer things. Reineck, who was in some legal trouble overseas, never attempted to rehabilitate his Miami property, which eventually began to sink due to damaged plumbing. As Yanez reported back in ’98, the “dangerous eyesore,” as she put it then, was demolished. Today, Yanez can confirm that Cunanan left Reineck’s houseboat a wreck, and that Andrew was essentially filthy and unshaven as seen in “Alone.” “In fact, he left it a bigger mess than what they show,” she says. “He really trashed it up. There’s food containers, that area where he was taking care of that wound. The way he looks — that dirty underwear — that’s to a T.” The one detail added for effect, she adds, was Andrew putting a bullet hole through the TV.
The houseboat’s caretaker Sort of. Fernando Carreira, who looked after Reineck’s ocean-moored property, was understandably spooked by the sound of a gunshot after entering to check on a possible intruder. Though given Cunanan’s desperation, it was probably wise for the then-72-year-old Portuguese caretaker to bail and call the police. As Carreira — who briefly sank his reward money into an ill-fated entrepreneurial effort, the legacy of which lives on via eBay — noted in a recent interview with Sun-Sentinel, “I thought the shot was for me.” Or for that matter, his wife, who was with him at the time, even if she didn’t make it onscreen in “Alone.” But by and large, Carreira’s crucial involvement went down as depicted, unless you want to split hairs over the ease with which he removed his .38 from its holster.
Marilyn Miglin’s reaction While seething at the FBI’s failure to bring down Cunanan, Lee Miglin’s cosmetics-magnate widow Marilyn Miglin could only refer to Andrew as “that man.” And per a Chicago Tribuneprofile on Marilyn in April 1998, she indeed could only muster pronouns in lieu of properly uttering his name.
Mispronouncing Cunanan If Marilyn couldn’t even breathe “Cunanan,” much of the police and media had their own struggles saying it right — a fact that, as “Alone” implies, was yet one more blow to Andrew’s hopes for household fame.
Andrew’s wig At one point in “Alone,” Andrew passes an FBI poster of himself featuring several possible likenesses, one of them with what appears to be a blonde wig. “Yes, that is true,” Yanez says (and it was, as you can read here). “There was a point where they were saying he liked to dress like a woman, and there were posters that did show him looking like a woman.” One can assume this was included to underscore the kinds of stereotypes that law enforcement trafficked in while pursuing him.
What They Took Liberties With
The houseboat’s address By all accounts (see: here, here, and here), Reineck’s infamous houseboat was located at 5250 Collins Avenue, yet “Alone” references the address more than once as being at 54th and Collins. This discrepancy is strangely consistent with Assassination of Gianni Versace’s MO when it comes to residences: As noted in earlier fact-checks, the precise address for both David Madson’s Minneapolis condo building and the notorious Normandy Hotel deviated slightly from what was scripted. A best guess would be an effort by producers to protect the privacy of those locations’ current occupants, even if the show may compel more people to seek them out.
The near encounter on another boat Cunanan is widely believed to have boat-hopped before finding his ultimate hideout in Reineck’s house. “Alone” zeroes in on one such stop, during which Andrew comes virtually face to face with the boat’s owner, who rushes out and urges her husband Guillermo to call the cops. Yanez notes, “There had been incidents of somebody pilfering food and breaking into places, that people found something and something was askew and they called the police. But we never knew exactly if that had been him.” One of those people was purportedly Guillermo Volpe, who owned a small sailboat called the Maru and told cops he found evidence that someone —maybe Cunanan — had slept in there and stolen a novel, and that he later spied Cunanan reading said novel nearby. Interestingly, a paperback book titled Hawaii was among the items FBI agents claimed from Reineck’s home. However, the suspenseful scene of Guillermo’s wife getting within steps of a trigger-happy Cunanan? That is, seemingly, a fanciful exaggeration.
The stolen Mercedes We could not conjure, nor could Yanez recollect, anything to support Cunanan having stolen a woman’s white Mercedes, only to turn around and bail on the car after hitting a police checkpoint. If anything, the scene somewhat mirrored Versace’s opening stroll down the beach that opened this season, in addition to communicating the manhunt’s escalation and how Andrew was effectively trapped. Not to mention, he always did allegedly daydream about wanting to own a Mercedes.
The media coverage There was absolutely a swarm of newspaper and magazine writers in and around Miami Beach that whole week, as well as outside Reineck’s houseboat the night Cunanan’s body was brought out on a gurney. As Yanez recalls, “There were reporters from Italy, Japan, Sweden. The media was a huge pack, and it was astounding, the reaction to his murder, the nerve it touched.” But she does point out one wrinkle the show missed. “They don’t touch on this at all, but there was a great confusion at the end,” she explains. “Earlier in the day, we hear there’s somebody at the houseboat and everybody goes over there. And then the police came out, after they had this standoff and there was a shot heard, and said, ‘No, there’s nobody here.’ So a lot of the media left, and then they called us back and said, ‘No, it’s him. He’s here.’ So there was some weird confusion.” As it happens, reports from the timeback up Yanez’s recollection that police were initially coy after the SWAT team was deployed (and per the FBI dossier, they did flood the houseboat with tear gas). “There was a first thought that the gunshot that the caretaker hears is [Cunanan] killing himself,” Yanez continues. “But the caretaker at first says, ‘He fired at me,’ but there might not have been evidence of that later on. It was a mess that night. Maybe they wanted to notify the Versace family first and didn’t want to tell the media. We were there all day.”
Andrew’s call to his father Yanez had never heard of any call being placed from Cunanan to his dad in the Philippines as police closed in, nor were we able to corroborate any such conversation between them. It’s even a stretch for “Alone” to capture Andrew readying a passport for exile abroad, since FBI deputy director William Esposito told media that Cunanan did make a mystery call — to a friend (whom, enticingly, he would not name) whom he hoped could secure him a passport. Supposedly, the FBI only found out about the correspondence after interrogating other individuals who ran in Cunanan’s circles. Regarding Modesto’s attempts to exploit Andrew’s name, those were covered in last week’s roundup.
Marilyn’s news conference Apart from the Chicago Tribune interview mentioned earlier, Marilyn rarely spoke publicly about her husband Lee’s death. One exception was an emotional press conference shortly after his murder in May 1997, an event that “Alone” repositions to coincide with Andrew’s waning days on the houseboat, the beginning of a This Is Your Life–style series of televised pieces vivifying the pain he’d brought to victims’ loved ones and his own, including his long-suffering motherMary Ann. We were unable to unearth footage of David Madson’s father Howard as portrayed on a news program, though he was vocalafter news spread of Cunanan’s suicide. Yanez reflects generally on how hard the Madson family tried to “clear his name, [that] he was a victim too, not a co-conspirator. But with Cunanan’s death, that was left hanging.”
Antonio’s suicide attempt It is true that Antonio was more or less exiled to Lake Como by the surviving Versaces, allowed to live in one of the homes controlled by the company but otherwise estranged. And in an interview with the Guardian, he acknowledges having entered a lengthy depression. He stops short, however, of saying that he tried to kill himself in the immediate aftermath of his lover’s death. According to those close to Antonio, the loyalty of friends like Elton John helped him through the grieving period.
One of the things I remember most vividly about the hunt for Andrew Cunanan was watching his final showdown on television. The regular broadcast was interrupted as the police went into a houseboat and found his dead body, and I just remember someone on TV saying “houseboat,” “houseboat,” “houseboat” repeatedly. That is the one detail about this story that always stuck out to me.
I’ve always wanted to live on a houseboat, ever since MacGuyver had one. But being from the landlocked part of Connecticut, it was never a reality. That’s probably why I imagined the houseboat where Andrew killed himself as being more like a sailboat, like the one where he hid before he got caught by that sunburned lady looking for her friend Antonio. It seemed cramped and gross in my mind. Of course, that wasn’t the reality at all: He was in some old queen’s fantasy world of a house boat and it was like the ‘70s come to life, complete with wicker furniture and a nearly campy interior. It had a giant television projector – cutting-edge technology at the time – and, if American Crime Story is to be believed, a closetful of nice clothes that miraculously fit Andrew. This all made me totally rewrite the narrative of how I had imagined Andrew’s final hours.
Still, this finale limps toward the finish line. Maybe that’s because I was one of the viewers who watched the police close in on Andrew back in 1997, so I already knew how this story ends. But looking back, I feel like the most interesting parts of this series were frontloaded into the first few episodes. Even those of us who followed the story knew little about Cunanan’s earlier crimes or his motivations, so shining light on those aspects of his life was an interesting choice – not just because of this story, but because of the time in general.
Now that we’re focused on Andrew’s final head-shaving, dog-food-eating days in a houseboat, there isn’t much more exposing left to do, save for a few heartbreaking moments with his parents. I’ll never forget that image of his mother Mary Ann, smoking a cigarette with a blanket over her head and illuminated only by the television. What happens with his father Modesto is also heartbreaking: When Andrew reaches out to him, he tells Andrew that he’ll come back to the U.S., even though there are charges against him, and he will take him back to the Philippines and get him to freedom and safety. Andrew waits by the door with his clothes packed and calmly reading. (How do you select a book when you’re on the run and it might be the last one you ever read?) Modesto never shows up, but Andrew does see him on television talking about how he’s selling the rights to his son’s story and exploiting their phone call for his own gain. For the final time, his father has failed him.
Perhaps my favorite moment in the finale is Andrew watching Marilyn Miglin hawking her perfume on television. “I imagine going back in time and telling [my mother], Here is something I made for you, the kind of perfume my father would give you for your birthday as a way of saying how special you are,” she says, as if speaking directly to him. Here she is, creating the same kind of narrative of rewriting reality, of rewiring the past to make the future electric, that Andrew mastered. She is using it to make the fortune that Andrew craved, while all he could do with his gifts was destroy. We would hope to see some empathy in Andrew for what he did to Marilyn’s husband, but we never see that. Instead, we see something close to awe.
I’m not sure if Andrew actually watched all of that coverage of the manhunt, but it sure makes sense that he would in this show, given what we know about his character. It also makes sense that he would go from laughing about it (as the cork on his champagne pops) to absolutely loathing it (as the media coverage paints him to be something that he didn’t think he was).
What’s odd is that, no matter how much of a monster Andrew was, the coverage and the hunt were so much worse than we could imagine. After all, hasn’t that been the point of this show all along? The worst offender is the wanted poster with Andrew’s face, which also shows mockups of what he might look like dressed as a woman. (Not that it matters, but it looks like VHS cover art for a bad made-for-television movie starring Marilu Henner as a police officer searching for a serial killer in a drag bar.) Even though he never had a penchant for drag, the FBI just automatically assumed that a gay man would either disguise himself as a woman or actually want to live life as a woman. This idea that the police’s homophobia made them ineffective at catching Cunanan was lightly considered in the opening episode and I hoped it would be picked up more subsequently, but it seems to have lost steam just as the series did. Save for this one moment, it’s a shame it wasn’t a bigger focus.
The Versace side of the drama is a little lackluster, too. I felt especially bad for Gianni’s boyfriend Antonio, who was shut out by the family, ignored by the priest at the funeral, and generally mistreated by everyone because he couldn’t (or didn’t) legally marry. But what happens between him and Donatella — her shutting him out of the homes and his promised allowance — seems less about him being gay and more about Donatella not liking him, so it’s a different narrative that doesn’t necessarily explore the homophobia of the time.
Meanwhile, it feels like “Alone” brings all of the guest stars out of hiding so they can each get one little turn onscreen again. We not only see Marilyn, Antonio, and Donatella, but also Andrew’s junkie friend Ronnie and all of the prominent detectives from the case. (You know, the detectives who seemed like they’d have a more active role after the first episode.) After Andrew kills himself, we’re left to wade through all of the drama with the rest of the players. The worst of it, without a doubt, is Antonio trying to kill himself out of grief. Although the real Antonio did admit to depression following Versace’s death, he is still alive and well. Leaving the audience with him collapsing in a maid’s arms seems deceptive at best and a bald-faced lie at worst.
The scene that really wrapped up the whole drama – for me, at least – was Andrew remembering his meeting with Versace. We find out that they never had sex, and that Gianni was the one man who didn’t fall into Andrew’s advances because he knew it would cheapen his dreams and ambitions. When Andrew tells Versace all about his desire to be special and how he’ll convince the world of it, his reply is, “It’s not about persuading people you’re going to do something great. It’s about doing it.” That one line separates what makes these two men different.
Whether or not we like it, though, they are inextricably linked because Andrew will forever be piggybacking off of Versace’s greatness. In the final images of the season, Donatella mourns over Gianni in his own mausoleum while we see Andrew’s tiny placard amongst a million similar ones in a public resting place with no one there to remember him. The show’s closing statement seems to be that Versace is ultimately greater, a true individual who was loved and whose accomplishments will withstand the test of time, while Andrew is just some nobody who tried to find greatness with destruction. However, this message seems at odds not only with reality, but with the case that the show itself made by trying to find the humanity in Andrew.
Even when someone’s death is not unexpected, untimely, and violent, there’s often a profound ripple effect through family and community. When the person is murdered, it’s a whole other level of crazy.
The final episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story begins where the first episode did, with Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) shooting Versace (Edgar Ramirez) in the face at point blank range. The first time, we saw the reactions of the people around Versace. This time, we follow Andrew as he breaks into an empty houseboat and raids the fridge. Finding a bottle of champagne, he smiles as he tears the foil from the cork and turns on the TV to watch news coverage of the murder. (Of course, there’s speculation that it’s the mafia, and veiled suggestions that the “infamous” designer might have been targeted for reasons they aren’t quite able to talk about.) As an eyewitness describes seeing Versace on the ground, the cork explodes out of the champagne bottle like a gunshot and Andrew startles violently, then collapses on the couch, giggling. A correspondent notes that Andrew Cunanan is the suspected killer. “Oh my God,” he breathes. You think he’s panicking at first, but as he walks up the stairs to sit on the upper deck of the houseboat, holding the champagne bottle by the neck, watching the police helicopters scanning the waterfront, you realize it’s not panic but elation. He’s done it. He’s famous.
We cut to Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light) as FBI agents come to let her know that Andrew Cunanan has killed Gianni Versace. “When will it end?” she asks in a brittle voice. “You had two months. You had his name. His picture. He had the money he stole from Lee. What have you been doing?”
“We’ve been looking for him.” But the agent can’t wholly defend himself, and they all know what she’s really saying. Lee Miglin’s murder wasn’t particularly compelling to them until Andrew killed a celebrity. Until then, it had been dismissed as a Gay Thing. A trivium. The FBI suggest she get on a flight out of Florida, that Cunanan might know she’s filming there.
Her voice could etch glass. “You want me to run. From him? You provide whatever security you think necessary. I have never missed a broadcast in my life.”
Andrew learns from the TV that he’s made the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list. He’s described as a male prostitute who served affluent clients. (It’s left open to speculation whether he knew Versace in that capacity.) He catches a statement from Marilyn Miglin in which she simply says her husband of 38 years was “her prince” and that she had “a fairytale marriage.” You can’t help hearing both connotations of the word “fairy,” and remembering Cunanan’s siblings referring to him as “Prince Andrew”; everything’s starting to converge and in Marilyn’s slow, deep, pause-riddled voice here is almost oracular.
Andrew dresses, leaves the houseboat and steals a car, giggling at the radio coverage suggesting Mafia involvement in Versace’s murder. Then he realizes he’s stuck at a police checkpoint and it stops being quite so funny. There’s no way off the island. All the causeways are blocked. The world’s finally paying attention to Andrew. He throws the stolen car keys into the water and screams.
He’s not the only one who’s watching the coverage. His mother is hiding under a blanket in front of the TV when the knock comes at the door in San Diego. She opens the door for the police and meekly asks “Have you killed my son?”
No, they have not. Andrew, now trapped like a rat with no money, isn’t laughing any more. Back in the houseboat, he watches TV footage of his mother being dragged out of her condo by the feds, looking totally unraveled.
Meanwhile, the cops have relocated poor, uneducated junkie Ronnie, a character I wasn’t expecting to see again and from whom I definitely wasn’t expecting one of the most searing monologues of the series. “He wasn’t hiding,” Ronnie tells the female cop. “Oh, you were looking for him, weren’t you? The only [lesbian] on the force? But the other cops, they weren’t looking so hard, were they?” It’s a tough call whether the look on her face or Ronnie’s is more devastating. Ronnie’s dismissiveness of their attitude—sure, Cunanan kills a bunch of gay nobodies and nobody cares, but now he kills a celebrity and he matters?—is so scathing and so hideously real, and when the cop doubles down and accuses him of being an accessory to murder, he just scoffs.
“So you never talked about Versace?” the male cop asks Ronnie.
“All he talked about was Versace,” Ronnie replies, his slightly clouded-over eyes suddenly clear as he leans in. “We all did. We all wondered what it would be like to be so powerful it didn’t matter that you were gay. The truth is, you were disgusted by him long before he became disgusting… Andrew isn’t hiding. He’s trying to be seen.”
It’s such a nasty and amazing moment. Because everyone in that room knows this guy is telling it exactly like it is. And there are no available rejoinders, just none. Again, the narcissistic quandary: When you’re not being looked at, you stop existing, so how far will you go to ensure you stay alive? And when society has a tendency to erase you because, as Ronnie puts it, you were “born a lie,” how much more toxic is it to have been raised by parents who, whether deliberately or by incompetence, saw to it that you never had a sense of your inherent human value? Lots of people deal with societal intolerance without becoming anything but stronger for it. Lots of people have narcissistic tendencies without being disordered. Lots of people have personality disorders and never kill anyone. But Andrew Cunanan was a perfect storm, and this man who barely knew him understands it almost instinctively.
Andrew haunts the waterfront, literally and figuratively adrift, and is getting really hungry. In front of a TV screen again, he sees Lizzie (Annaleigh Ashford) reading a statement in which she says she knows who he really is, adds that she loves him unconditionally, and urges him to turn himself in.
Next, David Madson’s father appears on TV, responding to accusations that David was involved with Andrew in the murder of Jeff Trail. (The cops really haven’t bothered connecting the dots, have they?) Andrew turns off the TV, but the voices don’t stop—it’s almost as if they’re in his head, but really there are just multiple TVs and radios blaring the same coverage. The desperation is getting serious at this point. He’s hungry enough to try (unsuccessfully) to eat dog food. So he watches Marilyn Miglin on the Home Shopping Network, talking about how she always wanted to make a perfume for her mother; how her wonderful father had died young; how they had lived in poverty and her mother had never had money for luxuries; and how this perfume she’s selling is one she would have wanted to go back in time to give to her mother as a way of saying “how special” she was.
Special.
And yep, Andrew calls Dad (Jon Jon Briones), who immediately says he’ll be there for Andrew in 24 hours, regardless of the danger he’ll be putting himself in. “I will find you. I will hold you in my arms like I used to. I promise.” Andrew is stupid enough to be filled with hope, and packs his things and waits.
But Modesto Cunanan doesn’t show up in Miami. He shows up on TV, from Manila, telling a reporter his son is innocent.
Of being a homosexual.
Modesto goes on to say Andrew is “special” and “a genius” and that he would never kill anyone and that he’s too smart for the police to find him anyway. That he phones all the time. That he has spoken to Andrew in the last 24 hours.
“What did you discuss?” the reporter asks.
Modesto smiles like a snake. “The movie rights to his life story. Andrew was very particular about the title.” The camera zooms in on Modesto’s face. “A Name to Be Remembered By.” Horror dawns on Andrew’s face, followed by rage. He puts a bullet through the TV screen, and through his father’s face.
In Milan, Antonio (Ricky Martin) and Donatella (Penelope Cruz) are talking before the funeral. Antonio mentions staying at Lake Como in a house Gianni had left to him. Donatella tells Antonio the board had to take possession of all Gianni’s properties because his personal finances were troubled. There’s nothing she can do. She’s on the board and Gianni’s sister, but there’s nothing she can do. Antonio’s out in the cold. Nice lady. At the memorial service, the priest won’t mention Antonio or even touch him as he walks by to bless the family. It turns out that Ronnie never understood that maybe there was really no amount of wealth or privilege that could erase the stigma of being gay. Well, maybe in Miami Beach, but not in the Catholic Church, not even when your priest is supposed to be there to help you process the loss of your partner of 15 years.
Andrew’s now eating the dog food as he watches Princess Diana and Elton John arrive in Milan for the funeral. He watches the service, fervently singing along with the boys’ choir rendition of “The Lord Is My Shepherd.” I don’t think he’s singing for Gianni Versace.
They’ve found the houseboat. The landlord, the cops, the FBI, helicopters, snipers. Andrew locks himself into a bedroom, where he sees a phantasm of his younger self. As the cops enter the houseboat, Andrew poses (dramatically as ever) in a seriously freighted silhouette, with the barrel of Jeff Trail’s gun in his mouth.
“I’m so happy right now,” he says to Gianni Versace as we hear the shot. They’re back in the San Francisco opera house from the season premiere. Gianni tells Andrew he doesn’t need to persuade people that he’s great or special, he needs to do something special. “Finish your novel,” he tells Andrew. Andrew begs to be taken on as his protégé, then tries to kiss Versace, who rebuffs him. “No,” Versace says. “I wanted you to be here to be inspired, to be nourished by this,” he says, indicating the empty house. “If we kissed, you would doubt. One day you will understand why I said no.”
Of course, Versace’s right, and we’d all live in a better world if there were more men with boundaries that intact.
We cut back to Marilyn Miglin as the police come to tell her that Cunanan’s dead. “Good. It’s over.” Her assistant finds her looking through letters. “We receive hundreds of letters from viewers,” she says. “Since my husband died, I receive letters about him. People he helped. Whose bills he paid. He never told me.”
At Lake Como, Donatella tells Santo that she was annoyed with Gianni the morning he was killed, that she didn’t pick up the phone when he called.
Antonio takes a boatload of sleeping pills.
A plaque with Andrew Cunanan’s name on it is applied to a blank piece of marble in a columbarium. A maid finds Antonio still alive. Donatella lights a candle for Gianni. The camera recedes down the faceless hallway of the columbarium, the ashes put away behind the identical squares of white stone.
The first time Darren Criss and Edgar Ramirez saw “Alone,” the complicated finale of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” they had no idea how their respective stories would end. For Ramirez, it turns out that Gianni Versace’s last scene came at the very beginning of his journey with the character.
“That was my very first scene in the show,” Ramirez said earlier this week at an “American Crime Story: Versace” screening event at the Directors Guild Theater in West Hollywood. Joined by assorted cast and crew from the entire season, Ramirez and his scene partner Darren Criss both spoke about their reactions to the finale — which they had just seen for the very first time, and were still struggling to process.
In one of the final moments of “Alone,” as federal agents are descending on Andrew Cunanan’s hideout, we trip back to the past, as Versace (Ramirez) and Andrew (Criss) have a conversation on the stage of an empty opera house. After a long discussion about the nature of beauty in the world, Andrew leans in for a kiss. Even when Versace gently declines, the sequence still ends on a note of peace and calm. Immediately shattering that atmosphere, the show snaps to its present, when Andrew fatally shoots himself in the head.
Although the two knew that scene might be used, it came as a surprise to both actors to see that on-screen conversation between their two characters placed where it ended up. For them, it created a sense of ambiguity about whether or not that interaction was meant to have occurred in real life.
“Were we watching one of Andrew’s machinations? Were we watching something that actually happened? I love the way that I wasn’t even sure anymore. And I kinda like that, because it made me think, ‘Is everything I just saw a machination of Andrew’s brain?’ I don’t know,” Criss said. “It was very effective to me because he lived in this nebulous sort of world. Considering how pivotal, whether fictional or non-fictional, that moment would have been, to put it right there at the end of his life was quite powerful to me.”
Added Ramirez, “I think that’s the beauty of good storytelling — that, in the end, it will fill the holes and connect the dots that reality can’t. No one will ever know what went through the heads of Gianni Versace or Andrew Cunanan. No one will ever really know if these two guys ever looked each other in the eye and connected or passed any kind of energy to each other.”
For Criss, the moment also crystalized an idea that he’d had after hearing questions about how many other Andrew moments actually transpired the way they did in real life.
“People constantly ask us, ‘Did that really happen?!’ I don’t know. But that’s irrelevant to me. It actually doesn’t matter to me. It’s the emotional content that we’re providing for this particular narrative. And that’s what hits me harder,” Criss said. “Whether it happened or not, if Andrew had believed that the emotional value of a moment like that happened, whether it was a handshake, a high five, a glance across the room, or a poster on his wall, the emotional content of that scene existed in his brain. It’s what carried him through what we watched these past nine episodes. That’s what’s more important to me.”
Many of the panelists reiterated that for them, the series is a reflection of love in many forms. Whether it was Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light), who returns in the finale for an affecting coda, Versace’s partner Antonio (Ricky Martin), or the memories of lost companions that Ronnie (Max Greenfield) refers to in his passionate interrogation room monologue, that message came through for them just as much as the pain that one young man inflicted twenty years ago.
“You know what really happened? The love between Gianni and Antonio. That really happened. I met people who know and were witnesses of that love. I think that’s what the show brings. We all feel that we know the story, but the reality is that we didn’t know the story,” Ramirez said.
In assembling the rest of the episode, writer Tom Rob Smith wanted to address the kind of reality that Andrew would have created for himself. But a central driving question of this episode came down to why Andrew would decide not to continue his moment of notoriety into a drawn-out court case.
“You’re looking at a man who everyone said is obsessed with fame, why does he not take the showcase of a trial? This is someone who was put on this earth to impress people. That’s what he wanted to do. He lost his money, he lost his looks, he lost the ability to impress people, and he turns to notoriety,” Smith said. “But I think when he gets to this endpoint, I think he’s disgusted with himself. That comes through very strongly in this episode. This is someone who wanted to be loved and who screwed that up so badly that when that news coverage fades, he’s left with this sense of profound shame. That was at the heart of the episode.”
Part of that process involved digging deep into what really happened during the Cunanan manhunt. Key scenes at the Miami Beach marina, the state of Andrew’s hideout, and even the priest’s refusal to take Antonio’s hand at Versace’s funeral all came from verified accounts of the aftermath of the murders.
“We know that the thing with the boat, they found bits of bread and Andrew’s newspaper clippings. We know that he was trying to escape. His dad did say that he rang him. That is all true. The ‘A Name to Be Remembered By’ title is the title that Modesto Cunanan wanted Andrew’s life to be called,” Smith said. “Actually, when you look at it, there were loads of fragments that were absolutely true. The Versace magazines by the head, again, that was real. And the coverage is all archive. We’re just trying to string them together.”
Executive producer Brad Simpson explained that the process of putting together the final episode was something that came at the very end of the process, a more gradual way to piece together the culmination of a season-long reverse approach to understanding the crime.
“It was the hardest episode. It was the only one that we didn’t have a plan at the beginning of how it was going to lay out. I think [Tom] did a brilliant job figuring out exactly how to let you know what’s going on inside Andrew’s hand and surmise what might have been happening,” Simpson said.
“We’re dealing with fragments, but when you have ten pieces of a puzzle and they’re all a cathedral, you can kind of work out the rest,” Smith said.
While the weeks after the premiere of FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story illustrated the path that took Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) on a killing spree across the U.S., Wednesday’s season finale returned to the death of the famed fashion designer and the aftermath of his murder as Cunanan spent his frantic final days before killing himself on a Miami houseboat.
The episode brought back many of the series’ all-star guest roster — Judith Light as widow Marilyn Miglin, Max Greenfield as Cunanan’s junkie friend Ronnie, Annaleigh Ashford as Cunanan’s oldest friend Elizabeth Cote, Jon Jon Briones and Joanna P. Adler as Cunanan’s parents — to show how all of the series’ major players were coping with Cunanan’s crimes.
Miglin, on business in nearby Tampa, was hoping her husband’s killer would be caught. Adler’s Mary Ann was dumbstruck that her son was responsible for such heinous crimes, Cote pleaded for the return of her kind-hearted friend, and Briones’ Modesto, whom Cunanan called in a desperate haze after realizing he wouldn’t be able to escape the cops, told his son he’d help him but then gave an interview on the news about a potential movie instead.
Much of the hour-plus episode featured Cunanan becoming increasingly more emotional and hopeless as he took shelter in a houseboat, watching Gianni’s (Edgar Ramirez) Italian funeral on television and reminiscing about his time with the designer. “What if you had a dream your whole life that you were special, but no one believed it,” Cunanan asked. Versace responded that it wasn’t about potential, it was about following through.
Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin returned as Versace’s grieving sister, Donatella, and partner, Antonio D’Amico, respectively, for emotional scenes coming to terms with Versace’s death. And, after Cunanan ultimately shot himself, a final scene juxtaposing Cunanan’s unremarkable final resting place and lack of mourners with Versace’s opulent mausoleum and Donatella’s palpable grief.
For viewers surprised that Versace himself was present in so few of the series’ nine episodes, writer Tom Rob Smith tells The Hollywood Reporter that it was not his intention to tell Versace’s story.
“We were upfront about the source material,” he explains. “We were never doing a biopic of Versace, because that’s this amazing success story. We were always doing a crime story, and the crime story is Cunanan. And what is interesting in relation to the crime story is the symbolism of Versace. What he represents, how he overcame everything that Andrew failed to overcome: homophobia and relative poverty. All the things that made Versace a success compared to things that made Cunanan destructive.”
The finale, Smith explains, is “bringing together all of these people that were destroyed and damaged by Andrew, and really exploring what it is to lose someone. I think this is one of the few stories where the victim’s loss is at the center of this piece — this hole that was created by Andrew.”
While Cunanan’s final moments were largely fictional, since the killer was holed up in Miami alone, Criss tells THR that he first thought that Cunanan’s suicide was largely an act of desperation. But after speaking with Smith about it, he realized that the decision was very deliberate.
“This is a guy who could have gone to court,” Criss says.“He could have stretched it out forever. He could have been Charles Manson. If he was looking for fame and notoriety then he could have stuck with that. He could have been incarcerated and continued to be on magazines for the rest of his life.
He adds, "This is a guy who has curated his entire life’s story very specifically, to the T. His backstory, what his parents did. Different people knew different versions of him because he was very specific of how his image would appear and what his story was. So I think he must have come to a point where he realized that if he was incarcerated, that narrative was taken away from him and the only way to control or almost canonize his notoriety and infamy would be to take his own life.”
The season also touched on the internalized homophobia within law enforcement at the time that potentially hindered the investigation of Cunanan’s other murders before Versace — David Madson, Jeff Trail, Lee Miglin, William Reese — but Smith tells THR the way the homophobia affected Cunanan was also incredibly destructive.
“Ultimately the homophobia, I think, is much more about Andrew’s homophobia — the way it beat him as a person and the way he soaked up everything, rather than it just being a personified police officer doing it,” he says.
But the juxtaposition between the two men from similar backgrounds who grew up to do vastly different things with their latent potential is what the finale ultimately drove home.
“You can’t just say Andrew was beaten by society. Other people overcame the things that he didn’t,” Smith says. “You’re contrasting, I think, two very different people who have many similarities in the beginning and why one person was full of love and created so much — Versace and this genius — with one person who became such a monster. That, to me, is one of the central shapes of the story.”
A few thoughts on the conclusion of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story coming up just as soon as the champagne cork pops…
Versace was a huge tonal and structural departure from the OJ season of American Crime Story. I admire Ryan Murphy’s willingness to gamble on Tom Rob Smith’s very different vision — half the fun of the anthology miniseries structure is the ability to radically change the show each time out — and appreciated the performances by Criss, Ramirez, Cruz, Martin, Light, and everyone else, but the experiment never quite came together for me.
Some of this was simply being forced to spend so much time in the company of Cunanan, when the show’s unflinching portrayal of his parastic sociopathy would be much more sustainable at movie length. And some was from Smith’s conceit of telling the story in reverse, so we only got proper context for things (the murder of Jeff Trail, that Cunanan’s story about having the master bedroom as a kid was true) well after the fact, which sucked a lot of the emotional power from the thing.
A show that went fully in reverse would have ended with last week’s “Creator/Destroyer,” the first episode to attempt to explain, and even slightly sympathize with, Cunanan as we saw how his father’s own pathological lies helped shape Andrew into the monster he became. It probably would have been a more potent end to the story than “Alone” turned out to be.
Some of this is Smith being bound by history. After murdering Versace, Cunanan eluded authorities for a week, then killed himself on that houseboat without a suicide note. So there’s no dramatic confrontation, no grand pronouncement about motive. Instead, the script lets the allegedly most important moment of Cunanan’s life flash before his eyes as the bullet enters, taking us back to his evening with Versace from the premiere, and to Gianni casually repudiating Andrew’s life philosophy by telling him to do something with his life rather than assuming greatness will simply come to him. It’s an effective scene — virtually every scene with Gianni was, which only left me wishing the show was more about him and Antonio and Donatella, and less about Cunanan — but doesn’t offer a huge amount of insight into Cunanan beyond what the previous eight episodes had told us.
This held true throughout the finale. Judith Light, Ricky Martin, and Penelope Cruz were all excellent again as Marilyn Miglin, Antonio, and Donatella each grappled with their losses. But other than perhaps Antonio reckoning with the limitations of his inheritance (due in part to not being Gianni’s legal spouse), their scenes were well-acted but thematically redundant.
The finale’s most effective reprise was the return of Max Greenfield as Ronnie, who was also there to reiterate ideas the season had put forth several times before, but in a manner so bluntly eloquent that it served his purpose. In particular, Ronnie telling the cops that they were “disgusted by him long before he became disgusting” neatly and viciously summed up the series’ attitude about why Cunanan was able to take and ruin so many lives before anyone in law-enforcement took him seriously.
Through those first eight episodes FX initially sent to critics, Versace felt like a collection of terrific pieces that added up to less than the sum of their individual parts. I had hoped the finale would retroactively elevate what had come before. Instead, it seemed a missed opportunity, like a lot of the season, down to the renewed emphasis on the Versaces after many weeks of focusing on Cunanan and, at times, his other victims.
If nothing else, the finale for The Assassination Of Gianni Versace was always going to be interesting. The series started with ambitious goals to provide a true crime series, a character portrait of a killer, a time capsule of the ‘90s, and an overlapping examination of a number of issues ranging from classism to internalized homophobia to the AIDS crisis. Not all of it was successful (in fact, most were not) and it resulted in a fairly uneven season of television where, from episode to episode, it would somehow switch from too packed with information to too shallow. Inability to drum to a steady beat was Assassination’s biggest frustration: the first couple of episodes were almost maniacally paced and brimming with plot; the last few made me wonder why we needed a nine-episode order to tell a possible six-episode story. But seeing how all of this—and the constantly-jumping timeline—would come together, and wondering what’s left in the tank, was part of the intrigue for the back half. After all, all Assassination has left is Andrew’s final kill: himself.
“Alone,” almost bookending the premiere episode, returns to July 1997 and again shows us Versace’s murder. But then it shows us the days between the murder and Andrew’s death, speculating on what Andrew was doing, saying, and feeling. Of course, there’s no way for writer Tom Rob Smith (and journalist Maureen Orth) to know the truth. What the episode guesses is that Andrew was celebratory, poppin’ champagne and obsessing over the news coverage, watching the failed manhunt on the deck while looking oddly at peace. He squats on a houseboat (this much is true) and seems thrilled by his face plastered on the screen—until it becomes too much. He watches Lizzie read a letter begging him to give himself up, even bringing up Andrew’s godchildren (this tape is real; we have no way of knowing whether or not Andrew ever saw it), and an interview with David Madson’s father, wondering if the two were lovers.
Then Andrew breaks down and calls his father in the Philippines, sobbing on the phone. Modesto is Modesto to the end, basically scolding Andrew because “men don’t cry” but he says he’s going to come to Miami to help. Of course, Modesto isn’t to be trusted. Andrew later watches an interview where Modesto denies Andrew’s homosexuality and, we learn, just wants to make a movie about him. (Here’s a fun fact check: Modesto did indeed want a movie with the non-negotiable title A Name To Be Remembered. He thought John F. Kennedy Jr. could play Andrew, and that it would gross $115 million.) Andrew and Modesto never reunite; shortly after, the houseboat is surrounded and Andrew puts a gun in his own mouth.
Maybe that’s part of why “Alone” feels so incomplete (and why I’m hesitant to put the blame entirely on the writing for my lukewarm feelings), because it doesn’t have anywhere to go except back to that fantasy sequence, of Andrew and Versace, all talk of inspiration and lust but not much else. I’ve mostly avoided (I think!) comparing the two seasons but, sorry: American Crime Story had an easier time with The People v. O.J. Simpson in part because it’s an easier story—easier to tell, easier to digest, easier to format into a season-long narrative arc based around a trial. It had an ending where Simpson went free (spoiler alert!) and had a life (and eventually a prison stint) afterward, which writers could use to go back and inform the character(s) and actions (I would be surprised if they didn’t dip into If I Did It as well for some insight). But here, Andrew gave himself a final ending, meaning we’ll never get his side of things, or his reasoning, or closure outside of knowing he can’t kill again. It was an abrupt ending to the “largest failed manhunt in U.S. history,” and that in itself felt incomplete, which is mirrored in the finale.
But “Alone” isn’t just following Andrew, which means we see a struggling Donatella and Antonio mourning Versace, even while still at odds (they have continued to have a vaguely-contemptuous relationship long afterward). There’s another wonderful appearance from Judith Light who, as Mrs. Miglin, takes the police to task for having Andrew’s name and photo for months without catching him. “What has he been doing for two months? What have you been doing?” (And that perfume bit was an easy highlight, too.) The police also go to Mary Anne Cunanan who can only ask, “Did you kill my son?”
They interrogate Ronnie (oh, hey, Ronnie!) who basically shrugs his way through the police interview—but does confirm Detective Lori’s instincts that they should’ve been looking at particular gay bars, so we can get some bonus anger at the botched investigation. “Alone” reiterates one of Assassination’s most prevalent points: that Andrew, and other gay people, “all imagined what it would be like to be so rich and so powerful that it doesn’t matter that you’re gay” and “the truth is you were disgusted by him long before he became disgusting.” It should feel more powerful than it is but instead it’s a reminder of the show’s insistence on beating us over the head with the same points when it could instead cover new ground.
One thing that stuck with me in Orth’s book was the press/celebrity around the matter: Modesto’s Larry King interview, Mary Anne’s general presence on the press circuit, the way that various friends and former lovers of Andrew were paraded around to give their stories, the disgusting hunger of the press who found themselves in bidding wars for sensationalized pictures or interviews, the people who basically had lucrative mini-careers profiting on the many deaths. For much of Assassination, I’d assumed (or hoped) this would get touched on (especially thinking back to the pilot, with the woman’s magazine and Versace’s blood, or the Polaroid photo of his body) but we didn’t get that which certainly seems like a missed opportunity—particularly because the show was heavy on classism, and a general obsession with money and fame.
The ending of the series is a mixed bag: Mrs. Miglin finds out Lee was a nice guy who paid bills and helped a man’s career (is the show implying that these were also his lovers? I don’t know! I kind of don’t care!); Donatella is wracked with guilt because she was annoyed with her brother and didn’t answer his call, the last call he’d make to her before he died; Antonio is all alone without Versace and swallows a handful of pills in a suicide attempt; the series ends on a sweeping shot of a mausoleum where Andrew’s body is kept. And … that’s it. Which is how I felt after that: “Is this it?” But at the same time, I’m not sure what else there could be.
Stray observations
Like always, I’m worried that this review makes it seem like I like it way less than I did, but it’s just easier to focus on the parts that left me cold or wanting. Overall, it was a solid season of television with a few bumps in the road, and the ambitiousness of it all helped to sell it. It’s just not a show that I will ever rewatch; I’d be surprised if I’m still thinking about it next week whereas the first season routinely enters my mind. But please, change my mind!
Was that end disclaimer in all the aired episodes (I’ve been watching screeners) or just this one?
The acting remained superb throughout and I would love it if Judith Light popped up in some future installments— though I must admit I don’t have high hopes for the Katrina season, and wish ACS would just skip ahead to Monica Lewinsky.
Speaking of: What’s your dream American Crime Story season? In my opinion, Ryan Murphy’s most missed opportunity was not acquiring Jeffrey Toobin’s Patty Hearst book because that story is basically built for this.
Wednesday’s finale of American Crime Story: Versacebrought to an end the horrific escapades of Andrew Cunanan and checked back in with the people whose lives were forever changed by his twisted actions.
The episode picked up exactly where the season premiere began, with a sunkissed Andrew strolling down the streets of Miami Beach, gun in hand, waiting for the perfect shot at Gianni Versace. And we all know how that went.
Judith Light’s Marilyn Miglin was the first familiar face to reappear; the FBI showed up at her Miami hotel room to inform her that it was no longer safe for her to be in Florida, offering to help transport her to safety. She declined, demanding that they escort her to her scheduled home-shopping broadcast, but not before dressing down the bumbling agents who failed to capture Andrew:
How many more are going to die? How much more pain do you think I can suffer? Two months. You had two months. You had his name, his photo. What did he have, the money he stole from Lee? What has he been doing for two months? What have YOU been doing? And where is he now, that man? I won’t say his name. Where is he now? … You want me to run? You want me to hide from him? You provide whatever security you think necessary. I have never missed a broadcast in my life.
But Marilyn wasn’t the only shadow from Andrew’s past to take aim at the authorities. Max Greenfield’s Ronnie was also interrogated, providing him the platform to question how seriously they’d been taking this case.
“Oh, you were looking for him, weren’t you, the only lez on the force,” he said. “But the other cops, they weren’t searching so hard, where they? Why is that, because he killed a bunch of nobody gays?”
Meanwhile, Andrew was holed up in some stranger’s houseboat literally eating dog food, practically daring the feds to bust him. (Apparently Ronnie was right when he said, “Andrew is not hiding. He’s trying to be seen.”) He spent most of his time watching reports about himself on the news, including uplifting messages from his friends (Lizzie!) and exploitative interviews with his father — the latter of which made Andrew so angry that he shot his television screen. (Well, the television screen of the man who owned he house in which he was squatting.)
Speaking of the homeowner, it was his return that triggered the beginning of the end for Andrew. Shortly after he reported a burglary, police helicopters were circling overhead and a hostage negotiator was attempting to talk Andrew out of the house. But Andrew wasn’t about to give in — not on someone else’s terms, at least. He placed a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger before he could be apprehended.
Wednesday’s finale also took us inside Gianni’s funeral, during which Antonio discovered that he might as well have died along with his lover. Not only did the priest shun his greeting, but Donatella informed him that he wouldn’t be able to live on the property Gianni had promised him. As a member of the board that controlled the property, Donatella could have insisted that he live there — that is, if she had cared enough to do so.
Tonight was the haunting, operatic finale to The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. The end of the nine-hour miniseries found Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) taking his own life and the Versace family laying their beloved Gianni (Edgar Ramirez) to rest.
EW talked to executive producer Ryan Murphy about the finale, Criss’ revelatory performance, and whether Katrina is still planned as the next installment in FX’s critically acclaimed American Crime Story franchise.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You all shot in the Versace mansion for a month for the beginning of the series. Was this finale shot when you shot the initial stuff at Versace’s home? Or did you go back? RYAN MURPHY: No, we went back. We had to build that houseboat. We built it based on the specifications of the mockup, so it took some time.
This final episode feels almost like a curtain call for a lot of the actors, like Jon Jon Briones and Max Greenfield. Was that a conscious choice to have them back and, in some ways, take a bow? Well, I think the point was to bring back as many of the players as you could. But they were all very active in those final days of Cunanan. Like, they really did think Cunanan might be coming for Marilyn Miglin. So it all dovetailed nicely. By the nature of the cross- country manhunt idea, the narrative was so spread out, so it was nice to finally have an episode where all of these great people could come back together. That was always part of the plan of the structure.
Max Greenfield’s scene in the interrogation room at the police station feels like the thesis for Versace, in that homophobia was so much of the reason the police didn’t pursue Cunanan. Yes, and also Marilyn Miglin [played by Judith Light] has a big monologue about family. So yes, but I think the reason I was interested in doing it initially and was drawn to it initially was because one of the crimes was apathy. Here was this manhunt, and it’s true that in Miami a lot of the police officers would not go into gay bars to put up the most-wanted posters because they thought people would think they were gay. So by pure apathy and being dismissed as, “Well, he’s taking out gay people, who cares!” that’s one of the reasons he ultimately had such a high body count — because people just didn’t care, particularly law enforcement.
It’s so great to see Jon Jon, Judith, Max and even Ricky Martin get these great moments. Was that rewarding to give them these showcases at the end? We gave all these great actors these solo arias. I love that about it. I thought it added something personal. One of the things we’ve done over the course over the show, it wasn’t a show just about Versace or Cunanan — it was about the victims and the victims of the time. They’re all such fantastic actors, so to give them these page, two-page-long monologues, I loved doing that and I know they were very grateful for that.
So much of the houseboat stuff feels like a hallucination by Andrew. Was that something you were going for? Yeah we did. Of course nobody can really know what happened in there other than a lot of physical evidence he left behind, like what he ate and what he watched. What I thought was so crazy about that houseboat was that there was a TV in every room and Andrew had found this television projector, so that was something that was really there. So he kind of did have TVs going in every room. At that point, Cunanan was on crystal meth and coming down off the drug in very painful withdrawal, and he had no food. The last couple days of his life were very fraught.
Darren really leaves everything on the table for this role, even shaving his head. You were his biggest champion for this — how do you feel about his performance? I am proud of him and I always knew he could do it and I think he proved he could do it. I was very adamant about his casting. I thought there was a great dramatic actor inside there waiting to come out. He took his responsibilities very seriously, and that’s the best thing I can ever do having the gig I have, is believing in people and giving the opportunities for them to shine. I do think it’s the best performance of the year, and I think it’s the hardest. It’s a nine-hour descent into madness.
You began the series with Versace waking up, and you end it with Andrew in a mausoleum. Did you go back and forth on the final image? Well, I liked the juxtaposition and I like what it said: In the end, Andrew didn’t get what he wanted. He was just one man out of thousands. When you pull out and the names surrounding him go on forever, as opposed to Versace. I liked the idea of the anonymity of Andrew’s legacy. I thought it was haunting to go back and forth to Donatella looking at the medusa in Versace’s mausoleum, and the grandeur and the love and the family and the spirit, versus the coldness and isolation of Andrew’s.
So when will ACS: Katrina start? Soon? I don’t quite know. We’re working on a couple of things. That’s a show where we have a lot of things cooking. We literally just edited the finale last week, so we haven’t made that decision yet. We’re never going to have a Crime Storyunless we have the scripts down. I think the reason why Versace went next is because Tom Rob Smith had such a strong take on it. I am not in a rush to move forward with anything unless it’s perfect. So we’ll see what’s next for that.
What about Feud 2? Are you any closer with that? Still talking about it. We’re still deciding it. I have the new Netflix deal and I have all my shows with Fox, I don’t want to do something unless the scripts are ready and the casts are ready. I’m taking my time and just trying to get everything right.
I haven’t talked to you since the Netflix deal. How do you feel about this? I’m really excited. I’m really excited to do something else. I’m excited to explore new worlds and do all different types of programming and make documentaries. I’m also really excited about the shows I have with Fox, two of those are my Netflix shows, Ratched and The Politician. At least for the near foreseeable future, nothing has changed. It’s business as usual and I’m still there, and we’re all still close and cool. I feel good about everything.
ACS news 