Tag: brad simpson

American Crime Story Producers Talk Versace, Hurricane Katrina and More

Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson are executive producers on American Crime Story. After the captivating and award winning first season, The People Vs. O.J. Simpson, there were some hold-ups. The next season was supposed to be about Hurricane Katrina, followed by the Gianni Versace murder. The Assassination of Gianni Versace became the second season, but Hurricane Katrina is still up next. Then they are developing a season about the Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky sex scandals of President Bill Clinton.

/Film spoke with Jacobson and Simpson at an FX party for the Television Critics Association. They described how each season has a different tone and therefore needs a different writer, and what we can expect from future seasons.

Since Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski weren’t available, how did you find new writers to tackle Versace?

Simpson: Ryan [Murphy] had Maureen [Orth]’s book and Nina and I had to think about who would be the perfect writer for this. It was tonally going to be different. O.J. was a drama. It had a sort of Sidney Lumet/Paddy Chayefsky inserted into it. This needed to be something out of the vein of Silence of the Lambs or David Fincher with a political bent. Tom Rob Smith is a writer we love. I tried to option his book, Child 44. When it came out, I lost the option battle for that. I think he’s one of the premier thriller writers as a novelist. We loved his series London Spy. He writes about all these things: Ripley-like characters, mysteries, people who are liars and also sexuality. It felt like his voice was the right voice for this. We knew we needed somebody who had as strong a reputation as Scott and Larry. He got the book and loved it and signed on instantly. Except for cowriting one episode, he’s written every episode of the season.

Do you think you’ll have a different writer for each season?

Simpson: I would love to stumble upon a writer who’d do a couple seasons with us. It’s tough because I love Scott and Larry. This wouldn’t have been a show that would’ve been right for them to write. Tom’s voice was perfect for this. It’d be easier for me if we could find somebody who would stay on, but somebody said earlier today, “We’re doing genres within genre.” True crime can mean many different things. If we did a kidnapping story, I guess we won’t because FX has their kidnapping story [Trust], but if we did a bank robbery story, we would probably find a very different type of writer.

Jacobson: The truth is that Tom wrote some amazing scripts early on. So we had a lot of very strong scripts while we were still struggling with Katrina, so we had plenty to get started because he was on a tear. He knew exactly what he wanted. We had the usual dramaturgical process of the back and forth, but he was writing great material and had a lot of them. At a point we were like, “Very clearly, we should be doing this first. It’s ready and we’re not ready on Katrina.” Better to get it right and do justice to your stories than to try to hit a deadline. Even though you wish you could hit a deadline, you’d rather not screw it up.

If Scott and Larry wouldn’t be right for Versace, how is the tone different from People Vs. O.J. Simpson?

Jacobson: It’s a different kind of story because of the fact that so many of the episodes cover different people. So you have all of the victims to explore. I don’t think people knew these people to begin with so they don’t have a lot of predetermined ideas because they didn’t know who these figures were. For me, I was impressed and surprised by what a cutting edge figure Versace was. I don’t think I realized that. You think of Versace clothes, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous kind of signifier of wealth. I didn’t realize what a visionary he was, how courageous his coming out was, the fact that he was really one of the first designers to come out. The others who had been forced out by having AIDS, all of that stuff really surprised me and the degree to which his work came from the inside, from his background and his history, his family, childhood. I really feel like I didn’t understand who he was until we dove into the research.

…

Did you think you could at first?

Simpson: O.J. took us a year and a half to write that. What we learned is with a new writer and new subject, you really have to put the time in and O.J. set a high bar. We didn’t expect to ever achieve what O.J. achieved which was this amazing universal acclaim, awards, ratings and everyone talking about it. We want each show to have integrity and exist and work on its own merits and bring something different to people. We’re never going to try to repeat O.J. That’s the reason this season is very different. If you’re showing up thinking it’s going to be O.J., you’re getting something very different this season. I hope it’s pleasurable. It’s scarier. It’s more intense but it’s also I think an important story.

American Crime Story Producers Talk Versace, Hurricane Katrina and More

How ‘American Crime Story’ Re-created Versace’s Death — on the Designer’s Own Front Steps

[This story contains spoilers from the premiere of FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.]

From the start, the producers behind FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story wanted the series to be different than other true-crime shows.

“The series opens with the murder of Versace, and we made that decision for a couple reasons. One is that it’s the one fact that everybody knows about this case — that Gianni Versace, if you know something, you know that he was murdered outside his mansion. We felt like, instead of waiting eight episodes to get to that, let’s go right toward that, which then led to this backwards storytelling. We’re telling this season backwards,” executive producer Brad Simpson tells The Hollywood Reporter.

That’s why Wednesday’s premiere opened with a lush, nearly eight-minute sequence detailing the final morning of the slain fashion designer’s life, culminating in the moment when 27-year-old serial killer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) shot Versace (Edgar Ramirez) on the steps of the designer’s Miami Beach mansion — which the production re-created on the actual steps of the building.

“Everyone was very moved because we didn’t make the steps, we shot on those steps,” Ramirez tells THR. “He laid on those steps, and Antonio [D’Amico, his partner] might have picked him up in the way Ricky [Martin, who plays D’Amico] did with me. And there’s something very moving and interesting and disturbing to me because Gianni was shot around 8:30 or so that morning … so he was alive. I was playing somebody who’s dying, I wasn’t playing dead.”

Says Martin, “It was very dark. It was very heavy and dark days because it was back to back, the actual finding of the corpse and then the investigation where the FBI just drills him, merciless. But I loved it because the mission was important in a sense — I’m telling this story because people need to know this story.”

Season two of the FX anthology from exec producer Ryan Murphy was a big departure from the franchise’s O.J. Simpson-focused first season, when the Emmy-winning limited series re-created most of its major locations on soundstages.

“What’s important about filming at the mansion is that it reflected how Versace lived his life,” Simpson says. “Versace’s mansion is in South Beach, right on a public beach. You open the door, and the entire world is out there. That’s how he wanted to live — not just authentically, but openly. He loved stepping outside and being among all the different characters in South Beach — the multiple ethnicities, people who were open with their sexuality — it was part of what inspired him. That walk that he did every morning, the walk that we begin with to get the newspaper, was something he hadn’t been able to do for several years because he had been sick, and now he was better. It meant so much to him. The tragedy that this thing that he loved, the openness with which he could live, is how he was able to be murdered, was incredibly important to represent.”

But being in the actual house, which Versace created himself, was invaluable to the show’s creative team.

“When we were in there with our craftsmen and our writers and everything, you felt that vibe coming through, and it felt important to shoot it there,” Simpson says. “At the same time, it’s incredibly chilling. The day that we re-created it, we created it as it happened. Everyone was very somber. People were crying because you could feel the energy of what we were re-creating right there in the moment.”

For Criss, the most striking part of filming that scene in the actual location was the fact that he gained the access to Versace’s life that Cunanan desperately craved.

“I so freely walked in. Me, Darren, just walking right through the gates and into a nice air-conditioned room on a really hot summer’s day,” Criss tells THR. “Andrew never made it inside, which has a more symbolic meaning — he literally and figuratively never got to go inside. There I was, dressed in the same clothes that he was in, re-enacting the scene that would forever define him in opposition of the Versaces, and there I am, walking in their house.”

“That felt very strange to me,” he continues. “It was surreal, but it made it very real, for sure. Being in that house was almost like being in a church because Versace was so present in that house. I found myself saying a silent prayer to Gianni and asking his forgiveness, not on behalf of Andrew, but I guess of hoping that he would be trusting of us telling this story and that we would try and create something with light that had so much darkness.”

How ‘American Crime Story’ Re-created Versace’s Death — on the Designer’s Own Front Steps

There’s Not That Much Fashion in FX’s Big Versace Drama

LOS ANGELES — Has fashion’s big moment on television finally arrived with the docudrama “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” the long-awaited installment of “American Crime Story” that begins airing on Wednesday on FX?

Not exactly.

This show centers not on Mr. Versace, the storied Italian designer fatally shot on his doorstep in Miami at age 50 on July 15, 1997, but on his killer, Andrew Cunanan, whose three-month murder spree culminated in his suicide at 27 a week later, leaving any motive a mystery. Mr. Versace doesn’t even appear in some episodes. Much of the season is told backward, beginning with the murder, and then working through Mr. Cunanan’s origin story, going back to his childhood.

It’s grittier and bloodier than its predecessor, “The People vs. O.J. Simpson,” which skipped the two gruesome murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman and focused instead on the madcap trial that followed, setting ratings records for FX and winning Emmys and Golden Globes aplenty.

“We knew we didn’t want to do ‘O.J.’-lite,” said Brad Simpson, an executive producer of the series. “We didn’t want to have the exact same tone or vibe because we felt like that’s something we couldn’t match. This is much more about crime.”

“‘O.J.’ was very frenetic,” said Ryan Murphy, another executive producer. “‘Versace’ is lot slower and grander in its compositions. That’s one of the turn-ons of the show for me. Every season, we’re going to take on a crime, we’re going to look at broader social issues, and every season will have a different tone.”

This one is two-toned. There is the color of Mr. Versace (Edgar Ramirez), whose over-the-top sensibility brought celebrities to the front row, and who helped nurture his younger sister, Donatella (Penélope Cruz), into a star in her own right. In the series, life is getting better for Mr. Versace before his death: His fashion house is about to go public; he is out and proud, rare for high-profile gay men at the time; and though he is H.I.V. positive, new medication is making him stronger.

Then there is the darkness of Mr. Cunanan (Darren Criss), who had a taste for the high life but appears to have made few earnest efforts to get there. The series focuses on his hideous unraveling from social climber to killer. In all, he murdered five people, including two friends, and at least three, and possibly four, gay men.

Much of the series is based on “Vulgar Favors,” Maureen Orth’s 1999 book about Mr. Cunanan, from which the Versace family has distanced itself. “The Versace family has neither authorized nor had any involvement whatsoever in the forthcoming TV series about Mr. Gianni Versace,” the fashion label said in a statement last week. “Since Versace did not authorize the book on which it is partly based nor has it taken part in the writing of the screenplay, this TV series should only be considered as a work of fiction.”

Regardless of its genre, ratings estimates indicate that roughly half the audience that tuned into “The People vs. O.J. Simpson” will not return for this season, said John Landgraf, the chief executive of FX, and he’s just fine with that.

“We’ve made a show that by definition that a gay man that’s lived through this experience is going to have a richer, deeper connection to this material than a straight guy who lived through that period of time,” Mr. Landgraf said. “That’s probably not the most commercial choice you could make in America, but the way you get to great television is to ask people to go into experiences that are compelling but that are challenging.”

Such experimentation makes FX an appealing line item on the slate of properties that the Walt Disney Company is looking to buy from 21st Century Fox, in a deal that will depend on regulatory approval. Mr. Murphy, a hitmaker whose contract expires later this year, has said he is not sure if he will stay with Fox after the Disney sale.

He said he was inspired to do the show because he was living in Los Angeles at the time and gay men in all major national metropolises were transfixed by the story, and terrified Mr. Cunanan would be arriving in their city next. But when Mr. Murphy proposed a season about Mr. Cunanan three years ago — well before the Simpson series debuted — it gave his colleagues pause.

Nina Jacobson, a producer of the series, politely nodded along before she went home to Google the killer. “I was pretty much in the dark,” she said. Brad Simpson, another producer, had a dim memory, too, and wondered if there was “enough meat on the bone.”

Compared with the abundance of coverage around the O.J. Simpson case (tons of books, boundless archives of material), the public’s fascination with Mr. Cunanan’s murder spree was faded like a pair of acid-washed jeans.

But the producers saw bigger themes in Ms. Orth’s book. If Mr. Simpson’s trial touched on racism and sexism, the Cunanan tale connected to something else: the shame of the closet, the remarkable difficulty of being openly gay in the 1990s.

“‘American Crime Story’ at its core only works if you’re telling a bigger story about a societal ill,” Mr. Murphy said. “So I thought, ‘Can we do something on homophobia in the ’90s and the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies at the time that I think and ruined so many lives?’ And it’s more topical than ever now with this president who is all about discrimination and exclusion.”

Ricky Martin, who plays Mr. Versace’s longtime lover Antonio D’Amico, was himself in the closet in 1997. During multiple time jumps in the series, Antonio is presented as both devoted lover when Mr. Versace was in the closet, and then devoted and even happier lover after he came out.

Mr. Martin said that his performance was informed by two things: just how much better it is to be proudly out now, and the embarrassment that he felt considering how he treated his former partners while he kept his sexuality secret.

“I went back to my life and what my life was in the ’90s: big closet,” he said. “I made my lovers be like Antonio where he was kept in the shadows and kept in the dark back in the ’90s. It took me back to a place, where, see, it was not necessary. I go back to Harvey Milk where he said everyone has to come out and we have to normalize this. So for me, I was playing both roles. I was playing the man coming out and the relief of it, and the lover, the victim.”

It wasn’t hard for Mr. Murphy to secure Mr. Martin’s participation.

“I used to live in Miami when the actual crime happened,” Mr. Martin said. “Although I never met Gianni personally, I was invited to that house many, many times. And for some reason I never went. I had a Giorgio Armani campaign back in the day, so I’m sure that didn’t help!”

Never one to miss a red-carpet opportunity, the house of Armani last week blasted out a news release announcing that it had dressed Mr. Martin, Mr. Criss and Finn Wittrock, the actor who plays one of the Cunanan victims, for the Los Angeles premiere of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace.”

Ms. Cruz chose a Stella McCartney dress for the premiere. A 2009 Academy Award winner for her performance in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” she called Donatella Versace, with whom she had come into contact “here and there” over the years, after being cast.

“She said to me, ‘If somebody is doing this and play me, I’m happy that it’s you,’” Ms. Cruz said. “We spoke for one hour. It was a very good conversation.” (Ms. Versace did make one request of the producers, which was granted: that neither of her two children be portrayed in the series.)

Ms. Cruz said she watched hundreds of hours of tape of Ms. Versace to master her Italian accent and mannerisms, and that her portrayal was intended to be one of “respect and love.”

And she said that early last week, Ms. Versace sent her flowers and that the two have been texting like middle-schoolers.

As for Mr. Ramirez, he found access to his character through compassion for the intense scrutiny Mr. Versace faced post-mortem. Mr. Versace “was killed twice,” he said. “He was killed physically, and he was killed so to speak morally and socially.”

The show’s main accomplishment, according to Mr. Ramirez? “I think it’s the redemption of Gianni Versace.”

There’s Not That Much Fashion in FX’s Big Versace Drama

Gianni Versace ‘American Crime Story’ looks closely at his killer

Gianni Versace and Andrew Cunanan were both smart, talented, engaging and popular. Versace grew up to become the most influential fashion designer of his generation. Cunanan grew up to kill Versace.

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” examines this tragic 1997 confluence when the second season of Ryan Murphy’s anthology series premieres Wednesday at 10 p.m. on FX.

“We can’t know what went on in Andrew Cunanan’s head,” executive producer Brad Simpson tells the Daily News. “But we try to get under his skin. How does a guy with so much to give end up going to such a dark place?”

This gives “Versace” a considerably different feel from “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” Murphy’s acclaimed first season of “American Crime Story,” which aired in 2016.

“The O.J. series was more focused on the trial, the lawyers and its impact on America,” says Simpson. “This is more of a thriller.”

“Versace,” which stars Darren Criss as Cunanan and Edgar Ramirez as Versace, is based on the 1999 book “Vulgar Favors” by Maureen Orth. She is a consultant on the TV series, which also features Ricky Martin as Versace’s lover Antonio D’Amico and Penelope Cruz as the designer’s sister and inspiration, Donatella Versace.

The real-life Versace family has disowned the show, as it disowned Orth’s book, labeling it “a work of fiction.” The book and the TV series both show Gianni Versace, who was 50 when he was murdered, as sexually promiscuous and Donatella with a snappish edge, particularly toward D’Amico.

Simpson says no disrespect is intended.

“Any crime like this is tough on the families of the victim,” he says. “I can understand why families don’t want it replayed.

“But crime is a genre, in books and on TV, and Maureen Orth is an accomplished and respected reporter,” Simpson adds. “We have tried to be ethical and do right by Versace. We believe he was a genius, and the series makes that clear.”

The opening of the first episode also makes it clear, Simpson notes, “that Versace loved life.”

In a long scene that cuts back and forth between Versace and Cunanan on the morning of the murder, we see the Italian designer rising in his luxurious, sun-drenched Miami Beach mansion, then dressing and strolling out to a local news dealer to buy fashion magazines.

Multiple scenes also show the designer talking about how the most important part of his clothing is the expressions on the faces of the models.

If they seem joyful, he says, the clothes themselves will exude the same pleasure.

Conversely, Cunanan increasingly exudes darkness, right up until he takes his own life at age 27, eight days after gunning down Versace. “He’s not a murderer born,” says Simpson. “He’s a murderer made. He was born, like Versace, with a ton of potential. He just went another way.”

Fans who know Criss from Murphy’s “Glee” and musical roles will see him morph into pure menace here.

“They may be shocked,” says Simpson. “But he’s an incredibly versatile performer.”

“Versace” also inevitably dives into the gay culture of the 1990s, which Simpson notes was much further underground than the LGBT world today.

“Versace was one of the few public figures who dared to be out,” Simpson says, and the attitudes of police and others in the show feel much more distant than just 20 years ago.

“Back then, you couldn’t imagine gay people getting married,” says Simpson. “We’ve come a long way in 20 years, though not all the old attitudes are gone.”

In the end, “Versace” leaves several questions unanswered or unknowable: why Cunanan took the turn he did, and why he wasn’t caught after killing four other people.

Whatever happened, two smart men with great potential wound up dead. That’s a crime.

Gianni Versace ‘American Crime Story’ looks closely at his killer