It’s fitting that the second season of FX’s American Crime Story is centered around the murder of Gianni Versace, because the series feels like style over substance. It’s like a high-end dress you’d see on a runway in Milan, something that looks ornate and artistic, but which is wholly impractical to wear.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (a cumbersome title) is surprisingly not focused on the fashion designer, played by Edgar Ramirez, who was shot in front of his Miami mansion in 1997. Instead, the focus is entirely on the assassin, Andrew Cunanan (Glee’s Darren Criss), a pathological liar, con artist and sociopath who went on a murder spree that culminated with Versace.
The show is essentially told in the style of the film Memento, a series of flashbacks that will slowly reveal the motivations and origins of Cunanan’s spree and his killing of Versace. The stylistic choice is one that will largely determine how much you enjoy the series.
For me (and I presume many others), Versace’s death and the four people Cunanan killed prior to him is not as well-known as the O.J. Simpson trial. It was a big story, but not one that captured America’s collective attentions for months and months. As a result, using a complicated storytelling structure makes American Crime Story difficult to invest in. Characters are introduced at the end of their stories, and then subsequent episodes offer insights into who they were and what led to their circumstances.
But the style and structure are merely a distraction from what, at its heart, is a terrifying and fascinating portrait of a serial killer. Cunanan, as a character, is disturbing and Criss’ performance has an eerie lack of emotion that suits the show. The limited series travels down Cunanan’s psychological rabbit hole, and contrasting him with Gianni Versace only helps to illustrate how deranged Cunanan is.
The cast also includes Penelope Cruz as Gianni’s sister, Donatella, and singer Ricky Martin as Gianni’s long-time partner and lover. But the show largely wastes both of them, giving them almost nothing to do and having them both disappear for several episodes at a time. Othfer major characters, friends of Cunanan played by Cody Fern and Finn Wittrock, don’t show up until the fourth episode, but become very important.
The series works best as a psychological drama, revealing piece-by-piece how and why Cunanan assassinated Versace and four other people. The flaws, however, lie in the fundamental structure of the season itself and perhaps in the violence. While the first season of American Crime Story was more of a sociological look at race and the judicial system, this season actually shows the demented and depraved violence, occasionally feeling more like a season of American Horror Story.
There are intriguing elements to American Crime Story’s sophomore season, especially how it uses the misconceptions and shame of homosexuality in the ‘90s that led to some police mistakes and may provide some insight into how Cunanan was able to elude capture for so long. But overall, the show feels unfocused, with its overly complex structure and lack of a consistent supporting cast.
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The Assassination of Gianni Versace has main character confusion
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is a riveting experiment that falsifies its results. The show — which succeeds Ryan Murphy’s exceptional The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story — ostensibly addresses the assassination of its subject, the Italian designer (played by the excellent Edgar Ramirez) shot to death on the steps of his Miami villa. It is, alas, misleadingly named. The show’s focus quickly turns to Versace’s serial killer, Andrew Cunanan, a shape-shifting con artist played with sinister elan by Darren Criss, and his various victims.
That slippage is deliberate: Like Murphy’s other projects — O.J. Simpson, Feud — the series uses a specific case to build out a larger social history. Where The People vs. O.J. illuminated the fraught context in which the trial took place, where Feud mined a scandalous rivalry for a bigger story about ambient misogyny, Versace attempts a fascinating anthropology of ‘90s-era homosexuality and attendant homophobia, the social ramifications of which allowed a serial killer to keep killing. It’s an ambitious undertaking that aggressively short-changes its nominal celebrity. The results — some of which are quite moving — are fascinating but mixed.
The trouble is that some of the show’s most interesting moves don’t track. Versace is so formally adventurous that it sometimes loses control of its own effects. The season lurches backwards in fits and starts, rewinding from Versace’s assassination to Cunanan’s encounters with his other four (known) victims. Sometimes the story moves forward, sometimes backwards. It works for awhile: I was rapt until I realized I’d lost track — things I’d assumed came after happened before, and vice-versa, and it wasn’t clear why the facts were presented in that particular order because they weren’t just failing to build; they seemed to collapse.
Take Cunanan. This should be one of television’s great villains, and he almost is (thanks to Criss’ cunning, smart-muppet charm). But he’d be a marvelous character if he made any real sense. The difficulty is that the real Andrew Cunanan shot himself a few days after killing Versace and left no note; his motivations are a mystery, and he remains a cipher. Murphy, who usually has too much source material, in this case has too little. The show can’t quite decide how to deal with this. It vacillates between truthful ambiguity and irresponsibly doubling down on rumor. (There’s no proof, for instance, that Cunanan and Versace ever met prior to the shooting, but in Versace they certainly did. Cunanan’s reasons for murdering a Chicago tycoon were unknown; it was rumored at the time that his son was an associate of Cunanan’s. The story was retracted and became a kind of example of reckless journalism. In lieu of exploring the work of those ugly rumors and others, like the theory that Cunanan had AIDS and was killing the men who gave it to him, Versace doubles down: Cunanan definitely had a sexual relationship with the tycoon, it says! And, as if to amplify the thing further, upgrades a famous ham sandwich left at a crime scene into an even more sinister ham).
This divided approach to filling in the historical record produces a character who doesn’t quite rhyme with himself. What does it mean that Cunanan, a self-aggrandizing liar whose dishonesty (it’s repeatedly suggested) is calibrated to compensate for the fact that he wasn’t loved, turns out to have been loved? And not just loved, but obsessed over and badly spoiled? Scandal and murder shows are always most interesting when they take up the question of how we told the story as it was happening, and that twist — if it qualifies as one — could be an opportunity to send up ’90s pop psychology. The show could have spun that earlier theory of Cunanan as society’s too-charitable reading of a monster, or pilloried its easy assumptions about the home lives that “produce” gay men. But instead of corralling that range of possibilities into a consistent account of Cunanan, or some interesting point about how foolishly we theorize serial killers (or homosexuality), the show goes limp. Oddly inert, it just sort of lets every version of Cunanan exist. Sometimes he’s awkward, stilted, and so obvious that his stories fool no one. Other times he’s gifted and manipulative. A brilliant and glamorous shapeshifter. A sad con man.
The pilot is stunning, both in its own right and for how well it captures this slight incoherence. It begins with camerawork that’s pleasingly lush and limited in its omniscience. Directed by Murphy, the opening sequence is every bit as excessive and ornate as its putative subject’s Greek-inspired designs. It looms through and over Versace’s gorgeous villa and whizzes in and out and around, sometimes rising up to look down at the magnificent architectural symmetry of the environment Versace created for himself, and his own elegant asymmetry within it. It’s dazzling, and the contrast between Versace’s gilded aesthetic and his antagonist couldn’t be clearer: We first encounter Cunanan looking grubby and nervous. His backpack is sad. He screams into the ocean. He runs to a filthy toilet and vomits.
But that spectacular aesthetic contrast between Versace and his killer really only serves that specific moment; it sputters out. As we get to know him better, it seems less and less likely that Cunanan would be that hysterically nervous; he’s shown killing other times with total sangfroid.
The vertiginous effect of Versace’s erratic chronology is compounded by the series’ equally experimental approach to point of view. Versace starts off as a kind of equal participant in the story of his demise, with Ricky Martin playing Antonio D’Amico, his lover of 15 years. (This is brilliant casting, and the story of Martin’s own celebrity journey out of the closet — which in some ways parallels Versace’s — elevates this subplot into really exceptional metacommentary. I wish he’d been given more to do.) The show treats Versace, his vision, his artistry, and his company with great tenderness. Penelope Cruz does a creditable Donatella. But a few episodes in, it’s not only abandoned Versace’s point of view — and Donatella’s, and Antonio’s — it’s followed an entirely different character into the afterlife.
These are puzzling choices, but Versace makes up for an overall lack of discipline with real virtuosity at the level of the individual scene, and great performances to boot. Cody Fern and Finn Wittrock are terrific as David Madson and Jeff Trail, a couple of Cunanan’s victims whose stories are so engaging they end up irrevocably distorting the show’s frame. Judith Light’s Marilyn Miglin is a triumph, and I can’t say enough about Ramirez’ Versace. Criss lends a very oddly-written character so much malice, bravado, and pathos that you wink easily at the discrepancies. Only when they stack up do you start to mind.
Ultimately, I think Versace suffers a little from the fact that its real protagonist isn’t famous. Infamy isn’t quite the same thing, and fame, not its opposite, is really what anchors these double-edged Murphy projects: O.J. Simpson’s status as an American hero authorized his function as symbol as well as character in The People vs. O.J. Simpson, just as Bette Davis and Joan Crawford’s fame elevated them so that — in Feud — their story accrued larger, more resonant layers. That Versace isn’t quite as interested in the celebrity at its ostensible center means the story toggles between the awful, violent specificity of its murderer’s pathology and the homophobic history it’s trying to wrap that story in. It’s a fascinating effort, even if it doesn’t quite live up (or down) to its name.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace has main character confusion
Six Miami Places You’ll See in American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace
1. Versace’s mansion. Because Florida legislators did away with film incentives in 2016, much of this season’s ACS was filmed in California. But there’s no way set designers could do justice to Versace’s Ocean Drive mansion with a replica, which is why exterior scenes were shot in South Beach. Versace fell in love with the jaw-dropping estate, also known as Villa Casa Casuarina, on a visit to Miami Beach in 1992 and purchased the property soon after. The luxurious home now operates as a hotel and restaurant.
2. News Café. Every morning, Versace strolled to News Café to grab a newspaper or magazine to read on the beach. Although regulars began to recognize him, staff from the time say he preferred to maintain a low profile. On July 15, 1997, the Italian designer was returning home from the restaurant when he was shot dead in front of his mansion.
3. The Miami Beach Police Department. Miami Beach Police suspected serial killer Andrew Cunanan almost immediately. They’d first heard of him a week before Versace’s murder when a federal agent called about rumors that Cunanan, who had already killed four people, was involved in a secret gay organization in South Florida. After Versace was shot in South Beach, police warned the public that Cunanan was armed and dangerous.
4. Twist. The FX series depicts Versace and his partner, model Antonio D’Amico, hanging out at Twist, a gay nightclub on Washington Avenue. Though there’s no indication from old news stories that Versace frequented the club, the FBI displayed wanted posters in the club’s bathrooms when Cunanan was on the loose. At one point, Twist claimed to have surveillance footage of Cunanan at the club two days before he killed Versace.
5. Normandy Plaza Hotel. As police furiously worked to retrace Cunanan’s steps, they learned he’d been staying at a $36-a-night hotel in Mid-Beach. Records showed the elusive killer had checked into the Normandy Plaza Hotel two months before targeting Versace. When police searched room 205, the only traces he’d left behind were a stack of fashion magazines and an electric hair trimmer.
6. The marina on the 5200 block of Collins Avenue. The manhunt for Cunanan finally ended July 23, 1997, when police surrounded a houseboat docked at 5250 Collins Ave. After a five-hour standoff, officers stormed the boat and found Cunanan dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“All across the nation, our citizens can stand down and breathe a sigh of relief,” Miami Beach Police Chief Richard Barreto said at the time. “The reign of terror brought upon us by Andrew Cunanan is over.”
Six Miami Places You’ll See in American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace
‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’ Is Disturbing, Excellent, And Absolutely Necessary
Andrew Cunanan‘s killing spree couldn’t have existed without silence. For four months in 1997, the serial killer claimed five victims, including the iconic fashion designer Gianni Versace. Cunanan wasn’t able to get away with these crimes because he was a master criminal. He was able to take so many lives largely because of an overprotective and unfocused police force that made countless major missteps and a media climate that didn’t care about a serial killer who targeted gay men until it was too late. It’s a story about the unspoken effects of silent discrimination. To this day, Versace’s murder is defined by silence. The murder of one of the first openly gay celebrities should be common knowledge instead of the often forgotten historic footnote it currently is. However, after the premiere of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, it will be next to impossible to forget the horrors of Versace’s murder.
Versace marks the second installment in Ryan Murphy‘s anthology series American Crime Story, and at first glance, it seems like an odd story to follow the groundbreaking The People V. O.J. Simpson. Though both criminal cases were defined by all-consuming amounts of media attention toward their end, Versace’s murder hasn’t stood the tests of modern history like O.J. Simpson’s trial has. In this way, Versace is a far more subtle season of the anthology series, dwelling longer in imagined conversations and alleged interactions than its predecessor ever did. But in every other way, Versace is the more direct season of the two. The series is one of the creepiest things Murphy has ever created, and it refuses to be ignored.
Almost all of Versace’s gripping yet unsettling elements can be attributed to Darren Criss‘ revolutionary performance as Andrew Cunanan. Criss brings an over-eager and rambling energy to the killer that initially starts as charming but then falls into the depths of being unhinged the more he lies. And FX’s version of Andrew lies a lot. From the series’ first episode, Andrew breathlessly drawls on about how vulgar he finds Versace’s designs before later obsessively tearing through every Versace ad and story he can get his hands on. As a viewer, it’s impossible to know what Andrew is thinking or motivated by at any given time, a choice that reflects the winding narrative of the book the Versace season is based on, Maureen Orth’s Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U. S. History. That unhinged uncertainty also makes for one of the most disturbing television has seen in recent years.
In comparison, Édgar Ramírez’s take on the iconic Gianni Versace is defined by authenticity. Tragically and pointedly, Gianni Versace is the beating heart of this story. FX and Murphy portray the designer as a giving and wise man who understood the value of loving life and deeply loved his family. Seeing the designer teach his sister Donatella Versace (Penélope Cruz) about the emotion behind fashion and reassuring his partner Antionio D’Amico (Ricky Marty) about his deep love for him are two of the best parts of the series. There is light and goodness to this dark series. It’s evident even when Donatella and Antonio are at each other’s throats. However, it’s because the series works so hard to make Gianni Versace such an immediately endearing character that the Versace installment is so tragic.
This season doesn’t mince words. The first 10 minutes of the series painstakingly show Versace’s brutal murder, allowing the rest of the series to work backwards from that moment. If anything, it’s this format that prevents the second season of American Crime Story from ever feeling too exploitative. Versace seems obsessed with trying to figure out why these murders were allowed to go on for so long, sorting through Cunanan’s life in an attempt to find an answer. By the end of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Andrew Cunanan doesn’t merely stand as Versace’s killer. He emerges as a terrifying monster who murdered five people who only wished him well. Likewise, Versace isn’t presented as just a talented designer. He emerges as a genius of his industry who was struck down far before his time. The saddest and most morbid note the series makes is how similar these two very different men truly were.
Versace is a deeply disturbing and confusing season of television. For every horrifying detail the series revels in, there is a beauty and sexiness that defines every one of its main characters. However, Versace does a few great things for this crime that have been sorely missing for a while. It gives names and faces to all of Cunanan’s victims, fully confronts the LGBT discrimination that was baked into this case, and it serves as a study of one of modern day history’s most chilling serial killers. The circumstances around Gianni Versace’s murder may have been categorized by silence, but American Crime Story’s take on Cunanan’s killing sprees is one of the loudest and boldest sagas on television.
‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’ Is Disturbing, Excellent, And Absolutely Necessary
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ is a painful and pointed look back
“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” and “The People v O.J. Simpson” have much in common: Both series are part of FX’s “American Crime Story” anthology, both are scripted dramas that revisit 1990s celebrity crimes, and both are the work of mastermind Ryan Murphy.
Yet the Versace story, which premieres Wednesday, is a markedly different viewing experience from its award-winning predecessor.
There are no Marcia Clarks or Johnnie Cochrans in the Versace story, no bloody glove, no white Bronco. In short, the new series doesn’t coax audiences in with the familiar, dipped in decade-centric nostalgia.
Details surrounding the Italian fashion designer’s 1997 murder by serial killer Andrew Cunanan weren’t burned into the American psyche like those of the double homicide in the Simpson trial. “Versace” sets out to make viewers care about a case most of them will barely remember. This is the show’s greatest challenge and its sharpest point.
Versace’s demise didn’t hit the same personal or political nerve with the American public or the media, largely because Cunanan was a male escort and the majority of his victims were gay. While the murder made for salacious “Hard Copy” headlines, even as a victim Versace didn’t elicit the same kind of love as accused murderer Simpson. And here that disparity is painfully present across all nine episodes.
After the initial tabloid intrigue, his killing was largely considered a gay on gay crime. And in the wake of an AIDS epidemic, the inference was that these were risky men leading risky lifestyles, dabbling in the avoidable. Ignorance and bigotry allowed much of America to emotionally divorce itself from the crime.
The series attempts to recast Versace’s “assassination” at age 50 from a fading headline to a human tragedy, and for the most part succeeds.
In a painful scene after Versace (Édgar Ramírez) is found dying on the front steps of his South Beach mansion, his significant other, Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin), is grilled by a detective who can’t quite grasp what kind of partner D’Amico is (“business?”). And, if they were romantically involved, why were they bringing other men home from clubs? It’s D’Amico who ends up being interrogated about his lifestyle rather than possible suspects.
Penélope Cruz is stone-cold perfect as Versace’s muse and sister, the hardened Donatella, and Darren Criss is chillingly convincing as the psychopathic Cunanan.
The downside here is that this series, based on actual events and inspired by Maureen Orth’s book “Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History,” is sometimes too dark and brutal in its re-creation of the murders.
The very nature of the crimes, sadistic and premeditated, makes this series far more grim than “The People v O.J. Simpson.” It demands that viewers pay attention to homicides that went largely unnoticed until Versace’s, and it’s a lot to ask. The victims include Cunanan’s ex-lover and Chicago tycoon Lee Miglin.
Like many of Murphy’s projects, cultural context is half the story here. The same America that gave rise to celebrated designer Versace also fostered the monstrous Cunanan.
The series encapsulates that dichotomy and the societal and systemic prejudices that link them.
Homophobia, in essence, allowed Cunanan to kill his way from San Diego to the East Coast with relative ease. Police who’d been persecuting the gay community weren’t ready to protect it, and Cunanan’s surviving victims were reticent to speak up for fear of being ostracized or worse.
The second installment of the “American Crime Story” anthology lends these victims the respect they deserve. It’s up to viewers to decide whether they’re willing to explore the pain and injustice just beneath the tabloid headlines.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ is a painful and pointed look back
‘American Crime Story’ Tackles ‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’ With Dazzling Bombast
“American Crime Story,” Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski’s true crime anthology series, premiered its first season, “The People V. O.J. Simpson,” in 2016. Executive producer Ryan Murphy, who’s fronted too many seasons of “American Horror Story,” has assumed showrunning duties for the second season: “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” in which he fully hitches his brazen kitchen sink storytelling style to a genre bound by more realistic filmmaking.
In “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” Murphy coyly pushes those boundaries only enough to bend them rather than break them, subjecting the legend of the great fashion designer’s murder to a fresh round of sensationalization as only he can: With dazzling bombast. But the show isn’t uniquely vulturous. The show’s hyper-stylized dramatization of Versace’s demise is in keeping with the beloved American tradition of picking dry the bones of slain celebrities, infused with class and surprising heartfelt empathy that adds dimension to the tale’s tragedy. Americans love their blood and guts. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” has the grace to make us feel guilty about it.
Murphy and Tom Rob Smith, who authored every episode in the season using Maureen Orth’s book “Vulgar Favors” as his basis, make the wise choice to begin at the end in the first of its many notable riffs on classic movies like “Sunset Boulevard.” We start with the crime and work our way backward, revisiting the characters we meet in the pilot’s pre-credit introduction anew over the course of years; if you know nothing of how Versace met his end, you’ll be caught up in the show’s first seven minutes. One sunlit morning in Miami Beach, Gianni (Édgar Ramírez) wakes up beneath the saffron hued clouds painted on the ceiling over his bed, and ambles over to his balcony to take in the view of the beach his lavish mansion affords him. At the same time, Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) sits on the very same beach, anxious over a deed he’s yet to do. The two men go about their very different days, Murphy cross-cutting from one to the other with a delicate care to demonstrate their grand existential disparity.
It’s a superb establishing moment that gives way to a sequence laden with great filmmaking and capped off with an act of violence whose blunt efficacy would make Martin Scorsese proud. To our eyes, the violence is random, but as “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” unfolds from its opening scene to its climax, that element of chance dissolves into something that very nearly feels like fate. On one hand rests Gianni, brilliant and bold, an artist coming into his own in the fashion industry as he spars, if lovingly, with his sister, Donatella (Penelope Cruz), over the direction of the company that bears their name. So too do they spar over such matters as his wish to come out on the world stage.
“You live in isolation, surrounded by beauty and kindness,” Donatella chides him in “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” the season’s fifth episode. “You have forgotten how ugly the world can be.” Gianni retorts, “Is the brand of Versace braver than the man?”
“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” positively brims with Smith’s spryly poetic dialogue, keeping the show lively at both its most adversarial and its most funereal, and it should be both: The story of Gianni is larger than life even when focused on his death and his difficulties. That scope differential between him and his killer-to-be is necessary, if not for illustrating their reality then for thematic effect. Cunanan is a monster, and “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” avoids mistaking him as anything else. But in contrasting Gianni’s endless privilege to Cunanan’s encompassing paucity, the show reminds its viewers of what exactly Cunanan felt was worth killing for in the first place.
Headings aside, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is less about Gianni than about Cunanan, a surprise given the temptation of extravagance offered by Gianni’s wealth and the aesthetic beauty of his world. The plain truth is that we know more about Gianni than we do Cunanan, and the most hideous mysteries have more allure than the gilded lives of the pretty and famous. He’s on screen more than Gianni, smooth-talking his way into hotel suites, San Francisco’s most exclusive clubs, the well-appointed homes of wealthy and powerful closeted men; we’re given a window into his method, watching him practice aw-shucks entreaties to strangers in the mirror. None of this surprises us, though. It’s the expectation Criss lays out for us about 15 minutes into episode one, “The Man Who Would Be Vogue,” as he goes tit for tat with a friend.
“I tell people what they need to hear,” he says, speaking to his sexuality on the surface while giving us fair warning about the skein of falsehoods he’s wound leading up to this moment. When your narrator is as unreliable as Andrew Cunanan, the facts of his life become secondary to the what-ifs of his life. In a manner of speaking, “American Crime Story” does him the favor of myth making, of giving him the visibility in death that he lacked in life. It’s a morbid thought, but watching “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” leaves one with an unnerving sense that if he was around to watch the series for himself, he’d probably love it. Murphy and Smith give him what he apparently hungered for his whole life, the reason he sought out Versace and lied about himself to everyone in earshot: Fame. Maybe it’s more like infamy, but he’d probably take it.
Murphy soaks the show in a palette that ranges merely from bright to lurid, splashing enough electric candied colors across the frame to send us into sugar shock; he staffs the series with past collaborators (not only Criss, but Max Greenfield and Finn Wittrock as well), plus a terrific supporting cast that includes Ricky Martin as Gianni’s lover, Antonio D’Amico, and “Orange is the New Black” vet Dascha Polanco as one of the detectives investigating the Versace shooting. He doesn’t emphasize name recognition and style at the expense of substance, though. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is a terrific example of true crime done right, prioritizing creativity without sacrificing honesty, but the element that resonates best with us is its central theme: The power of truth versus the cowardice of lies.
Versace embraces who he is, not only as a designer, but as a man. He literally and figuratively wears his personality on his sleeve (and on the sleeves of his clients). Cunanan determinedly lies so that he doesn’t have to face up to who he really is. The only character who gets close enough to Cunanan to figure that out is David Madson (Cody Fern), his overly kind lover and the second victim in the killing spree that would end with Gianni’s blood spilled on his front steps. No wonder Cunanan felt so compelled to take Gianni’s life, as well as his own: He couldn’t stand to see the fashion titan succeed, in business and in self-acceptance. Murphy treats Gianni’s comfort within his own skin as triumph; maybe Cunanan wouldn’t like the show that much after all.
‘American Crime Story’ Tackles ‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’ With Dazzling Bombast
Filming ‘Versace’ death scene was unsettling for Édgar Ramírez
“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” star Édgar Ramírez, who plays the murdered fashion icon in the new FX series, went to Miami a week before production began to get a feel for how Versace spent his final morning.
“I wanted to have my own experience without the basic nature of a movie set,” says Ramírez, 40. “They allowed me into the [Versace] villa [now a hotel]. I had my quiet time with the property. Then I walked the death walk. I went to the cafe [where Versace went to buy fashion magazines]. By the time I got back to the villa, I was more calm than I think I would have been if I hadn’t seen it first.”
When executive producer Ryan Murphy, Ricky Martin — who plays Versace’s companion, Antonio D’Amico — and Darren Criss, who plays Versace’s killer Andrew Cunanan, arrived on the set, the mood became “very frantic,” Ramírez says.
“[Versace] was shot at 8:45 a.m. and dead by 9:20 a.m,” he says. “It was very difficult for me not to think that everything that was going on, he was feeling it, although he was unconscious. I felt Ricky’s trembling. It was a very, very emotional scene. When they put me on the gurney and took me into the emergency room, I could feel everyone and everything. It was very difficult for me not to imagine that [Versace] was there, that he wanted to say something — goodbye, whatever.”
Versace’s death in July 1997, at the hands of serial killer Cunanan, was only the beginning of Ramírez’s journey. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is told out-of-sequence — from the sole encounter Versace had with Cunanan in San Francisco in 1990 to the beginning of Cunanan’s murder spree in Minneapolis three months earlier and Versace’s treatment in Miami for HIV-related illnesses.
“It was a life that was very fated,” Ramírez says. “He did think surviving AIDS was a miracle. The Catholics of the Mediterranean [believe] in a world of miracles and redemption and compassion.”
Screenwriter Tom Rob Smith also explores the conflicts Versace had with his younger sister, Donatella (Penelope Cruz), a bottom-line businesswoman who objected to her brother’s coming out. She thought such a disclosure would drive away celebrities and potential investors in the company, just as the family planned on taking it public. Versace’s response to her paranoia? “We’ll always have Elton [John].”
“It was a very volatile relationship, but a close one,” says Ramírez. “They were able to have a huge fight in the morning and then have dinner as if nothing ever happened.
“I didn’t know much about the man and the persona,” says Ramírez, who grew up in Venezuela. “The lushness and exuberance of the brand. When he was killed, then of course I knew who he was.”
Having played the role, he says he is truly moved by Versace’s global impact on the culture and the meaning of his American death. “He was the southern Italian guy going to the Milanese [fashionistas]. People from northern Italy are not Italian; they’re Swiss,” he says. “And along came this guy who spoke in a dialect people in northern Italy wouldn’t even consider Italian. And then he created this company that in 10 years took over the world.”
It was all over in an instant. “Andrew shot him in the face. He wanted to erase his humanity,” Ramírez says. “Gianni reminded him of everything he couldn’t be. They were both outsiders.
“One had the guts and the talent and the courage to do something about it.”
Filming ‘Versace’ death scene was unsettling for Édgar Ramírez
The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Review: FX’s True Crime Drama Is Addictive And Unsettling
One of the most highly-anticipated series of 2018 has to be The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. The first chapter of the American Crime Story anthology series covered the events of the O.J. Simpson murder trial and was a huge hit with viewers and critics alike. The pressure is on for The Assassination of Gianni Versace to match the quality of The People v. O.J. Simpson. Luckily, the new chapter of the anthology is a worthy successor to The People v. O.J. Simpson, and it’s as addictive as it is unsettling as it chronicles the events leading up to the assassination of Gianni Versace.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace covers the before, during, and after of Gianni Versace’s murder by spree killer Andrew Cunanan on the steps of Versace’s South Beach residence back in 1997. The case itself is famous and the show doesn’t dance around delivering the ugly deed. While the big death happens relatively early on, Versace’s end is only the starting point for the way the show is telling this story. Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) targets world-renowned fashion designer Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) at his home, and his death shocks the world. Gianni’s sister Donatella (the magnificent Penelope Cruz) and partner Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin) occupy important parts in Versace’s life before and after his death, but they’re not always on the same page.
On the Andrew Cunanan side of the story, The Assassination of Gianni Versace delves into his descent from liar and con artist into the killer who would go on a killing spree culminating with the murder of Versace. From his encounter with the Miami-based addict Ronnie (Max Greenfield of New Girl fame) to his final meetings with victims, he loses control in ways that are both compelling and chilling. Adding to the levels of tragedy are the very close calls in which Cunanan is almost caught by authorities before he can commit his final act of violence.
Created and executive produced by Ryan Murphy of American Horror Story, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story fully embraces the look, fashion, and sounds of the late 1980s and 1990s as the series jumps through the years leading up to Versace’s murder. The time jumps are frequent enough that you’ll want to pay close attention to what’s happening lest you miss the quick update of what year it’s supposed to be in a given scene, but the story is engaging enough that you may not find yourself wanting to check your phone or look away.
The new season of American Crime Story may be named for Versace, but the show makes it clear from almost the very beginning that The Assassination of Gianni Versace is really a gripping story about the rise and fall of Andrew Cunanan as he seeks to stand out from the crowd by spinning any story he thinks could be believable. Given how much of the focus is on Cunanan, The Assassination of Gianni Versace would have failed if not for a stellar performance from the actor who landed the part.
Darren Criss is spellbinding and utterly chilling as Andrew Cunanan. The actor previously best known for playing a bow tie-wearing high school warbler on Glee pulled out all the stops as Andrew Cunanan, and he was scarily effective, especially when contrasted with Edgar Ramirez as Gianni Versace. Ramirez is utterly likable in the role of Versace, and it’s easy to see why he was so beloved and inspired such loyalty from his sister and partner.
It’s also increasingly easy to see why Cunanan would decide to target Versace. The fashion designer had everything Cunanan wanted: fame, fortune, genius, and the means to live as an openly gay man with a loving partner of more than a decade without being ostracized by society in the 1990s. The Assassination of Gianni Versace works especially well because of the similarities and differences between the two men as portrayed in the show.
It would be remiss not to mention Penelope Cruz as Donatella Versace. Cruz alternates between powerful and vulnerable, all while wearing incredible dresses and killer heels. Ricky Martin is a pleasant surprise as Antonio D’Amico, taking his character from one extreme to another in the different years covered by the series.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace isn’t exactly the most lighthearted series ever to hit the airwaves, and there’s a certain heaviness to it that probably wouldn’t be ideal for binge-watching. That said, the series is definitely worth the watch. It’s not The People v. O.J. Simpson 2.0 and it’s not something that has been done before on broadcast television. In a TV season filled with an abundance of scripted shows, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is a unique and standout series worth tuning into each work.
RATING: ★★★★☆
TV Guide Review (Source) | 17 January 2018
How Darren Criss Became Versace’s Killer (And Why He Keeps Playing Gay)
Step-touching his way through the halls of the fictional Dalton High School—the hair perfectly parted, the navy blazer impeccably tailored, and amplifying an a capella rendition of a Katy Perry song through the sheer wattage of his all-American smile—a then-22-year-old Darren Criss, fresh out of college and making his debut as Blaine Anderson on a 2010 episode of Glee, was the epitome of the teenage dream.
Now, he’s the 30-year-old stuff of nightmares.
Well, he isn’t, exactly, but the serial killer he plays on The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story certainly is.
In many ways, Criss’ revelatory performance as Andrew Cunanan, the 27-year-old gay man who, after murdering five people including the famed fashion designer, became one of the most wanted serial killers in American history, is all the more unsettling because of its stark contrast to the genial crooner we were introduced to on Fox’s burned-fast-and-bright musical dramedy.
But then again, the surprise of a certain clean-cut progressiveness has been the hallmark of Criss’ still-young career.
“I think it’s really given me an alley-oop,” Criss says, referring to the initial shock a Glee fan might have to watching the actor as Cunanan, say, bind a rich john who hires him as an escort with duct tape and then gauge him with a hammer. “I’d like to think [audiences] would be interested and compelled anyway,” without this lingering image of Criss as Blaine, the consummate Nice Guy. “But I think it’s an extra nudge when you have that to juxtapose against.”
When we first met Darren Criss several years ago, he was wearing a thigh-length kimono and tending to his favorite blonde wig, remnants of sweat-sticky glitter smudging just about everything in sight—aided and abetted in its mission by the runoff from his sparkling go-go boots. We were in his dressing room backstage at the Belasco Theatre, high off the energy of his stage-scorching performance in as the titular transgender rocker in the 2015 musical revival Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
It was Criss’ first major gig after wrapping his run on Glee, and a thundering opening salvo in proving the breadth of his talents, let alone taste in projects.
Things are decidedly bleaker, or at the very least chillier, when we reunite two-and-a-half years later at a café in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York to talk Versace, inarguably the biggest and certainly darkest project of his career thus far. Still, Criss’ fashion choice is doing its part to dial up the fabulousness of the morning: a knee-length, forest green mohair overcoat he pets with pride when we compliment it. “One of the kids from Boy Band on Good Morning America this morning was like, ‘Yo bro, it looks like you skinned the Grinch!’” Criss laughs. “I’m like, that is indeed an apt observation.”
Just as when we talked before, Criss bubbles over with the kind of giddiness, but also navel-gazing introspection, that one might expect from a lifelong theater kid—which the 30-year-old actor absolutely is, having grown up attending performance arts schools and raised in the San Francisco theater scene he joined at a young age.
And so there’s a certain amount of objectivity and pragmatism as we discuss the arc of his career, not to mention a pinch-me enthusiasm in promoting a leading role in Ryan Murphy’s follow-up to the blockbuster The People v. O.J. Simpson series. There’s also a refreshing eagerness to engage thoughtfully in conversations about his sexuality and sex appeal—oh yeah, we talked about those nude photos—especially in relation to the coincidence that, though he identifies as straight, the three defining roles of his career have been gay characters.
For all the talk of teenage dreams and historical crime nightmares, Darren Criss is nothing if not woke.
The fact of the matter is that, while Versace’s 1997 murder is the catalyst for the series and crucial in instigating the conversations about sexuality and fame in ’90s America that it explores, Versace (played by Edgar Ramirez), his longtime boyfriend (played by Ricky Martin), and sister, Donatella (Penelope Cruz), are all minor characters. This is almost exclusively a showcase for Criss as Andrew Cunanan, the highly intelligent sociopath with tortured feelings about his own sexuality, driven to murder.
“The thing I keep saying is I feel like I made varsity,” Criss says, about leading the starry ensemble. “I feel like I’ve been lucky enough to be invited into the school, into the program. I put in enough games on J.V. Now they’re like, alright kid, it’s your shot.”
Murphy first floated the idea of playing Cunanan to Criss three years ago. Their working relationship on Glee only bolstered a purely superficial argument for the casting: Criss and Cunanan look uncannily similar, and share almost identical Filipino-American backgrounds. “I would have been happy to audition,” Criss stresses, grinning sheepishly. “I masochistically relish that process.”
He’s fully aware that people are fascinated by the idea of the Tiger Beat cover boy thwarting that image playing the sociopathic serial killer, just as they were by the idea of the straight cisgender teen idol actively pursuing the role of a transgender rock star when he booked meetings for Hedwig when Glee was ending.
“I keep telling reporters that I’m curious what the conversation would be if I started with Versace and then three years later I do this musical comedy,” he says. “And I do think the questions would be the same: ‘Darren you’re sort of this dark brooding dramatic guy and that’s what you’re known for. It must be such a departure to be playing this happy go lucky. When I was watching Versace I never thought I’d be watching this guy singing and dancing on Broadway.’ But we have to categorize. It’s how we keep ourselves sane.”
He chuckles. “My goal in life in all respects is to keep people as off-kilter as possible.”
Well, speaking of throwing fans for a loop, let’s talk about that naked Instagram photo.
While Blaine on Glee was certainly made out to be a handsome, crush-worthy romantic lead—all the more groundbreaking, of course, because the romance was a same-sex teenage one—there was something chaste and sort of juvenile about it. Not anymore. Now, Darren Criss exudes sex.
He’s damn hot, too, and clearly leaning into it. Ryan Murphy, god bless him, is nothing if not the Patron Saint of Sexualizing Male TV Stars, and thus had Criss shooting in nothing but a red Speedo very early on in the Versace shoot. One particular day ended with a sunburned Criss as red as his skimpy wardrobe. So, after getting the blessing of his girlfriend of seven years, Mia, Criss thought it would be funny to post a nude selfie, covering his naughty bits with the crumpled up bathing suit, on his Instagram.
The gay community collectively gasped in unison.
“I learned what the word ‘thirsty’ meant after that,” Criss laughs.
“My favorite part of the post was the caption, which was completely upstaged,” he says.
Uh, there was a caption?
“Exactly! That’s what’s so funny about these things. When something goes viral, all context gets thrown out the window.” (For the record, the caption mocked his sunburn: “So what’s more red? My sunburn, my Speedo, or YOUR FACE???”)
Criss takes it all in good humor, of course. “It tickles me, and I think it’s, in a weird, twisted way, endearing,” he says when we mention that his nude scene from the Versace premiere—a lingering look at his naked body and butt from behind—has already leaked and is circulating on gay porn sites. But he gets a little weary when all that becomes the focus of discussion around Cunanan. At the premiere in Los Angeles, for example, gossip rags bombarded him with questions about how he got into shape for the show, the usual tired questions about an actor’s exercise regimen. “I freaked out,” he says. “Like, no, no, no. Andrew’s not supposed to be a sexual object.”
You can take sex appeal out of the conversation, of course, but you can’t take sexuality out of it. And it’s an interesting, if complicated, conversation in relation to Criss’ career. As we mentioned earlier, Andrew Cunanan marks the third time Criss has played a LGBTQ character, after Blaine on Glee and Hedwig.
At a time when the visibility and normalization of gay characters is trumpeted in tandem with a cry for opportunity for LGBTQ performers and creators, it’s a coincidence that invites a certain amount of scrutiny for a straight actor whose career has benefited from these characters.
“I’ve been really fortunate in that, while I almost bizarrely invite that, there hasn’t really been any scrutiny,” Criss says. “As a straight, cisgender white guy, I can definitely see how people in the LGBTQ community could be a little weirded out about the consistency of these roles. But it’s not conscious. I’m not going, ooh, I’m going to go after all these queer roles. It’s sort of no different than a gay actor only doing straight roles. I think in our political climate those things are important to talk about and important to notice.”
“Especially for a community who’s had to fight for its voice to be heard and recognized for so fucking long, I completely understand the sensitivity to what my approach or reasonings are,” he continues. “But I think hopefully the art transcends the politics in that I’m an actor. Just plain and simple. Maybe that sounds pandering, or maybe it sounds like I’m trying to put that curiosity down. I’ve been thrilled that no one’s ever really given me grief for this. Because I think we all agree the stories are more important than the pieces that make them.”
Rather than shy away from questions about this, skittish that something he says might be deemed controversial, Criss actually continues to elaborate, saying “there’s so much to unpack here.”
“I like talking about it,” he says. “Because I feel like the gay community has embraced me when it really didn’t have to. I am aware that I’m an outsider. I didn’t grow up gay. I didn’t go through the same journey that a lot of gay men and women went through. That is something that binds the gay community together in a very real way. I would never deign to say that I deserve to be included, but I’ve been so touched and privileged to be a voice and connected to a part personally and professionally that I’m just thrilled there hasn’t really been any visible or audible backlash.”
Plus, he reaps the benefits of being a satellite member of the community, such as trusting whoever encouraged him to wear that fabulous—and hardly heteronormative—green overcoat.
“That’s true!” he laughs.
It reminds him of a joke that was in Hedwig at the expense of an actor, whom he’d rather not name now, talking about how he enjoyed “all the privileges of homosexuality and none of the responsibilities.” It always got a big laugh, to the point that when co-star Lena Hall filled in for him as Hedwig, he suggested that she make the same joke but using his name instead.
“I tend to step outside my body and look at this all from the back seat. I was like that is a really, really funny joke,” he says. “Because it’s true. I’ve been really lucky to have all the privileges, all the fun things of the gay community without all the responsibilities and burdens that come with it. And I’m so aware of that.”
He then launches into a story that he apologizes several times for having told before to other media outlets, but which seems to so genuinely reflect his attitude about his place in the gay community as an outsider who plays these characters.
“This is the nerdiest analogy,” he starts, before likening the experience to being given the Green Lantern ring from some LGBTQ powers-that-be and being told to be a symbol for the community, thinking in response: “Me? Are you sure?”
“But I’m glad it was me,” he says. “I’m glad that these things have fallen on my plate, and that things have happened in my life that I think actually make me a good candidate for being put in the position that I was put in, having grown up like I did in San Francisco, being raised basically by gay twentysomethings in theater. These are people who I looked up to. These are people who I wanted to be around. These are people who raised my adult consciousness without them even being aware of it. So later in life, yeah, fuck yeah, those are the people I want to be connected with. It is really cool. I really lucked out.”
Teenage dreams grow up, and even become realities. Darren Criss is in the midst of his.
How Darren Criss Became Versace’s Killer (And Why He Keeps Playing Gay)
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