Tag: acs versace
The role Darren Criss was born to play
While Darren Criss’ most famous character saw him favouring bow-ties, cardigans and being an unabashedly good guy, his latest role calls on him to repeatedly drive a claw hammer into one of his victims, blood spluttering all over the walls of a downtown warehouse conversion.
Andrew Cunanan is most famous for gunning down Gianni Versace as he stood outside his beachside Miami mansion in 1997. But before he drew his weapon at the designer’s head, Cunanan had wreaked havoc with four other killings.
Even though American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace — with an A-list cast that includes Penelope Cruz, Edgar Ramirez and Ricky Martin — appears to be a drama about the famed design house, Cunanan’s story makes up something like 80 per cent of the time.
By structuring the series in reverse linearity and opening with the Versace murder before each subsequent episode takes a step backwards, to the other killings and back to Cunanan’s adolescence and childhood, it seeks to explain how someone as charismatic as him could end up where he did.
With the weight of almost the entire nine episodes on his shoulders, Criss gives a nuanced and powerful performance that’s been talked about in terms of how many statues he’ll nab come awards season.
Darren Criss talks about the emotional complexity needed to play the man who murdered Gianni Versace
Darren Criss’ role as a real-life mass murderer could not be further from the job that made him famous.
In The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story – the nine-part series about the murder of the fashion designer, which also stars Édgar Ramírezas Versace, Penélope Cruz as his sister, Donatella Versace, and Ricky Martin as Versace’s lover, Antonio D’Amico – the 31-year-old actor, singer and songwriter portrays Andrew Cunanan, the man who became famous for killing fashion designer Gianni Versace in July 1997 after murdering at least four other people. It’s a far cry from Blaine Anderson, the singing and dancing ‘Warbler’ character Criss played on Gleefor five years.
That said, The Assassination of Gianni Versace and Glee have more in common than just Criss as a star, and that’s how he got involved in the first place. Both series are executively produced by Ryan Murphy, who was also behind Nip/Tuck, The New Normal and the American Horror Story.
Darren Criss talks about the emotional complexity needed to play the man who murdered Gianni Versace
DarrenCriss: Australia – The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story premieres tonight at 8:30pm on @showcaseaus. #ACSVersace
Versace: Glee actor in a killer role
Pick of the day: Versace: American Crime Story, 8.30pm, Showcase.
It’s not hard to guess why, but Versace: American Crime Story arguably is mistitled to the degree it focuses not on Italian designer Gianni Versace but on the man who gunned him down at his Miami Beach mansion in 1997, Andrew Cunanan.
But by the end of this nine-episode series, Darren Criss’s depiction of the twisted fantasist and killer — his performance is being spoken of as an award contender — will sear into the memory.
Criss — best known for his role in Glee, created by Ryan Murphy, who also executive produces on Versace — tells The Australian his character begins the series mired in the lies he tells about himself.
“Cunanan exists in a larger-than-life headspace,” he says. “He is a classic narcissist in that he is somebody who can say something and ipso facto believe it is true.” Making him relatable, rather than alienating or appalling, was Criss’s focus.
“I latch on to the common denominators we can all relate to, and Cunanan’s flamboyant dishonesty comes from a sadly endearing place of wanting to impress people,” he says. “It’s less about lying; he’s a storyteller, this is how he survives.”
A key scene occurs in the first episode where Cunanan tells Versace (Edgar Ramirez) his largely fabricated life story.
“Edgar and I barely have any scenes together, but that is a key one in setting up the parallel between destroyer and creator, two very different but brilliant minds,” Criss says.
He says it was a “twisted providence” that Cunanan committed terrible crimes, which nonetheless has given the actor a career-defining role in a series he clearly is proud of.
“I’d like to think that if I’d done Cunanan first, I would have gone on to do something like Glee — I like taking as many twists in my career as possible,” he says. “We are all a million different people; I don’t want audiences to feel like they 100 per cent understand what my deal is.”
ACS news 