Departure from Glee: Darren Criss’ Creepy Performance as Andrew Cunanan in the Versace TV Drama

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The 31-year-old, Emmy-nominated actor, singer/songwriter, and performer stole all of our hearts when his breakout role of Blaine Anderson appeared on Glee for the first time. He sang a breathtaking rendition of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream,“ and episode after episode his charming smile and gentle persona made us all swoon. Nowadays, he is taking on the role of Gianni Versace’s killer, Andrew Cunanan – a stark contrast to the fun-loving and adorable Blaine. Seeing that he is a performer of his own music, it was obvious that the role on Glee was perfect for him. And while longtime fans of Criss always knew that he had the capability to branch out and do more serious roles (see: Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway), much of the world was shocked to see him portraying a villainous murderer.

The show is a dark look into the life of Cunanan, who Criss plays with empathy and humanity. “It’s my job to be empathetic. If I set out to paint him as a monster, then there’s no point in telling the story. This isn’t a Bond villain,“ he said to USA Today. In many recent interviews on the show he explains that as an actor, it’s important to look at the sides of the character that can be related to you.

In Criss’ case, there are many similarities between him and his character – Cunanan was a seemingly nice, charismatic guy who everyone loved when he was young. He chose to put his desire for fame and jealousy of others into unspeakable means. Criss is also charismatic and kind, loved by all – but he chose to channel his passions into making a positive change in the world. He wanted to make people smile and share his talent with those who would listen. And if he hit a roadblock, he would push forward and do his best to move onto the next step. In Cunanan’s case, he would not move forward. According to the show, he would hold onto the past and hurt those that stood in his way. In the FX Behind the Scenes video below, executive producer Brad Simpson explains that Cunanan maybe wasn’t “destined to be a murderer, but has an unstable personality and was put on that path.”

FULL ARTICLE | BLENDED MAGAZINE

Pop Culture à la Mode: The surprising sensitivity of ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

Aside from Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy is inarguably the most prolific — and successful — showrunner and producer working at the moment. Even if you don’t know him by name, you’ve likely seen at least one of his shows. Just in the last decade, he’s headed such long-term projects as “Nip/Tuck,” “Glee,” “American Horror Story,” “Scream Queens,” “American Crime Story,” and “Feud.”

Murphy is unusually skilled at what he does. Whereas other TV producers like Aaron Spelling and Joss Whedon saw diminishing returns with increased notoriety, Murphy has managed to get better with age. When he’s particularly passionate about a certain subject, he can deliver, even if that means forgoing the quality of previous endeavors. (Notice how “American Horror Story” started sucking the moment he started putting all his attention onto “American Crime Story.”)

If Murphy has proven anything thus far, it’s that he’s at his best when he and his co-conspirators tackle heavy subject matters rooted in reality. His most acclaimed project to date, “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” was lauded for inviting viewers to reevaluate seemingly larger-than-life individuals and the story they played a part in. Last year’s “Feud” did the impossible and turned the oft-caricatured Golden Age actresses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford into sympathetic, deeply vulnerable women.

Murphy’s latest project, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” is no different. Set in 1997, it revolves around the pre-stages and aftermath of the murder of the eponymous fashion titan, unfolding nonlinearly to showcase the shifting perspectives of Versace’s loved ones and, most notably, his murderer, Andrew Cunanan.

Though Murphy has not been as involved with “Versace” as he was with “O.J.,” the series nonetheless capitalizes on what he delivered so well with the latter series and “Feud”: three-dimensionalizing extraordinary people made more untouchable by sensationalized storylines.

Yet what has caught my eye about this series, which is now at its midway point, is how superbly and sensitively it has characterized those who fell victim to Cunanan’s bloodlust. Before senselessly murdering Versace on the front steps of his beachside home, Cunanan also killed an acquaintance, a lover, real-estate developer Lee Miglin, and a handful of others.

So often in the media, victims are overlooked and underrepresented. Because they act as components of a larger, sickening narrative, they frequently serve as examples of a madman’s mania rather than actual people. There’s a reason why we likely cannot name even one of Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy’s victims off the top of our heads.

There is a danger, then, to programs like “Versace.” By rehashing a heinous crime, there is a risk of reinforcing the harms done by the media at the time the event occurred, unintentionally glorifying the crimes of a monster while minimizing his or her victims. This sort of thing is done on the regular: Popular true crime programs turn tragedies into entertainment and tend to emphasize the most sensational aspects of a crime.

“Versace” does give a lot of screen time to Cunanan, who is portrayed by the handsome, charismatic Darren Criss. But the show makes an effort to underline his beastliness and more prominently provide his victims with the moving narratives they should have been given immediately after their deaths.

Cunanan’s lover, David Madison, is portrayed as a kind-hearted, talented architect who struggled with accepting his sexuality until the day he died. Miglin is shown as a tortured spirit whose financial prowess couldn’t ease the pains of hiding his homosexuality well into his 70s. Versace himself is not presented as the impenetrable demigod we might have imagined him as but rather as an anxiety-ridden individual very aware of his mortality. The episodes featuring these characters are less about Cunanan and more about how they were susceptible people who were preyed upon. Our hearts break for them in ways that weren’t as possible in the face of the inherently homophobic media frenzy of the late ’90s.

So while watching “Versace,” I couldn’t help but instead more often think about how rare it is — and how necessary it is — for a crime-based television show or a movie to so perceptively or emotionally portray victims. And how much better the show is for arguably giving more weight to the prey than to the predator. True crime shows, take note. This is how you should be doing it.

Pop Culture à la Mode: The surprising sensitivity of ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Episode 3 Recap: A Death in the Family

I caught the flu the day this episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace aired. In the (almost) a week it’s taken me to write this review, I’ve (almost) gotten over the illness. I have not gotten over the episode.

Journey back in time to the third and fourth slayings in Andrew Cunanan’s five-person killing spree, “A Random Killing” bears a half-truth as a title. Victim number four was random indeed, needlessly slain for his truck after a careless leak tipped Andrew off that his stolen car was being tracked. The need felt by victim number five’s surviving loved ones to paint his murder, too, as random — and Andrew’s need to make this impossible for them to do — is the crux of the story. The resulting hour is as menacing, as moving, as good as live-action drama about murder can get.

Any discussion of this extraordinary episode of television must begin with the casting of its two new principals, millionaire Chicago real estate developer Lee Miglin and his beauty-queen turned home-shopping entrepreneur wife Marilyn. Hiring Mike Farrell, M*A*S*H‘s B.J. Hunnicutt, and Judith Light, Who’s the Boss‘s “Angeluhhh,” isn’t quite the stunt showrunner Ryan Murphy pulled off when, say, he made John Travolta and David Schwimmer part of Cuba Gooding Jr.’s defense team and made a masterpiece out of the result. For one thing, the career peaks that trio were hitting around the time of the actual O.J. Simpson case added to The People v. O.J.‘s ’90s-retro frisson. For another, Farrell lacks the “hey, it’s that guy!” cachet held by the others for today’s viewers, while on the other hand, shows from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit to Transparent have given Light ample opportunity to show off her dramatic chops.

What matters, then, isn’t merely the fact that famous faces animate both Andrew Cunanan’s closeted client and target and that target’s determined yet devastated widow. What matters is what those faces do, and the remarkable degree to which writer Tom Rob Smith and directer Gwyneth Horder-Payton allow them to do it.

As Lee, Farrell is revelatory, his kindly face registering a heartbreakingly familiar range of emotions. Pride in his wife’s accomplishments and gratitude for her pride in his. Coldness at the prospect of actual physical intimacy with her but comfort and relief for her continued friendship. The agonizing, eroticized decision to lie to her and allow her to make a business trip without him so he can arrange a liaison with his young escort lover. (His strange, hard-to-watch mini-breakdown when she asks him to join her and he realizes he’s going to refuse is just unbelievably strong work.) The unshakeable religious guilt he feels as an older Catholic man keeping his orientation in the closet, a pain akin to a chronic illness. (“I try,” he whimpers to Jesus and Joseph in his private basement chapel. “I…try…”)

Puppydog enthusiasm for Andrew’s presence and affection, so strong that not even Cunanan’s sour sarcasm and cruelty about the transactional nature of their relationship can truly dampen it. (“I feel alive! You make it seem so real!”) Genuine, almost childlike love of architecture, particularly his world’s-largest-building dream project and his vision of anonymously hanging around on the observation deck, enjoying others’ enjoyment of the results.

It’s this last bit more than anything else that triggers Andrew’s homicidal rage, not that it would take much at this point at any rate; Andrew actually holds his gun on Lee behind the man’s back, just to feel the power he imagines Lee feeling. “I want it to inspire people to reach up,” Lee says of his “Sky Needle.” “It’s about that, not about me.” To Andrew, the very idea that any achievement is not about the immediate glory of the person responsible for it, much less the tallest building in the word, is a heresy of the highest order, and must be punished as such.

So Andrew drags his aroused, oblivious partner into the garage, tools arrayed ominously in the background, and debuts the face-tape routine we remember from the previous episode’s “Easy Lover” sequence. “You like being pathetic, don’t you?” he sneers, before showing Lee how truly helpless he is by suddenly smashing his face in. By now that marvelously expressive face is totally obscured by the tape, so we are only left to imagine the horror, panic, and pain in his eyes by cross-referencing it with his muffled whimpers — worse, perhaps, than seeing it straight up. As Lee lies there, Andrew announces that he’s killed two people already, he’ll stage his soon-to-be corpse with women’s underwear and gay porn, outing him through the act of murder. “You know, disgrace isn’t that bad, once you settle into it,” he says, before lugging over a bag of concrete mix, staving in the man’s chest, and then stabbing him repeatedly. To add insult to this fatal injury, Andrew uses Lee’s beloved blueprints as a placemat for a meal of meat before burning them up. No dreams get out of here alive.

Farrell’s role is interactional, emerging from conversations with his wife, his killer, and his God. It’s a dialogue. Light’s Marilyn is a monologue. She’s constantly speaking to other people, to be sure — to more of them than Lee, in fact. She’s got an television audience for her home-shopping show, a live crowd for her speech introducing her husband at a fundraiser where she touts him as the embodiment of the American Dream, a host of neighbors and cops with whom she must interact as they first discover and then investigate the crime. She even has a son, on hand as glum-faced comic relief when she touts his ostensibly burgeoning acting career. (“He plays a pilot!” “A Russian pilot. There’s lots of pilots in the movie.”)

But except in the few intimate moments she shares with Lee — and even then she’s arguably more focused on her behind-the-scenes suspicions than the here and now — Marilyn’s main task is the Sisyphean labor of maintaining outward appearances. She’s not shy about this, either. “How can a woman who cares so much about appearances appear not to care?” she rhetorically asks at one point, when she realizes her lack of visible signs of grief must be apparent to others.

What makes this character, and Light’s performance, so crushing is the opposite of what you’d expect, though. It’s not that she’s a perfectly put-together Woman With It All who’s trying to cover up her husband’s homosexuality by any means necessary — the kind of part Light, with her severe facial structure and stentorian voice, could play in her sleep. It’s that she’s trying to reveal the real bond she had with this man, despite what she knows to be true and cannot say — a bond that Cunanan’s actions have made it harder and harder for her to get other people to believe in. She finally breaks down not when confronted with evidence of Lee and Andrew’s preexisting relationship, contra to her preferred narrative of a break-in and burglary, but when she starts telling a cop about the “adventures” they had together back in the day, all hot-air balloon rides and romantic desert rescues. “I loved him,” she sobs, starting to smear her makeup. “I loved him very much! There. Is that betterrrr?” Her bitterness stretches out that terminal -r like she’s ripping flesh from a carcass. “Am I a real wife now?” Her pain isn’t over the lie, it’s over what was true. During the harrowing opening sequence, when Marilyn returns home from her trip and realizes something is amiss when Lee fails to pick her up from the airport, that truth is what haunts her face the whole time.

I’m glad, in that beautiful terrible way tragedy can make you glad, that she gets the last word of the episode, even as Andrew continues shopping and driving and killing on the way to his appointment in Miami. (Cunanan misses the chance to carjack and older woman and winds up hunting down and shooting truck-driving family man William R. Reese instead, pulling the trigger almost as soon as the frightened father tries to turn his assailant’s heart by saying he’s a married man with a son. He had no way of knowing how little Andrew wanted to hear that particular song. With a taste for killing in his mouth, he’ll destroy stability on sight.)

Marilyn returns to her gig hawking her signature line of fragrances on the home shopping channel almost immediately — a gutsy move with which the show challenges us to continue to feel empathy for her as she slips into the uncanny valley between sincerity and showmanship, just as the mere presence of any older woman with a glamorous background triggers our societally induced suspicion and revulsion at female failure to remain young. “He believed in me,” she tells her audience, completely honestly. “How many husbands believe in their wive’s dreams? How many treat us as partners? As equals? We were a team for thirty-eight years.” That’s what they were, even if it’s all they were. That’s an achievement. That’s what Andrew destroyed.

Marilyn ends the episode by recounting the advice she got when she first began selling stuff on TV, a technique for connecting with the camera and the people on the other side. “Just hink of the little red light as the man you love.” She stares at the light, at the camera, at us, and as the impenetrable black mascara of her wet eyes closes and the scene cuts to black, her thoughts are ours to imagine.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Episode 3 Recap: A Death in the Family

Why Laura Branigan’s ‘Gloria’ Is the Perfect Song to an On-Screen Crime Scheme

Twice in the last month, the 1982 Laura Branigan hit “Gloria” has been used as a key plot device: to soundtrack the maniacal trance of a person about to commit a major act of violence. In “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” Darren Criss, who plays serial killer Andrew Cunanan, sings along to the tune at top-volume while driving to his next crime scene in Miami. And in “I Tonya,” Sebastian Stan, in the role of Tonya Harding’s ex-husband Jeff Gillooly, listens to the song intently as he ponders how to handicap competing figure skater Nancy Kerrigan. Coincidence that both the Ryan Murphy series on FX and the Craig Gillespie-directed film feature men in their cars finding meaning in the post-disco pop song?

“I had no idea ‘Gloria’ was going to be in ‘I Tonya,‘” says “Versace” music supervisor Amanda Krieg Thomas. “I watched the movie as a complete bystander. It was very funny to see that.” (Jen Moss and Susan Jacobs handled music supervision for “I Tonya.”) But Thomas has since heard from others who took notice of the duplicate cue. Indeed it would be hard not to as both scenes illuminate the psychotic turn that the two men make. “It’s totally sugary 80s pop and that’s among the reasons why it works,” she adds. “But there are so many more levels to it, and why people have really responded to it.”

One of those reasons is that the song’s familiar synth-led Euro-dance melody both contrasts and accentuates the moment. “The recognition [factor] is part of why you want to use it — it’s not something that’s going to be buried in the background,” says Thomas, who notes that Murphy, “has an eye and an ear for what he wants … and we’re all in service to it. The recognizability of a song can be the creative brushstroke. And that’s something Ryan is great at.”

“Gloria” was, in fact, a quantifiable hit at the time of its release in 1982, eventually peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. It would end up spending 36 weeks on the chart. Curiously, the track was actually a cover of an Italian pop hit with new lyrics added in English. “That song was much bigger in the Italian language than it it was in English,” “Gloria” co-producer Greg Mathieson tells Variety. Originally asked to give the song a new arrangement, Mathieson decided to stay faithful to the original. “The engineer asked me, “Why are you doing this exactly the same?’ And I said, ‘It was a hit, I’m not going to mess with it!’”

Mathieson, whose credits include Donna Summer’s “Enough Is Enough” and Toni Basil’s “Mickey” (the latter a No. 1 song in Nov. 1982, the same week “Gloria” hit No. 2, a rare feat for a producer in an era long before Max Martin), has also gotten word of “Gloria” synchs. Asked why the song serves so well as an accompaniment to insanity, the now-retired producer posits: “I think they used it because of the juxtaposition of evil intent and the feeling that the song gives you, which is to get up and dance and have a good time. They’re trying to set up this dichotomy of pumping yourself up.”

Thomas concurs that Branigan’s “Gloria” provides “a great contrast when it’s surrounded by darkness” but there’s also the lyrical content about a person, like Cunanan, who is hiding in plain sight. “‘Gloria, You’re always on the run now.’ … Andrew is literally on the run,” she says. “Ryan wanted to think about music as what would Andrew’s taste be? What would he be listening to? What is his soundtrack? And this completely fits into that world [of] the young kid growing up in the 80s who was homosexual and going out to clubs.”

It’s worth noting that both “I Tonya” and “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” are based on true stories that took place in the ’90s, a good decade after “Gloria” stormed the charts with a priority push by then Atlantic Records head Doug Morris. “Gloria” the synch had also been somewhat dormant for a time, but in 2013, the Italian version popped up in “The Wolf of Wall Street” and the Branigan recording has since been placed in such shows as “The Last Man on Earth,” “Scorpion” and “South Park,” all in 2017.

There’s a reason for that, says Atlas Music Publishing CEO Richard Stumpf. “The spike is entirely due to Atlas taking over the Sugar Music catalog in 2016,” he explains, referencing the song’s Italian publisher. “We have doubled the annual sync. Kristen Bushnell Perez, our head of sync, and her team do an incredible job of promoting our songs.” (Warner Music Group owns the master of the Branigan version of “Gloria” while publishing for the song’s writers — Giancarlo Bigazzi, Umberto Tozzi and Trevor Veitch — is with Atlas.) “We selectively populate our musical pallet so that we have the top songs, from top eras available to pitch,” Stumpf adds. “By doing this, each song has a better shot at increased value. It also allows us to be lightening fast with license clearance. These are big factors in raising sync levels for catalogs.”

Stumpf estimates that a song like “Gloria” can earn “millions” over the life span of its second act. “All evergreens, if managed properly, should be able to produce a high level of steady revenue,” he says. “But even the greatest garden, if not watered, will wither. Same with music. If songs are stuck at bloated publishers who can’t focus, they lose value. Our favorite thing to do is pick up catalogs from super-sized publishers and add value. A song like ‘Gloria’ can pull in six figures for film use and high six to seven figures for commercials. And that’s just the publishing side!”

Why does “Gloria” rise above the rest for major cues? The publishing executive also points to the song’s “sonic intensity” along with the imagery in the lyrics. “This is where music supervisors do a great job.”

Why Laura Branigan’s ‘Gloria’ Is the Perfect Song to an On-Screen Crime Scheme

‘American Crime Story’ Episode 5 Unexpectedly Tackles Violence Against Gay Men In The Military

Episode five opens in Milan, Italy, in 1995. Gianni, Donatella and Antonio D’Amico debate whether it’s right for Gianni to officially come out to the public. D’Amico claims he’s been treated by the press as an assistant. Meanwhile, Donatella worries about the effects the announcement would have on publicity for the company.

“You have forgotten how ugly the world can be,” she tells Gianni, who in turn stresses that being diagnosed with HIV, he feels emboldened to be honest with himself and the world.

Flash-forward to 1997, right before the events of episode four. Cunanan is seen injecting drugs while begging credit card companies to extend his limit so he can fly to Minneapolis. Cutouts of Gianni Versace are pasted to his wall, hinting at the formation of his obsession.

Trail, whom we know Andrew winds up murdering, reveals to a co-worker that he was in the military as an officer before making the decision to leave. He gets heated when asked more.

Trail and Madson are wary of Cunanan as they pick him up at the airport. They think of ways to avoid him while he’s in town. Immediately upon arriving back at Madson’s apartment, Andrew proposes. Madson is both confused and horrified. He attempts to decline, but Andrew persists.

Trail and his sister discuss a postcard Andrew “accidentally” sent to Trail’s father, outing him. The sister pushes for him to actually inform his parents. Cunanan repeatedly humiliates Madson in public, telling mutual friends of their engagement. Madson loudly declines the proposal again.

The next day, Madson attempts to confront Andrew about his pattern of lying while offering him some financial help. Andrew says he’s starting a new life in San Francisco and needs someone to share it with, while subtly accusing Madson of being in love with Trail.

Andrew stalks Madson that night and watches him rendezvous with another man. Andrew goes back to Trail’s apartment and begins rummaging through his drawers, looking for something. Evidence to use against him? A piece of information to confirm his paranoia?

Andrew finds both a video on gay people in the military (which conspicuously features a thinly anonymized interview with Trail) and a gun. Trail recounts saving the life of a Navy man being beaten to death by his fellow soldiers for being gay. He wonders if coming to the rescue was the right move for his career.

Flash-back to two years prior, to the very incident Trail described. Trail is seen rescuing a smaller soldier from vicious beatings twice in a row. He consoles the soldier who begs for a reassignment. Another soldier sees the moment, and his suspicions are aroused.

Paranoia about sexuality at the military site is on high, with soldiers exchanging stories about men in bathrooms engaging in illicit encounters. Trail is visibly worried when a higher officer calls him in for a meeting, stressing the importance of codes of conduct.

Trail considers suicide. He cleans his garb and ties a noose with his belt. As he dangles from a bench, he changes his mind and unties himself.

Hours later, he’s at a gay night club. And there’s Andrew, sitting at the bar. Cunanan clocks that it’s Trail’s first time at a gay bar, and the two start drinking.

Back to Versace. He appears to be going through with his coming out despite Donatella’s warnings. The scene is cross-cut with Trail’s interview about gays hiding in the military. The two stories are parallel.

It goes back to 1997 again. Cunanan and Trail argue.

“I saved you,” says Andrew.

“You destroyed me,” replies Trail.

“I loved you,” says Andrew.

“No one wants your love,” Trail retorts.

Andrew leaves for Madson’s place. Later that night, he’d go on to murder Trail with a hammer.

The extent to which Murphy has embellished the lives of Trail and Madson for the purposes of his narrative are unclear, although the basic facts do match up: Trail was, in fact, a Navy officer whose body was found in Madson’s apartment. He did, in fact, give an anonymized interview on being gay in the Navy.

Trail’s deep shame over his sexuality, like Madson and Miglin, was the source of his relationship with Cunanan — who, in Murphy’s narrative, fed off his victims’ melancholic regrets like a vampire. It would have been easier to depict Andrew as a purely manipulative monster, stalking wounded prey. Instead, Murphy shows him as desperate and drawn to the bleeding — not only out of a desire to manipulate and dominate, but also to end his loneliness.

Although the ‘90s are often seen as somewhat of a paragon of socially liberal progress, the cruelties of that decade are washed away in the waves of nostalgia from the past few years. Cunanan’s narrative, however fictionalized it may be in Murphy’s sociopathic love stories, highlight not only the immense nastiness foisted upon sexual minorities in our recent history, but also the heartache (and violence) of living in a world designed around queer persecution and forced isolation.

‘American Crime Story’ Episode 5 Unexpectedly Tackles Violence Against Gay Men In The Military

Ask Matt: Versace Doesn’t Register in ‘Versace,’ Votes for HGTV’s ‘Home Town,’ ‘Black Panther’ on TV, and More – TV Insider

Does Versace Need Versace?

Question: We’re now more than halfway through the highly emotional second season of FX’s American Crime Story anthology, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, and the least intriguing parts are the scenes (thankfully just a couple this week) that feature Versace! The third and fourth episodes didn’t have anything to do with Versace and they were the strongest episodes to date. It’s so ironic that the title of this extremely compelling series features the name Versace. — Fred

Matt Roush: And yet without the high-profile slaying of the celebrated designer, which catapulted the deranged Andrew Cunanan onto the front pages while also marking the end of his reign of terror, this fascinating and unsettling docudrama almost surely wouldn’t exist. Calling the series “The Madness of Andrew Cunanan,” while more appropriate, wouldn’t have the same ring. Addressing your criticism, I don’t mind the Versace scenes. Edgar Ramirez is doing a fine job working on a much smaller canvas to depict certain turning points in Versace’s life, including most recently his coming out, which made an interesting parallel to the equally-ill fated Navy officer played by Finn Wittrock, who gave his interview about gays in the military to CBS News from the shadows. The series seems to be making the point that while Versace made a name for himself, trying to live openly and honestly, the man who would end his life was doing anything but, existing in a toxic world of narcissistic delusion. That’s a pretty powerful contrast.

Ask Matt: Versace Doesn’t Register in ‘Versace,’ Votes for HGTV’s ‘Home Town,’ ‘Black Panther’ on TV, and More – TV Insider

Edgar Ramirez Discusses Playing Fashion Icon Gianni Versace

Playing larger-than-life fashion icon Gianni Versace isn’t a role Édgar Ramírez will soon to forget: the 20 pounds he put on for the part in Ryan Murphy’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story are a constant reminder.

“I had to gain weight, so I somehow kept the character with me all the time. I had to live with that weight for seven months. Every time I touched my belly or had heartburn, it reminded me of the show. Every time I couldn’t fit into my pants or was on a photo shoot and couldn’t fit into sample sizes, I was reminded that I was playing Gianni,” he confides ruefully.

It’s the night before the second season premiere of FX’s true-crime anthology, a highly anticipated follow-up to 2016’s much-feted, award-winning The People v. O.J. Simpson. The 40-year-old actor is in New York to promote the nine-episode series, an exploration of Versace’s murder that is based on Maureen Orth’s best-seller Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History. Despite having a nasty cold—which hit him “like a truck” during Golden Globes week—and still toting around some of that extra, custom-designed Versace baggage, his passion for the project is palpable.

“What Versace did—the impact that he had on the history of fashion and culture—is undeniable. He basically changed fashion by marrying sexuality and glamour on an unparalleled scale. Right now, we live—for better or worse—in a time that was shaped by Gianni Versace. The culture of bling, the exacerbation of fame, the picture between cinema and fashion, and fame and celebrity is something Gianni helped to create,” he enthuses.

Sadly, the Italian-born designer’s death became as infamous as his life had been. He was shot and killed in cold blood on July 15, 1997, on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion after returning from a walk on Ocean Drive. He was the fifth victim of serial killer who committed suicide just eight days later.

Ramírez—like most of the world—was fascinated by the glittering Gianni Versace, but it was the chance to work with American Crime Story’s equally mesmerizing producer and creator that drew him to the role. “I want to be part of stories that are not only dramatically gripping—that grab you and don’t let go—but that also touch upon important subjects. This is the case for most of Ryan Murphy’s work—his stories are interesting, but also socially and culturally relevant,” he notes, before admitting, “The first thing that drew me to the project was Ryan. I’ve been a huge admirer of Ryan Murphy for a long, long time.”

That said, he still didn’t accept the role right away. In Hollywood, Ryan Murphy need only snap his fingers and say “Jump!” before any number of A-list stars would squeak “How high?” But not Ramírez. He wanted to be sure of the project before he signed on the dotted line, and bold as brass, told Murphy to “come back to [him] with another script.”

When we applaud his chutzpah, the actor is quick to set the record straight and maintain that he is not a diva. “I loved the script immediately, but just based on one episode, it was very difficult for me to understand how the character was going to be a force, and not just a presence,” he explains. “That was very important. I needed to read other episodes to be able to understand where the character was going. It’s not about the size of a character, it’s about how much of a force a character is within a story. I knew that the writers were going to be spectacular, but I wanted to understand the direction of the whole story. Ryan gave me my process and my space, so I said yes.”

He has another reason for being hesitant: He’s been burned before—and it only happened once—but he’s loath to let it happen again. “People can have the best intentions—and I can say I’ve always worked with well-intentioned people—but so many things can happen in a production. Things change, and then all you’re left with is promises when you’ve already taken on a project. For me, it’s very important to take responsibility of my choices,” he notes, before describing his most disappointing cinematic experience, in what was one of his first major roles.

“I was lucky that it happened early in my career, which made it actually painless in a way, because I learned that I have to do projects for the right reasons,” Ramírez says. “I wasn’t sure about the script and was more fascinated by the people I was going to work with, the scope of the project and the charisma of the director—who turned out to be a much better producer than a director and a writer. I was enchanted by his promises and how he pitched the movie to me. But it didn’t end up that way on the page, and I was already committed; [the character wound up being ] difficult for me to play.”

His starring turn in The Assassination of Gianni Versace is a role that he takes full ownership of. “What I said to Ryan is, ‘I have to be responsible for my choice, so that if I sign on regardless of what happens, I’m not going to blame anyone—you or the producers,’” he recalls, noting, “It’s not about having things my way, because that’s boring. I love to be surprised by material, but walking into the unknown I need to be sure that I’m being responsible for that leap. I need certain conditions to be met for me to open up to the adventure.”

Clearly, Murphy, along with the cast and crew, more than satisfied his requirements, giving Ramírez one of the top overall experiences of his career. “This is one of the best roles I’ve ever had the chance to play. I couldn’t be happier, and I have only great things to say about this experience,” he says, adding that he’s not only formed a life-long friendship with Murphy, but with co-stars Penélope Cruz, who plays Gianni’s sister, Donatella; Ricky Martin, as his longtime lover, Antonio D’Amico; and Darren Criss, as the killer Cunanan.

He formed a familial bond with Cruz in particular, whom he first met while filming the series in December and refers to as “a very good friend,” though the cast as a whole truly seemed to form a life-long bond. “It doesn’t happen very often, but we all became very close. It was one of those experiences where you know that everyone will be in each other’s life after this project,” Ramírez vows.

Their closeness was especially opportune given the sensitive subject matter. “It was a lucky strike that really helped the process, because this was a very intense shoot, and we had very [dramatic] scenes,” he maintains. “The family relationships within the Versace clan were volatile, and we had to have a lot of trust in each other. We had to really abandon ourselves to each other to really get to the core of the scene.”

The fiery Versace family hasn’t been particularly impressed with Murphy’s project, which, again, ais based on a nonfiction work. They released a statement in January asserting that they “neither authorized nor had any involvement whatsoever” in the series, and that it “should only be considered as a work of fiction.” A follow-up declaration was equally dismissive, announcing that the “Orth book itself is full of gossip and speculation” and was an “effort to create a sensational story” with “secondhand hearsay that is full of contradictions.”

Needless to say, Ramírez did not get in touch with any members of the Versace family—not his brother, Santo, niece, Allegra, nephew, Daniel, nor Donatella (who reportedly sent friend Penélope Cruz a bouquet of flowers wishing her luck)—while researching the role. Instead, he did his research by reading old interviews, and also managed to find friends of the late designer who were willing to talk and provided much-needed, personal insight into his life. “For particular reasons, we weren’t allowed to [approach the family], but I also knew it would be fruitless, and I didn’t want to do that. They weren’t open. The Versaces went through one of the most horrible tragedies in contemporary history, and it happened in the public eye. I knew this was going to be hard for them, so I didn’t want to reach out to them,” he admits.

That said, he is interested in hearing their thoughts after they’ve actually seen the series, which debuted on January 17: “I’m very curious to see what their reaction will be when the cat is finally out of the bag, and they see what we did, and that we did it with the utmost respect and compassion. It is not sensational. Our show is based on a nonfiction book by a highly respected female writer, and we stand by her reporting.”

After playing Gianni Versace, however, Ramírez very keenly feels the family’s grief. “In order to understand the massive loss that this man’s disappearance was, we really had to understand his creative process and how much love he had for art, for life, his family,” he notes. “In the most Italian of ways, he had such a hunger for life. He had such curiosity. He was such a disruptor, such a nonconformist. He tried to change the world in the best way he could. After having portrayed his life, it hurts more to know that he’s no longer with us.”

However, Ramírez did not have to shake off his sadness at the end of every day. Instead, he embraced the true essence of Gianni Versace. “I didn’t really need to get rid of the character every time I walked off set, because he was fun,” he admits. “It was nice to be him. It was nice to be that force.”

CARPE DIEM

Ramírez has always stood up for what he believes in, and does this even more so now that he has the world as his stage. “I have the opportunity to help others by the virtue of what I do,” he notes. “I have a great platform to give a voice to people who are underrepresented or don’t have a voice. I think that’s a part of my responsibility.”

He does this most frequently through HeForShe, a solidarity campaign for the advancement of women initiated by UN Women. The movement’s goal is to achieve equality by encouraging men and boys to become agents of change and to act against the inequalities that women face worldwide.

“[As a result of the campaign], I think that women have felt supported and more men have their backs. Men have felt encouraged to also join forces in trying to reach a more gender-equal world, which is the goal of the movement. Gender equality is a liberation movement for each and every person that has felt the burden of a gender stereotype, or like they’ve had to fit into an uncomfortable mold or felt the pain of discrimination,” he declares.

And no, he’s never been personally discriminated against, never had resistance or doubt in accepting a job, and that’s the point. Things shouldn’t always be easy, and if they are, you fight for others, in his opinion.

“[Discrimination] has never personally happened to me, but it’s been very close to me—my mom, my sister, my niece, my female friends. Not even when I decided to become an actor did I feel it. To have had the privilege to decide my life and what I am, that obliges you to help other people to have the same privileges,” he says.

Growing up in San Cristóbal, Táchira, Venezuela as the son of Soday Arellano, an attorney, and Filiberto Ramírez, a military officer, Ramírez was allowed to do as he pleased. His sister, Nataly, was not as fortunate. “I never felt that I needed to do something else, because my father’s expectations were different. I felt very supported at home. But my sister was not. For example, she wanted to become a pilot. She really knows how to drive a car. She wanted to become a race [car driver] and pursue that passion, but my father wouldn’t let her. I had the privilege to choose and decide my life, clearly,” he says. “My sister, cousins and friends didn’t have that choice. I had more opportunities to decide my life based on my gender. I was never criticized by my dad when I decided to become an actor. He said, ‘Okay, I guess you know what you’re doing,’ but I don’t know if it would have been the same thing if my sister had wanted to be that.” Incidentally, there are no hard feelings today in his household. “We are, as a family, trying to build opportunities for the next generation so they don’t feel the burden of a gender stereotype,” he says.

Ramírez, who is also a Goodwill Ambassador of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and supports Amnesty International, has always stood up for what he believes in. “I’ve always been an outspoken person since I was a kid,” he reveals. “I didn’t always know what I wanted to do, but if I wanted something, I was determined to get it.”

He had the freedom to try his hand at a variety of careers until he found one that fit. After graduating from Venezuela’s Universidad Católica Andrés Bello with a degree in mass communication and a minor in audiovisual communication with the intention of pursuing international relations, he tried a stint as a political journalist before working as executive director of Dale al Voto, a Venezuelan foundation similar to Rock the Vote. He also worked in promotions at one point before deciding to become an actor.

His first role of note was in the Venevisión soap opera Cosita Rica. His first major motion picture was Tony Scott’s 2005 film, Domino, and first blockbuster the 2007 action flick The Bourne Ultimatum. He has appeared in a plethora of films with big-name directors since his early days as an actor, including Steven Soderbergh’s Che; Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty; andDavid O. Russell’s Joy. Other projects include Vantage Point; the 2015 Point Break reboot; Hands of Stone; The Girl on the Train; and, more recently, Gold and Bright.

He just wrapped Pablo Trapero’s thriller The Quietude with The Artist’s Bérénice Bejo in Argentina and will reunite with Robert De Niro for the third time in a top-secret project. Although he can’t talk about the film, he has plenty to say about De Niro, his co-star in Joy and Hands of Stone. “I’ve only done two films with Bob, but it feels like six because of the intensity of the films, but also because of the intensity of our relationship,” he shares. “I’ve been lucky to become very close to Bob, and he’s an important part of my life, not only professionally but also personally. We try to hang out as much as we can. He’s a great listener and a huge source of inspiration. He’s one of the most polite people I’ve ever met. He treats everyone equally, honestly. That’s very inspiring, especially in this day and age.”

At the end of the day, Ramírez is just looking for things that make him happy. “I’m in New York City right now, and I’m playing one of the most important parts that I’ve ever done and working with some of the greatest talents I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with,” he notes. “I just spent an amazing New Year’s Eve with my family. My father almost died this past year, but he made it [to the holidays] with us. I’m at a great moment in my life. It’s as good as it gets. Is it perfect? No, nothing’s perfect, but that’s part of the challenge. You’re always trying to make things a little bit better. Sometimes you nail it, sometimes you don’t, but you wait for the next day to make it better. I take things one day at a time.”

He references the destruction of his homeland, and the constitutional-crisis protests that swept Venezuela in 2017. “I come from a country that was destroyed by bigotry,” Ramírez says. “My country has been basically morally erased. Almost more than three million people have left the country. However, every time I walk through Buenos Aires [in Argentina], I see young people from my country that have fled there just happy that they’re alive, that they have a new slate in front of them. And that is beautiful. It gives me hope.”

We ask if he thinks his innate optimism—his hopefulness—has helped him navigate through life—the belief that if you want things to be wonderful, they will be. He mulls this over, and he agrees. “I think so. I always try to see the glass as half full and not half empty. I mean, there are days when I just see emptiness, sure—it’s not a constant thing—but most of the time, I have to believe that things can improve. Bad things, evil things just tend to be a little bit louder.”

But it’s in his personality to focus on the good, to live in the moment. He asserts that he’s happy with his path: “I’m very lucky. I also work very hard. I have great people around me, and I try to surround myself with people who have the same attitude. I’m at a very interesting moment [in my life]. But you know, if you had asked me 10 years ago, I would have said the same thing. I’m very open to what the day awaits.”

Edgar Ramirez Discusses Playing Fashion Icon Gianni Versace

American Crime Story: Versace Recap: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Gives Life To One Man And Death To Another

I’m back! After taking a mental health break (those are good for you), yours truly is here to cover this week’s chilling episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. Before I get started, a million thanks are due to Clare Sidoti for covering last week’s heartbreaking episode for me.

We all need a mental health break every now and then, and perhaps if Andrew Cunanan had taken one, maybe he wouldn’t have become the murdering psychopath that he was. Who am I kidding though? The man was totally born that way, and a lot of people figured that out quickly while some did not and by the time they did, it was too late for them.

I am, of course, referring to Jeff Trail, who met an untimely death last week. This week’s episode focused on his backstory, which mirrored a bit of Gianni’s life at roughly the same time as far as the events and things that mattered to them both goes.

Gather ’round and let’s discuss “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

A Brave Choice: Gianni Versace is still alive in this episode (thanks flashbacks), and as always, he was arguing with Donatella about his decision to do an interview with Advocate magazine in which he will openly say that he’s gay. But Donatella is against him and fears a backlash since homophobia is still very much a thing. They compare Versace to Perry Ellis, the designer who walked his final runway show weakened by what was believed to be AIDS shortly before succumbing to the disease; Gianni sees it as the most important show of his career, Donatella as the moment people stopped buying his clothes sadly. Antonio also wants openness and shares his thoughts about the whole situation: For 13 years he’s been mistaken for Gianni’s assistant, and he wants their relationship to be public, which Donatella hates . She sees Antonio as a climber and a leech; the family business should concern only family.

A Man Obsessed: As for our serial killer, Cunanan has having his own crisis, albeit a less glamorous one: He’s on the phone with American Express, asking them if they can expand his credit so he can book a flight to Minneapolis. He has two friends there, he explains, and they owe him money, which will help pay off the card and its new limit, he claims. After getting his yes, Cunanan injects heroin between his toes, and we’re afforded a wider view into his private life: a miserable, bleak apartment, a closet full of well-pressed clothes and a collage of Gianni Versace, including that inevitable Advocate interview. Life isn’t going so well for the unhinged killer as it seems.

Back From The Dead: Shortly after, Cunanan is met at the airport by both David and Gulf War Navy veteran Jeffrey Trail as the series of events in this episode happened before their tragic deaths. Trail explains his leaving the Navy as his choice but there was something else going on with his discharge, and as soon as he links up with David in the airport he makes his feelings for Cunanan clear. “Everything he’s told you about his life is a lie,” Trail says. David feels sorry for him, but Trail has nothing but anger and a debt to pay. Cunanan had “accidentally” tried to out Trail to his father with a postcard signed, “Love, Drew, kiss kiss,” but Trail says he still owes Cunanan, at least enough to let him use his apartment for the weekend so long as they don’t have to interact. Big mistake.

A Surprising Proposal: When Cunanan comes home with David, David finally sees what Trails sees in Cunanan, which is nothing good. Then Cunanan pulls a fast one on David and proposes to him with a $10,000 watch, mind you. Unfortunately for Cunanan, David reacts with shame and pity and humiliation for both of them, which Cunanan ignores and tells him to think about. David does give him an answer later when they meet up with Linda (the same woman who will find Trail’s body, and who will tell the police about Cunanan). David says he’ll never marry him, that their relationship isn’t real. “It’s just another story,” he says, giving the watch back. Cunanan heads back to Trail’s apparent and ends viewing a tape of Trail giving some kind of interview about gays in the military.

Jeff’s Story: We are then taken back to two years earlier to see Trail in the Navy, and witness firsthand the incident he spoke about in the interview, where he saved a gay sailor’s life and it cost him his anonymity as someone mentioned to him about being able to identify gay men by tattoos. Sadly Trail tries, in a panic, to take a knife to the ink on his kneecap. With seemingly no way out, he begins to hang himself in the bathroom, until he changes his mind, gasping for breath, and goes another way: to a gay bar, where he meets Andrew Cunanan. The two become close, close enough that Cunanan tries to talk Trail out of doing the anonymous interview with CBS. But Trail knows: It’s just something he has to do. It’s the same sentiment echoed by Versace: a shared, quiet bravery that makes their deaths all the more aching.

A Tragic End: On the day of his murder, Trail finally has it out with Cunanan. He sees Cunanan for what he is: a selfish fraud. Cunanan tries to say he did a lot of him and gave him his life meaning. “Everything you gave me,” he says, “It means nothing. You have no honor.” Cunanan says he saved him. “You destroyed me!” Trail fires back. Cunanan tells him he loves him, and Trail answers, “No one wants your love.” From there, everything that happened in the previous episode and the events leading up to it add up. Cunanan brings Trail’s gun to David’s house and tells Trail to come and get it. While David goes downstairs to let Trail up to the apartment, Cunanan grabs a hammer. The episode ends with Trail’s sister and her parents leaving a message for him, not knowing that no one will get it.

Quote of the Night:

“You’ve never believed in anyone but yourself.” Trail

American Crime Story: Versace Recap: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Gives Life To One Man And Death To Another

Penelope Cruz talks making her TV debut as Donatella Versace

Today, platinum-haired powerhouse designer Donatella Versace is one of fashion’s most powerful women, but 20 years ago, she was a bereaved sister fighting for the future of her family’s Medusa-emblazoned megabrand. “Wow, Donatella!” is the first thing Penélope Cruz says to me when I mention her critically acclaimed role in American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, and the exclamation could well serve as the show’s unofficial subtitle. “To keep the company going in the middle of that huge, deep pain she was feeling – that’s real strength,” reveres Cruz.

Proximity to her own siblings is just one of the reasons that 43-year-old Cruz – dressed down today in a gray cashmere hoodie and blue jeans – is happy to be back in her native Madrid. London, where she lived last winter during the filming of Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express, reminded her that she is constitutionally unsuited to gray days and “a 4pm nighttime – it affects the brain,” she says in her accented purr. It was worth enduring a little seasonal affective disorder, though, for the bespoke performances she was able to coax from her co-star Josh Gad, aka the voice of Olaf the snowman in the Disney smash Frozen. Stored “like treasures” on her smartphone, she plays the audio clips to her kids when she’s in need of parental kudos. “I know Olaf, and that makes me the coolest mom in the world,” she beams.

For the rest of us, ‘Friend of Olaf’ doesn’t quite compare to Cruz’s other achievements, such as becoming the first Spanish woman to win an Academy Award, for her role in 2008’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona. As she pointed out in her acceptance speech, this was the stuff of dreams for a girl from the working-class Madrid suburb of Alcobendas, who headed to New York at the age of 19 to study dance. The film also reacquainted the actress with fellow Spaniard and Oscar winner Javier Bardem, who had, once upon a time, played a bullfighter and part-time underwear model opposite Cruz’s feisty factory worker in her breakout film, Jamón, Jamón. The pair married in 2010. So now there are two Oscars to polish – and two children to consider.

Naturally, that phone call was to Actual Donatella. As a red-carpet regular, Cruz has been dressed by the house of Versace on multiple occasions. “I said to Donatella, ‘This is keeping me up at night because it’s such a big responsibility to play someone who’s not only alive, but someone I respect so much.’ And she told me, ‘If somebody’s going to do it, I’m happy that it’s you.’ Her words gave me the freedom to do this. I think she could hear in my voice that everything was going to be done from a place of respect.”

Mastering Donatella’s voice, of course, was a key part of characterization. This was Cruz’s second Italian job – she starred alongside Sophia Loren in the 2009 musical Nine – but the designer’s distinctive manner of speaking was a departure. “Her voice is much lower than mine, and I worked for months and months with the voice coach Tim Monich. I was not interested in doing a caricature, an imitation; I want you to feel her there. Everything about Donatella is rock and roll – even when she’s just sitting in a chair, she does it with an attitude.”

To keep the attitude alive in the breaks between their scenes together, she and Édgar Ramírez, who plays Gianni, turned to music: “We listened to a lot of Prince, and a lot of opera. We thought that both were very Versace.”

Whereas attitudes towards race churned at the core of The People v. O.J. Simpson, sex and sexuality pervade this sun-drenched second season of American Crime Story. Gianni Versace was killed outside his Miami mansion by Andrew Cunanan (played by Glee alumnus Darren Criss), a fantasist who preyed on gay men during a time of widespread homophobia, and whose fascination with celebrity culture morphed into a murderous obsession.

“We’re telling a story that makes you think a lot about the craziness that’s going on in the world today,” muses Cruz. “It makes you question the concept of fame, and how some teenagers and very young people grow up idealizing something that is poison.” She’s concerned that social media is exposing us to pressures that were previously the exclusive preserve of celebrities who are, she says, at least somewhat better prepared. “It doesn’t matter if you are exposed to 200 people or two million – if you’re not equipped to deal with the pressure of opinion, manipulation and bullying, it’s dangerous.”

It’s impossible to touch on the topic of fame’s dark side without alighting on Hollywood’s recent sexual harassment scandal. After all, Cruz won her Oscar for her performance in a film written and directed by Woody Allen and produced by Harvey Weinstein.

I feel her hand tap my kneecap. “I know that you are going in that direction,” she says, before adding that she had no inkling of the scale of Hollywood’s problems prior to the revelations in the New York Times. She was aware, she clarifies, that certain high-profile men were “difficult to deal with on a professional level; that they were tricky, or did some bullying – that much was clear. But these other things that have come to light…” Her eyes widen.

She knows, of course, that Hollywood has very different attitudes towards men and women. “Since the age of 25, [journalists] have been asking me if I’m afraid of aging. It’s a crazy thing to ask, and I’ve always refused to answer. They would never ask a man such a question.

“Obviously that kind of thing is on a different scale to what we were just talking about, but everything builds up, and I consider it to be part of an overall suppression of women,” says an impassioned Cruz.

She’s emphatic that the recent disclosure of widespread abuse via the #MeToo movement must result in actions as well as words. “It has to change the rules of our industry and all the other industries in which women are being repressed in so many different ways. It cannot just be something that’s there to fill the news for a few months before we move on to something else.”

With her own daughter and son, Cruz says she’s found a novel way of shifting the gender narrative, quite literally. “Fairy tales matter so much because these are the first stories that you hear from the mouths of your parents,” she says. “So, when I read fairy tales to my kids at night, I’m always changing the endings – always, always, always, always. F*****g Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and all of this – there’s a lot of machismo in those stories. That can have an effect on the way that kids see the world. If you’re not careful, they start thinking: ‘Oh, so the men get to decide everything.’”

Cruz’s subversive fairy-tale heroines, she says, are prone to declining proposals of marriage, or making the proposals themselves. An example? “In my version of Cinderella, when the prince says, ‘Do you wanna marry?’ she says, ‘No, thanks, ’cos I don’t want to be a princess. I want to be an astronaut, or a chef.’” Cruz laughs wickedly and closes an imaginary book.

No doubt, Donatella would approve.

Penelope Cruz talks making her TV debut as Donatella Versace

Big Dreams Are Deadly in American Crime Story Season 2

Andrew Cunanan, who shot and killed Gianni Versace on the front steps of the designer’s palatial estate on the morning of July 15, 1997, was good at bragging. In the second episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, a new FX miniseries about the crime and the years that led up to it, Cunanan (Darren Criss) lands in Miami’s South Beach. It is the last stop on a three-month killing spree, in which he has already murdered four men in three different states. Boasting energetically to a new friend, he claims he was once engaged to Versace (he wasn’t), who took him to dinner at the fabled San Francisco restaurant Stars (he didn’t). He launches into a reverie on Versace’s gift for design, and when his friend replies with, “Sounds real nice,” Cunanan is not pleased. “I don’t see something nice. I see the man behind it. A great creator. The man I could have been.”

Cunanan’s curdled sense of self-importance runs through the next seven episodes of the series, which travel backward from Cunanan’s crime spree to his troubled childhood. His parents, a depressive Italian-American mother and a Filipino immigrant father, poured all their hopes into young Andrew. He slept in the cavernous master bedroom by himself and attended a swanky private school in La Jolla, California, even though his parents could barely afford the tuition. He wore a red leather jumpsuit to school on occasion and was voted “Most Likely to Be Remembered” in his senior yearbook, but his own page gave almost no information about him. Instead, he inserted just one quote, attributed to the French King Louis XV: “Après moi, le déluge.” After me, the flood.

Cunanan’s first victims were Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock) and David Madson (Cody Fern), two young gay men he met through the San Diego and San Francisco nightlife scenes when he was in his twenties. Trail, a former naval officer, befriended him when his ship was docked in the San Diego harbor. Madson, a promising young architect from Minnesota, and Cunanan had met in San Francisco in 1995, when Cunanan spotted him at a restaurant bar and sent a cocktail over. That night, according to writer Maureen Orth’s account (the FX show is partially based on Vulgar Favors, her 1999 best-seller about Cunanan’s crimes), the pair had a “nonsexual sleepover” inside the Mandarin Oriental hotel, where Andrew was staying thanks to an allowance he collected from a wealthy, older La Jolla businessman named Norman Blachford.

Blachford, whose partner of 26 years had just died when he met Cunanan, allowed him to move in to his mansion and decorate it, giving him credit cards, a $33,000 Infiniti, and a $2,500 living allowance. Cunanan was apparently ashamed of being a “kept” man but also flaunted his nouveau riches, spending lavishly on friends and acquaintances. When he met Madson, Cunanan felt a genuine emotional connection and obsessed over the architect romantically for the next two years. By the time Trail took a blue-collar job in Minneapolis, where Madson also lived, Blachford had dropped Cunanan, who was now alone. Cunanan flew to Minnesota, killed Trail with a claw hammer inside Madson’s airy loft, and then shot and killed Madson four days later on the banks of East Rush Lake, an hour outside town—perhaps out of jealousy or despair.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace sticks with Cunanan throughout his spree. Versace (Edgar Ramírez) and his longtime partner, Antonio (Ricky Martin), only appear intermittently, like pops from a flashbulb rather than fully developed characters. This feels purposeful: Cunanan was preoccupied with fame, perhaps to the point of psychopathy, and he put celebrity on a pedestal. He saw himself as destined for greatness, and it is this tragic misconception of himself that makes his story so very American. Versace was an openly gay immigrant, succeeding at the highest levels of American business. This must have enraged Cunanan, the openly gay son of an immigrant, who saw in Versace the anointed prince that he longed to be.

Shortly before the first episode aired, members of the Versace family distanced themselves from the new show, which they thought “should only be considered as a work of fiction.” In Vulgar Favors, Orth asserts that Cunanan had met Versace in San Francisco around 1990, when the designer created the costumes for a San Francisco Opera production of Capriccio. Although it’s not clear whether the two met only in passing or were much better acquainted, we see this encounter in a scene in The Assassination of Gianni Versace. If they had dated, as Cunanan often boasted to friends, Cunanan’s violent act may have been personal: Some reporters at the time speculated—with a homophobic slant—that Cunanan may have been an “HIV killer,” out to get revenge on former boyfriends. (A medical examiner later testified that he was not in fact HIV positive.) Versace’s family holds that he never met Cunanan, that the designer was a victim of his own fame and of one man’s twisted rampage against a sparkling culture that rejected him.

The second installment in Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story anthology series, the show doesn’t aim to establish which version is true so much as to expose the rot at the center of American culture—horrors that could only happen here. (Last season followed the trial of O.J. Simpson, dissecting the racial and gendered complexities of the case.) What we do know, from Orth’s book and from several other reports following the murders, was that Cunanan’s life was one of deception and delusion, of falsehoods and fibs and chicanery. He wanted to travel in the highest echelons of society, clinking glasses with socialites and captains of industry and cavorting on yachts. He didn’t like to work but loved to party, a less talented Mr. Ripley.

Cunanan wanted to travel in the highest echelons of society, clinking glasses with socialites and cavorting on yachts.

Throughout, Cunanan has to confront the mismatch between his aspirations and reality. From an early age, he bluffs about his background, telling classmates he is the son of wealthy aesthetes, that his father, Modesto (Jon Jon Briones), once served as Imelda Marcos’s personal pilot and that his mother has filled his lunch box with lobster tails. In the penultimate episode, we learn that Modesto has had to flee the country after embezzling fortunes from his clients. When Cunanan, now in his teens, goes to Manila to find him, Modesto is living in squalid conditions. Criss and Briones stare at each other for long minutes in this scene, filmed inside a tiny tropical shack. Cunanan realizes his father’s success was a lie, and that all of the confidence and self-regard he has absorbed from his bellowing belief must also be fraudulent.

Many people would experience this sort of trauma—the explosion of the family unit, the disgrace of a parent—and cave inward. Cunanan does the opposite. When he returns from Manila, his lies only get bigger. He claims that his father owns a pineapple plantation, that as son and heir, he is set to inherit millions. He tells friends that he has family in New York, Paris, and Rome, and that Signore Versace has asked him to travel around the world with him designing costumes. Even before the period when a quick Google search could swiftly puncture outrageous claims, all this bragging raises suspicion. In a conversation Madson imagines shortly before he is killed, he asks Cunanan to tell him one true thing about his life. It doesn’t happen. Cunanan was like a Gatsby so enchanted with the green light that he would kill for it, a man so bedeviled by the American dream that he became a walking nightmare.

Because the show tells Cunanan’s story backward, we often see his victims die before we get to spend time with them. We see Cunanan in the days leading up to the murder of Versace, then we see him bludgeon Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell), a prominent Chicago real estate developer, in Miglin’s garage. We see him shoot a cemetery caretaker in Pennsylvania just so that he can steal his red pickup truck. When these victims appear again on-screen, beaming and unaware of their bloody future, it can feel like agony. They die in front of you all over again, and you are mourning them even while they are simply talking and moving.

The best episode of the series is “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which follows Jeff Trail through the trauma of being gay in the military. In one scene, he tries to hang himself in uniform; in another gruesome moment, he takes a box cutter and begins to slice a tattoo from his calf, after hearing that officials can identify homosexuals by their body markings. The anguish and shame that Trail feels is devastating, especially as we know what fate lies ahead. He is forced to leave the Navy, but as he leaves, he gives an interview to a news program about the struggles of being gay and wanting to serve your country. The fact that this act of bravery—and its promise of a new, more open life—so closely precedes his death haunts the episode.

No one is safe in Cunanan’s world, but then, perhaps, it was never safe to be gay in 1990s America, even for gold-plated celebrities like Versace. The media of the time blamed the victim for his own murder as much as it blamed Cunanan. While Cunanan was “a killer on the loose,” Edward J. Ingebretsen has written in At Stake: Monsters and the Rhetoric of Fear in Public Culture, Versace was seen as “a different threat entirely, that of a profligate and well-traveled member of the upper class, whose mobility, like the killer’s, is also the stuff of myth.” The media wrapped Versace’s and Cunanan’s stories together, frequently drawing parallels between the two: both gay, fashion-obsessed men, enchanted by wealth. Yet they couldn’t have been more different—one of them created, while the other destroyed.

In the end, The Assassination of Gianni Versace belongs to Cunanan, because it is a singular story: the story of a boy who wanted everything in the world but never figured out how to get it. This is an American crime story, in that we see in the rearview how the consumerist ’90s could warp those who treated celebrity like a religion, how some were even willing to commit vile acts for a taste of rarefied air. Very little is, at its core, more American than that.

Big Dreams Are Deadly in American Crime Story Season 2