‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ premiere recap: When doves die

Warning: This recap of “The Man Who Would Be Vogue” episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story contains spoilers.

The best part of Peak TV is how excellent television no longer has to appeal to everyone. Sure, we can discuss giant hits like The Walking Dead with total strangers, and Grandma won’t stop talking about Breaking Bad. But increasingly — and often thanks to producer Ryan Murphy — mass audiences are not what the best shows aim for. About 14 people watched last year’s best series (Twin Peaks), and just try bringing up Insecure at a dinner party. We’re not all watching the same great shows anymore, but man, what a time to be a fringe TV viewer.

This is to say that The Assassination of Gianni Versace, the stellar new entry of Murphy’s already perfect series, will be most appreciated by the chicest of bubbles. It’s gaudy, terrifying, campy, tragic, heartfelt, gorgeously filmed … and probably too specific in its milieu to excite a mainstream audience. But if the past 1.3 years taught us anything, it’s that bubbles may not always win elections, but damn is our art better. Definitely comment below if you disagree jk.

“The Man Who Would Be Vogue” was one of the most spellbinding and compelling (and timely!) episodes of television I’ve ever seen, and we should talk about it!

We began with a typical morning in Miami, particularly if you are a wealthy Italian designer at the top of his game in the mid- to late ’90s.

This, friends, was Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez), and between his gilded beach palace and servants in black tennis shorts, we could gather that he was pretty successful. Not so successful that he didn’t eat revolting honeydew melon for breakfast but doing well enough by most standards.

By this point Versace was so famous that obese, pale Midwesterners would wait outside his home begging for him to autograph old issues of Vogue. Now THAT is fame.

A few blocks away at the beach, a young man named Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) was just finishing up screaming at the ocean. He had a big day ahead of him. He was ready to MURDER.

And in a wordless, artfully directed, heartbreaking sequence, Cunanan ran up and shot Versace right there on his front steps. Several times. In the face. In other words, this ended up being not that great of a morning for him. Probably a Top 5 worst morning, if we’re being honest.

We then flashed back to the first time Cunanan met Versace, at a gay dance club in San Francisco. Right off the bat (which is a baseball term and therefore probably not relevant to this scene), we learned that Cunanan’s ambitions to hang out with a famous man were outshined only by his ability to lie and exaggerate the details of his own life. Despite Versace’s initial reluctance to talk to this weirdo nobody, he was eventually intrigued by Cunanan’s claims of Italian heritage and other rich-boy jazz. Cunanan was IN.

Except we then saw Cunanan replay the evening’s events to the skeptical straight couple he’d been living with, omitting certain details like how it’d been in a gay club (Cunanan was posing as straight to his roommates) and making it sound like Versace was picking HIM up. But I loved when the roommate dude looked at his wife and they rolled their eyes knowingly. Cunanan clearly loved to spin fanciful yarns, but it was also clear his friends were no longer believing his wild tales.

Like his college friend over here, who called him out for lying to everybody about not only his sexuality but also his ethnicity and social class. Except what he SHOULD have called Cunanan out for was his glasses that attached to only the bridge of his nose. What kind of Bond villain was Andrew Cunanan trying to dress as? Anyway, regardless of all this, he was verifiably invited to the opera that Versace had designed gowns for, and that meant he needed to HUSTLE if he wanted Versace to believe that he was knowledgable and worldly.

I am honestly not sure what those papery rectangle stacks are, but they appear to have “words” on them and in this case Andrew Cunanan was reading them? I don’t know, ask an old person. (I’m 57.)

But yeah, Versace seemed to be the only person in the world NOT skeptical of this young, handsome liar. After the opera, as Cunanan literally basked in the spotlight while onstage, he told tales of growing up on Indonesian plantations and a Bentley-driving gay father. Perhaps Versace could tell this dude was making things up, but he seemed intrigued by the improv. Cheers to con artistry!

One of the less-reported details of Versace’s murder was the fact that he wasn’t the only victim. Well, there had been at least four other victims before this, but there was another victim in this incident. That white dove! A white dove was murdered right alongside Gianni Versace, and that is the only thing that made this tragedy even sadder. Well, also the fact that Versace’s shoes fell off.

And then, in detail more graphic than any of us asked for, we watched as paramedics and doctors attempted to save a bullet-riddled Versace’s life. [Spoiler] They did not.

The sequences detailing the aftermath were visually clever and wrenching, from watching the surgeons peel off their gloves and exit the room, leaving Versace’s body alone … to the autograph seekers who literally sopped up blood from his front steps in order to create a souvenir to sell. But my very favorite was the woman who arrived at the scene in full couture and began to WERK behind the news lady.

Say what you will about her lack of propriety, but that lady had star quality.

For his part Andrew Cunanan seemed downright giddy with what he’d done, stalking through town spying on TVs and smiling at newspaper headlines. These were not the reactions of a remorseful, sympathetic person, and you can quote me on that.

Then somehow the episode got even BETTER? Because this was when Donatella Versace (Penélope Cruz) showed up to mourn, accuse, and succeed her brother in his business dealings, all with a barely understandable Italian accent. Seriously, Penélope Cruz is truly next-level. Hope she likes Emmys.

Speaking of incredible: Did you guys know Ricky Martin can ACT? As Versace’s live-in boyfriend of 15 years, he sobbed and projected misery like a seasoned Shakespearean actor. Adding to this particular scene’s pathos, we were brutally reminded that in 1997 people were still not comfortable with (or even cognizant of) the existence of gay relationships.

Even though the detectives were looking to investigate a murder, they seemed straight-up flummoxed by the fact that Versace had had male lovers. Worse, Donatella Versace decided that she didn’t want these details in the press, clearly believing that her brother’s homosexuality was a danger to their brand.

Actually, even way, way worse, was the fact that Andrew Cunanan was already a known suspect in other murders, but the police had plainly not done much about it, in part due to his and the victims’ homosexuality. Yep, that was a thing back then. Crimes against gays were frequently back-burnered or ignored altogether. In this scene, a pawn shop owner (played by the majestic Cathy Moriarty) saw Cunanan’s face on TV and then angrily alerted cops the fact that she’d reported him days earlier as having sold something in her shop. Yet the cops did nothing! Ugh, the ’90s were really horrible in certain/most ways.

But enough wallowing in the brutal realities of an unjust world — let’s talk more about Donatella! While obviously in mourning from the still-fresh murder, this episode made very clear that her business sense trumped all. Because Versace the company had been on the verge of going public, she now feared that power over the company would be taken from the family, so she and her other brother decided to keep it private. In my opinion this made for a good move, seeing as Versace is still sort of a thing these days. (Side note: I am not sure whether this miniseries will be reenacting Donatella’s Ice Bucket Challenge video, but here’s hoping there’s at least one episode devoted to it.)

This episode was also full of tons of extremely good and witty visuals, and that’s all credit to Ryan Murphy’s directorial eye. There were a lot of clever and downright beautiful details in this episode, but I loved elderly orange speedo man watching calmly as the Miami SWAT Team descended upon Andrew Cunanan’s hotel room. What was going through his mind? What was he thinking about all this? Hopefully we’ll find out in the next episode.

At the end of this episode Andrew Cunanan remained at large. A particularly filthy-looking Max Greenfield was found holing up in Cunanan’s room, so something tells me we’ll learn more about this guy. Cunanan himself had taken to roaming around Miami in a canary yellow polo shirt and matching hat, while grinning proudly at himself on the front pages of the local papers. It may have been a violent, inglorious, shameful way to achieve it, but this charlatan had really reached the next level.

“The Man Who Would Be Vogue” was quite simply one of the best first episodes of a show I’ve seen in a while. Relying on sweeping visuals over dialogue, and allowing gaudiness to exist beside sincerity, it gripped me right away. While we know this is not a happy story and it doesn’t end particularly well, it does feel as important and timely as ever, much like its predecessor The People v. O.J. Simpson. It remains to be seen whether this season will catch on with viewers and critics like that one did, but either way, it’s hard not to be grateful for something this special.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ premiere recap: When doves die

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Is Really Andrew Cunanan’s Show

Two years after the debut of The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, Ryan Murphy and his team are back with another scripted deep-dive into another infamous true crime of the ‘90s. The murder of Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) by narcissistic grifter-turned-drifter Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) is the inciting incident for a series that will explore Versace’s groundbreaking legacy as both a fashion icon and an openly gay star, alongside Cunanan’s mental decline as he becomes increasingly obsessed with Versace and everything he represents.

This was a distinctive and off-kilter opening episode: for one, it’s deliberately unclear for large portions whether what we’re seeing is fact or fiction. Everything Cunanan says—and by extension, everything we see from his perspective—is suspect, because this is a person with no fixed sense of self, who has learned to navigate the world by “telling people what they want to hear.” Though Cunanan is not the narrator of this show, he narrates enough of his own story to make the viewing experience deeply unsettling, and the ugliness at the heart of him makes for a compelling contrast with the beauty of everything else in Versace’s world.

Here are seven talking points from the first episode, “The Man Who Would Be Vogue.”

1) It’s early days, but this may be the most stunning opening to any show in 2018.

I saw the first seven minutes of this episode back in August, and was so genuinely bowled over that I didn’t know what to do with myself afterwards. From the music to the cinematography to the meticulously detailed set (which recreates the interior of Versace’s Miami Beach home), it’s a ravishing, enthralling sequence laced with so much dread, because you know exactly what Versace is walking towards when he strolls back to his house from the cafe. It’s even more impactful when you consider that Versace had been seriously ill shortly before he died (expect to see this explored in a future episode). Every morning he woke up probably felt like a gift.

2) The show pulls a bait-and-switch early on.

In the sense that Gianni Versace’s name is in the title, but this is really Andrew Cunanan’s show. I suspect some viewers who tuned in expecting to see the detailed story of Versace may be disappointed, but Cunanan is such a mesmerizingly unique character—and Darren Criss is such a revelation in this role—that the focus on him and his mental state is understandable. It is striking, though, that we go a full sixteen minutes before Versace himself has any significant dialogue, or even any screen time outside of that opening sequence.

3) Did Cunanan and Versace really meet?

This remains a hugely controversial point in real life—both whether they even met, and to what extent they knew each other. The episode begins with Cunanan gleefully telling his close friends and reluctant landlords, “Guess who I met? Gianni Versace!” and what we see in the club follows from there, suggesting we’re seeing Cunanan’s deeply unreliable version of events.

In the version we see, Cunanan approaches Versace in the VIP area of a Miami club, and barrels right through the intense social anxiety that I’m feeling by proxy, as Versace repeatedly and unsuccessfully tries to give him the brush-off. Cunanan finally gets Versace’s interest, though, with a maybe-true-maybe-not story about his Italian-American mother, and the two begin to bond.

There’s a second layer of unreliability to this, though. We cut from the Cunanan/Versace meeting in the bar to Cunanan telling a entirely different version of the story, wherein Versace approached him and Cunanan scornfully said “If you’re Gianni Versace, I’m Coco Chanel.” So… what is the truth? Presumably it’s the version we saw, but the scene where Versace and Cunanan go to the opera together makes me skeptical on that front too. That scene involved such beautiful, telling dialogue—“That makes me want to cry.” “It makes me smile.”—that I strangely wanted to believe it was true, even though it seems unlikely Versace would have immediately taken to Cunanan in this way.

4) Andrew Cunanan is not so much a chameleon as a shapeshifter.

There’s a Talented Mr. Ripley quality to Cunanan, a social climber who will convincingly transform himself into whatever he needs to be to con whoever he’s with. I say convincingly, but in fact the cracks are beginning to show—the couple he’s living with exchange weary glances as Cunanan rambles about his date with Versace, and he casually tosses off the F-word to make himself appear more heterosexual.

Directly before and after the shooting of Versace, Criss has a series of standout, terrifying, semi-cathartic moments of pure release (screaming maniacally into the ocean looks extremely appealing, unsure what this says about me?) but the beat that really stuck comes right when Versace’s death has been confirmed on the news. A woman standing near Cunanan, watching the same television, puts a hand over her mouth in shock—and Cunanan, mirroring other humans as he’s learned to do, does the same. But while the woman is tearful, Cunanan is hiding what looks like a maniacal smile behind his hand. Full-body shudder.

5) There was a brief nod to the second second of Feud.

Versace buying the Princess Diana issue of Vanity Fair was a tiny moment, but a significant one. Just over a month after Versace’s murder, Diana—one of his friends—would also die an untimely death. That connection aside, this may also be a sly reference to the planned second season of Feud, which will focus on Diana’s tempestuous relationship with her husband Charles.

6) “What will they find out?” “Everything.”

This is presumably a reference to the most controversial part of the series: Versace’s medical history, and specifically his HIV status. As was hinted at when the police came to question Antonio, the series will deal heavily with both Versace’s burden as an openly gay celebrity, and the rampant homophobia of the period, which arguably colored the way in which police investigated Cunanan’s crimes. Donatella (Penelope Cruz) is determined to prevent as much gossip from spreading as possible: “First, people weep,” she notes. “Then they whisper.” Her priority in the wake of her brother’s death is preserving his company, no matter what, because she refuses to let “this man, this nobody” kill Gianni twice. Little does she know this line is the best revenge she could possibly have—along with the Versace family spokesman declaring to the press that they had never met Cunanan—because there’s nothing Andrew Cunanan fears more than being seen as a nobody.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Is Really Andrew Cunanan’s Show

Edgar Ramirez on playing Gianni Versace, fashion, and his all-time favorite Versace shirt

Edgar Ramirez stars as Gianni Versace in Ryan Murphy‘s newest FX production, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. The Venezuelan actor has starred in many Hollywood flicks, including Joy, The Girl on the Train, The Bourne Ultimatum, and Zero Dark Thirty — but playing the role of the late, revered Italian fashion designer was unlike playing any other.

I caught up with Ramirez after his Build Series interview in New York. Immediately, I noticed his impeccable, dapper style. The actor wore an olive suit by Italian label Brunello Cucinelli, a stylish checkered shirt by emerging New York designer R. Swiader, and shiny brown brogues by Aquatalia. Although he wasn’t wearing it at the time, Ramirez pointed out his favorite sartorial choice of the day — a clean, minimalist color-block coat by Honduran designer Carlos Campos. Clearly, the actor has some serious style swag.

One might think Ramirez’s fashion sense is in stark contrast to Versace’s bold classicist prints and pop culture-infused designs, but the actor is quick to point out that the two have more in common than you might think.

“He always had one element that always stood out. I relate more to that,” Ramirez tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “Even though Versace’s designs were grandiose, in reality when he was not at ‘his fashion show,’ at an event, or frankly in the public eye, his personal style was minimal, often wearing only black and white,” notes Ramirez.

For example, “Like today. It’s my shirt.” He proceeds to show me his triple-button closure at the collar of his mustard and black checkered shirt. If it didn’t have this small design detail, “I wouldn’t wear it.” As the saying goes, “God and the devil, they both live in the details.”

Although the actor was not wearing Versace at Build, “Almost all of Edgar’s costumes were Versace,” costume designer Lou Eyrich tells the New York Post.

But Eyrich had to rely on her creativity and a heavy dose of vintage sourcing to re-create the ’90s-era Versace family wardrobe, as she had to work without the cooperation of the Versace fashion house.

The Versace family recently released a statement to WWD saying the family “has not authorized nor has it in any way been involved in the TV series dedicated to the death of Gianni Versace” and that it is a “work of fiction.”

But of all the Versace fashion the actor did wear, which was his favorite? A vivid striped blue and gold baroque silk shirt he wore for the cover of Entertainment Weekly. “That blue was a Versace blue. It was so electrifying,” says Ramirez.

When we think of the Roman Empire, “We tend to relate it to washed-out statues … white palaces and white marble” due to wear over time. But in actuality, “the Roman Empire was bright and colorful. Everything was shiny, big, and loud. And Gianni basically rescued that.” The designer created an entirely new fashion framework that embodied classicism and embraced Rome’s great art and architecture.

During Milan Fashion Week in 2017, Donatella Versace honored her brother’s legacy with an epic finale during the brand’s fashion show. She reintroduced many of Gianni’s iconic, baroque, pop-art, and Warholian designs and concluded with the five supermodels whose careers he helped define: Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Helena Christensen, Carla Bruni, and Claudia Schiffer.

There is no doubt Gianni Versace affected the landscape of the fashion industry in many ways. His fusion of pop culture, Roman art, celebrity, and sexuality all played into his legacy. The designer was also a pioneer of making the front row a celebrity mainstay. “We wouldn’t be invited to the first row of a fashion show if it weren’t for a culture that Gianni Versace created 20 years ago,” says Ramirez during his Build interview. He was the first to create this “mixture between celebrity, cinema, music, and this rock ’n’ roll approach to couture and high fashion.”

Versace was not just a designer, but also an innovator in fashion, a skilled tailor, and a craftsman. After his death, Donatella continued his fashion line, which rakes in more than $600 million annually, allowing for her brother’s fashion legacy to continue to thrive.

Although Ramirez is on to his next film projects, he still has a few mementos from set to remember Versace by — a pair of black slides emblazoned with classic Versace gold medusa heads and a key chain, both emblems of the designer that appear in the first episode.

Gianni Versace was only 50 when he was killed on his front doorstep in 1997. This marks the 20th anniversary of his death. The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story premieres tonight, Jan. 17, at 10 p.m. ET on FX.

Edgar Ramirez on playing Gianni Versace, fashion, and his all-time favorite Versace shirt

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Delivers an American Psycho Story of Varying Quality

Given how different the second season of American Crime Story is from the first, there’s really no use in comparing them. But I can’t help it (no one can?). The People v. O.J. Simpson was a big deal, initially so popular because of the nostalgia and the appeal of seeing re-creations of the “trial of the century” with John Travolta camping it up as Robert Shapiro, but then so celebrated for its breakout performances. Sterling K. Brown was a relative unknown before the series. Sarah Paulson saw a boost in her career, as well. The Assassination of Gianni Versace doesn’t have as well-known a story. Its ensemble isn’t so packed with famous names, with its characters or the actors portraying them. The follow-up series can therefore be surprisingly disparate. But it nevertheless does a good job of pulling us into what it offers.

Even if we can forgive the unfair expectations, though, Ryan Murphy’s latest production is a bit of a bait and switch. The first two episodes of The Assassination of Gianni Versace promise as much of an operatically tinged biopic about fashion icons Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) and sister Donatella (Penelope Cruz) as the circumstances of his murder. Ricky Martin is there and impresses as Gianni’s longtime partner, Antonio D’Amico. These are the promoted stars of the show, and yet they’re not in very much of the ensuing chapters. When they are on screen, they’re incredible and worth the wait, but the irregularity of their involvement is more shocking than any contrast against the O.J. installment of this anthology program. I’ve seen eight of the nine episodes (all that were shared with press in advance), and they’re a mixed bag.

The series might as well be called The Assassin of Gianni Versace because it’s almost completely about Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), the spree killer who finished out a five-murder run when he shot Gianni in the face outside the fashion designer’s Miami Beach mansion. After depicting the murder in the pilot then continuing with a bouncing-around of time to show a years-earlier meeting between Versace and Cunanan and also some of the police investigation, the series jumps rewinds in chronology with each episode. Watched all together, the structure is reminiscent of the movie Memento. It also plays like each chapter is a prequel to the one that came prior. Villains tend to get such backstories to reveal their fall from innocence to become the evil monster we were originally introduced to. But not in backward spurts.

So we follow in reverse as Cunanan’s other killings are shown. The middle episodes of the series are sort of like standalone vignettes presenting who the victims were and how they met their end. Episode three (“A Random Killing”) is particularly strong as its own thing, mostly thanks to how it plays as a character piece about Marilyn Miglin, wife of the murdered Lee Miglin, and for Judith Light‘s exceptional guest performance in the role. It’s the peak chapter of the show (so far) for me, even if it’s the first instance where we realize The Assassination of Gianni Versace isn’t going to actually have much Versace in it. And that it’s scarier, gorier, more akin to Murphy’s American Horror Story than the sort of legal drama we saw with The People v. O.J. Simpson. For the next few episodes, these are the tales of a true American psycho.

Spree killers can be interesting, though they aren’t always as compelling as serial killers or one-off murderers. The former lends to psychological character studies, the latter more to whodunits and courtroom procedurals such as the first American Crime Story season. Apologies for the spoiler, but there was no trial for Cunanan, as he took his own life before he could even be apprehended. So instead of moving forward in time and dealing with retroactive explanations and defensive claims in the form of legal proceedings a la The People v. O.J. Simpson, here we get an attempt to connect the dots that may provide some understanding of Cunanan’s bloodshed. Of course, most of what we see is, while not necessarily fictionalized, certainly full of speculation. Many scenes solely involve people not around to provide details.

The series never makes a definite case for the why. We will never know what exactly triggered Cunanan to kill two of his friends, one of his many closeted and married lovers, a random cemetery worker, and a fashion legend whom he may or may not have ever met beforehand. In its best-directed episodes (the Murphy-helmed first, as well as the three by Gwyneth Horder-Payton, including “A Random Killing”) The Assassination of Gianni Versace doesn’t even explicitly spell out everything going on from scene to scene, which is respectably trusting of the intelligence and attention of the audience. The real question explored, as it is in the journalistic and more pointedly titled book it’s based on, “Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U. S. History,” is how did authorities let one of the most wanted men in America elude capture so long that Versace’s slaying could occur.

That inquiry takes this story through a cloud of themes and contexts pertaining to being a gay man in the ’90s. Not unlike The People v. O.J.‘s essential addresses of race and gender as it informed and mattered to the case of O.J. Simpson and the arguments and conduct of the trial, The Assassination of Gianni Versace touches on how homosexuality was viewed and treated at the time and how Cunanan and his victims’ lives were impacted by the difficulties and dangers of both secrecy and disclosure (one episode even focuses on the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy), the HIV/AIDS scare and eventual life-saving drug cocktails that arrived mid-decade, and the plethora of stereotypes. But it’s all kind of tricky, as viewers shouldn’t come away focused on the story’s unavoidable alignment with the “depraved homosexual” trope.

Murphy manages to avoid crossing any lines that could generally offend, I think. Where he doesn’t succeed as well is in the attempt to integrate the Versaces’ story with that of Cunanan. Following the first two episodes, Gianni and Donatella, joined often by Antonio, only sporadically return to the narrative. Initially they’re welcome distractions, but their part in the whole thing becomes inconsistently significant. Weak parallels are made, including one very bad cross-cutting between the nervous coming-out moments of Gianni and another character. Other times it seems like the series is just taking us back to the Versaces randomly now and then because they’re famous persons of interest, there are real events that can be reenacted, and well, Ramirez, Cruz, and Martin are deservedly the primary draw.

As Cunanan, Criss is also pretty phenomenal and this should be a breakout performance for the lesser-known former Glee regular. But the character becomes less interesting over time (especially during a binge-watch, as I experienced them). It’s a tough task to pull off such a mysteriously maniacal charlatan and have him carry a nine-week program so prominently without humanizing the monster too much nor depicting him as an unrealistically heightened caricature. Criss makes it work in spite of the character’s absence of complexity, coming off as a clever yet deranged Clark Kent who never felt loved enough to become a superman with his strengths rather than a villain. Still, the actor is overshadowed by Light and the uncannily perfect Ramirez and often unintelligible but magnificently committed Cruz.

Without seeing the finale, which is being held and which will surely return to the setting of the first two episodes (many viewers will suddenly be reminded after two months that Orange is the New Black‘s Dascha Polenco, as a police detective on the case, once seemed to be one of the stars) I can’t make a call on the series as a whole. But even halfway in it was clear that The Assassination of Gianni Versace is an uneven and sometimes disappointing take on this true-crime story. But as usual with Murphy’s shows, there is enough good to outweigh the bad. They’re mainly watchable for their casting and slew of standout performances — this one even slips Cathy Moriarty in for a bit role and Aimee Mann gets a nice cameo. And the attention to detail in the production design here will make you feel like you’re literally going backwards in time with the narrative.

It’s also worth remembering that these series are never perfect. Even The People v. O.J. Simpson has tons of flaws but might be misremembered as being more substantial than it is if you also saw the documentary O.J.: Made in America around the same time (perhaps all of these true story based anthology shows could use an unaffiliated but complimentary documentary accompaniment). Of course, they also tend to be more fun. The Assassination of Gianni Versace is dark without the camp and levity that fans are likely to anticipate. Whether it will manage to keep most viewers tuning in anyway, I don’t know. But I recommend at least watching the fantastic first three episodes.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Delivers an American Psycho Story of Varying Quality

American Crime Story: Versace Season 1 Episode 1 Review: The Man Who Would Be Vogue

Gianni Versace was murdered nearly 20 years ago in the summer of 1997 under the blazing Miami sun.

His murder and the subsequent hunt for his killer was one of the biggest news stories of its time. And now it’s getting the Ryan Murphy treatment.

The brain trust behind the riveting The People v. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story, have turned season 2 into American Crime Story: The Assassination of Versace Season 1 Episode 1.

And while the premiere wastes no time in showcasing the aforementioned murder, it looks like the subsequent fallout will be the main focus of the series.

Much as the OJ case concentrated on the trial, it appears that what happens after Versace’s murder, will be just as important as everything that comes before it.

If you’re entering this with fresh eyes, there’s a lot thrown at you in the first hour.

While we meet all the necessary players, we don’t get to see much beyond what we may read on a footnote. The one exception being the man behind the murder, Andrew Cunanan.

Played to absolute perfection by Glee alum Darren Criss, Andrew is the villain of this story – no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Switching between the murder and scenes of Andrew years prior, it’s very clear that Andrew is a confused man.

A conversation with a male companion pretty much lays out the kind of man he will be.

Andrew: What does it matter what I say?
Friend: What does it matter?
Andrew: Yes?
Friend: It matters.
Andrew: Only if they know it isn’t true.
Friend: But you know.

Whether he’s boasting about his father and his riches or his dreams to write a novel, there’s a falseness and arrogance that just comes pouring off of him.

See, we are privy to seeing a glimpse of the real Andrew, a man with an empty closet, living with friends who continuously roll their eyes everytime he begins to tell a long-winded tale.

But the Andrew who boldly introduces himself to the Gianni Versace and scores a celebratory glass of champagne with the famed designer is a phony suck up, whose dastardly charm brings him face to face with the man he would later murder in cold blood.

While the OJ series played out in the courtroom and brought the conversation of race and the justice system to the forefront, this series will definitely delve into what it meant to be gay in the ‘90s and the incompetence in the search for Cunanan prior to Versace’s murder.

It looks like there will also be a peek into the lives of the other Versaces and how Gianni’s death affected not only them but the company he took to such heights.

Darren Criss steals a lot of the screen time in the premiere, but Penelope Cruz, showing up about midway through, makes Donatella Versace into a steely-eyed woman, hellbent on preserving the Versace name.

She also has an icy relationship with Versace’s partner of 15 years.

Nothing was ever asked of you, except to take care of him. You couldn’t even do that.

It’s interesting play to begin the series with the murder and switch between alternating timelines. Sweeping stories of this nature sometimes do better when they are told from a straightforward point of view – a simple point A to point B.

But I’m trusting in the Ryan Murphy magic here. There’s a reason we are seeing things in this order.

Moving forward there will be much to cover, and I think the premiere sets the stage for another engrossing series.

It’s got all of the right ingredients so far. A top-notch cast and a compelling story based on real-life happenings.

★★★★☆

American Crime Story: Versace Season 1 Episode 1 Review: The Man Who Would Be Vogue

The Assassination of Gianni Versace Episode 1 Review: The Man Who Would Be Vogue

From the very first notes of music, Versace is operatic.

It has fantastic sets and locations, and it knows it. It has a justifiable reason for using opera music in primetime, and it flaunts it. The opener is directed by Ryan Murphy, and the most creative shots are loving, unexpected portrayals of the places where these two men, killer and killed, belong. The most revealing moment, and one that speaks to the larger themes of the show, shows barely any of Darren Criss’s face as killer Andrew Cunanan, accompanied by horns that sound more like a klaxon or warning than the brass section of the orchestra.

Even Gianni’s death, and the gut-punchingly grim spectacle that forms around it, is beautiful, as is the twin autopsy of Gianni and the dove that died alongside him. This kind of show is designed to be watching with Wikipedia open in one tab, but true or not, the woman who soaks up Gianni’s blood with an ad for his clothing line (which somehow makes it more beautiful?) pushes the limits on craven American responses to celebrity death.

The first episode of a true-crime limited series (a fast-growing micro-genre unto itself) has two main goals: 1) set up the central crime/mystery to be resolved, and 2)hook the audience enough that they’ll think it’s worth sinking eight or ten hours to find out the answer.

It succeeds at the first, but I’m left unsatisfied with the second.

The present tense of the second season (or “installment,” as FX likes to call it) of this limited series is centered on a manhunt, not a media frenzy masquerading as a trial. That allows the show to take on more of a feel of a thriller, with shades of The Talented Mr. Ripley and Taking Lives. The audience sees the killer – his identity is not obscured – and law enforcement learns his identity within hours of the murder. For Versace, the question is not who did it or how, but rather why. And why, if they knew it was Andrew Cunano and were ready with a trunk full of fliers (that look startlingly close to the real thing) did it take them so long to catch him?

There’s plenty to dig into with those questions, but the episode has to do so much narrative work that it nearly runs out of room to entice us to come back for more. There is so much that’s working here, from the visuals to the performances and the promise of things to come, but it feels sluggish during the oversized runtime, which is closer to an hour than the 44 minutes we’re used to with standard TV dramas.

One of the advantages to Murphy’s American Crime Story is that his flair for melodrama and camp are tempered by the reality that the cases and literally life and death, and his shrewd (though troubled) selection of subjects who naturally call for camp. So much of this installment would be ridiculous literally anywhere else on TV, which might just be Ryan Murphy’s mission statement. Here’s hoping it’s enough to ward off the usual afflictions of his second and third seasons.

Plenty has been said about the debate over ethics in true(ish) crime, but if you’re looking to fall on the right side of the line, it helps to angle your story around larger meaning. Versace has a lot to say about homosexuality and closeting in America, and Murphy’s life experience plays into that in a way he simply couldn’t with the OJ case. Some of Murphy’s best work has been when he tells stories that fundamentally belong to his community. And though to a certain kind of white, cis gay man the story of Bette and Joan might be considered part of their canon, it is fundamentally the story of two women struggling under the pressure to contort their image and personality to compete for the spotlight, and Murphy’s continued failure to properly handle those issues weakened the series.

I’m intrigued by the way the show is handling the many ambiguities inherent in this case. Unlike The People vs OJ, our would-be defendant isn’t famous and has never spoken on the record, so Murphys team and us would-be sleuths are left to imagine many of the key moments.

If we’re talking performances, this is Darren Criss’s show and everyone else is just happy to be invited. That’s not to say the others aren’t good – Edgar Ramirez’s Gianni Versace is solid and charming, Penelope Cruz is completely transformed, and I have a feeling the best is yet to come from Ricky Martin – but rather that the script gives him so much to dig into, and he’s the perfect actor to do it. He easily mimics Cunanan’s real life chameleon physicality, and most people are already in disagreement over his sexual orientation.

Donatella is our other heavy hitter, though they held back on her as long as possible. She has an impactful entrance, though I’m mostly impressed at the restraint Murphy showed here, which fits the tone of the moment within the episode perfectly, but is unusual for him.

Penelope Cruz, who is apparently a friend of Donatella’s and has her blessing, has a tall order to serve. First, the voice. Anyone who knows anything about Donatella Versace knows that her distinct looks comes with an equally distinct accent. Cruz has to play it believably, without dipping into caricature or being so true to life that the audience can’t understand her. Second, she finds herself playing the day to day villain for much of this. She’s the one who dislikes the boyfriend that we’ve all fallen in love with after the cops are so rude to him. She’s the one who cancels the IPO. She’s the one with a sizeable reputation preceding her. And yet, Cruz’s Donatella comes across as powerful, stricken, at a lost, and completely unwilling to lose an inch of her brother’s legacy.

Speaking of that cop, though it’s startling to remember that 1997 was 30 years ago, Versace has no intentions of letting us forget that when it comes to gay rights, it might as well have been lightyears. The cop pretending not to know that Gianni and Antonio are partners, what exactly “partners” means, and then trying to comprehend group sex, has got to be the straightest thing imaginable. But Ricky Martin’s performance keeps it from becoming a punchline. His hurt when the cop suggest there’s no difference between a hookup and what he has with Gianni is deeply genuine, and a startling reminder of how few rights same-sex couples had, just a few decades ago.

That is made more stark by Cunanan’s inability to live in his own skin, his seething rage at himself and those who see him for who he is, and the insinuation that he has HIV (fact-checking suggests that while the media thought he had it at the time of his death, the ME’s report says otherwise). Criss and the script play it pretty close to the vest, letting us believe one thing and then another and then catching him in lie after lie, to the point where we question everything about him.

★★★★☆

The Assassination of Gianni Versace Episode 1 Review: The Man Who Would Be Vogue

L+SD Ratings: “Assassination Of Gianni Versace” Premieres Well Below “People v. OJ,” Still Wins Wednesday Night

The bad (yet predictable) news: The premiere of FX’s “The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” drew fewer live+same-day viewers than any installment of “The People v. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story.”

The good news: Wednesday’s premiere was still the day’s top cable original in adults 18-49.

According to live+same-day data posted by Showbuzz, Wednesday’s “American Crime Story” premiere drew a 0.72 adults 18-49 rating and averaged 2.22 million overall viewers.

The numbers markedly trail the February 2, 2016 “People v. OJ” premiere, which drew a 1.96 in the demo and 5.11 million in overall viewership.

“The People v. OJ” fell considerably in subsequent weeks, but it never went below a 1.11 in the demo or 2.72 million in overall viewership.

The series-to-series decline is not at all surprising, however. In addition to lacking the novelty factor, the second season features a less notorious/iconic case.

The “Gianni Versace” numbers, moreover, are still strong by cable standards. The premiere was Wednesday’s #1 cable original in adults 18-49. It was a top ten performer for overall viewership.

Citing the changing television landscape, FX publicly dismisses the importance of adults 18-49 numbers. The network professes a preference for data that includes DVR and multi-platform viewership. “Gianni Versace” is expected to receive a substantial lift from delayed/non-linear viewing and thus look even more favorable under the microscope FX deems relevant.

The short story here is simple: “Gianni Versace” got off to an underwhelming start in comparison to “People v. OJ,” but its numbers were still quite solid by typical cable standards.

L+SD Ratings: “Assassination Of Gianni Versace” Premieres Well Below “People v. OJ,” Still Wins Wednesday Night

In The Assassination of Gianni Versace, a Star (Killer) Is Born

It’s never been a better time to be a serial killer.

Or, rather, a serial killer on screen. Baby-faced former Disney stars like Zac Efron and Ross Lynch step up to play necrophiliacs Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer. Charles Manson may be dead, but he’ll live on in Quentin Tarantino’s new movie. Are you into maids who may have murdered their employers in the 19th century or are old-school psychopaths more your style? There are shows about both, of course.

Ever since massive cultural events like Serial and The Jinx, pop culture has felt like a nonstop true-crime machine, with an eye turned specifically on revisiting (and sometimes glamorizing) the past. The first season of the Emmy award-winning American Crime Story recreated the O.J. Simpson trial with a contemporary lens: an empathetic focus on prosecutor Marcia Clark and the advent of the 24-hour news cycle. Now, the show takes on the difficult task of revisiting the 1997 murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace and the manhunt that preceded it.

While the show’s second season, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, may carry the late designer’s presence in the title and its promotional materials—as well as a dramatic pre-premiere controversy over how much of the show is fictionalized—killer Andrew Cunanan is the series’ North Star around which the show’s far-reaching politics and storylines revolve. In fact, you shouldn’t expect the Versace family, despite how fun Penélope Cruz’s Donatella is, to take up much screen time at all. The show begins with Versace’s death and moves backward in time, tracing the steps of 27-year-old Cunanan as he compulsively lied and murdered his way through four states and five men in just a few months.

The choice to use this timeline may seem confusing, but it proves to be the perfect format for preserving Cunanan’s opaque backstory, which viewers are left to question just as any of his skeptical victims and partners had. Darren Criss (Glee) plays Cunanan with an almost addicting charisma and clinginess, giddily worming his way into the lives of wealthy gay men often as an escort and live-in boyfriend. And because of Cunanan’s story and its necessary accessories (luxury hotels, designer clothes, strobe-lit night clubs) this season is certainly aesthetically flashier than its courtroom-confined predecessor. Watching Cunanan dance wildly around a hotel room in a pink speedo to “Easy Lover,” as if he were in a music video and not sadistically torturing a client, you can see why the Versace family was reportedly uneasy about the series.

So Cunanan is the star killer and Gianni Versace may be his star victim, but the show’s best material takes place before their fatal meeting. In addition to Versace we get to know Cunanan’s other victims, naval officer Jeff Trail, architect David Madson, real estate developer Lee Miglin, and for a brief moment William Reese, from whom Cunanan stole a car. We also get to know some of their parents, siblings, pets, wives, and dreams. We see how they grappled with coming out, or not coming out, as gay.

It’s here in these backstories that the show takes most of its creative liberties, understandably connecting the gaps in the story with conversations and murder details we’ll never know, though much of the series does stand up to Maureen Orth’s reporting in Vulgar Favors. But whereas The People vs. O.J. Simpson revisited its crime with a clear focus (on racism, misogyny, a voyeuristic media), the ideas of the Assassination of Gianni Versace are more scatterbrained. The series explores ’90s homophobia and how it affected the way law enforcement scrutinized Cunanan’s victims and bungled his manhunt, plus a brief diversion into Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And with Cunanan, who was half-Filipino, constantly chasing the dream of Versace’s self-made success, there’s also a larger, more muddled story here about the dangers and pressures of the American dream.

But if there’s one thing this season of American Crime Story does depressingly well is award a specificity and humanity to Cunanan’s victims. Because while pop culture may be obsessed with murder, it’s not always concerned with portraying victims as real people with full lives that precede their deaths. We don’t get to know the victims of Richard Speck or Ed Kemper on Mindhunter, or the countless dead girls of CSI and Law and Order, or much about Nicole Brown Simpson or Ron Goldman in the first season of ACS. Our contemporary obsession with killers may continue in Assassination of Gianni Versace, but at least so do the lives of victims too.

In The Assassination of Gianni Versace, a Star (Killer) Is Born

Finn Wittrock On Playing Andrew Cunanan’s First Victim in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story”

As a frequent member of Ryan Murphy’s core ensemble, Finn Wittrock is used to being murdered. But in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, there’s the added weight of playing the real-life victim of who is referred to as a America’s first gay serial killer.

“It was surreal,“ Wittrock tells INTO. "It was one of the most, just physically and technically one of the hardest things. I was dead and covered in blood and prosthetics for about 12 hours for three days, and they kept telling me they were going to use a fake body double but they used me a lot more than I thought they would. I feel like I earned my stripes that day.”

In the new FX mini-series, Wittrock plays 28-year-old Jeffrey Traill, a former lieutenant in the U.S. Navy whose time in the military coincided with the realization of his homosexuality as well as the instatement of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Traill, a Gulf War veteran from a blue collar Illinois family, once appeared on 48 Hours to discuss being gay in the navy, though he was shrouded in shadowy anonymity to protect himself from dishonorable discharge.

“Gays are here in the military,” Traill told host Richard Schlesinger. “We perform our jobs and we do it well. … You’re gonna weaken our national defense if you remove gays from the military. And you’ll never be able to do it 100 percent—it’s just whether or not you continue to hunt us and force us to fear.”

“I watched that a lot—every day, over and over, and tried to get his cadence and his rhythm and his shame and also his pride,” Wittrock said of the 48 Hours segment. “He is a complicated fellow. And such a tragic ending because he seemed to have so much potential and just figuring out who he was and what he wanted to do with his life and he lived in a time when he was just a little too early for his time, kind of a trailblazer in a way, you know?”

Traill was, by all accounts, a good guy—maybe too good in that his friendliness and empathy may have cost him his life. Or perhaps it was just bad luck. Traill met Andrew Cunanan after leaving the Navy, but staying near port in San Diego, where Cunanan was a fixture of the nearby gayborhood. In her book Vulgar Favors, journalist Maureen Orth details both Cunanan’s history with wonts of flashiness and propensity for compulsive lying as well as Traill’s loneliness and internalized homophobia as he ventured out of the military and into gay bars. Their fateful meeting turned into a friendship that ended with Traill’s being beaten to death with a claw hammer in a mutual friend’s Minneapolis loft.

The Assassination of Giannini Versace writer Tom Rob Smith adapted his teleplay largely from Orth’s book, as she covered the case for Vanity Fair before Cunanan even reached Versace in Miami in July of 1997. (He would kill himself eight days later.) What Orth’s book offers is not just an in-depth look at Cunanan’s background and psyche, but extensive research into the victims (Traill and Versace as well as architect David Madson, real estate tycoon Lee Miglin, and cemetery worker William Reese), as well as the landscape of American homophobia that factored heavily into how Cunanan’s pre-meditated murder spree was able to unfold.

The FX series attempts to fit as much backstory as it can into a narrative that is by and large about Cunanan (Darren Criss) more than it is Versace (played by Edgar Ramirez), but it’s also more about the anti-gay rhetoric that existed in America at the time than it is about the specificity of Versace’s shooting.

"Certainly for me and I think for Ryan, too, the homophobia that runs through the story is—it brings up painful memories,” says out EP Nina Jacobson. “It is a reminder of how much had changed in 20 years. But to read even in Maureen’s book about where these guys are being outed as they are being murdered; [that police] go to the parents and say, ‘Well, there’s things you don’t know about your son’—it’s just so wrong and so disturbing.”

Jacobson brings up how the FBI knew Cunanan was not just gay, but a frequenter of gay nightclubs, and yet, they wouldn’t canvas gay bars in their manhunt.

“They wouldn’t go into the clubs, they wouldn’t put the flyers up,” Jacobson says. “They wouldn’t go into the community, into the gay bars saying, ‘Have you seen this guy?’ And he’s right there. The politics of that to me were really devastating.”

Versace, she says, didn’t have to die. And that’s one case that the show attempts to make as it tells the story of Cunanan and his murder spree in a backward fashion of sorts.

“There are so many chapters and its such a sprawling, interesting narrative—it’s like a tree that grows all these different branches,“ Wittrock says of the show. "Episode by episode kind of takes you down this individual arc that leads back to the main thing, so I am amused by the structure of it and the writing.”

“Just learning about who Andrew Cunanan is just an amazing dark rabbit hole to go down,” Wittrock continues. “It’s like learning about Jack the Ripper. It’s like you are horrified, but can’t turn away.”

As Traill, Wittrock may meet an untimely death, but he otherwise poses a powerful authenticity that Cuanan seemed to be envious of. Although he was closeted while in the military, Traill risked his career doing not only the 48 Hours interview, but also protecting another soldier from being gay bashed, spurning rumors about his own sexual identity. When Cunanan attempted to out him to his father by sending a romantic sounding postcard to his family’s home address, Wittrock held his composure but decided to cut Cunanan out of his life—at least, that’s what he said he’d planned to do after allowing Cunanan to visit him one last time.

Despite the star power that Ramirez, Ricky Martin, and Penelope Cruz inevitably bring to the series (Martin plays Versace’s long-term lover Antonio D’Amico; Cruz is a campy yet convincing Donatella), Darren Criss is truly the star of Assassination. The name recognition that Versace brings has overshadowed the other victims’ deaths since they took place, but now, the cast and crew insist, they use it not just to draw viewers in, but to take away the iconography Cunanan would have wanted for himself as a fame-seeking serial killer. Instead, Jacobson says, the EPs were hoping the theme would be more about "the inability to be authentic and the struggle for authenticity.”

“And the courage of Versace’s heroism,” she adds, “which I didn’t realize really. When you put him in a timeline, the only other designers who were out were dead, and they were out because they died of AIDS. He chose to come out at a time when Ellen wasn’t out yet. It was a very different time.”

And while Versace’s own hard working history and public coming out was admirable (both on screen and in real life), it’s Wittrock’s broody but noble sailor-turned-factory worker that brings the most relatable heart to the series. Watching him spar with Criss as his scene partner are some of Assassination’s most heartbreaking, too, when you know it’s based on a true horror story.

“We had a good time,“ Wittrock said of working with Criss. "There are some projects where you really take the relationship off screen and this one was more us talking as co-conspirators figuring it out together. He is a very generous person on set and a remarkable versatile actor and really jumps in and out of the character very fluidly.”

Wittrock said Murphy approached him about the role right as he was finishing up The Glass Menagerie on Broadway, and the timing was right not just for him to jump at a new series, but at another chance to work with Murphy, whose prolific creativity can be hit or miss, but is at least always fun for the actors.

“I think that I have been lucky to fall into the Ryan Murphy fan group and that has its own niche within it,“ Wittrock says. "I am honored to be in anything that he has me do, and its cool to play the spectrums of yourself.”

And for Wittrock, playing yet another queer role in the Murphy universe invites an opportunity for him to connect with a fanbase that has supported him in American Horror Story iterations and his role in The Normal Heart. A fanbase that, in 2018, is hopefully outraged by the homophobia that was implicit in the deaths of four gay men (Reese, victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, was straight) as it is excited by the idea of seeing Wittrock, Criss, Ramirez, and Martin play queer roles for nine episodes of Ryan Murphy television. It’s certainly a different landscape than when Versace came out, one of few public figures to acknowledge that not only was he gay, but he was happy, too.

Says Wittrock, “Bring on all the gay fans!”

Finn Wittrock On Playing Andrew Cunanan’s First Victim in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story”

Assassination of Gianni Versace Proves Two Things: Darren Criss is a Star, and Ryan Murphy Can Pick ‘Em

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Loyalty can be an admirable trait in life, but the same is not always true in art. The history of cinema (and television, theater, and most collaborative arts) is littered with projects that coulda-shoulda-woulda been great, save for an actor miscast by a faithful friend (or a well-intentioned parent, sibling, or lover). More disappointing still are filmographies tanked by that kind of professional affection — think of all the great Helena Bonham Carter performances we missed out on while she was busy being the reliable bright spot in the age of lesser Tim Burton.

But now hear this: It can never be said that Ryan Murphy’s loyalty to actors, and theirs to him, has not paid dividends. Jessica Lange won Emmys. Sarah Paulson’s now a household name, which is as it should be. It’s kept the underrated Evan Peters employed, made sure Denis O’Hare continues to kill it, and helped to remind the world that Kathy Bates and Angela Bassett are queens — and all those gifted people made sure that even Murphy’s messiest, most chaotic creations remained eminently watchable, if not entirely sensible or (sometimes) particularly good.

Now it’s going to make a star of Darren Criss, and Darren Criss in turn makes The Assassination of Gianni Versace a piece of can’t-miss television. His isn’t the only great performance in the second go-round of American Crime Story, but it’s the best and also the most surprising. It’s well past time to call it like it is: Ryan Murphy’s single greatest strength as an artist is his work with actors. He can spot them, nurture great performances from them, earn and retain their loyalty, and identify precisely when to throw them into the role most likely to show them at their best. He did it with Lange. He did it with Paulson. And now, he’s doing it with Blaine the Warbler from Glee.

Like most of Murphy’s recent work, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is every inch an ensemble piece, but only the second season of American Horror Story rivals this outing for the sheer, magnetic pull of one character and performance. Criss’ work as spree killer Andrew Cunanan is so good that it’s perhaps fairest to talk about literally everything else first.

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Assassination of Gianni Versace Proves Two Things: Darren Criss is a Star, and Ryan Murphy Can Pick ‘Em