It doesn’t take much for one to get lost in the illusion of a Miami winter, its promises, its hopes. In mid-January, I fled bone-frigid New York, spending a handful of days on South Beach, willfully prey to its neon revelry. Miami is similar to NYC in its lust for lavish, intemperate promotion. Among the most raucous advertisements I came across during my trip—which included an aerial banner touting “Migos Tonight” at nightclub LIV—were the ones for the TV show American Crime Story, the Ryan Murphy-produced, FX anthology miniseries that seized the nation’s attention with its first season, 2016’s The People vs. OJ Simpson.
Its just-debuted new season, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, centers on the rise and industry-rattling death of the Italian-born fashion maven who spent much of his adult life in Miami, before his murder there in 1997. Analogous to The People vs. OJ Simpson, which garnered unanimous praise for the depth of its character nuance and thematic layering, the Versace cast is rich with veteran and rookie talent; there’s Penelope Cruz as the heartbroken and hell-bent Donatella, Darren Criss as boyish killer Andrew Cunanan, and Edgar Ramirez as the venerated, genius designer.
But recreating a TV sensation is not an exact science, especially in the face of drastically shifting media consumption. Two years ago, American Crime Story premiered with polarizing force and sustained momentum through its 10-episode run, but even that precedent couldn’t guarantee Versace’s cultural dominance. Despite its overindulgent promotion in Miami and elsewhere, the season’s first episode brought in less than half of People vs. OJ’s 2016 debut. More than ratings, though, it’s the noticeable absence of conversation around the show that stands in starkest contrast to its predecessor. Though only three episodes into the season, Versace has failed to captivate and stun the viewing public in ways that once characterized the TV watching experience.
The reason is a striking example of what happens when what’s old must be made new: TV has cracked. A symmetry of consumption has given way to a minefield of choice. In the past decade the medium experienced a wolfish expansion. The universalization of streaming platforms brought with it an overabundance of content. The response was near berserk: major networks and cable channels infused respective programming, stuffing screens fat with competing shows, some of top-tier quality—but many more, as critcs have pointed out, that were merely good. The Era of Prestige TV evolved into the Era of Too-Much TV.
TV has cracked. A symmetry of consumption has given way to a minefield of choice.
Naturally, this cultural thickening helped to feed the pulse of social media, accelerating our appetites for everything pop culture. (Twitter fattened as a result, ample proof of how we yearned for issues to discuss and argue over.) Anything we talked about, everything we talked about, felt explosive and urgent—until the next explosive, urgent thing happened.
Our current landscape has undergone an irreversible remaking: content-delivery services and social media have capsized not just how we watch TV, but how we talk about it, too. In an era overflowing with shock and misery and moments of optimism that tug at one’s heart, how we collectively process TV itself can often feel momentless.
Consider The Deuce, HBO’s sleek porn-and-disco-era period piece about sex work and power disruption in 1970s New York City. It’s likely one of the best shows of the last decade. Yet, when it debuted last fall, there was little chatter about David Simon’s latest dramatic feat. It arrived and ended with a whisper. The organizing logic of modern TV consumption simply doesn’t allow for cultural sustenance. That’s not to say there was no critical engagement around The Deuce, or shows of its caliber—ABC’s recently-cancelled American Crime (no relation to American Crime Story) suffered an equivalent fate during its incisive three-season run—only that the genre’s inflation has made it easier to overlook what’s directly in front of you, and sometimes not even hear about a show at all. The noise can be deafening.
On the opposite end is a show like This Is Us, the wildly popular NBC family drama that became the rare pop phenomenon (it averages around 9 million viewers per episode, a triumph in a ratings-starved climate). Online, talk of This Is Us carries with it the semblance of Olympian significance—without fail, I’m told, its import is immediate and special. This occurs each week, one after the other, again and again. It’s not that This Is Us isn’t especially relevant; it’s just that, according to friends or co-workers or online associates, so is Legion and Better Things and Alias Grace and American Vandal and Insecure and Riverdale and Big Little Lies and The Good Place. We believe everything is immediate and special, which means nothing is immediate and special.
When everything carries with it an air of singularity, it can be hard to discern what is of real substance and what is hollow bluster. We’re either talking about so many things we completely miss one, or we’re talking about so many things at once, nothing feels special since we’ve deemed everything special. If everything feels like a moment, worthy of dissection on your favorite website or across your timeline, then its true impact is lost.
TV’s crack hasn’t just been foisted on us—it’s a direct consequence of our own demonstrated wants. One Pew study found that internet TV consumption habits were on the rise among young adults (18-29), and that a majority of them (61%) customarily watch TV via streaming services. The Consumer Technology Association also found that people don’t watch live TV as much as they used to (20% of US households are cable free). People aged 18-34 spend a greater portion (55%) of their video-watching time consuming content after it’s aired on TV, according to the study.
The catch: In exchange for personal convenience, TV providers are beginning to ask for single-brand loyalty. Disney’s internet-distributed streaming service launches next year. With Facebook’s Watch platform, the social behemoth is determined to make TV a centerpiece of its universe. Amazon, Hulu, and Apple TV are expanding their original-programming efforts. Netflix will spend $8 billion on content in 2018, a number that dwarfs most cable networks. We are moving toward a future of Experience Centers—the feed is available to you at all times, the options endless and constant.
How TV is delivered to us is being remade, so how we understand it must be too. For now, it’s a complicated solace. A glut of streaming providers equals a glut of content equals heightened disconnect. Fortunately, TV’s crack has also allowed for more ambitious and true representation. We’re moving in a direction where soon there will be a vision every person can identify with on TV. Perhaps The Deuce didn’t feel as impactful as it should’ve because we’re processing (or not processing) too many things at once, stuck in a perpetual overload of pop culture.
Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it wasn’t that it lacked punch, maybe there was no need to collectively champion or salivate over The Deuce because we simply don’t need to anymore. It could be that TV’s in the best state it’s ever been. There’s something for everybody—bona fide character depictions, empathetic storylines, relatable themes. The moments have become so normalized that they too have become unrecognizable.
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The Assassination of Gianni Versace Episode 3 Review: A Random Killing
“What terrifies you more, death or being disgraced?”
If I were to pose a similar question to Andrew Cunanan, it would be this: What terrifies you more, never amounting to anything or everyone knowing about it?
Andrew Cunanan is obsessed with big, important men. Being one, being perceived as one, taking them out, and taking them down by revealing some secret shame. It’s hard to imagine that Andrew Cunanan could exist in this way if he didn’t hate himself. He clearly hates himself for many reasons, but chief among them are the fact that he isn’t a somebody and the fact that he’s gay.
Ryan Murphy is walking a fine line here: queer characters, real and fictional alike, are far too often portrayed as psychopaths, murderers, craven perverts. But this case, in the careful hands of someone who knows those tropes all too well, reminds us that Andrew’s failings are his alone, while simultaneously showing how the same self-hatred that causes him so much shame and causes others so much hatred or fear is exactly what made his victims vulnerable in the first place. It’s what kept investigators from catching Cunanan sooner. Versace is equally as attentively loving to its victims as it is attentively horrified by its spree killer.
The strength of American Crime Story is that it lets us visit all these other worlds in such a way that suggests there is a fully-fledged show happening about each one, and we’re just briefly visiting it where our two paths overlap. We might imagine that in a parallel television universe, there is another limited series starring Marilyn, focusing on her second act as a self-made cosmetics mogul in the male-dominated 80s, after her career on stage, all the while married to her steadfast husband Lee.
Everything about Lee Miglin is heartbreaking, and Mike Farrell plays him beautifully. He clearly just wants to be loved and seen for who he is. He struggles with what he sees as a sin, as shameful base urges. His basement shrine – and it does feel like his, not theirs as a couple, right? – is extensive. Candles and portraits are one thing, a custom kneeler is another. His prayer – “I try, I try, I try” – shows a man struggling to fit a mold that will never be his and hating himself every time it doesn’t work. He has lived a whole, successful life, but it’s as someone else. Lee represents so many other men, who loved their wives but were not in love with them. Men who could never fill the void that comes along with denying who you really are.
This is the most brutal episode of the installment so far, although I expect to say that a few more times before we’re through.
The bitter cruelty with which Andrew toys with Lee makes it all the more devastating. I kept finding myself thinking, but he’s going to murder him. Surely that’s worse? And it is. Oh, it is. The impending murder hangs over the first half of the episode, building stress in our bodies as we wait for the inevitable, knowing it will be ruthless and cruel. And yet. There is something heart-wrenchingly sadistic to playing with your food before you eat it. We can never know for sure what went on between Lee and Andrew, aside from a few key facts. But we know they spent time together. We know this was not their first meeting. While the lines were almost certainly different, it’s hard to imagine that the gist of their encounter was much different than what Ryan Murphy posits here.
It’s darkly impressive that an episode with such unvarnished violence can still garner gasps from an act as simple as ripping a sketch down the middle and burning it. Only a well-drawn character can elicit such emotions, and here I mean Lee. We’ve only just met him, but we feel his pride in his Sky Needle, the unbridled joy he would experience in touring it anonymously, overhearing the laughter of children as they saw the view from his own creation. When Cunanan destroys the drawings, he is desecrating Lee’s life’s work. He is desecrating Lee.
This episode was built on tension, more so than the previous ones. It feels like at any moment, the Miglins’ kindly neighbor will turn a corner to find the Miglin’s pristine white home covered in blood. Or that any one of Andrew’s sudden outbursts will turn on a dime into murder. You worry about Lee’s dignity and privacy, and Marilyn’s, when their neighbor inevitably discovers Lee’s body in a compromising position.
This was our first episode without Gianni, anything or anyone from his world. It’s a wise choice, particularly since the last episode was weighed heavily toward Andrew, and the Gianni storyline felt shortchanged, less impactful. I’d rather see a better story about Gianni later on than feel like dribs and drabs of his life are shoehorned in. Besides, I can’t imagine that we would feel as completely drawn in to the world of the Miglins without spending as much time with them as this episode does.
I want to call attention to Marilyn, played with strength and empathy by Judith Light. This is a stunning performance, and she had a tall order to fill. From the get go, there’s a tenseness to her body, a stiffness to her affect. She doesn’t say a word, but we know that she knows that something is wrong. Later on in the episode, Judith is able to show Marilyn’s steely reserve while somehow revealing her inner turmoil: the depth of her grief, her unwillingness to rethink the true partnership that was her marriage, her loyalty to Lee and the dignity she felt he deserved. Her choice to process Lee’s murder as a random killing is completely understandable.
★★★★★ 5/5
The Assassination of Gianni Versace Episode 3 Review: A Random Killing
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Episode 3 Recap: Judith Light Takes Center Stage
As the third episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story opens, we see neither Gianni Versace nor Andrew Cunanan. Instead, writer Tom Rob Smith and director Gwyneth Horder-Payton introduce us to Marilyn Miglin. Miglin is a home-shopping icon and the head of a beauty product empire — worthy of a TV show in her own right. Considering the legendary Judith Light is playing her, you might expect Ryan Murphy and co. have suddenly decided to add another star to the mix.
But as much as Marilyn dominates the narrative this week, this is still not her story. We’re still in Cunanan’s; Lee Miglin, Marilyn’s husband (played by Mike Farrell), was his third victim. In flashes back-and-forth, we see both how he died, and how Marilyn handles the immediate aftermath of his murder.
When Marilyn has to go out of town for work, she asks an innocuous question of her husband: “What are your plans for when I’m away?” His struggle to answer — his reach for any possible thread of what he’s doing — depresses him mightily. “I’m going to work, like I always do,” he says, sitting, dejected, on their stairs. She asks if he wants to come with her: “I like it when you’re there.”
This takes Lee aback. “You do?” he asks. As depicted by Light and Farrell, the Miglin’s relationship is one of mixed signals and unspoken secrets. There’s clearly love there, but that’s only half the battle.
See, Lee’s real plans for when Marilyn is away are to meet up with a younger man he knows: Andrew Cunanan. There’s great hesitance within Lee for this meeting. As he goes to let Cunanan in, he freezes in front of his mirror and adjusts his sweater. He then lets out a deep sigh as he can’t quite get it right. The clothes are right; the fit is uncomfortable. Lee is a misfit in his own life, and meeting with Cunanan is his chance to try and find a better fit.
The Cunanan we see here is more aloof than prior. With Versace, he was trying to be the best version of himself. With Lee, he’s sloppy and distracted. This is, we know from history, the Cunanan who has recently killed two men. He can’t even muster the energy to pretend to care about his newest victim.
Unlike most of the episodes of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Darren Criss’ Cunanan has relatively minimal screen time. Light takes center stage, particularly during the time after her husband’s death.
In fact, Marilyn wants Cunanan dropped from Lee’s history. She’s wounded to learn of her husband’s relationship with an escort, but her interest is in preserving his memory, not damning him in death. She wants there to have been nothing intimate between Lee and Cunanan, no connection. “We’ve never heard of him,” she insists icily. “It was a robbery, and a random killing.” It’s what she needs — not just as someone who cares about how things look, but as a widow who wants her relationship with her husband preserved as she remembers it.
In a powerhouse scene, Marilyn applies her makeup while monologuing about her husband’s murder. “I know what they’re saying about me,” she says, applying her face with an unsteady hand. “Why hasn’t she cried? Where’s the grief, the emotion? She couldn’t have loved him. How could a woman who cares so much about appearance appear not to care? … How dare they say our marriage was a sham? Lee and I shared our whole lives. We shared all kinds of adventures. We rode in hot air balloons. When I was lost in the desert, he rescued me. How many couples can say they have that kind of romance? I loved him. I loved him very much.”
She says those last lines through heaving sobs as Light allows Marilyn’s grief to overcome her. “There, is that better?” she spits. “Am I a real wife now?”
Marilyn’s plight is a sympathetic one. She knew her husband as one man; his death is revealing him to be another man entirely. Trying to make those ideas compatible is harder than merely erasing the parts of Lee that trouble her. Unfortunately, this reaction is rooted in internalized homophobia, both within Marilyn and the community at large. Her fear is not just that her husband was hiding secrets; it’s that the secrets would ruin his reputation — ruin the idea of their marriage. And so, she chooses to hide Cunanan’s motive.
Ultimately, it’s this lingering homophobia that keeps the real motive behind Lee’s death a secret — a recurring thread through this season of American Crime Story. We often think of homophobia as personally restrictive, a threat that keeps gay people in the closet and terrified of bullying, discrimination, and even assault. But homophobia is also structurally restrictive: For Marilyn to be secretive about her husband’s sexuality means one piece of the Cunanan puzzle was left out. The same goes for how the police wouldn’t canvas the gayest parts of Miami for Cunanan in the previous episode: Hate stands in the way of justice.
Personal and structural homophobia come together in next week’s episode, “House by the Lake.” Personally, it’s my favorite episode of anything that Ryan Murphy has ever done; think “Looking for the Future,” but so, so much darker.
Up-and-Comer of the Month: “Versace” Star Cody Fern on the Controversial FX Series and Wanting to Play Marilyn Manson
If you’ve been watching The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story like I told you to, then you’ve heard of David Madson, the young architect who Andrew Cunanan considered the love of his life. While you’ll learn more about Madson in forthcoming episodes, it’s time to meet the Australian actor who plays him — Cody Fern, who is the Tracking Board’s Up-and-Comer of the Month this January.
Fern goes toe-to-toe with Darren Criss in Versace, and he has big things brewing in Hollywood. The rising star hails from a small town in Western Australia, where he grew up as the first person in his family to attend university. Despite his modest upbringing in a remote part of the country where few people forge careers in the arts, Fern went on to play the lead onstage in Romeo and Juliet, and he also starred in the National Theatre’s acclaimed production of War Horse.
Fern won Australia in Film’s Heath Ledger Scholarship in 2014, but his breakout feature role didn’t come until last year’s The Tribes of Palos Verdes, which unfortunately got caught up in Relativity’s bankruptcy and fell victim to the company’s downfall. Still, Fern didn’t let that setback hold him back, as he also starred in the award-winning short film The Last Time I Saw Richard, and helped director Bart Layton workshop his latest Sundance hit American Animals at the Sundance Director’s Lab.
When we spoke in mid-January, Fern had only seen one episode of Versace, but he had started getting positive feedback from journalists. He’ll watch American Crime Story unfold in tandem with audiences, who should pay attention to his impressive performance. Our chat runs the gamut and includes Fern’s take on why Andrew Cunanan killed Gianni Versace, so enjoy!
What sparked your passion for acting and made you decide to get into this crazy business?
That’s a long story, but I’ll give you the truncated version. I’m one of those people who has known ever since I had conscious thought. I grew up in a very, very, very small town in Western Australia called Southern Cross. It’s about seven hours outside Perth by train, and there was a population of just under 300, so the arts were never really something that [I considered] possible. I’d never been exposed to theater, and I didn’t see my first play until I was 22. I’d always known that I wanted to do it, but I kind of veered off into studying business. I did a degree in commerce, and then I segued into psychology. I thought for a time that I was going to be a therapist, and that could kind of numb, to a certain extent, my desire to be an actor, but I couldn’t get away from it. It continued to pursue me. So I kind of threw it all away at 24, just before my 25th birthday, so like, five years ago, now. I joined “the circus,” and here we are.But I think my passion for it came from… it’s strange, because everyone talks about acting and everyone has their own philosophies on that, but I think for me personally, what I love about film, and what I love about plays, in particular, is getting to see stories that haven’t been told, and angles on stories through the lens of people who may not be as glamorous as most. That’s what really attracted me to it. I used to watch a lot of daytime films, and I used to sneak into arthouse theaters and watch French films, so I kind of fell in love with acting as a form of storytelling. Not just “once upon a time there was this,” but more cut from a deeply psychological level. It just gelled with who I am and what I do and the experiences that I’ve had.
Tell me about the audition process for American Crime Story and how Ryan Murphy discovered you for this role.
That’s an interesting one as well. I was in London at the time, because I’m developing a feature film. I was working with my producers Nancy Grant and Xavier Dolan, and I’d kind of been a little exasperated in LA because I was pursuing very detailed and character-driven stories that were particularly high-end, and I kind of refused as an actor to pursue anything that was kind of boy next door or one-dimensional. I’d been in theater before so I had the opportunity to explore intense stories and characters, and a range of different roles. And when I initially moved to Los Angeles, I was kind of exasperated by the stories being told. I going in for a lot of 16-year-olds. So with this audition, when American Crime Story came through, I kind of took it as an opportunity for a last hurrah before I went off and directed my feature film. It was a strange time because I was kind of mourning the acting that I wasn’t able to do at the same time as investing my creativity into writing and directing and acting in my own feature.So I kind of just gave it my all in the audition. It was kind of like a send-off, like a little goodbye, and then a week later I got a callback. I think I was positive that the role was going to go to somebody in the Ryan Murphy canon, I just never assumed that it was going to be me. And then I met with the writer, Tom Rob Smith, who’s incredible, and the amazing producer Brad Simpson, and we had the callback from there. Ryan was kind of instantly like, “it’s Cody,” and three weeks later I was filming. It’s such intense material, so it was just a real opportunity to dive in. But from his end, I’m not so sure how he came across me. It was a wide casting call, and they were just looking for the right person. I’m just grateful that it was me.
Did you have to read with Darren Criss and Finn Wittrock to see if you guys meshed well together onscreen?
Actually, no, I didn’t read with them. When I first worked with Darren, we were kind of thrown into Jeff’s death. The murder of Jeff Trail, in the apartment. That was the first day of shooting. I hadn’t met Darren before. I’d seen him in Hedwig and the Angry Inch and thought he was brilliant in it, but we didn’t meet each other, no. I think Ryan decided based on the strength of the audition and then went from there, and Finn had already been cast. It was kind of a rolling freight train It just went. That was a particularly intense day of shooting.Let’s talk about the actual show. Do you think that Andrew truly loved David, and if so, why didn’t David love him back? Can you talk about their relationship as far as you saw it?
I did some extensive research and obviously read Maureen’s book, and it’s such a fine piece of investigative journalism. She spoke to the friends and family members of David Madson, and I think their relationship is an anomaly in the life of David Madson, because David was a very kind, very generous, very vanilla guy, by all accounts. He was kind of very boisterous and happy and loving, but at the same time he came from an intensely religious background, so I think the collision into Andrew is an interesting one. I think that they did love each other at one point in time, but David ultimately broke it off with Andrew, because of exactly what plays out in the series. There was a sense of dishonesty that he felt coming from Andrew, and the fact that he was hiding something. He even had communicated to friends that he was afraid of Andrew at one point in time.I think that it’s very clear that Andrew loved David, but I think for David, and I think what the series explores as well, is that Andrew loved the idea of David. He loved the idea of this wholesome man who had a life and who was comfortable and who could give him a sense of stability and real generosity. But I think that David didn’t get honesty from Andrew and that was something that was really difficult for him. Andrew was someone who struggled with the truth. In many accounts, Andrew had spoken to friends of David’s, especially when he was going out to see David and Jeff, and referred back to the fact that David is the love of his life, and he told many of his friends that. The proposal to David was a particular shock, I think.
What the series explores which is really interesting is this love gone wrong, and the story between David and Andrew in the series is really a love story. It’s about missed connections and missed opportunities, and I think it leaves it up to the audience to decide whether or not it comes down to Andrew’s psychopathic tendencies or his inability to face the truth. It’s an interesting relationship, it’s very rich with complication, but by all accounts, yes, David as the love of Andrew’s life, it’s just that David felt the need for something more truthful.
And now for The Big Question: Why do you think Cunanan killed Versace?
From my perception, which I think is very much in line with Ryan’s, Andrew was a man who really craved attention, who really craved validation and craved to be magnificent in the eyes of others, so much so that he would go to extreme lengths to be somewhat famous. Versace was somebody who represented everything that Andrew wasn’t. He was somebody who was willing to work, and very hard, for what he believed in, and what he was passionate about, whereas Andrew kind of lived off the backs of others. He used and manipulated all these men to get his way. I think Versace took his level of genius and gave it back to the world, whereas Andrew always felt that the world owed him something.So I think that the death of Versace, and the time that Versace was going through during that period, really synced up with Andrew in terms of Andrew’s downfall and Versace’s rise. Versace certainly was a truth-teller at that point in time, one of the most revolutionary truth-tellers, and when he came out in The Advocate magazine it was a huge deal. Andrew, although out in some circles, initially lived a very closeted life, and he told people what they needed to hear. So I think Versace’s level of truth threatened Andrew’s, and I think that Andrew was ultimately tipped over the edge and owed something that Versace had, and so he felt the need to take it, or at least to take it down.
What has been the biggest pinch-me moment of your career so far?
Ever since moving to LA, it’s been like that. I’ve gotten to work with extraordinary people. But I think for sure the biggest pinch-me moment was working with Ryan Murphy. Much is said about Ryan Murphy as a genius and not enough is said about how kind and generous he is, both as a creative and as a human being. The day I found out that I got this I was screaming. I was on the phone with my agent and managers and we were just going wild. I’ve followed Ryan’s work for so long and I’ve loved his work for so long. And I said when I moved to LA, I was hesitant about doing TV at that time because I didn’t want to be locked into a long contract, and so I said if I’m going to do TV, I want to work with Ryan Murphy, and so for that to come true… they say, never meet your idols because they’ll destroy your idea of them, but that’s not true with Ryan. He’s so kind and he’s so generous and he’s so giving and he’s so bloody brilliant, you know. It really, truly has been the biggest pinch-me moment to be involved in his world and his universe, the Ryan Murphy multiverse, is breathtaking. I’m still in shock.Are there any actors who you admire, or whose careers you’d like to emulate?
I’d have to say Cillian Murphy. I think he’s one of the most extraordinary actors that we have today. The Wind That Shakes the Barley, and more recently, Peaky Blinders. He’s a powerhouse performer, and I really admire the way he lives his personal life. He’s really about the work. You know who has been on my mind recently? Richard Jenkins, from The Shape of Water. I think he’s such a phenomenal actor. He’s always put in this category of being a character actor, and he’s so phenomenal and specific and precise in the choices that he makes, so I love following his work as well. And there are so many extraordinary actresses, like Cate Blanchett and Meryl Streep and Tilda Swinton and what Michelle Williams is doing at the moment. I love actors who are very specific in their work, who are very emotionally connected, and who are unafraid to take risks with either their physical appearances or the roles that they choose.You wrote and directed a short called Pisces, and I know you mentioned that you were prepping a feature. Are you focused on acting right now, or are you looking to press forward with those directing ambitions?
I don’t think that they’re mutually exclusive. I think that they can run in tandem. Writing and directing certainly takes up a lot of my time, but at the heart of it all, I’m an actor. It is what I love doing the most. I love acting. I love being able to tell stories in that manner, and so I’m very much pursuing acting. I just think that what’s interesting about writing and directing, the power is in your hands. As an actor you’re quite often waiting by the phone waiting and hoping that somebody else, to a certain extent, chooses you, and it’s very difficult, therefore, to continue to keep up your craft, unless you’re in class or doing self-tapes or whatever it happens to be. So I love writing when I have downtime from acting. As with all thing, the cards will fall where they fall, and I was very much going down the line of directing my feature and now I’ve been swept up into acting again, which I’m extraordinarily acting for. I’ll continue to write, definitely, and directing is on the horizon, but for now I’m totally focused on acting. I will say this as well… I think that they all influence and inform each other. If you write and you’re going through the process of rewriting and getting notes and specifying, you start to understand, really understand, what a good script is and what a bad script is and what good writing looks like. You can appreciate what people go through and it helps you as an actor, so I think they all inform each other.I know you have social media accounts, but you’re not very active on social media. Is there a reason for that, or do you just prefer to be a little bit more private and guarded with fans?
I just recently got an Instagram because I certainly don’t want to ignore or turn away from any people who want to engage with the work or have something to say about it, but I’m not a social media person and I never have been. It’s not about being private or being secretive, it’s just a personal choice. I think it consumes so much of people’s lives, and I know that the industry is certainly going a different way, especially with actors, whereby the more fans you have and the greater reach you have, people think that it’ll lead to more work, and it may. But the type of work that comes from me having one million more Instagram followers than somebody else is not the kind of work that I ultimately want to be doing. I just find that I really like personal interactions and stimulating conversations, and I think that while social media can be a great way to stay connected, it’s also a really disconnected version of reality. You’re constantly curating your life for others, and what your life is, and it lends itself to the seeking of opinions and comments, and I think that can be dangerous for some people. It certainly is for me. It’s very depleting for me, because it raises my level of anxiety too high. It’s too tied to validation. And that’s not true of everybody. And I’m not saying anything against social media, I’m just saying something against social media for myself. So we’ll see what happens with the old Instagram. I like being able to post photos and offer my perspective of the world, but I’m not so keen on posting photos of myself. I find being behind a film camera very easy and intimate, and I find being behind a still camera very alarming and anxiety-inducing. I think I enjoy the veil of a character.Do you have a dream role? Is there a part you’re dying to play?
There are so many. There’s such an intricate tapestry of roles out there. I love really complex, three-dimensional roles, and people who are flawed. I think that’s what I loved about David. In this series, we’re examining a victim, but we’re also examining somebody who is examining his own level of complicity in a tragic event. He’s asking himself questions about shame and hiding and repression, and he’s not a device in any way. I’d would really love to sink my teeth into playing Marilyn Manson. He’s such an intelligent and thoughtful and interesting social provoker. I remember when I was younger, watching him on the rise, and no matter what people think about his music, he’s a great conduit for conversation, and he really engages with people on taboo issues. I love that about him, and I think his personal life is super interesting, in how he chooses to represent himself and engage with the world. Look, I love his music. For me, as a teenager, he represented such an era of rebellion and refusal and rage. I love all of that. I think it’s something that’s ingrained in me, especially as a teenager, and he was able to really reach into that and expose it.What’s next for you?
I’m actually not allowed to say. I have a couple of big announcements to follow, but I’ll get in trouble. I’m sure you’ll be hearing very soon. I’m just super thrilled to watch Versace with everybody. This is all so new to me, in terms of this moment in time. People haven’t been exposed to my work very heavily yet, especially the public, so I’m really excited about that. I’m just thrilled to see what the response is going to be.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ episode 3 recap: American horror story
Warning: This recap of the “A Random Killing” episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story contains spoilers.
Horror loses its bite when we learn too much about the villain. It’s not just that the unknown is always scarier than the known, it’s that we can’t help but develop a grudging empathy for a killer the more we get to know them. After Monster laid bare Aileen Wuornos’s many tragic tribulations before her serial killings, it became easy to forget she was a terrifying death-bringer for certain innocent people. Or in fiction, was there ever a bigger blunder than Rob Zombie attempting to explain Michael Myers’ childhood to us in the Halloween remake? Shockingly, finding out that The Shape had been bullied as a child completely robbed him of his terrifying, shark-like unknowability. But what happens when the reverse occurs, and a complex, borderline sympathetic villain is suddenly stripped back and streamlined into a dark void? Horror returns.
Three episodes in and it’s clear that Gianni Versace himself is only a side character in what is ultimately the horror saga of Andrew Cunanan’s crimes. But where the premiere introduced Cunanan as a verbal, witty, clever, and deeply troubled person motivated by jealousy and longing, this week reframed him as a straight-up horror movie slasher. His motives were opaque and unpredictable, his methods bizarre and hard to explain. I was terrified. Is there a chance the American Crime Story subtitle contains a typo? This week The Assassination of Gianni Versace was suddenly much closer in tone and effect to Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story. Which is to say, “A Random Killing” was one of the most disturbing episodes of TV I’ve seen in a while. Let’s talk about it!
We began with two women hawking perfume on the Home Shopping Network in the mid-’90s.
The perfume was ingeniously called “Pheromone,” and its mastermind was one Marilyn Miglin, the IRL baroness of a Chicago-area beauty empire. She was played here by the great Judith Light, who had been mercifully freed of her Transparent wig and personality. Judith Light was INCREDIBLE in this episode, which — though it was about the two murders Cunanan committed prior to Versace’s — centered the story around this woman and how she coped when her husband was murdered.
After her husband failed to pick her up from the Chicago airport, Marilyn arrived at her ominously empty house and recruited some neighbors to help check the place out. But from the long, tense tracking shots of the all-white, fancy home, we knew something was wrong. A stranger had been there. But what kind of maniac would leave ice cream out on the counter? The police definitely needed to be called! (Also there was a corpse in the garage.)
We then flashed back a week and met Marilyn’s husband, Lee, a well-respected and enormously successful commercial real estate developer. Right away we could tell the two adored each other, but in a married-my-best-friend kind of way. Lee was probably not interested in doing sex with Marilyn, but they definitely held hands in bed. We should all be so lucky!
Anyway, while Marilyn was away on her work trip, guess who swung by for a visit? Yep, Andrew Cunanan dropped in unannounced, and we gathered that Lee had hired Cunanan as an escort in the past. And though Lee clearly tried to be a gentleman toward his young companion, Cunanan took matters into his own hands. And in this case those matters were duct tape, a bag of concrete, and eventually a screwdriver.
Aside from brutally murdering older men, Cunanan loves to give a speech while doing so. In this case he monologued about how Lee was a powerful man attempting to build the tallest building in the world, but now Cunanan had power over him. So whereas we mayhave believed that Cunanan’s murders had been opportunistic, or methods for him to gain quick cash and stolen cars… It was now clear he was excited by the idea of destroying powerful men as a way of elevating his own status. Dark, dark stuff. And this extended sequence of torture and murder was one of the less pleasant things I’ve ever seen on TV. Poor Lee.
Rather than show you all that violence, let’s just settle for this image of Cunanan stabbing a honey-glazed ham! Think of it as sort of a metaphor for what had just happened in the previous scene.
Anyway, back to Marilyn. Her whole thing was, she was a sharp, professional woman who wanted the investigation undertaken in the most efficient manner possible. She verbally itemized every item Cunanan had stolen from their home, and vehemently denied any knowledge of why Cunanan had surrounded her husband’s corpse in gay porn rags. The killer must’ve brought them, duh.
I also liked this strange moment when the investigators were asking Marilyn questions but she just wanted to talk about her son’s burgeoning movie career. It’s almost poignant how in the midst of this tragedy she was still trying to maintain her composure as a strong businesswoman and image protectress.
But of course, eventually she crumbled and gave a moving (and convincing) speech about how much she loved her husband, and that it HAD been a genuine marriage, despite whatever his leanings were. They’d been best friends and partners and each other’s support systems. And it goes without saying that Judith Light’s work was devastating in this episode. Hope she still has space on her mantel for more trophies, because dang.
Meanwhile, Cunanan was driving around in Lee’s stolen Lexus, and browsing local Versace boutiques, which in my opinion is foreshadowing. But he soon realized that the built-in car phone was giving his location away whenever he passed a cell tower. It was time to find some new wheels!
And unfortunately for the poor undertaker who drove by Cunanan in a pickup, red was Cunanan’s favorite vehicle color!
Next thing we knew, he was following the man back to his mortuary, leading him into the basement at gunpoint, and then, well, you know. Truly heartbreaking. I have to be honest with you, I am not a fan of Andrew Cunanan.
We then ended with this moving scene, when Marilyn Miglin returned to the Home Shopping Network airwaves and memorialized her husband while clutching a bottle of her perfume. And while the juxtaposition of mixing pathos with consumerism could have been a salient satirical point, Judith Light’s pained emotions made it just simply devastating. In a series ostensibly about one famous murder, it’s clear Cunanan destroyed so many more lives than just Versace’s.
“A Random Killing” also served to make the point that many of the gay-related details of Cunanan’s crimes were swept under the rug in order to maintain reputations. Marilyn Miglin actively sought to prevent the press from knowing that her husband had known Cunanan prior to the murder, and while one can understand the protectiveness a victim’s family might have, it was this kind of public discomfort with gay men that hobbled Cunanan’s swift apprehension. Just another frustrating element to what has become an increasingly American horror story. (Get it? Like the show.) Great, if deeply unpleasant, stuff.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ episode 3 recap: American horror story
American Crime Story Review: Judith Light Steals the Show in the Excellent “A Random Killing”
Rating – 9.0
Judith Light has become so… poignant. When did that happen?
A couple of months before he shot Gianni Versace, Andrew Cunanan tortured and murdered Lee Miglin, a real estate mogul in Chicago. He was found by his wife, Marilyn. And that’s where we begin the third episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace.
In real life there was and still is considerable mystery around the connection between Cunanan and Miglin. In the episode, it’s not clear how they met, but when Marilyn (Light) takes off on a business trip, Miglin (Mike Farrell) goes to a chapel area in their home and prays for forgiveness for what he’s about to do. “I try,” he says plaintively. “I try.” Then he goes upstairs to meet Cunanan. It’s clear it’s not the first time, and it’s implied that he has a history of indulging in male escorts occasionally—it’s slightly less clear whether Marilyn knows this, but it seems like it.
There’s a chilling moment where Miglin greets Cunanan with a very heartfelt hug and we see Cunanan just standing there like a rock. Of course we know what’s about to happen, but that only heightens the tension as Miglin shows Cunanan drawings for a new project and Cunanan responds with derision, becoming increasingly passive-aggressive and belittling before taking Miglin into his garage and, as he did in “Manhunt,” wrapping his victim’s head in tape. It seems like silencing successful older men might be the emerging through line in Cunanan’s killing spree. But it goes deeper than that, too, and deeper than mere psychopathy. Cunanan makes it fairly clear that he knows he’s a psychopath. “This is who I really am,” he tells the gagged and bound Miglin.
The scene of the murder unfolds excruciatingly slowly, as Cunanan tells Miglin he’ll be wearing women’s underwear when his body is found and that everyone will know he’s gay. “What frightens you more,” Cunanan asks, “death, or disgrace? Disgrace.” He then crushes Miglin’s body with a bag of concrete—the use of a building material is clearly part of the “disgracing” of a man who builds things. After further defacing his victim’s body, he goes back upstairs, takes Miglin’s drawings, and burns them in the chapel. At this point I’m wondering if anyone could possibly outdo Darren Criss in a Terrifying Stone-Cold Stare competition; the guy’s just mesmerizingly scary. You get a sense of fathomless rage, deep self-loathing coupled with narcissistic grandiosity, and a desperate desire to be more than what he knows he really is.
Then we spool forward, to the Miglin home surrounded by policemen. Marilyn is almost bizarrely dry-eyed and brisk as she rattles off a list of things stolen by the killer, including Miglin’s Lexus (which has a phone in it, so Cunanan can be tracked) and a number of other items, including rare gold coins (now we know where the murderer got the one he pawned in Miami). When the officer broaches the subject of Miglin’s body being surrounded by gay porn magazines, it becomes clear that Marilyn has not been in the dark about this. She sharply informs the officer that she doesn’t care what was going through the killer’s mind, she just wants him caught. “I will not let him steal our good name,” she says. “And we built that together.”
Cunanan drives to New York City, where he is drawn by the windows of… yep, the Versace atelier. (By now, even the shot of his foot walking across the mosaic tile floor’s gorgon-head logo is completely ominous.) Unfortunately, someone’s leaked the fact that the police are using Miglin’s car phone to track Cunanan, and he hears about it on the radio, resulting in another execution, this time of a complete stranger whose truck he then steals.
But as great as Criss’ performance is, this episode belongs to Judith Light. As Marilyn Miglin she is incredibly nuanced. Obsessed with appearances yet unapologetic about what’s underneath. Cold, but brimming over with barely containable emotion. Defensive, but wide-open. Dignified and brave and oblique and sad, prideful and angry yet strangely resigned. It’s a beautiful performance and she absolutely owns the camera in every scene she’s in. Especially the last one, in which she goes back to her shopping-channel TV program (she’s created a perfume called “Pheromone,” which has a whole twisted poetry of its own if we consider her as a woman whose marriage might have been extremely perfunctory at the sexual level) and says she wants to go back to work because her husband was and still is part of everything she does. She says a friend of hers who had a TV program had once given her some advice about being in front of a camera: “Imagine that little red light is the man you love,” she says, staring straight at the lens, faintly smiling, eyes lit with unshed tears. It’s a phenomenal cut-to-black ending.
Meanwhile the wheels, literal and figurative, are now spinning toward the death of Gianni Versace.
American Crime Story Review: Judith Light Steals the Show in the Excellent “A Random Killing”
Judith Light on ACS: Versace, Andrew Cunanan, and Playing Marilyn Miglin
In the hands of actors Judith Light and Mike Farrell, the tragic story of Chicago power couple Lee and Marilyn Miglin in this week’s episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story makes viewers forget the titular fashion icon altogether. “A Random Killing” tells the story of Andrew Cunanan’s third murder in 1997, three months before he shot Versace on the steps of his South Beach mansion. As depicted in the episode, Cunanan was a paid escort who had a relationship with the real-estate mogul (Farrell) and killed him while his wife Marilyn (Light), the founder of a beauty empire, was away on a business trip.
Ahead of the episode’s airing, Vulture spoke to Light about her riveting performance as Miglin’s widow, who is still alive today. Light also spoke about the inner work she does before taking on new characters, how she views the Miglin’s family’s denials that Cunanan and Lee knew each other, and why working on American Crime Storymeans so much to her.
You haven’t worked with Ryan Murphy before. What was the casting process like?
I have not and I always had wanted to. It came up through another friend of mine, who I had done a play for in New York and actually won the Tony for [Other Desert Cities]. It was Jon Robin Baitz. He said, “There is this part and I think you should do it because it’s amazing,” and because it’s so timely in terms of what I talked about in my advocacy for years — the LGBTQ community. He thought I had to change my whole schedule [for it]. So it comes from having amazing, wonderful friends.Did you remember anything about Andrew Cunanan or how Versace died? Was that something you paid attention to?
Yes, I had followed it. I had been in a way upset about Versace, of course, who I believe was an extraordinary talent. But that this could happen so blatantly and so easily, and as we all know now, how the world is so easily taken down in so many places. I mean, there was just something yesterday in Kentucky, and so we find that people have this kind of accessibility to firearms and if their mental incapacity or whatever drives them unconsciously in their psychological damage, this is so, so easy. We live in a world where we can find ourselves unprotected and needing to be safe, so I followed this story and I thought this is just incredibly demoralizing on so many different levels. It’s disheartening, I think. As human beings, we can operate at a higher level and oftentimes you see a situation like this and we don’t.I’m originally from Miami and I remember Versace’s murder well, but I had forgotten over the years that Cunanan was a spree killer. I don’t think I knew anything about the Miglins. Did you?
No, I actually didn’t. My parents lived in Pompano Beach and that was partly my connection to it and my connection to Miami, but I didn’t really know or read about what had happened prior to Cunanan and the process of his killing spree.Did you learn about Marilyn Miglin when you started to talk with Ryan Murphy about the role?
Yeah, that was what informed me. I didn’t know anything about it, and then I read Maureen Orth’s book [Vulgar Favors: the Assassination of Gianni Versace] and so I knew more about it from that, so it was like a process of education.How did you prepare?
I spent a lot of time just reading the book, reading over the script, which I thought was extraordinary, and also talking to Gwyneth Horder-Payton, the director. I talked to the producers about what they were wanting and what they were seeing and what they needed. Also, whenever I work on any part, I always do the kind of homework that takes me into the depth of a person’s dynamics and psychology.What does that homework entail?
I sit with myself, looking at what drives someone. It’s a very intense process that I go through and I also allow myself to see places in myself that are similar to a character. But it’s a deep sort of investigative process, and I also work with a woman named Ivana Chubbuck and she’s a wonderful coach. We talk a lot about the character. So, that’s the kind of thing that I do. Once I go somewhere, I really tend to spend a lot of solitary time and immerse myself after having researched and spent time with other people who support me in the homework. When you have a great script, that also makes a difference because that gives you the map, the landscape of where you’re going.Did the fact that Marilyn is a real, living person change your approach in trying to figure out the character?
No, I think you just have to go from what’s given in the script and in the story. You know, we’re careful and we’re deferential, but I didn’t think it was purposeful to speak to her.Did you watch videos of her?
No, I really didn’t want to. Ryan was very specific about what the look was. He had translated all of that to the makeup and hair people and what they wanted to see. I am doing a representation in a piece, so it’s not, for me, it isn’t helpful. In another case, it might be, but no.What was important for you to convey about Marilyn Miglin?
That she loved this man deeply and was completely devoted to him. He was a man who allowed her to be all that she could be, and she was, in many ways, a woman ahead of her time. And she had a man who supported her in her endeavors. She is a great businesswoman and he was a great businessman, and they had a very connected, deeply loving relationship.The scene when they return from the banquet and he thanks her for introducing him was very sweet. It showed their genuine admiration and affection.
That’s exactly right. That was something that was really a top note that both Mike Farrell and I wanted to focus on and play.Do you think Marilyn knew about Lee’s secret life?
I don’t know. I can conjecture, I can speculate, but I think it’s problematic to do that because we don’t know. One of the things that I find so fascinating about psychology and human nature is we go through the world thinking that we know something, and our unconscious is driving us to do different things. When there is a real person involved, I can’t speculate about what her unconscious is or what she knew. And so, it’s like I’ve said so many times before in so many different interviews — Freud said 100 years ago, consciousness is an extraordinary event. It is not an ordinary event. And so, we’re talking about whether someone knew or not. Maybe unconsciously that’s possible, but I don’t know. And I don’t think that actually matters.What I think matters is the dynamic that was going on and the overall context of this series, The Assassination of Gianni Versace. There was this young man who was clearly very disturbed and his psychology was very problematic, who had been discounted on so many levels and had different aspects to him that drove him to do this. All of these pieces, and I think some of Ryan’s purpose, was to show what homophobia in a culture does to people. How a culture makes people stay in the closet, and how that’s what took place. How this young man was so desperate to be someone else, not own himself, that he came to do these terrible acts. And I think what’s valuable about this piece is that we’re talking about a level of homophobia that is still in our culture today.
We see that in Versace’s story too, during the conversation he has with Donatella about coming out to the Advocate. And she doesn’t want him to.
Remember, this is the height of the AIDS pandemic. Only two years before, in 1995, did they come out with the protease inhibitors that were beginning to save people’s lives. That’s only two years before that, and you’re talking about a culture that was discounting and dismissive and vilifying the LGBTQ community. That’s so much of the top note of what I think this story is about. It’s like, lest we forget, this is still going on. These kind of people and their vilification of this community, a community that is so extraordinary. So this piece is a pay attention moment, and that’s why I’m so proud to be a part of it.What did you find most challenging about playing Marilyn?
That’s an interesting question to ponder. I have to say, the script is so great, it’s all there, and then I got to work with Mike Farrell, who’s so connected and such an extraordinary artist, and all of the people that were put together on the show — the only thing I found really challenging was having to figure out how to change my schedule. It wasn’t the work. I have great admiration for her. She’s an incredible businesswoman. She’s an incredible person. She was out there in the business world in a major way, early, early on. She found a partner who supported her efforts. I mean that’s pretty fantastic, talking about today and really making sure that women are paid equally and operating at a high level in the workplace. I have great respect for her.The Miglin family has maintained that this was a random killing and have denied that this aspect of Lee Miglin’s life existed. But the show presents it as fact that he had a transactional sexual relationship with Andrew Cunanan and that eventually led to his murder. Did it give you any pause to tell that story, given the family’s denials?
I want to be very careful about this because I know people want to talk about that. That is their business. That is their life. That is the way they choose to hold this. It is not my business as an actor in this very important story to challenge what they feel, what they want, or what they feel they want to talk about, and I think it’s very important to keep sacred people’s choices.I hear you. But I’m wondering how you worked it out for yourself. How do you tell the story as an actor, knowing what the family has said? Does that impact you in any way?
They’re two different things. I’m given a script. I’m an actor. This is the part I’m given to play and it is my job to tell the story in the best way that I can so that it is illuminated from the page to the screen. That’s my job. My job is not to get involved with the family and their stories and what they believe or what they don’t believe. I don’t get involved in that. I have a very different job. I have a very separate job, and my job is to do what I’m given to do.I was really taken by the clicking of the nails when Marilyn waited for the police to search the house. She was perfectly still except for her nails. Did Gwyneth ask you to do that?
It was written into the script, and when you have a writer like Tom [Rob Smith] and you have those directions — again, it’s a road map. It’s the landscape that he was giving us in that moment about who this woman is, how strong she is, how stalwart she is, how she is not going to let her emotions take her over, and it tells you the story in action rather than in words. I just thought that was so powerful. It also shows you her detail to beauty and to grooming. Her whole business is a beauty business and you see that. Those nails tell you a whole story about this person. I think that’s brilliant writing. It’s just extraordinary to me.In the last scene, Marilyn is back selling at Home Shopping Network and she tells that story about pretending the camera’s red light is the man she loves and closes her eyes. Did you choose to end that way? Or was it in the direction?
It’s so interesting that you ask about that because I don’t remember whether it was Gwyneth Horder-Payton, the director, or me. I think I may have done it at one point and she liked it, or I did it and then she cut the scene there, but I think that it was a combination of both of us. That’s a very emotional moment, so I don’t always remember what happens in those moments.Do you remember how you were feeling? That was a very beautiful, poignant moment.
Yes. There’s the sorrow, there’s the loss, there’s the knowing that you have to get on with life. So much of what happens for me when I play a character is that a lot of different things are going on all at one time, and I don’t know how to separate them out. But I know that if I’m emotionally connected, there’s a lot of other things that are going out on a lot of other levels, and I think that’s what helps people feel something when they watch it. So some of the things that I was feeling were the loss, the moving on, the need to take back a life that had been ripped from me in that moment, and knowing that my husband would have wanted me to move on.Just like in the scene where Marilyn says that she knows everyone is judging her because she hasn’t cried, then she eventually breaks down and says, “Am I a good wife now?” Tell me about working on that powerful scene. Was that a very long day?
I had flown in because the Emmys were the night before and I had been nominated for an Emmy, and then the next day was that scene that we had to shoot. You really have to know the words for a scene like that because the way it was written by Tom Rob Smith — who is an extraordinary craftsperson — one thing led to another emotionally. I had to work on it long and hard to get everything down because you can’t not know the words in a scene like that. You really have to be not thinking about that, but thinking about everything else. Gwyneth Horder-Payton, the director, was really available to talk about it, to make sure that it was what she wanted, how she saw it, how I saw it, how we could shape the scene. Also, when you do your own part of the scene and they shoot you, you have to be able to keep giving the level of emotion to other people who are in the scene, and so it was a very long day. The level of satisfaction we all felt by the end of it was so deep and so powerful that we were exhausted, but it didn’t feel like it was painful work. It was exciting and vibrant and thrilling and it changed as we went each time, and it was a lot, but incredibly satisfying.This interview has been edited and condensed.
Judith Light on ACS: Versace, Andrew Cunanan, and Playing Marilyn Miglin
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 3: Death or Disgrace?
This episode, which lacks any Versace (Gianni or Donatella), felt to me like the freshest so far in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” the second season of “American Crime Story.”
We are introduced to several new characters, chiefly Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell) and his wife, Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light). Their portrayal of a Chicago couple who have made the best of a 38-year marriage despite the lie at its center is both plausible and moving.
Marilyn, a feisty former dancer, has become an entrepreneur who sells her fragrances and cosmetics on the Home Shopping Network. “Perfume is about our bodies talking to each other without words,” she tells viewers.
Lee is a commercial real estate developer, a Catholic who keeps a religious altar in his home where he prays for God’s forgiveness for his sexual attraction to men, and says he has done his best to resist temptation.
It’s all slightly campy, but these two, whose relationship could easily have been portrayed in a mawkish or ridiculous way, came across to me as deeply sympathetic. God only knows how many marriages between ambitious women and closeted gay men were created (and endured, even now) during the decades-long rights revolution in the United States that culminated with the full striking down of sodomy laws, in 2003, and the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage, in 2015. How did these couples manage these lies, while striving to lead lives of decency and integrity?
Like the series over all, this week’s episode is not told in chronological order. It is 1997. We follow Marilyn from a work trip in Toronto back to her home on Chicago’s Gold Coast, where she quickly notices that things are not as they should be. Two passing friends dial the police. Marilyn sits in the kitchen, her polished nails dancing on the granite countertop, as a bloodcurdling scream is heard from the garage: Lee’s mutilated body has been found.
“I knew it,” Marilyn says under her breath.
Flash backward, a week earlier: Marilyn and Lee are at a fund-raising luncheon for Gov. Jim Edgar, Republican of Illinois.
She introduces her husband in terms so admiring as to be gushing: “So often we are told the American dream is dead. Except I say: Look at my husband, Lee. One of seven children. The son of an Illinois coal miner. He began his career selling premixed pancake batter out of the trunk of a beat-up old car. And today Lee manages 32 million square feet of commercial property across the Midwest.”
Later, at home, Marilyn moisturizes her face and removes her cosmetic eyelashes. It would have been easy for the episode’s writer (Tom Rob Smith) and director (Gwyneth Horder-Payton) to have this moment be the one when the mask of a happy marriage is removed, its ugly face revealed.
In some ways that happens: In a quiet moment before the mirror, Marilyn applies a drop of perfume down the front of her silk robe, her eyes hollowed out with longing. In another room, Lee takes a call from Andrew Cunanan, dialing from a pay phone, and when Marilyn asks who is calling, he lies and says it’s a business call. But the marriage is not merely a sham. When Marilyn asks Lee what he plans to do while she is away on business, he sounds down. She asks him to accompany her.
“I like it when you’re there,” she says, and she means it.
It is their last meaningful encounter.
With Marilyn away, Lee opens his door to the serial killer, who happens to be in town. Lee shows him his plans to build a 125-story, 1,952-foot Sky Needle, which would have been the world’s tallest building.
The conversation does not go well. Andrew thinks the main point of having a building taller than the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower) is to surpass the latter structure’s observation deck. Andrew also urges Lee to name the tower for himself, something the self-effacing developer has no intention of doing.
They kiss — “It feels like I’m alive,” Lee says — and Andrew boasts: “Escorts don’t normally kiss, do they? I am not like most escorts. I am not like most anybody. I could almost be a husband, a partner.”
I found this reference to marriage anachronistic, and puzzling, and not for the first time in this series. In earlier episodes, Gianni Versace’s partner, Antonio D’Amico, tired of their hedonistic lifestyle, proposes, and Cunanan tells a friend — falsely, we believe — that Versace once proposed to him.
I’m certainly not making light of commitment or the desire for it. But I’m puzzled by the use of words like “husband” and “proposed.” They don’t seem true to my own memories of the late 1990s, when gay men were more likely to speak of boyfriends, partners and companions, and they seem strangely ahistoric.
My next quibble with this episode is more prosaic: the killing of Lee Miglin, in his garage, by Cunanan is so grisly and sadistic as to be difficult to watch. I’ll spare the details, but the monologue Cunanan delivers before delivering the coup de grâce bears note:
The monologue raises the question: Is Cunanan motivated by self-hatred, a desire to expose hypocrisy, or both? His use of homophobic language suggests self-hatred, but his focus on disgrace suggests some kind of crusade. It is not, of course, a crime to cross-dress, or to look at porn. This mutual failure of recognition — murderer and victim seem to agree on one thing, that to be gay is a disgrace — is perhaps the saddest moment in this series so far.
The rest of the episode is a tour de force by Judith Light, whose portrayal of a wife in denial is simply magnificent. She offers a brisk inventory of what’s missing from the house — a Lexus, $2,000 in cash, two leather coats, two suits, “some inconsequential pieces of jewelry,” rare gold coins and a dozen pairs of socks — as she reaches the conclusion that the killing must have been a random and opportunistic robbery.
Told by the Chicago police superintendent about the gay porn found next to the body, Marilyn surmises that “they must have belonged to the killer,” but goes on to say: “I’m not interested in his intentions. Find him, catch him, but don’t talk to me about what or might not be going through his mind.”
She adds: “Dollars, jewelry, socks, suits — that’s all I’ll allow that man to steal from me. He won’t steal my good name. Our good name. We worked too hard making that name, and we made it together.”
For an ambitious woman born in the 1930s to have a husband who is fully supportive of her professional aspirations might indeed, as she suggests, have been “a fairy tale life.” “How many husbands believe in their wives’ dreams?” she asks her Home Shopping Network viewers — and us — later in the episode. “How many treat us as partners, as equals?”
Left unsaid: Perhaps his being gay allowed him to be such a supportive partner.
Compared with all this, Cunanan’s murderous escapades seem mundane. He flees to New Jersey, and the police failure to capture him after a radio station reveals that investigators have been tracking his movements by car phone. In search of a new car to steal, he stops at a cemetery, where he marches one of the groundskeepers into a basement and makes him get down on his knees.
The man begs for mercy, but his plea is cut short. And for the first time in this series I was so disgusted by this killer’s lack of remorse that — for a moment at least — I didn’t want to keep watching.
At least most of carnage is out of the way. Six more episodes, two more bodies to go.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 3: Death or Disgrace?
“ACS: The Assassination Of Gianni Versace” Episode 3 Recap: “Random Killing”
This week’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story was a heartbreaking departure from the first two episodes. All the fun of what we’ve seen so far — South Beach’s color and fire throwback jams like Soul II Soul’s ”Back to Life,” Laura Branigan’s “Gloria,” and La Bouche’s “Be My Lover” — was stripped away to reveal the undeniable brutality of Andrew Cunanan’s (Darren Criss) murders. I appreciate how much care has been taken in showing the way trauma ripples out in people’s lives, because a death doesn’t happen in a vacuum, its shrapnel stays lodged in people’s families, friends, and culture for years after.
Just as soon as I’d typed that I felt sick, because Andrew Cunanan appears to be the kind of killer who was highly concerned with his legacy and who is or is not a “great man.” I’m curious about Cunanan’s motives, since his intentions at times appear to be to out and potentially humiliate the powerful men he’s taken as clients. It would be easy to paint him as a “have not” who wants to destroy the “haves” because he’s jealous, but that flattens out some of the more nuanced and dark intentions I think he had. Take for example, the conversation Andrew has with Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell) about his dream building at his desk. Andrew appears to almost be guiding him into saying what he wants the person he knows he is going to destroy to say. It’s almost like he needs his trophies to be worth more because then he will be robbing them of a more full and rich life. I worry he viewed himself like a gladiator who proved his strength by destroying other strong men.
He might also have just been a regular sociopathic killer, with very little complex motivation beyond wanting to kill. TV often gets a bad rap for sensationalizing real life events, but it’s interesting to note that the actual murder of Lee Miglin was even worse than what we saw. According to The Washington Post, he was stabbed over 20 times with a screwdriver and had his throat sawed open with a hacksaw. Following this murder and before Cunanan made it to Florida to stalk and kill Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramírez), he was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. I just kept going back to how high profile he was for so long, and yet, he was still able to kill more at least two more people.
But let’s get to the women. The motif of women’s intuitions was back with a vengeance. I was moved and deeply disturbed by Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light) almost being afraid to search her impeccably clean, white house, for fear of confirming her immediate suspicions. It’s slightly ambiguous if she simply knew something was wrong, her husband was dead, or her husband had been having affairs with men, but the moment when she says, “I knew it,” hooked me. Long after the episode, I was thinking of how she is yet another strong matriarch thrust into a leadership position by the untimely death of her partner. Sounds like Donatella, no? Finally, I know it’s small, but the cop who found Andrew Cunanan’s car was also a woman, and I don’t think any casting (especially of a woman) is ever by accident.
It’s heart-shattering to me that Donatella and Marilyn are both so aware that their reactions will be immediately be judged. When a desperate Marilyn finally cries and says, “Am I a real wife now?” I felt a pang of sadness for her, but I also felt guilt because I realized I had been waiting and judging her for not crying yet, too. I had been caught, and I thought I had been on her side. I think that’s why her final monologue to camera was so chilling. Her heavy makeup even reminded me of Ellen Burstyn in Requiem For A Dream, but her words about what the public will never know, and what it means to be a couple rang true. If anyone deserves to have the last word on her husband’s life, it’s her.
“ACS: The Assassination Of Gianni Versace” Episode 3 Recap: “Random Killing”
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’: Judith Light on her devastating performance as Marilyn Miglin
The third episode of FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story focused on the brutal murder of Chicago businessman Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell) by Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss). But it also told the story of Miglin’s marriage to his wife, Marilyn, played by Judith Light in a bravura performance.
Almost unrecognizable, Light is haunting as a woman who tries to hold in all her emotions until finally she cracks. EW talked to the actress about the performance and what she hopes the world can learn from this story.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you get involved in this?
JUDITH LIGHT: I have wanted to work with Ryan [Murphy] forever. I just think he’s really extraordinary. This literally came out of the blue through a friend of mine who is a brilliant writer who’s working with Ryan. He said, “There is this part and I think you would be amazing in it.” And it was my friend Jon Robin Baitz who wrote Other Desert Cities and because of him and Joe Mantello, I got the Tony! [Baitz is working with Murphy on the second season of Feud] So when Robby wrote to me, he said the script Tom Robb Smith wrote is amazing and it’s Ryan and they’re such incredible people and I want you to know them and I want you to work with them. I come from reparatory theater and so when people have their rep companies wherever they are, their teams that work together beautifully, to do the kind of work that Ryan has done, you wanna get an opportunity to work with them.It was crazy because it was last minute and I had to change my entire schedule around. They were so incredible with me. I said to them, “Look, I have to give a speech at the opening of the AIDS conference in Washington D.C. as part of the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.” They all said, “Got it. Go do it, girl, and just fly to us after that.” They were really extraordinary in making this all work. My agents said, “You HAVE to make this work!” I had all these people supporting me to have this come to fruition and I’m so excited. It was a most special experience.
Were you aware of the Miglins and this part of the story?
No! No! No! I knew the story about Gianni Versace because I’ve been an advocate for the LGBTQ community for so long. I knew the Gianni Versace part of the story and I knew about Andrew Cunanan. My parents lived in Ft. Lauderdale so I knew about all of that and I knew about the level of homophobia and the discounting of the gay community particularly at the height of the AIDS pandemic. I knew all about that but I didn’t know in detail what had preceded this killing spree and this rampage and then really didn’t know about it till I read this script and I read the book.So you read Maureen Orth’s Vulgar Favors. What other research did you do?
Yeah. You look at that script and it’s the map and it’s the landscape. I didn’t need to be searching for anything else. It was all given to me.Did you ever consider reaching out to Marilyn Miglin? Or did they discourage you?
No. First of all, nobody said anything to me. I don’t think it works to reach out. They gave me all the help and all the information I needed. I work on a character from an artistic perspective and from a psychological perspective and that’s how I work. I don’t need to know everything that goes on. Also, this is a very sensitive subject. I think it’s right to be careful in the way you relate to people and deferential.What do you think of this marriage? Was it a marriage of friendship?
I literally have no idea. We also don’t know what is needed from somebody, in our personal needs when we get together with someone. You know how you look at some people and you go, “What are you doing together?” You would never do that with Lee and Marilyn. You don’t know what draws people together. We have no idea. I will tell you, particularly now in light of everything that’s happening in relation to women in business and around the world, this powerful woman with a real business head and sense had the support of someone who loved her and honored her and supported her. That I think is such an important topic when we’re relating to this relationship. Look at what she had and look at other women around her who had not had that and particularly at that time. This is huge! So you have to honor him and have to honor her for seeing what they had. The other stuff is private and intimate and who knows? We have no idea.How was it working with Mike Farrell?
I loved him. You talk about somebody who was an artist and he was so kind and so gentle. He loves to do the work and we were connecting on all these different levels. I had such honor for him and such respect for him for so long. I think he’s remarkable. I just adored working with him. We would just have these little things. There’s one part of the episode where I’m honoring him, speaking about him. It was all truthfully as Judith about Mike as it was I think about Marilyn in relation to Lee — who he is as a person is just extraordinary and so kind and so gracious. So we would just do these little improvs with each other before I went out and to do the speech so we were connected in that kind of way. It was very special with him. And we practiced ballroom dancing together and that was great!That final moment where you remove your make-up and finally crack is so emotional. What was that like to shoot?
There are all kinds of adjectives you can give to all of that stuff. It was challenging. I was concerned. It was interesting because when we shot it, I had been nominated for an Emmy and I think I had flown back and the next day I had that scene on that next morning. Lemme put it this way: To a person, there was this outpouring of support and generosity and Gwyneth Horder-Payton, who was the director, was taking me through all of it and all the steps and how we did the pieces of it. She allowed for me to figure out where I was going to be emotionally and how I was needed to move throughout the scene. It was just this kind of generous dance of everyone doing their work to support everyone else’s work. That’s all I can tell you. It took a long time to do it and we did it over and over and over again. There was a lot of dialogue that had to be memorized and that was a lot to deal with. But, as you can see, it’s written so beautifully. It was there and by the end of the time every one of us felt incredibly satisfied with what we had done and how we had worked together.What do you want people to take away from this episode and this story?
I hope for what Ryan hopes for which is to make sure that we are facing the cultural devastations of what happened in a world where homophobia is still rampant. We have not handled that issue within ourselves or our culture or in the stories we are telling and that’s why we have to tell these stories. The LGBTQ community is a most extraordinary, powerful, dynamic community that has been shoved aside. Whenever you make anybody “the other” in order to make yourself feel more secure in any way shape or form, that you shove people back into a closet because you don’t feel comfortable, that is a top note and so important to talk about in the viewing of this. This didn’t have to happen. If the world were a different place, a safer place, a kinder place, a place where people could get help and talk out their issues and their problems and I don’t mean to make it sound simplistic but I really do believe that if we related to each other that we are one human family and we understand what it feels like to feel and be empathetic to other situations these things would not have to be happening.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’: Judith Light on her devastating performance as Marilyn Miglin
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