Tag: acs spoilers

The violence of capitalism in The Assassination Of Gianni Versace

There’s a moment early on in The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story that, perhaps more than any other, sticks with you long after the image fades. Andrew Cunanan (a remarkable, terrifying Darren Criss), who we’ve already seen kill Gianni Versace, stands in the bathroom of a rundown motel room that he occasionally shares with his friend and potential partner Ronnie Holston (Max Greenfield). He stares at his reflection in the mirror. His face doesn’t move. He betrays no sign of any emotion. Then, he picks up a roll of duct tape, peels the tape back, and begins wrapping it around his head. The motion continues, the signature sound of the strong adhesive an eerie soundtrack to the nonsensical actions. Before long he’s covered his face and head, with just enough room to breathe.

It’s a quietly chilling scene made all the more tense when Andrew plays it off like nothing to Ronnie, but it’s also an insight into one of the show’s more intriguing thematic explorations: the violence of capitalism and its effect on our identity. In the early episodes especially, the show seems to revel in the lavishness of its setting while contrasting that sense of fullness with Andrew’s persistent change in identity. The very first scene of the premiere sees the camera moving from the expanse of the ocean to the expanse of Gianni Versace’s mansion, both settings turbulent, overwhelming, and unpredictable in their own ways. Ryan Murphy directs the opening sequence in a way that immediately situates us in this world of opulence. We take in the clouds painted on the bedroom ceiling, a verisimilitude of the outdoors, and the first of many images that look to replicate an authentic experience.

Through the halls of the mansion we go, our eyes unable to keep up with everything in our path: chandeliers, priceless art, silk pajamas, and balconies with an ocean view. This is the life we are meant to envy, the American Dream come true. Murphy, for the most part, films the scene with a bird’s-eye view, as if we’re outsiders that long to be given access to these gilded halls. Immediately the show is drawing a visual connection between violence and materialism. The episode cuts from Andrew angrily screaming in the tempestuous ocean to Gianni, surrounded by servants, enjoying a lavish breakfast inside the sunlit concourse of his home. More viscerally, there’s the image of Andrew pulling The Man Who Was Vogue, a book about the rise of Condé Nast and his influence on cultural gatekeeping and style, out of his backpack, followed immediately by a gun. Violence follows materialism is the suggestion, one that pops up again and again throughout the season.

It’d be slightly preposterous to argue that The Assassination Of Gianni Versace is some sort of remarkable Marxist critique of capitalism and material wealth, but as the episodes unfold it’s hard to ignore that the show is teasing out an intriguing connection between Andrew Cunanan’s ability to shift his personality at will and our own willingness to adopt certain roles in a very public way, spurred on by a culture obsessed with social media and its consumerist tendencies. Coursing through the show is a critique of our consumerist culture; despite being set the in the late ’90s out of necessity to the true crime, this is a show that’s very much aware of the plague of tastemaking and performative consumption and sharing that defines so much of our lives today. But what’s more scathing is how the show uses Andrew Cunanan as a stand-in for the anxiety and personal oppression that comes with such a culture. His need to be anything and everything to the people around him is not just a sign of his psychopathic tendencies, but a result of the pressures of a capitalist system that continually tells us we’re not doing good enough, that who we are is a failure, and that buying more things is the only way to establish a true, stable, respected identity.

Cunanan—it’s important to note that throughout this piece any mention or analysis of Andrew Cunanan is referring to the character within this show, and not the real man he’s based on—is an enigma similar to Patrick Bateman, a character from a more problematic work that, nonetheless, still draws a connection between Bateman’s bloody outbursts and his need to conform to an ever-shifting set of ideals about what it means to be respected, glorified, and envied. There’s a reason the business-card scene in Mary Harron’s 2000 adaptation of American Psycho stands out so vividly within the film; because it provides terrifying insight into Patrick’s mind-set that the violent acts simply don’t. We need that context of Patrick’s insecurity to understand the violence.

Assassination wants us to understand Andrew in a similar way. He’s a man with no single identity—Andrew’s sexuality is a major component of his complex identity within the show, and Paste’s Matt Brennan wrote a stirring piece about it—but rather a collection of signifiers meant to convey worldliness, taste, and stature. When he first meets Gianni in a club, he regales him with stories about his lavish lifestyle and impeccable taste. Only later do we, and Gianni, realize that it’s all a fabrication, an attempt to convey a certain social standing that he’s been unable to achieve.

This is the anxiety and alienation that capitalism thrives on. It’s a system that creates and then benefits from identity crisis. Alienation is a term in Marxist theory with many different meanings that, when taken together, give us a broader understanding of a feeling that’s often difficult to define. As David Harvey lays out in Seventeen Contradictions And The End Of Capitalism, one such definition is alienation as a “passive psychological term” that means to “become isolated and estranged from some valued connectivity.” The result of that alienation is “to be angry and hostile at feeling oppressed, deprived or dispossessed and to act out that anger and hostility, lashing out sometimes without any clear definitive reason or rational target.” Andrew cannot fill that void inside of him, the one created by a system that tells you that you alone aren’t good enough. When a man in a dance club asks Andrew what he does, he responds thusly: “I’m a serial killer, I’m a banker, I’m a stockbroker, a paperback writer, I’m a cop, I’m a naval officer,” and more, listing off one profession after another. He’s everything and nothing all at once, driving home the idea that under capitalism there is no true identity, only a series of labels that oppress us.

The question is, then, are we all as psychopathic as Andrew Cunanan? Certainly most of us aren’t murderers, but Assassination does seem to suggest that Andrew’s troubling need to be everything all at once is not too far removed from our own need to belong, a feeling amplified in our current culture of constant sharing and liking. We curate our lives, and more importantly our social media timelines, in much the same way Andrew curates his behavior and personality. Andrew literally puts on a costume, another man’s suit and his expensive watch, to attend the opera. He can’t imagine doing anything else. He tells outlandish stories about fictional past boyfriends; one in particular would drive him around in his Rolls-Royce and also snagged Andrew a job building sets for Titanic. These are small violences, little bits of untruth that erode the social fabric and Andrew’s own understanding of himself. Are we doing the same? Are we allowing Instagram influencers, native advertising, and increasingly “hip and socially aware” brands to make us feel like shit just so we’ll buy the thing they’re shilling that supposedly won’t make us feel that way?

Assassination, in at least some way, wants us to ask those questions. It’s not the larger thematic thrust of the season, but it is an intriguing and unavoidable presence. The series asks us to question our own search for identity through material means by showing not only how Andrew is affected by alienation, but also how those around him struggle within a capitalist system. The Miglins are the best example. They are the epitome of the American Dream under capitalism. At a fundraiser gala, Lee gives a speech that evokes the classic “bootstraps” story of his success, and his wife has no trouble building a line of perfume to sell on TV. Everything is picture perfect.

That is, until you dig deeper. At home, Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light in a devastating performance) takes off her makeup, a maudlin look on her face. The mask necessitated by the public gala has been removed, and her sorrow is now visible. Similarly, Lee Miglin can’t be his true self, a gay man in a world that would financially and socially punish him for his sexuality. He wishes he could just “roam among them,” a beautiful statement about wanting to live free of restriction and punishment for who he is. But capitalism has a set of rules and an oppressive structure that must be abided by, and anything outside of that is pushed aside. So, this isn’t just about Andrew, but rather all of us, and the way we’re forced to imitate ways of life rather than living the way we truly want to.

I wish there were a hopeful message to end on, something in the show that points the way forward to a place where we can know one another’s intentions and understand our own, free from the forces of capitalism. But if anything, the world portrayed in The Assassination Of Gianni Versace, in all its gold-plated, vacuum-sealed glory, has only gotten worse. We’ve become more convinced that we can buy something in order to be something. We’ve become chameleons of emotion, projecting our grief, joy, and anxiety to our followers without any check on our authenticity. Like Andrew, we can wear any mask we want.

As chilling as the duct-tape scene is, the most telling moment when it comes to the performative nature of Andrew Cunanan, and thus ourselves, is when Andrew sees the news’ first piece about the killing of Gianni Versace. His face is blank for a moment before he’s overcome with grief. He looks on the verge of weeping, all before the hint of a smile creeps in and the episode cuts to commercial. An imitation of emotion, literally mimicking the public grief of the woman in front of him, as convincing as the real thing. It’s a moment with implications that the show explores throughout the season, which is that Andrew, and everyone else, is a product of a system that grinds us down, asks us to perform emotions and wants, and then shames us for failure. “It was all a lie, an act,” says David, one of Andrew’s victims, moments before he gets a bullet in the back. The violence of capitalism breeds an identity crisis, and a subsequent emptiness and isolation, that can lead to physical violence. We’re all at risk, refusing to challenge the rules and upend the system. We have more in common with Andrew Cunanan than any of us would like to admit.

The violence of capitalism in The Assassination Of Gianni Versace

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TV Party 001 – The One With The Introductions

Every so often, a podcast comes along that makes you reconsider the possibilities of the medium – a show so innovative, entertaining and downright transcendent that it changes you on a fundamental level. And also, there’s TV Party.

For this first episode, Allison and Clint are joined by Podlander Drunkcast’s Julie Starbird and The AV Club’s Caroline Siede. Together, the fearsome foursome talk about last week’s Good Place finale, the majesty of Lily Tomlin in Netflix’s Grace and Frankie, and more! | 5 February 2018

*from 51:02 –  53:01

American Crime Story S2: ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ is an unsettling meditation on true crime- Entertainment News, Firstpost

I love watching true crime shows. Always have. Never though, have I felt aware that as a consumer of these shows, I was exploiting the victims of heinous crimes. Until American Crime Story season 2.

After a critically acclaimed first season, based on the OJ Simpson trial, the FX show has turned its attention to another high-profile case: the assassination of Gianni Versace. The flamboyant designer was gunned down outside his home in Maimi; the shooter — Andrew Cunanan — coolly walked away after pumping bullets into Versace as the latter stood on his doorstep.

Three episodes have been released on the streaming service HotStar so far, and while the first (and to an extent, the second) gives us a glimpse into the life of Versace — or at least what he was doing on the day of his murder — to a great extent, the focus is on his killer, Cunanan.

Andrew Cunanan grew up as the son of a former Navy veteran-turned-stockbroker and a homemaker mom; his father skipped out on the family to avoid being arrested for embezzlement. Cunanan reportedly had an IQ of 147 (those with IQs in the 140-145 rage are considered geniuses), but didn’t have any academic distinctions to speak of (he dropped out of the University of California, San Diego, after briefly being enrolled there). He never held down a real job either, instead peddling drugs (and possibly other illicit goods), in addition to working with gay escort services. To indulge his taste for the high life, he carefully cultivated ‘sugar daddies’ — extremely wealthy older men (many of whom weren’t ‘out’ as gay) who would shower Cunanan with expensive gifts and money in exchange for companionship.

Cunanan was a glib talker (or to put it less euphemistically, a most fluent liar) and a social chameleon — he could change his persona depending on the situation; this, in addition to the aliases he used made his movements difficult to track. He was also extremely charming, although some acquaintances later claimed they had known Cunanan had a dark side as well.

By the time Cunanan made his way to Miami to kill Versace, he had already murdered four other men and was on the FBI’s ‘most wanted’ list. A series of oversights on the part of law enforcement authorities had helped him escape their net. He checked into a Miami hotel under an assumed name and then set up a watch outside Versace’s palatial home, until the morning when he finally shot the designer dead. He also neatly evaded being apprehended by the police in the aftermath of the crime.

This is the ground that The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story covers with respect to Cunanan’s murderous spree, in its three (so far released) episodes.

Cunanan’s first two murders aren’t dwelt on within these episodes (Jeffrey Trail, a close friend, and a former lover called David Madson were the first victims). But the third — of a respected Chicago-based businessman named Lee Miglin — is depicted in some detail. While the Miglin family has consistently denied this, American Crime Story season 2 shows Miglin as having used Cunanan’s services before; the night of his murder, Miglin invites Cunanan over to his home for a sexual encounter. It is at this time that Cunanan (having already killed Trail and Madson by this point) brutally murders the older man before making away with some valuables and the family’s Lexus.

Actor Darren Criss plays Andrew Cunanan with a gay (no pun intended) abandon. There’s a scene when (in Miami) he’s got an old man he propositioned on the beach, helplessly restrained on the bed. Clad only in his briefs, Criss/Cunanan dances across the suite gleefully with a pair of scissors in his hand, even as the audience is left to wonder just where a stab of those sharp blades will land.

Criss channels Cunanan’s charm, his effortless prevarications, his role playing. Through it all you never lose sight of the sinister quality of his persona; at several points in the three episodes, you’ll experience a sense of dread, of sympathy for his victims who do not know what fate is to befall them at the hand of this man. Like the man bound up in bed, you can only wonder helplessly where Cunanan’s next blow will fall; because his violence is so random, it’s that much harder to predict.

As much as The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is about Criss playing Cunanan, there are also strong performances by Judith Light as Lee Miglin’s widow Marilyn, and Penelope Cruz, who plays Gianni’s younger sister Donatella Versace.

Cruz — sporting Donatella’s signature platinum blonde mane — steps into the frame after Gianni’s murder. Donatella was Gianni’s muse, she was also in charge of handling the brand image for Versace. With her brother’s death, she became Versace’s creative head as well. Cruz has the voice and mannerisms down pat. She’s impressive when she sashays in and takes charge of a difficult situation, and in those rare moments when she lets her cool mask slip and gives in to tears.

Judith Light infuses her portrayal of Marilyn Miglin with similar strength. She’s brisk, brusque and businesslike, hyper-vigilant that not a breath of scandal touch her now dead husband, and allows herself the luxury of breaking down only in the presence of a trusted associate. She’s a lonely woman even when her husband is alive — the Miglins’ marriage is depicted as affectionate and respectful but also devoid of passion (and not just due to their age).

The man at the centre of it all — Gianni Versace (played by Edgar Ramirez) — also has a quality of loneliness about him. Whether it’s in his vast, baroque mansion or in the company of his partner/lover of 15 years, Antonio (Ricky Martin), Versace somehow invites our sympathy — but maybe that’s also because, knowing his fate, it’s impossible not to view him through the prism of tragedy. The few glimpses we see of him working with clothes is when he (fittingly enough) seems most at ease.

It is in seeing the destruction that Cunanan wreaks on his victim’s families that you sense how true crime stories — of which we have such a glut in popular culture and which we consume in such a variety of ways (book/TV shows/documentaries/feature films/on reddit and other community sites) — exploit true loss and grief. It’s an unsettling feeling for someone who’s an avid (and thoughtless) consumer of pop culture.

Based on journalist Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favours, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story hasn’t met with the Versace family’s approval. They’ve contested several details in the account, including two previous meetings that Orth reported took place between Gianni Versace and Andrew Cunanan (a chance meeting at a discotheque and later, a sort-of-date at the opera). The Miglin family too has contested Orth’s version of Lee having used Cunanan’s services. Orth, in her Vanity Fair reportage at the time of the crimes and in the years since, has stood by her story, which she says wad backed up by Cunanan’s friends and acquaintances.

The specifics may be in question, but the quality of American Crime Story’s second season — three episodes down at least — is not. Watch it, for a glimpse into a psychopath’s mind — if you can get over the feeling of capitalising on someone else’s grief, that is.

American Crime Story S2: ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ is an unsettling meditation on true crime- Entertainment News, Firstpost

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Punch Drunk TV Ep. 84: Sorry, Aziz Ansari

Hey Clinkers, Aaron here – I am out of town this week so welcome to an episode Jack and I recorded on a Monday. We never record on Mondays. It was weird.

In this episode, we cover the pending return of “Magnum P.I.,” The CW’s new “feminist” angle for “Charmed” and the awful new version of WGN America. Also, Aaron had an Aziz Ansari conundrum he really needed to work out … just listen, you’ll see.

Ask Matt: Revival Boom and ‘Murphy Brown,’ ‘Victoria’ vs. ‘The Crown,’ ‘American Crime Story,’ ‘Ray Donovan’ and More

Getting Hooked on FX’s Crime Story

Question: Wow, that was an extremely intriguing episode of FX’s American Crime Story last night! I found it superior to the previous installments, which is ironic, because this episode didn’t feature Versace at all. (Hence, I left The Assassination of Gianni Versace off the title). I admit it is sometimes difficult to watch and enjoy, because the lead character is absolutely one of the most evil characters I have ever watched. I realize he is severely demented, but he takes his violent acts to another level.

Judith Light will almost surely receive well-deserved award nominations. What a fantastic performance! I admired her from way back in the ’80s when she was on the ABC sitcom Who’s The Boss? with Tony Danza. Since then she has portrayed countless compelling characters flawlessly. Thank you for recommending this great series. — FJ

Matt Roush: I was impressed in this episode by both Judith Light and Mike Ferrell (as her doomed, closeted husband, a real change of pace), and when I screened the series—FX made all but the finale available in advance—this was the hour that really made me sit up and take notice, as it became clear how Andrew Cunanan’s crimes were going to be presented. First the crime, then as the episodes unfold in reverse time, the backstory. (It’s even darker in the next episode when we meet two of his younger victims in relationships already in progress. All becomes clearer later, and man, is it tragic.) The Versace angle doesn’t entirely go away, because we revisit the designer (Edgar Ramirez) in parallel storylines as he is making a name for himself while Cunanan, his future assassin, is pretending to be who he’s not in a deadly cycle of narcissistic delusion. Darren Criss may be hard to watch when Cunanan is at his worst, but it’s an electrifying performance.

Ask Matt: Revival Boom and ‘Murphy Brown,’ ‘Victoria’ vs. ‘The Crown,’ ‘American Crime Story,’ ‘Ray Donovan’ and More

Does ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Work Without Versace?

The third episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story moved away from Miami and away from the Versaces. Series regulars Edgar Ramirez, Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin were completely absent from the episode as Gianni Versace, his sister and his partner.

Instead, the episode moved to Chicago to tell the story of Lee and Marilyn Miglin and how Andrew Cunanan killed Lee. But does a season with Versace in the title work without the fashion designer?

Oddly, I think the answer is “Yes.” First, “A Random Killing” featured the single best piece of acting in the show’s three episodes courtesy of Judith Light as Marilyn Miglin. Her bold, show-stopping performance was brilliant from start to finish, worthy of the tremendous acting in the show’s first season. For her alone, the third episode was a success.

Despite the show’s title, it’s clear that the second season of American Crime Story isn’t about Gianni Versace. He might be the most recognizable name, but this is Andrew Cunanan’s story. The series is a deep look at the psychology and journey of a demented spree killer. Gianni Versace’s role in Andrew’s story is minimal, so putting him and his family aside for an episode or two makes sense.

The only real problem is that it feels like a bait-and-switch. The first two episodes established the world of the series, but the third episode changed everything and seemed to exist in a completely different series. I would argue that the third episode is far more indicative of the series as a whole than either of the first two, which were very misleading when it comes to what the story is really about.

“A Random Killing,” in many ways, was the real start of The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Future episodes will continue to be told in that style (for example, the fourth episode will once again not include any Versaces). This is what the show is, a series of vaguely connected vignettes from the life of Andrew Cunanan.

Did you miss the Versace storyline or did you prefer the show without it?

Does ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Work Without Versace?

Why Viewers Aren’t Ready to Make “Versace” a Cultural Phenomenon Like “O.J.”

When American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson debuted on FX in February 2016, it was the most-watched premiere of an original scripted series in the cable channel’s 22-year history. And no wonder: Like the steadfast hits of the Eighties and Nineties that TV execs are now joyfully rebooting, FX’s subject was the inescapable pop-culture phenomenon of the “trial of the century,” which has held Americans tight in its grip in the 20-plus years since the conspicuous case collided with a burgeoning 24-hour news cycle.

It’s hardly a surprise that the ratings for the second installment in the Ryan Murphy true-crime anthology series, subtitled The Assassination of Gianni Versace, have so far been much lower: While the O.J. premiere drew a rare-these-days 8.3 million total viewers — that number rose to 12 million after accounting for FX’s “encore” airings — Versace’s first episode, which aired two weeks ago, pulled in a still-impressive 3.6 million viewers live, and 5.5 million factoring in repeat broadcasts. (For context, Game of Thrones may regularly attract a per-episode audience of 8 to 10 million viewers , but even critical darlings like Big Little Lies don’t necessarily bring in those numbers; none of the HBO miniseries’ seven episodes drew even 2 million live viewers.)

If you were old enough to remember the O.J. trial blaring out of countless TV screens and newspaper headlines for a solid year, The People v. O.J. Simpson was not just great TV but a chance to relive that indelible moment through a fresh lens, like a revival of a beloved sitcom. Versace’s smaller audience is somewhat inevitable, and it reflects a central revelation of the series: that law enforcement only began to seriously pursue a string of murders of gay men at the hands of a cagey 27-year-old named Andrew Cunanan when he killed a fifth gay man who happened to be famous.

The crime described in the show’s subtitle occurs within the first few minutes of the premiere, when Cunanan (Darren Criss) guns down Versace (Edgar Ramírez) in front of his Miami Beach mansion. The subsequent episodes move backward, tracking Cunanan’s killing spree from Minneapolis to Chicago to rural New Jersey. (The show is based on Maureen Orth’s 1999 book, Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History.) Along the way, we meet his victims: Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock) and David Madson (Cody Fern), both friends and former lovers of Cunanan; Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell), a Chicago real estate developer who’d hired Cunanan as an escort; and William Reese (Gregg Lawrence), a caretaker at a cemetery who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As I wrote in my review, Versace is a bit of a bait and switch: It’s not really about the famous Italian designer and his soon-to-be-famous sister Donatella (Penélope Cruz). The Versace family merely frames the story of Cunanan, an accomplished bullshit artist who worked at a local pharmacy while living with his mother in San Diego — before he got a taste of the high life when he landed a gig as a live-in escort for a wealthy, elderly gay man. The more we learn about Cunanan’s past, the more the show — aided by a compelling, three-dimensional performance from Criss — emphasizes the man’s internalized shame. (For more on the show’s interrogation of this suppressed self-loathing, read Matt Brennan’s review at Paste.) Along the way, we also learn about his victims; the fourth and fifth episodes, which delve into David Madson’s and Jeff Trail’s backstories, are particularly affecting, and the fact that the show devotes so much run time to tell their stories is a refreshingly uncynical approach in an age of arrant celebrity worship.

In the two decades that have passed between Versace’s murder and this series, mainstream culture has reached the point where the most heavily promoted series in a major cable channel’s current lineup tells the kind of story that would’ve been labeled “niche” just a few years ago, simply because of its lack of a straight, male perspective. “One of the things that excites me about this era of television is that you can come at it from any character’s point of view, or any showrunner or creator’s point of view,” FX CEO John Landgraf told me over the phone. “You don’t have to make reference to the majoritarian point of view, whether that’s male or white or heterosexual.”

(Landgraf has been vocal about the need for TV executives to reform their hiring practices. In 2015, Maureen Ryan wrote a Variety article lambasting networks for hiring so few women and people of color to direct their shows, and FX in particular had a bad track record: Just 12 percent of its series in the 2014–15 season were directed by people who were not white men. In the wake of that study, Landgraf vowed his network would work to close that gap, and at the 2016 TCA Press Tour, he announced that 51 percent of the directors booked at that time were women or people of color.)

Landgraf acknowledged that Versace so far hadn’t been as “widely accepted” as O.J.“It’s pretty dark material,” he said. He suspects the cooler response has more to do with the lingering perception that stories told from the perspectives of gay people are still coded as “alternative.”

For the record, I really like The Assassination of Gianni Versace; yes, it’s a lot darker than The People v. O.J. Simpson, and its narrative structure — on top of the fact that it tells a less-familiar story — demands more from the viewer. Still, I suspect the fact that its early ratings are such a comedown from the previous installment, and that it hasn’t been welcomed into the new TV season with quite as much fanfare, says less about the show than it does about us.

“My gut feeling is that it’s still hard to put that point of view out there,” Landgraf told me. “I think there’s a process, a pathway, from rejection and bigotry to a willingness to be in somebody’s skin, and a willingness to consider their skin as valid as your skin. And I think that for a hetero-dominant culture, we’re not there yet with gay people.”

Still, Versace is a big step toward that brave new world. And while viewers in the States may not be quite as rapt with this story as they were with O.J., in Italy, the show has earned record ratings, with 700,000 tuning in to watch the premiere — compared to 572,000 who watched the seventh-season premiere of Game of Thrones. Who’s gonna tell them this is a show about the constraints of gay identity in 1990s America?

Why Viewers Aren’t Ready to Make “Versace” a Cultural Phenomenon Like “O.J.”

Up-and-Comer of the Month: “Versace” Star Cody Fern on the Controversial FX Series and Wanting to Play Marilyn Manson

If you’ve been watching The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story like I told you to, then you’ve heard of David Madson, the young architect who Andrew Cunanan considered the love of his life. While you’ll learn more about Madson in forthcoming episodes, it’s time to meet the Australian actor who plays him — Cody Fern, who is the Tracking Board’s Up-and-Comer of the Month this January.

Fern goes toe-to-toe with Darren Criss in Versace, and he has big things brewing in Hollywood. The rising star hails from a small town in Western Australia, where he grew up as the first person in his family to attend university. Despite his modest upbringing in a remote part of the country where few people forge careers in the arts, Fern went on to play the lead onstage in Romeo and Juliet, and he also starred in the National Theatre’s acclaimed production of War Horse.

Fern won Australia in Film’s Heath Ledger Scholarship in 2014, but his breakout feature role didn’t come until last year’s The Tribes of Palos Verdes, which unfortunately got caught up in Relativity’s bankruptcy and fell victim to the company’s downfall. Still, Fern didn’t let that setback hold him back, as he also starred in the award-winning short film The Last Time I Saw Richard, and helped director Bart Layton workshop his latest Sundance hit American Animals at the Sundance Director’s Lab.

When we spoke in mid-January, Fern had only seen one episode of Versace, but he had started getting positive feedback from journalists. He’ll watch American Crime Story unfold in tandem with audiences, who should pay attention to his impressive performance. Our chat runs the gamut and includes Fern’s take on why Andrew Cunanan killed Gianni Versace, so enjoy!

What sparked your passion for acting and made you decide to get into this crazy business?
That’s a long story, but I’ll give you the truncated version. I’m one of those people who has known ever since I had conscious thought. I grew up in a very, very, very small town in Western Australia called Southern Cross. It’s about seven hours outside Perth by train, and there was a population of just under 300, so the arts were never really something that [I considered] possible. I’d never been exposed to theater, and I didn’t see my first play until I was 22. I’d always known that I wanted to do it, but I kind of veered off into studying business. I did a degree in commerce, and then I segued into psychology. I thought for a time that I was going to be a therapist, and that could kind of numb, to a certain extent, my desire to be an actor, but I couldn’t get away from it. It continued to pursue me. So I kind of threw it all away at 24, just before my 25th birthday, so like, five years ago, now. I joined “the circus,” and here we are.

But I think my passion for it came from… it’s strange, because everyone talks about acting and everyone has their own philosophies on that, but I think for me personally, what I love about film, and what I love about plays, in particular, is getting to see stories that haven’t been told, and angles on stories through the lens of people who may not be as glamorous as most. That’s what really attracted me to it. I used to watch a lot of daytime films, and I used to sneak into arthouse theaters and watch French films, so I kind of fell in love with acting as a form of storytelling. Not just “once upon a time there was this,” but more cut from a deeply psychological level. It just gelled with who I am and what I do and the experiences that I’ve had.

Tell me about the audition process for American Crime Story and how Ryan Murphy discovered you for this role.
That’s an interesting one as well. I was in London at the time, because I’m developing a feature film. I was working with my producers Nancy Grant and Xavier Dolan, and I’d kind of been a little exasperated in LA because I was pursuing very detailed and character-driven stories that were particularly high-end, and I kind of refused as an actor to pursue anything that was kind of boy next door or one-dimensional. I’d been in theater before so I had the opportunity to explore intense stories and characters, and a range of different roles. And when I initially moved to Los Angeles, I was kind of exasperated by the stories being told. I going in for a lot of 16-year-olds. So with this audition, when American Crime Story came through, I kind of took it as an opportunity for a last hurrah before I went off and directed my feature film. It was a strange time because I was kind of mourning the acting that I wasn’t able to do at the same time as investing my creativity into writing and directing and acting in my own feature.

So I kind of just gave it my all in the audition. It was kind of like a send-off, like a little goodbye, and then a week later I got a callback. I think I was positive that the role was going to go to somebody in the Ryan Murphy canon, I just never assumed that it was going to be me. And then I met with the writer, Tom Rob Smith, who’s incredible, and the amazing producer Brad Simpson, and we had the callback from there. Ryan was kind of instantly like, “it’s Cody,” and three weeks later I was filming. It’s such intense material, so it was just a real opportunity to dive in. But from his end, I’m not so sure how he came across me. It was a wide casting call, and they were just looking for the right person. I’m just grateful that it was me.

Did you have to read with Darren Criss and Finn Wittrock to see if you guys meshed well together onscreen?
Actually, no, I didn’t read with them. When I first worked with Darren, we were kind of thrown into Jeff’s death. The murder of Jeff Trail, in the apartment. That was the first day of shooting. I hadn’t met Darren before. I’d seen him in Hedwig and the Angry Inch and thought he was brilliant in it, but we didn’t meet each other, no. I think Ryan decided based on the strength of the audition and then went from there, and Finn had already been cast. It was kind of a rolling freight train It just went. That was a particularly intense day of shooting.

Let’s talk about the actual show. Do you think that Andrew truly loved David, and if so, why didn’t David love him back? Can you talk about their relationship as far as you saw it?
I did some extensive research and obviously read Maureen’s book, and it’s such a fine piece of investigative journalism. She spoke to the friends and family members of David Madson, and I think their relationship is an anomaly in the life of David Madson, because David was a very kind, very generous, very vanilla guy, by all accounts. He was kind of very boisterous and happy and loving, but at the same time he came from an intensely religious background, so I think the collision into Andrew is an interesting one. I think that they did love each other at one point in time, but David ultimately broke it off with Andrew, because of exactly what plays out in the series. There was a sense of dishonesty that he felt coming from Andrew, and the fact that he was hiding something. He even had communicated to friends that he was afraid of Andrew at one point in time.

I think that it’s very clear that Andrew loved David, but I think for David, and I think what the series explores as well, is that Andrew loved the idea of David. He loved the idea of this wholesome man who had a life and who was comfortable and who could give him a sense of stability and real generosity. But I think that David didn’t get honesty from Andrew and that was something that was really difficult for him. Andrew was someone who struggled with the truth. In many accounts, Andrew had spoken to friends of David’s, especially when he was going out to see David and Jeff, and referred back to the fact that David is the love of his life, and he told many of his friends that. The proposal to David was a particular shock, I think.

What the series explores which is really interesting is this love gone wrong, and the story between David and Andrew in the series is really a love story. It’s about missed connections and missed opportunities, and I think it leaves it up to the audience to decide whether or not it comes down to Andrew’s psychopathic tendencies or his inability to face the truth. It’s an interesting relationship, it’s very rich with complication, but by all accounts, yes, David as the love of Andrew’s life, it’s just that David felt the need for something more truthful.

And now for The Big Question: Why do you think Cunanan killed Versace?
From my perception, which I think is very much in line with Ryan’s, Andrew was a man who really craved attention, who really craved validation and craved to be magnificent in the eyes of others, so much so that he would go to extreme lengths to be somewhat famous. Versace was somebody who represented everything that Andrew wasn’t. He was somebody who was willing to work, and very hard, for what he believed in, and what he was passionate about, whereas Andrew kind of lived off the backs of others. He used and manipulated all these men to get his way. I think Versace took his level of genius and gave it back to the world, whereas Andrew always felt that the world owed him something.

So I think that the death of Versace, and the time that Versace was going through during that period, really synced up with Andrew in terms of Andrew’s downfall and Versace’s rise. Versace certainly was a truth-teller at that point in time, one of the most revolutionary truth-tellers, and when he came out in The Advocate magazine it was a huge deal. Andrew, although out in some circles, initially lived a very closeted life, and he told people what they needed to hear. So I think Versace’s level of truth threatened Andrew’s, and I think that Andrew was ultimately tipped over the edge and owed something that Versace had, and so he felt the need to take it, or at least to take it down.

What has been the biggest pinch-me moment of your career so far?
Ever since moving to LA, it’s been like that. I’ve gotten to work with extraordinary people. But I think for sure the biggest pinch-me moment was working with Ryan Murphy. Much is said about Ryan Murphy as a genius and not enough is said about how kind and generous he is, both as a creative and as a human being. The day I found out that I got this I was screaming. I was on the phone with my agent and managers and we were just going wild. I’ve followed Ryan’s work for so long and I’ve loved his work for so long. And I said when I moved to LA, I was hesitant about doing TV at that time because I didn’t want to be locked into a long contract, and so I said if I’m going to do TV, I want to work with Ryan Murphy, and so for that to come true… they say, never meet your idols because they’ll destroy your idea of them, but that’s not true with Ryan. He’s so kind and he’s so generous and he’s so giving and he’s so bloody brilliant, you know. It really, truly has been the biggest pinch-me moment to be involved in his world and his universe, the Ryan Murphy multiverse, is breathtaking. I’m still in shock.

Are there any actors who you admire, or whose careers you’d like to emulate?
I’d have to say Cillian Murphy. I think he’s one of the most extraordinary actors that we have today. The Wind That Shakes the Barley, and more recently, Peaky Blinders. He’s a powerhouse performer, and I really admire the way he lives his personal life. He’s really about the work. You know who has been on my mind recently? Richard Jenkins, from The Shape of Water. I think he’s such a phenomenal actor. He’s always put in this category of being a character actor, and he’s so phenomenal and specific and precise in the choices that he makes, so I love following his work as well. And there are so many extraordinary actresses, like Cate Blanchett and Meryl Streep and Tilda Swinton and what Michelle Williams is doing at the moment. I love actors who are very specific in their work, who are very emotionally connected, and who are unafraid to take risks with either their physical appearances or the roles that they choose.

You wrote and directed a short called Pisces, and I know you mentioned that you were prepping a feature. Are you focused on acting right now, or are you looking to press forward with those directing ambitions?
I don’t think that they’re mutually exclusive. I think that they can run in tandem. Writing and directing certainly takes up a lot of my time, but at the heart of it all, I’m an actor. It is what I love doing the most. I love acting. I love being able to tell stories in that manner, and so I’m very much pursuing acting. I just think that what’s interesting about writing and directing, the power is in your hands. As an actor you’re quite often waiting by the phone waiting and hoping that somebody else, to a certain extent, chooses you, and it’s very difficult, therefore, to continue to keep up your craft, unless you’re in class or doing self-tapes or whatever it happens to be. So I love writing when I have downtime from acting. As with all thing, the cards will fall where they fall, and I was very much going down the line of directing my feature and now I’ve been swept up into acting again, which I’m extraordinarily acting for. I’ll continue to write, definitely, and directing is on the horizon, but for now I’m totally focused on acting. I will say this as well… I think that they all influence and inform each other. If you write and you’re going through the process of rewriting and getting notes and specifying, you start to understand, really understand, what a good script is and what a bad script is and what good writing looks like. You can appreciate what people go through and it helps you as an actor, so I think they all inform each other.

I know you have social media accounts, but you’re not very active on social media. Is there a reason for that, or do you just prefer to be a little bit more private and guarded with fans?
I just recently got an Instagram because I certainly don’t want to ignore or turn away from any people who want to engage with the work or have something to say about it, but I’m not a social media person and I never have been. It’s not about being private or being secretive, it’s just a personal choice. I think it consumes so much of people’s lives, and I know that the industry is certainly going a different way, especially with actors, whereby the more fans you have and the greater reach you have, people think that it’ll lead to more work, and it may. But the type of work that comes from me having one million more Instagram followers than somebody else is not the kind of work that I ultimately want to be doing. I just find that I really like personal interactions and stimulating conversations, and I think that while social media can be a great way to stay connected, it’s also a really disconnected version of reality. You’re constantly curating your life for others, and what your life is, and it lends itself to the seeking of opinions and comments, and I think that can be dangerous for some people. It certainly is for me. It’s very depleting for me, because it raises my level of anxiety too high. It’s too tied to validation. And that’s not true of everybody. And I’m not saying anything against social media, I’m just saying something against social media for myself. So we’ll see what happens with the old Instagram. I like being able to post photos and offer my perspective of the world, but I’m not so keen on posting photos of myself. I find being behind a film camera very easy and intimate, and I find being behind a still camera very alarming and anxiety-inducing. I think I enjoy the veil of a character.

Do you have a dream role? Is there a part you’re dying to play?
There are so many. There’s such an intricate tapestry of roles out there. I love really complex, three-dimensional roles, and people who are flawed. I think that’s what I loved about David. In this series, we’re examining a victim, but we’re also examining somebody who is examining his own level of complicity in a tragic event. He’s asking himself questions about shame and hiding and repression, and he’s not a device in any way. I’d would really love to sink my teeth into playing Marilyn Manson. He’s such an intelligent and thoughtful and interesting social provoker. I remember when I was younger, watching him on the rise, and no matter what people think about his music, he’s a great conduit for conversation, and he really engages with people on taboo issues. I love that about him, and I think his personal life is super interesting, in how he chooses to represent himself and engage with the world. Look, I love his music. For me, as a teenager, he represented such an era of rebellion and refusal and rage. I love all of that. I think it’s something that’s ingrained in me, especially as a teenager, and he was able to really reach into that and expose it.

What’s next for you?
I’m actually not allowed to say. I have a couple of big announcements to follow, but I’ll get in trouble. I’m sure you’ll be hearing very soon. I’m just super thrilled to watch Versace with everybody. This is all so new to me, in terms of this moment in time. People haven’t been exposed to my work very heavily yet, especially the public, so I’m really excited about that. I’m just thrilled to see what the response is going to be.

Up-and-Comer of the Month: “Versace” Star Cody Fern on the Controversial FX Series and Wanting to Play Marilyn Manson