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Nina Jacobson is having a very successful 2018. As one of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s fellow executive producers on the project, she has been Emmy-nominated with the producing team for Outstanding Limited Series on FX Network’s THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE: AMERICAN CRIME STORY. Actors Darren Criss (as murderer Andrew Cunanan), Edgar Ramirez (as Gianni Versace), Penelope Cruz (as Donatella Versace), Ricky Martin (as Antonio D’Amico), Judith Light (as Marilyn Miglin), and Finn Wittrock (as Jeffrey Trail) are also nominated for their performances in the production; Murphy received a nomination for his direction of one episode and Tom Rob Smith is nominated for his writing of another. Jacobson and the producing group previously won an Outstanding Limited Series Emmy for the initial AMERICAN CRIME STORY season, THE PEOPLE V. O.J. SIMPSON

Meanwhile, FX’s POSE, the series about the transgender ballroom scene in New York in the ‘80s that Jacobson exec-produces with Murphy et al, currently airs Sunday nights and has been picked up for a second season.

In an interview conducted before this year’s Emmy nominations for THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE and POSE’s Season 2 pick-up were announced, Jacobson talks about both series.

ASSIGNMENT X: What kind of research do you do when it comes to still-living people who are depicted in AMERICAN CRIME STORY?

NINA JACOBSON: Generally speaking, we have only worked on recent material. We did it with O.J. and with this [VERSACE], which is that, a well-researched book, or in the case of O.J., where there were so many books, we obviously worked off of the [Jeffrey] Toobin book, in this case, we worked off of Maureen [Orth]’s book, getting the perspective of multiple voices, as opposed to trying to tell one or another person’s story, allows us to serve a more balanced telling. And so we don’t ask people, “Hey, do you want us to tell your story?” or, “How do you want us to tell your story?” We just try to get as much research as we can, whether it’s written, whether it’s anything that’s been reported, or whether it’s people who knew the individuals involved, and then put together sort of a mosaic of information, and then let the actors find their character as they go. And then if ultimately they want to talk to the person – for instance, Antonio was very generous to Ricky, but that was well into the process that they started to speak, and so we don’t usually have contact with the people, because, for one, it feels intrusive, and we just draw on well-researched sources and then try to put a mosaic together that doesn’t over-emphasize one person’s version over another, because everybody will tell their story in a different way.

AX: For you, and also for Ryan Murphy, how much of the appeal of telling the story of Versace’s death and the homophobia surrounding it, was the political aspect, and how much was the aspect of getting to visually go into Versace’s world?

JACOBSON: Certainly for me, and I think for Ryan, too, the homophobia that runs through the story brings up painful memories, it is a reminder of how much has changed in twenty years, but to even read in Maureen’s book about where guys were being outed as they were being murdered, and they [the FBI] would go to the parents and say, “Well, there are things you don’t know about your son.” You’re like, “It’s so wrong, and it’s so disturbing.” And then the fact that Versace did not have to be killed, that Andrew is there in South Beach, across the street, in plain sight, and nobody is looking for him. I mean, they are – badly – but they’re not going into the clubs. They wouldn’t put the flyers up. All that stuff that’s in the material, which is that they wouldn’t put the flyers up, they wouldn’t go to the gay community, walk into bars – “Have you seen this guy?” [Cunanan] was right there. So the politics of that to me were really devastating, and that inability to be authentic and the struggle for authenticity, and the courage of Versace’s heroism [for being openly gay]. I didn’t realize, when you put him in a timeline, all the other designers who were out were dead, and they were out because they died of AIDS, they were outed by being ill. He chose to come out at a time when Ellen [DeGeneres] wasn’t out yet. It was a very different time.

AX: Because POSE deals with high style, and Versace was designing in the ‘80s, is there any costume design crossover between VERSACE and POSE?

JACOBSON: Other than the fact that we have the wildly talented Lou Eyrich [also nominated for AMERICAN CRIME STORY] working on them both, not necessarily. Although it was funny, when we did [the upcoming feature film] CRAZY RICH ASIANS, for a lot of the characters demonstrating their success and wealth, they wore Versace. So while we were working on this, we were also working on CRAZY RICH ASIANS, and you could see how much the brand is still a signifier of wealth, and of a certain kind of expression of wealth.

AX: Have you and the production company ever met any resistance in doing LGBTQ-focused material?

JACOBSON: No. For me, it’s actually a real privilege, because these are actually the first stories in this space that I have told, between POSE and VERSACE. Representation is really important to me. I’ve tried to advance the representation of women, and certainly, for something like CRAZY RICH ASIANS, which has an all-Asian cast, and a romantic comedy, it’s a big, fun, mainstream movie for everybody, but these are actually the first times that I’ve really had the chance to tell stories about gay and trans people, so I just feel lucky to get to do it now. I mean, and to have the material, and then someone like Ryan, who has this access to so many people who want to see the stories that he tells.

AX: How many projects are you working on at once?

JACOBSON: Quite a few. We have a movie [set and shot] in New York called BEN IS BACK with Julia Roberts and Lucas Hedges, we have POSE, we have GOLDFINCH, so we have all of that, and then a couple of things that are about to go here in L.A., and then CRAZY RICH ASIANS in post. It’s been kind of a crazy busy year. But it’s a good thing.

AX: And what would you most like people to know about THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE and POSE?

JACOBSON: [With POSE], I think one of the things we wanted to explore – the politics are certainly there, but for now, really the show lives and dies on these characters and this extraordinary cast. I think one of the things that we’re trying to explore is, there was enormous transphobia in the gay community. It wasn’t just what you still see now in terms of transphobia, [like] the purported trans ban in the military. There was a “divide and conquer” [mentality], and everybody always looking to have somebody who might be beneath them in the pecking order. I think the show tries to explore even that level of politics, the politics within the gay and trans community, before they had come together, which they’re still making an effort to do, but at a time when people turned on each other. And that’s something we explore in the show as well. It’s the point at which you’re either a “have” or a “have not,” and the rush to become a “have and the pressure to strike up a pose and live up to the materialism of the ‘80s, to be one of those guys. It’s something you see with Evan [Peters]’s character. And we’re certainly living with the results of that now. But we try tocome at it all not through an instructive or expository manner, but just these characters living their struggles in a way that I think illuminates and speaks to the politics of that time.

[With VERSACE], I hope people will pay attention to the pertinence of these themes and the politics of it. We’re still looking at so much – that attempted ban on trans people in the military, and when you look at the impact on somebody like Jeff Trail and how heartbreaking it was to see the personal toll of that, and that guy who had his true love taken from him, just because of who he was, and then to see the contrast of [what] one person who has acceptance and love and family can achieve, like a Versace, versus the terrible corrosive effect of self-hatred and the inability to live an authentic life, and how important it is that we keep advancing the ability for people to be able to live authentic lives.

AMERICAN CRIME STORY: Executive Producer Nina Jacobson also talks POSE – Interview

FX’s Wednesday-night second installment of the anthology drama series, THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE, deals not only with the well-known event of the title, but of the murder spree that led up to it. Andrew Cunanan, played in the miniseries by Darren Criss, killed at least four other men – Jeffrey Trail, David Madson, Lee Miglin and William Reese – before attacking Versace, who is portrayed by Edgar Ramirez. Based in part on Maureen Orth’s nonfiction book VULGAR FAVORS, argues that law enforcement was slow to track Cunanan due to the homophobia of the times.

AMERICAN CRIME STORY comes from executive producers Ryan Murphy (who also directed a number of episodes), Brad Falchuk, Alexis Martin Woodall, Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson. Rather than have a writers’ room for THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE, the executive producers opted to have a single writer for all ten episodes, Tom Rob Smith.

Smith, an Englishman who is also an executive producer on this season of AMERICAN CRIME STORY, created and wrote LONDON SPY and CHILD 44. He talks about his research for the project, and what struck him most in what he found.

ASSIGNMENT X: When the producers came to you, did they say, “We’d like you to write all ten episodes?”

TOM ROB SMITH: No. It just evolved from the fact that we were in a room, and it was Brad, Ryan, Nina and myself, and the book just needed a very particular approach. It wasn’t that we sat down and said we were going to tell the story backwards [as the series does, to an extent]. We didn’t have that concept. It was, we were trying to figure out how to do it organically. The thing with a [writers’] room is, if you have a big room, you have to make those decisions and then send everyone off to write their episodes. And we would move forward a fragment, and then decide to change direction. You’re much more nimble if you’re on your own. I think it just happened like that.

AX: How was it decided that this season of AMERICAN CRIME STORY would be ten episodes, as opposed to twelve or eight or whatever?

SMITH: That was again all decided by the story. We look at them and think, “What is the right number?” They’re like books in a weird way. You’re like, “What are the parts that we have?” No one says, “We want ten episodes,” or “We want twelve episodes.” They say, “What is your story?” And you look at it, and think, “This is how much we have. These are the great episodes.” The quality control on this is so high, they would never stretch it to fill a quota. It was always about, each episode has to feel really satisfying in its own right, almost like a story in its own right. So that’s where it comes from.

AX: How aware were you of the murders at the time they occurred in 1997?

SMITH: I was very aware of the Miami murder, but I knew nothing about the build-up. And I think that’s one of the things, that we take that thing that everyone knows, which is the perception of Miami, and we’re unpacking it, so we’re literally pulling those pieces apart. And that to me was a discovery, too. I went on a journey in a sense that viewers kind of go on, which is, I knew the thing on Miami, and now let’s see what was behind it all.

AX: Cunanan’s murder spree stretched across the U.S. What kind of research did you do in the different cities and states?

SMITH: The Minneapolis murders, we got all the police files. One of the big gaps was that, [author Orth] must have read the police files, but obviously, you’re getting her fragments. It’s always interesting to get your own, and the Minneapolis police files, they released them without any problem. I think they were like four hundred pages. I think we got a thousand pages on the FBI, I think we had four hundred from the Chicago [police]. So you have these volumes of information. We’ve got a great researcher on the project. We got all of that. In San Diego, these weren’t released by the San Diego police force, we had to the court records. So we got everything that was possible to get. Minneapolis is where the murders start, and they’re a key part of our story. When we say AMERICAN CRIME STORY, this is an American crime story in a geographic sense. We have L.A., we have San Francisco, we have San Diego, we have Minneapolis, we have Chicago, we have New York, we have New Jersey – all of these towns were part of this enormous story.

AX: How is it for you setting a story in the U.S.? You’re British and your other projects have been set in England and Europe. Was there anything you sort of had to absorb about Americans?

SMITH: I don’t know. I just think, we were telling an American crime story for sure, but I think one of the reasons [the first season of AMERICAN CRIME STORY, THE PEOPLE V. O.J. SIMPSON] was so successful is, it spoke to everyone around the world. You go for those universal truths. I do think, pushing all of the universal truths to the side, the minutiae is very important, like going to San Diego and going to Andrew Cunanan’s house, seeing where he grew up. Sometimes those things can be overstated, because they didn’t give you an episode, for example. You don’t get an episode from it. But Andrew Cunanan was very sensitive to class and status. And I was like, well, I get that as an idea. And I went to his house, which was in La Bonita, and it’s a nice house. His parents did well to pull him up out of relative poverty in National City. But even on the street he’s on, which has a slight incline, he was on the bottom of that street, and it went on to kind of a wasteland. And as the houses went up the hill, they got steadily more expensive. And I was like, “Even in this one street, there’s this microcosm of the haves and the have-nots.” He went to La Bonita High briefly, and I went there, and it’s a regular high school, and then he was sent to Bishop’s in La Jolla, and I was like, “This is a world apart.” You turn up and it’s this beautiful courtyard with these whitewashed walls. He was taken from this household that was modest, and given everything. And just when you go into the detail and you see it for real, those things really start to speak to you about the character.

AX: Obviously, there’s a lot of visual oomph in Gianni Versace’s world. Was it easier or harder for you to write with knowing that, “Okay, people are going to be taking in the surroundings,” so you need to give them a moment to look at that before you start the drama?

SMITH: Oh, no. I see it all as one. I see the locations and the clothes, all that detail is storytelling. That opening is the contrasting of these two worlds, this world that someone had created that was down to the ashtray, down to the silk robe, down to the slippers. [Versace] built all of that. He built his own homeware, and so that sense of, look at what he’s created, [and then at Cunanan, who is] someone who was literally down to nothing on a beach, who had this terrible abscess on his leg, he had physically broken apart, and who was in shorts he’d probably been wearing for weeks and weeks, and was in this sweaty t-shirt, and this sense of, look at the contrast between these two men. So I always saw the visuals as being a real storytelling engine and not some kind of secondary thing.

The Versace home is – it’s weird going there, because now it’s a hotel, and I felt this energy of, he’s missing from this space. You really feel it. You feel like, this isn’t just a nice house, this was his. This needs him on some level. I could really feel an absence.

AX: What is it like writing someone like Versace who, in a sense, creates his own world?

SMITH: What I found so inspirational about him, and one of the things was, he’d turn up to Milan, this guy from the south of Italy who was looked down on by the [design establishment], and now he’s such a grand figure that we forget that he was this person who was told “no” by everyone. And even different fabrics – he would refuse to accept “no,” he would say, “I’m going to [use] this fabric.” And I found that refusal to accept the constraints and confines that were presented to him very inspirational. That was a key part. I found that he inspired me as I wrote, if that makes sense. I was like, “This man is amazing.”

AX: Do you have any other projects we should know about?

SMITH: I’m doing a show for BBC2, MOTHER, FATHER, SON.

AX: And what would you most like people to know about THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE: AMERICAN CRIME STORY?

SMITH: I’m fascinated by crime stories, because I think they’re about society. I feel like they soak up something about society, tell a bigger story. And this really does. It tells a story about America at that time and about identities, aspirations, it’s emotional. But I also think this was the largest failed FBI manhunt of all time in Miami. This has enormous scale. And how this kid in La Bonita ends up causing the pandemonium to tip over Miami to me is a very interesting story to tell.

This interview was conducted during FX’s portion of the Television Critics Association (TCA) press tour.

AMERICAN CRIME STORY: Writer Tom Rob Smith on THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE – Exclusive Interview