American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace is over, and that’s fine. This season was so ambitious, but it had to work with the rough outlines of a true story, and I wonder if that held it back, or at least held back its final episode. The tragic end of Andrew Cunanan’s (Darren Criss) real life may have been violent and graphic, but it wasn’t that dynamic. I know I sound sick, but the manhunt didn’t have any high-speed chases or even that many close calls. For the most part, Cunanan just hung out in an apartment watching his own face on TV and panicking.
While the finale never got all the way to a boil, I did thoroughly relish the supporting characters getting their individual curtain calls. I’m glad Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light) is back because she is a scene-stealing queen. No one dramatically loses their train of thought quite like her. She stirred up more emotion in a single monologue than some of the entire episodes this season. I also thought it was kind of beautiful that the show’s two mothers, Mary Ann Cunanan (Joanna Adler) and Miglin had similar reactions when the FBI came knocking at their door: They immediately asked if their kids are okay.
Lizzie also invoked her kids (and Cunanan’s godchildren) when she spoke to camera asking Cunanan to show the world he still had good in him. She was so sympathetic and angelic, and probably is the person who saw Cunanan at his best moments most often. On the flip side, Ronnie (Max Greenfield) was quick to tell Detective Lori Wieder (Dascha Polanco) that Cunanan was not his friend, but then he kind of sort of had Cunanan’s back later in the interrogation room. I think their non-friendship friendship was one of the more fascinating dynamics of this season. Their accidental comradery may have relied on them not asking too much of each other and a shared interest in drugs, but I think Ronnie respected Cunanan’s chutzpah, or at the very least felt his same anger and struggle to be acknowledged. He has one of the most succinct and sassy lines of the episode when he says, “You couldn’t find a gay, so now you’re gonna blame a gay?”
Which reminds me, could Dascha Polanco’s role have been any smaller? It might have been my mistake to assume her and Ricky Martin’s role as Antonio D’Amico would be bigger based on their celebrity, but I wish we had seen more of both of them. The little we did see of D’Amico felt meaningful, but I don’t think you can say the same for Wieder. It was such a special indignity he was made to suffer. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be the invisible partner, and especially to have a priest swerve on you like that. My only grievance with the funeral scenes is the use of real footage of Princess Diana and Elton John. It gave me the heebie jeebies and felt oddly disrespectful to me, even though I’m sure that wasn’t the intention.
Maybe I was ready for the season to be over, but I found watching Cunanan going crazy in that apartment to be a tiny bit boring. Was throwing up on his own face a bit much to anyone else? I almost feel like they went for that simply because him hiding out without a plan is such bland TV without it. They even resorted to having Cunanan shoot a TV. Sorry to be the nerd with a hard time suspending my disbelief, but gunshots are also loud, and firing guns willy nilly while you’re in hiding is a bad call! Oh and shaving his head and baring his soul was a little extra but I will cop to liking seeing Darren Criss with a new lewk.
The modest surprises for me were that Cunanan called his dad, and Modesto actually managed to come across as a little bit sweet. There’s a darkness there of course, because it almost sounded like his dad proud of him for the awful things he’d done. I thought Cunanan’s dad’s final moments of opportunism might be enough to make him lash out at the police in anger and potentially die by suicide in the process, but he seemed to finally be resigned to his fate.
Maybe I felt deflated after watching this episode simply because this is essentially a show about a man who killed five people and all the watching in the world doesn’t change that, but I actually think it’s something else. I think the show wanted me to feel nourished by the final scene between Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) and Cunanan, and I just didn’t. We see a rejection that is small to Versace and everything to Cunanan, but I don’t know that he visibly looks like he snapped, or that the things they said to each other were any different than I had already filled in with guessing throughout the season. In other words, it didn’t feel like a big reveal, but it had the grand placement in the episode’s pacing as well as with its showy setting that made me feel like it was supposed to mean more, and it just didn’t.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace returned to the present-day—that is, July 1997—for its final episode, revisiting Gianni Versace’s death and depicting Andrew Cunanan’s final hours with a touch of melodrama and some serious liberties with the truth. The finale brought back several familiar faces, returned to that controversial Episode 1 dream sequence, and ended on a rather dull note following weeks of bloodshed, fashion, and over-the-top theatrics.
Here, six things to note from the season finale of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, “Alone.”
1) Versace’s murder opens this episode, too.
Like the season premiere, the finale begins with the moment around which the series revolves. But unlike the Technicolor, dream-like rendering of Versace’s murder in Episode 1, this sequence is depicted from Cunanan’s perspective. After he shoots Versace, Cunanan stares down at the designer’s body with a look that’s almost victorious. His face seems to say, “This time, I won.”
Cunanan celebrates by breaking into a houseboat to camp out. He pops a bottle of champagne (timed to a TV news report’s graphic description of Versace’s murder) and watches his own face light up the screen. This is the most relaxed we’ve ever seen Cunanan, so much so that it’s almost unbelievable—Darren Criss looks like a supermodel in this sequence. As helicopters comb Miami Beach on the hunt for the fugitive, Cunanan settles into a deck chair to watch. He’s finally garnered the fame he’s always craved.
2) Marilyn Miglin and Ronnie become crude mouthpieces for showcasing the police’s inefficiency.
Here’s a face I never expected to see again. American Crime Story shows Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light), widow of Cunanan victim Lee Miglin, in Tampa at the time of the Cunanan manhunt, though there’s no evidence to suggest this was the case in real life. When the cops arrive at her hotel room to ask her to leave the state, she attacks, accusing the cops of failing to do their jobs.
“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?”
Later, the cops pick up Cunanan’s old pal Ronnie (Max Greenfield) for questioning. He delivers a similar diatribe, but blames police homophobia for the failure to capture Cunanan. Ronnie addresses the only woman on the case, Detective Lori Wieder (Dasha Polanco), and acknowledges that she did her homework. “But the other cops here, they weren’t searching so hard, were they? Why is that? Because he killed a bunch of nobody gays?” When the other detective (José Zúñiga) protests, Ronnie goes off: “You know what the truth is? You were disgusted by him long before he became disgusting.”
For a show that promised to navigate how homophobia affected the police’s failure to capture Cunanan, these scenes feel like afterthoughts. The show’s reverse-chronological framing device rendered it more like a biopic of Andrew Cunanan than a thoughtful examination of the authorities’ unsuccessful search for a spree killer targeting gay men. Episode 2 and Episode 4 both touched on the subject, but not enough to feel impactful, so instead of powerful commentary, these finale scenes serve only as a suggestion of what could have been.
3) As his loved ones abandon him, Cunanan’s narcissism also gets the best of him.
The honeymoon is over for Cunanan. After evading the police for several days, the fugitive has had one too many close calls. Back at his houseboat, he watches the television reports with increasing dread. His best friend Elizabeth (Annaleigh Ashford) tapes a televised plea, and it seems to shake Cunanan for a moment. Later, when David Madson’s father gives an interview, Cunanan can’t take it anymore. He’d turned on every television in the house to revel in his newfound celebrity, but now, he’s surrounded by the face of the man he loved—and the voice of that man’s father. He runs frantically through the house to shut off the TVs, but his desperation only grows. He’s never felt so alone.
His salvation comes, for a moment, from an unlikely source—Marilyn Miglin. Cunanan catches an infomercial in which Miglin reminisces about happy memories of her late father. It’s an odd scene that serves a much-too-neat purpose: inspiration for Cunanan to call his own father (Jon Jon Briones) in the Philippines. He’s utterly desperate at this point, begging his father to come get him. Overjoyed at the sound of his son’s voice, Modesto promises to fetch his son from Miami in 24 hours. But the next day, while awaiting his father’s arrival, Cunanan catches news footage of Modesto discussing the movie rights to his own life story. He’s devastated. His father’s not coming, and now, he has no one and nothing left.
4) The moment of Cunanan’s death returns to that baffling scene in the opera house.
Cunanan is eventually discovered squatting in the houseboat, and a standoff with the police ensues. As the authorities enter the house, Cunanan shoots himself in the mouth, but not before taking one final glance in the mirror. As the gunshot goes off, Cunanan’s voiceover ironically declares, “I’m so happy right now.”
We’re back at the opera house, in that much-debated scene from Episode 1. Cunanan’s realizing this miraculous interaction with Versace is his make-or-break moment. “What if you had a dream your whole life that you were someone special, but no one believed it?” he asks the designer. “And then, what if the first person that truly believed you was the most incredible person you’d ever met?” Versace counters: “It’s not about persuading people you’re going to do something great. It’s about doing it.” And that, of course, is what ultimately separates Versace from Cunanan.
It’s here that this scene shifts from too-good-to-be-true dream sequence to cold reality. Versace encourages Cunanan to finish his novel (remember that?) but Cunanan jumps at the chance to prove himself to his idol, offering to work as Versace’s assistant. Now, Versace balks, and their connection is tarnished. Opportunistic as ever, Cunanan tries to kiss Versace in a final, desperate bid for affection and validation. Versace kindly rebukes him, with the promise of dinner “another night.” Cunanan is left alone, as the lights onstage go dark. The scene ends with the sound of the gunshot, implying that Cunanan’s most devastating rejection is also his final, conscious thought.
5) American Crime Story’s version of Antonio D’Amico depicts a suicide attempt.
A truly baffling plot point in tonight’s episode comes by way of Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin) and the Versace family. It’s well known that in real-life, Donatella did not really like her late brother’s partner and effectively iced him out of the family. In this episode, Donatella (Penelope Cruz) hints to D’Amico that she intends to eventually evict him from the home he shared with Gianni (according to the real-life D’Amico, this really happened). Later, at Gianni’s funeral, the priest neglects to mention D’Amico and shrugs off his hand with a scowl. So far, so believable. But the episode takes a turn in its final moments, as D’Amico is shown swallowing a handful of pills. Moments later, a maid finds his barely-conscious body. There is no evidence to suggest this ever happened in real life; D’Amico is alive and well today, and it’s appalling that the show neglects to acknowledge that.
6) In death, Cunanan becomes a footnote to Versace’s legacy.
For a show so obsessed with appearances, its final moments are quite anticlimactic. As Donatella mourns at Gianni’s lavish grave and the maid discovers D’Amico on the floor, an unnamed cemetery worker lays Cunanan’s cremated remains to rest, a pointed metaphor for Cunanan’s insignificance within the shadow of Versace’s legacy.
How could FX screw up the ending of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace”?
Don’t believe half of what you saw on Wednesday night’s season finale. It never happened.
Although the credits clearly say “Based on the book ‘Vulgar Favors’ by Maureen Orth,” Murphy and his screenwriter Tom Rob Smith had, up to now, done such a scrupulous job in detailing killer Andrew Cunanan’s descent into madness — minus the weight gain from his crystal meth addiction that made him persona non grata in gay circles.
But they blew it in the end. And fans of the show need to know what really went down.
Note to Hollywood screenwriters: Don’t f - - k up the end of a true-crime story, especially when the facts are there for everyone to read. I know reading is not a big pastime in LA, but the truth is out there.
On page 477 of “Vulgar Favors,” Orth describes how quickly it all went down on the Miami houseboat where Cunanan had been hiding out after shooting Versace in cold blood.
When houseboat caretaker Fernando Carreira saw that the front-door lock was broken, he entered the home at around 3:45 p.m., gun drawn. Orth writes, “As he pulled it out to conduct a search, a loud shot rang out in the second-floor bedroom. ‘It was a very big noise and I have to run out,’ ” Carreira recalls.”
That shot was Cunanan killing himself through the mouth with the gun he stole from his first victim, his friend Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock).
In Wednesday night’s finale, Cunanan (Darren Criss) sees the caretaker from an upstairs balcony and fires a shot to scare him away. In reality, Cunanan was already dead.
Subsequent scenes of the police closing in, of tear gas canisters being thrown into the houseboat and of the electricity being cut off to trap Cunanan did not happen while he was alive.
Why bend the truth for a Hollywood showdown? This is not an episode of “Mannix.” Up to this point, the series had accurately shown how Versace was killed, filming the murder scene in front of his former Miami Beach mansion, and how the FBI screwed up the investigation — for example, by refusing to let Miami police distribute the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list photos of Cunanan in gay bars after he’d killed four men but before he killed Versace (Edgar Ramírez). (They did eventually hang flyers, but too late — Cunanan was already dead.)
The finale’s list of inaccuracies goes on.
In real life, the FBI had a difficult time identifying Cunanan’s corpse. The cops did not happen upon Cunanan until 9:30 p.m. The forensic identification of his fingerprints did not occur until 3 a.m. the following morning. “It was extremely difficult, because he was as stiff as a board,” said Sergeant George Navarro of the Miami-Dade police. Two “nervous” technicians had to match the thumbprint to one on a pawnshop form Cunanan had signed along with a copy of his driver’s license (the original was at the FBI lab in Washington, DC.)
Another extremely annoying inaccuracy: Donatella Versace (Penélope Cruz) did not cut her brother’s partner, Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin), out of his inheritance, as the show clearly states.
Let’s go back to Orth’s book. “Antonio D’Amico was given approximately $30,000 a month, ‘inflation-proof,’ for life, and the privilege of living in any of Versace’s houses around the world,” she writes. “Antonio, however, told a Canadian newspaper, ‘I’ll never set foot [in those homes] because it would only be fruitless suffering.’ In a further distancing, Donatella and [Versace’s brother] Santo struck a deal with Antonio to take his monthly payments in one lump sum.”
As for the “Valley of the Dolls”-esque scene of Martin swallowing an entire bottle of blue pills, please. Orth reports D’Amico returned to Florence “to launch his own design company.”
The scenes of Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light) being warned by the FBI to clear out of Tampa, where she was on a business trip, were another Turkish Taffy stretch seemingly designed to give Light another scene for a potential Emmy campaign.
In the end, the “Versace” finale is a disappointment. The truth of the story is sufficiently tragic and moving. No one needed this melodramatic finish to drive a point home.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Cast – Darren Criss, Edgar Ramirez, Ricky Martin, Penelope Cruz Rating – 4/5
In 1990, the future Oscar-nominated filmmaker, Richard Linklater, directed Slacker, a film whose impact is still felt to this day, even if the actual number of people who’ve seen it remains as low as ever. It was his attempt to capture the free-flowing nature of campus life in his hometown, Austin – a small film made on a shoestring budget in which characters would meet other characters, and in that typical manner for which Linklater would later become known, talk about every topic under the bright Texan sun.
As an audience member, Linklater said that he had always wondered what happened to the supporting characters in movies – the shopkeepers and the cab drivers who’d briefly interrupt the protagonist’s larger story. Where did those people come from? What were their hopes and dreams? What did their lives amount to? It was with these questions in mind that Linklater made Slacker, a movie that has no protagonist, and abandons characters the moment new ones pop up, switching the direction in which the story – if there was a story at all – was headed and subverting everything you thought you knew about narrative storytelling.
You wouldn’t normally invoke an early ‘90s indie film about aimless kids while talking about The Assassination of Gianni Versace, the second season of the terribly entertaining American Crime Story true-crime anthology series – but as strange as it may sound, that’s the one movie that sprang to mind. And there are several reasons for this, reasons that go beyond the simple stylistic similarities Versace and Slacker share – the constant switching focus of the plot, the backwards narrative, the subversion of expectations.
The first season, which was an addictive retelling of a modern American folktale – the trial of OJ Simpson – was a gloriously flamboyant piece of entertainment, capable of moments of starling insight in between scenes shot with swooping cameras and punctuated by bombastic speeches. There was a deliberate tone to the way in which creator Ryan Murphy tackled the story. It was only natural to expect more of the same in The Assassination of Gianni Versace, which is based on a true-life incident arguably more scandalous than OJ’s trial.
It begins with the seemingly impromptu murder of the Gianni Versace outside his sprawling and characteristically tacky Miami mansion. We watch as the famed designer wakes up in a bedroom fit for a European aristocrat, as he dresses himself in immaculate clothing and ambles through the hallways of his home, like a lion surveying his kingdom. His hand grazes the ornate sculptures of naked men that he has stationed like guards outside a Roman chieftains’ quarters. He touches these trophies, both real and inanimate. Finally, his rests his hands on his partner, who stands silently by his side throughout the show’s nine episodes, like he owns him. He probably does.
After eating breakfast in his courtyard, tiled with the Versace logo, he ventures outside, into the real world, where the rest of us live – the people who idolise him and dream of wearing his clothes one day. And that is where he gets shot in the face by Andrew Cunanan. But The Assassination of Gianni Versace isn’t about the designer’s rise to fame and it isn’t about his secret life as a homosexual man. Nor is it about his rumoured battle with HIV and the faith he showed in his sister, Donatella, when he learnt that he didn’t have much time to live. It could easily have been about any one of these things and as fans of Season 1, we would’ve have hungrily accepted it, and probably enjoyed it, considering how undemanding we’ve become.
But then, if it were about these stories, which are admittedly intriguing, that would rob us of the opportunity of bringing up Slacker, wouldn’t it? Because it will only take Versace one episode to upend every expectation you might have – certainly every expectation I certainly had was discarded with the swiftness of last season’s fall/winter collection.
When Versace fell to his death in slow motion, outside the palace he’d built for himself, with Ricky Martin crying over his limp body, I fully expected to be transported to a flashback of the young Gianni, growing up in Italy with the driven yet under-confident Donatella. But that would have been too easy. Instead of profiling the fashion icon and peeling back the layers of secrecy with which he lived his life – quite like what Murphy and his team of excellent writers did in Season 1 – the show turns its focus on Cunanan, and traces his unsettling journey to the moment he pulled the trigger in front of Versace’s mansion.
And as a portrait of a serial killer, The Assassination of Gianni Versace couldn’t have been more captivating. Remember, it has only been months since we saw Mindhunter, David Fincher’s brilliant Netflix show about the birth of serial killers, but while they’re both essentially about the same thing – understanding, or at least trying to understand the psyche of a mass murderer – they couldn’t have been more distinct. Both shows are, however, the products of very singular visions – and God knows Ryan Murphy is, for the lack of a better word, brighter in his world view. This time, though, he is slightly overshadowed by Tom Rob Smith, who has written every episode of the season. There is a tonal uniformity that this process brings to television, and we’ve seen it work several times in the recent past, most notably in True Detective.
And as terrific as the storytelling choices are in this show – we revisit Cunanan’s murders in reverse, meeting his future victims after we’ve already seen them being bludgeoned or hacked or shot – it’s the three main performances that elevate it. Edgar Ramirez (who plays Gianni Versace) and Penelope Cruz (a suitably dusky, pre-surgery Donatella) might not be as central to the proceedings as one might have initially anticipated, but they’re the pool of subtlety that is essential to the tornado that Murphy’s programmes sometimes have the tendency of becoming.
But this is Darren Criss’ show. As Andrew Cunanan, he is a petulant child in certain scenes – when he is demanding rich white men to become his sugar daddies and lashing out at his single mother, scarred by the man who broke them – and in others, he is a terrifying monster – incapable of decency, surviving only to destroy others. With this show, he has become a star.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace has more in common with the films of David Fincher than it has with its own predecessor, but isn’t it refreshing when a programme doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel, but comes up with not one, but several new versions?
The finale of The Assassination of Gianni Versace is an excellent showcase for a few of the series’ best qualities: attention to detail, an ability to fill in the gaps in the record, and a surprisingly effective effort to make us see some shared humanity with Andrew Cunanan, or at least the ways in which the world failed him as well as his victims.
This episode largely succeeds in its Herculean task of resolving the Andrew of the first half of the installment – the spree killer, the vicious manipulator – with the Andrew of the second – the insecure pretender who grew up in a home of violence and deceiving your way to the top.
There are, of course, more clear messages about the way America treated gay men at the time. Some news segments blame David Madsen in a way that feels tied up in his sexuality and past relationship with Andrew. In one poster, Andrew’s photo is doctored with lipstick and again with a wig and lipstick, even though he wasn’t known to cross-dress.
There’s an excellent blending of archival footage, like of Princess Diana and Elton John at Gianni’s funeral, with news clips done over with our actors, like his old friend Elizabeth going on the news to tell Andrew she knows the real him and loves him, and won’t he please end it peacefully.
There are spotlights for three of our more minor characters, as Jon Jon Briones returns as Modesto Cunanan, trying to parlay his son’s infamy into something for himself, Judith Light stuns yet again as Marilyn Miglin, desperately hoping for an end to her tragedy, and Max Greenfield gives an award-worthy performance as sad Ronnie that will do the impossible, and make us all forget about Schmidt.
Andrew may be a murderer, but his father is an abuser, a manipulator, the violent wheeler-and dealer who taught him everything he knows about deception. He also taught him cruelty, which we remember as Modesto answers a question about his son’s crime and calls him innocent…of being a homosexual. One of the more heartbreaking moments is seeing Andrew cry to his father on the phone: “I’m in trouble, I need help, come get me.” Who hasn’t said those words to a parent?
It’s followed, of course, by Andrew’s face when he hears his father on tv and realizes that no, he is not coming to save him. He’s just trying to make a buck and inflate his sense of self, as usual.
Another moment that worked surprisingly well was Andrew seeing himself in Marilyn Miglin’s story, as she’s shown on the many televisions in the houseboat. Andrew is surrounded by the news, going back and forth between relishing it and being so upset that he shoots a TV. His time in the houseboat is, generally, claustrophobic and increasingly desperate, as he eats the dog food that he had earlier spit out into his own wanted poster. He looks more and more like Ronnie, who’s both AIDS sick and dope sick, as he gets closer to his death.
Later, Marilyn is proud of Lee’s secret acts of kindness, but there’s a hint of the idea that if he didn’t tell her about that, what else didn’t he tell her? Again, this is all courtesy of the powerhouse performance by Judith Light, which gives life and import to the smallest detail, letting it take on new meaning, like the fact that Lee helped a young man’s career.
And still, we have precious little of Versace. In some ways, it feels as though he would have had better coverage if he hadn’t been quite so famous, if he had been memorialized in a single dedicated episode, like Lee Miglin, or even if he had been in a couple, but in more concentrated doses, like David Madson and Jeff Trail.
While Penelope Cruz has given a great performance as Donatella, ultimately it doesn’t feel like it adds up to all that much. Perhaps her character’s arc is a victim of the rearrangement of the Versace chronology to demonstrate maximum parallels between Gianni and Andrew, in service to Andrew’s story line.
I can’t finish this without calling out Antonio’s final scene, where he attempts suicide. A person could reasonably finish this show and believe Antonio died, which is the not the case. There’s so much more to Antonio’s story, why not hint at that, rather than suggest death? We was sidelined and deprived of the rights an opposite gender spouse would have without question, but he also overcame that and his grief and went on to continue his career.
When Marilyn Miglin says, “good. It’s over.” I can’t help but think of the real-life Marilyn, who, somewhere out there, must live with not only what Andrew did to her husband, but with what the media, the public, and even this very tv show is doing to her. It’s never over for Marilyn and the other loved ones, and we have all taken part in ensuring that.
Taking stock of it now, I’m not all that convinced that Assassination was for the greater good. Unlike The People vs OJ, it didn’t bring about any new revelations by reframing an old crime with new understanding. Nor did it particularly empower the victims or their loved ones, like The Keepers. If we have to put something up on the scale to weight against the pain of the real life Marilyn Miglin, Jeff Trail’s father, Mary Ann Cunanan and so many others, what is there? Some fantastic performances, perhaps career making for Darren Criss and Max Greenfield. Perhaps more attention on longtime actor Jon Jon Briones. A reminder to the American public that our dark past isn’t as far back as we think.
But is it enough?
Lined up against the real anguish of those who lost their loved ones, many of whom are ardently opposed to this show existing? We’ve only given Andrew more of what he wanted: we made him special.
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.”
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