FX’s widely celebrated O.J. Simpson “American Crime Story” focused on the theatrics and hijinks of the celebrity athlete’s televised murder trial and the colorful characters involved.
Don’t expect any such amusement from “Crime Story’s” second season, which details the murder of fashion icon Gianni Versace in the summer of 1997 and the events leading up to him being gunned down.
While viewing the first four episodes, I didn’t smile once. What I did feel was stunned, sad, chilled, mortified and thoroughly sickened, as if someone had delivered a hard punch to my gut.
The drama is breathtakingly beautiful at times, inviting us into the opulent, glamorous and often decadent world of Versace (Emmy-nominated Edgar Ramirez, “Carlos”), his handsome longtime partner Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin) and his fiercely devoted sister Donatella (Oscar-winner Penelope Cruz), a realm made even more dreamy by pastel-washed Miami.
But that’s only the backdrop. This new nine-part “American Crime Story” is primarily a no-holds-barred depiction of the horrific crimes of sociopath Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss, “Glee”), his calculated killing of Versace, the gruesome slayings that preceded it and the effect on the various victims’ friends and families.
“Every season of this show will have a different tonality,” co-executive producer Ryan Murphy told TV critics at a recent FX press session in Pasadena, California. “The first season was very much a courtroom pot boiler. The second season that you’ve seen is a manhunt thriller.
“I loved that this was not glamorizing the Cunanan story, and we never want to do that on this show,” Murphy added. “I really loved how we laid into everybody who was affected, not just the people who were killed, but also the relatives, the siblings. I think what (Cunanan) did was very, very destructive, and the reasons why he did it — the homophobia of the day, which still persists — is something really topical.”
What both series have in common is they’re topical and reflective of the day.
“With ‘O.J.’ we looked at sexism and racism, and we are doing the same with this season,” Murphy said.
As for the drama’s honesty, the Versace family recently decried it as “fiction.” However, journalist and author Maureen Orth, whose book “Vulgar Favors” served as the basis for the drama, stands by its authenticity.
“I would say my sourcing in the book is 95 percent or more on the record, and I talked to over 400 people, and so, so many things that you might think were made up aren’t made up,” Orth said.
As indicated before, it’s not an easily digested story: Each of the murders is terrifying, as is Cunanan’s manipulation and shaming of his victims.
However, it’s portrayed with such realism and emotional commitment by its magnetic and meticulous cast that you are hooked instantly and will want to see it through to its conclusion.
The stars met with us to share their feelings about the characters they play and how being part of such a sad, brutal and disturbing series affected their lives.
Murphy said Ramirez was the only central cast member who didn’t instantly say yes when approached.
The actor eventually was convinced, however, and said he came away surprised by what he learned about Versace the man: “How family oriented he was and how strong those family ties were and how important they were in his life. And how rather subtle and intimate and private he was in comparison to the public perception of the House of Versace.”
“He was rather a quiet person that would go kind of shy, you know, extroverted, but shy at the same time,” Ramirez said. “And he would go to bed rather early and wake up rather early and had more the demeanor and the life of a craftsman than like a larger-than-life celebrity. So that’s something that even to me was very surprising.”
Martin, known best as the Latin pop star who gave us hits such as “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” said he had a conversation with his character, D’Amico, to assure him that his relationship with Versace would be “treated with utmost respect.”
“I told him, ‘I will make sure that people fall in love with your relationship with Gianni. That is what I’m here for. I really want them to see the beauty and the connection that you guys had.’”
He also got the biggest laugh during the FX press session. “I peed a little bit,” he said when he learned Donatella would be played by Penelope Cruz.
As for Criss, people who’ve seen him in lighter roles, such as the singing-dancing Blaine in “Glee,” no doubt will be astonished by the intensity of the actor’s performance here, particularly when the sadistic side of Cunanan comes out.
However, Criss made sure he also found something likable about Cunanan, such as his charm, to turn in a fleshed-out portrayal.
To preserve his sanity through filming, he said, the role “didn’t come home with me. I know a lot of people who jump into these kinds of things, and it really consumes their whole lives. And maybe that’s just the kind of person I am, but my alibi of how that, sort of, works is I think what saved me is that Andrew compartmentalized so many things in his life: emotions, people, experiences. He could disassociate, and likewise, I could sort of disassociate.”
Darren Criss didn’t get to spend too much onscreen time with his American Crime Story costars — but they more than made up for it when the cameras weren’t rolling.
During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday, Criss opened up about shooting the upcoming FX series, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, which chronicles the 1997 murder of the Italian designer outside his Miami Beach home at the hands of Andrew Cunanan, played by Criss.
“He was a spree killer, a very troubled young man who does not follow the typical prerequisites of a killer,” said Criss, 30, of Cunanan. “He didn’t kill small animals as a child, or have a history of violence. Such is the exploration of our show — how a kid with so much promise becomes somebody so destructive.”
Asked if he had “fun” playing the killer, Criss said, “I don’t know if fun is the polite word, but it certainly goes to dark places. We see the good sides of him, the sad sides of him.”
“But the fun part, truly, if I have to just be a big stargazer, is I got to do this show with this insane-o cast of huge superstars,” he continued, referencing A-list cast costars Edgar Ramírez as Gianni Versace, Penélope Cruz as his sister Donatella and international pop superstar Ricky Martin as Versace’s lover, Antonio D’Amico.
“So you have Latin royalty, and then the half-Filipino kid,” quipped Criss of himself.
Criss said he “made sure” to spend time with his costars offscreen, because “for plot reasons — and you can do the math — I don’t actually spend a lot of time with their characters at all onscreen.”
During production, Martin had everyone over to his house “several times” — and, according to Criss, the singer is quite the host.
“I’m sort of the Pied Piper of karaoke in singalong situations. I usually don’t bring booze, I usually don’t bring food, but I’ll bring a guitar and we’ll have a singalong, so that was my contribution,” said Criss. “One of my favorite memories of shooting the show is we’re at Ricky Martin’s house, which is already a place-setter of like, ‘Woah, this is wacky.’ And I’m sitting there next to his five or six Grammys, and what Ricky thought would be nice as a host was he got pedicures for people.”
“So I’m playing guitar — I’m playing ‘Let It Go’ and Penélope is singing that song, then I start playing one of Ricky Martin’s songs and Edgar Ramírez is singing it to me, he’s singing it to Ricky, we’re sitting next to his Grammys — and all the while, they’re getting pedicures. And I’m like … ‘How did this all happen?’ ”
“You’re now both livin’ la vida loca,” quipped host Jimmy Kimmel.
For former Glee star Darren Criss, the only thing to be gleeful about while tackling his latest role was getting what the actor describes as "the role of a lifetime.“ In FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, the latest installment of the hit Ryan Murphy limited series franchise, Criss not only portrays spree-killer Andrew Cunanan, the man responsible for the brutal slaying of famed fashion designer Gianni Versace and several other men, he embodies him. It was a challenge Criss relished and with which he wanted to take great care. "I think the actor’s job is to find the empathy in anybody [he is playing],” Criss (pictured above and below) told MediaVillage in a recent interview. "I don’t care if it’s a football player or a scientist or in this case a ‘serial killer.’ You have to take into account not only the worst moments but the best moments and find as many common denominators between you and that person as possible.
“That’s a lot easier than you think,” he continued. "[Andrew] is not your classic American serial killer as we know them, where there are a lot of tells. He was loved by many, was an enjoyable, delightful, smart kid brimming with potential, so you kind of reverse engineer that and latch onto those things. You then have to ask yourself at what point could this have been me, and what point in my life could I have done these things that we would conventionally understand as the most abominable?“
The Assassination of Gianni Versace begins with the murder of the designer on the steps of his Miami mansion in 1997 and backtracks through the lives of both Cunanan and Versace (Edgar Ramirez). For Criss, it was re-enacting the gunning down of one of the world’s most respected fashion icons – at the very location – he found most difficult.
“Yes, that was an overwhelmingly emotional day,” he admitted. "We spent a lot of time in that mansion and there I was, dressed as Andrew, with his likeness put on my face and hair. Andrew never made it inside the mansion, but there I was having lunch for a couple of weeks. That wasn’t lost on me.“
According to Criss it was the knowledge of what he, as Cunanan, would be depriving the world of that weighed so heavily on him. "You have this overwhelming sense of what was and could have been, then what was taken away,” he recalled. “The O.J. story, for example, was shot on sets, but this is where it happened! These are the stairs, it was the street, everything is as it was with the only difference being 20 years have passed and the bloodstains have been removed. I had a moment when I walked into the building and really could feel Gianni’s presence.
“I found myself walking in there and kind of talking to Gianni,” he continued. “Being like, ‘Look, man, this is a horrible thing that happened here and I’m so appreciative of what you gave the world.’ It certainly gave me a new appreciation of his legacy. Hopefully, we can start a new story dialogue that he might’ve been interested in and would have liked people to [know about]. I guess I found myself trying to make peace with it.”
Despite having to humanize Cunanan in order to portray him, Criss wants two things known. One: He’s not fond of serial killers. Two: while based on real events, the series is not a documentary. He’s appreciative of the fact that much of Cunanan’s dialogue and the events are conjecture, with only Cunanan and his victims, all of whom did not survive his wrath, a party to them.
That’s something executive producer and writer Tom Rob Smith was also aware of, as he told MediaVillage. “I made sure that the stuff I put in supports a greater fundamental truth, so the smaller inventions never contradict what I knew to be a greater truth,” he said.
“There has been a great sense of care that Tom has taken with Andrew,” explains Criss. "I think only he and I get to share this almost fondness, which I am scared to say, but it’s your job [as an actor] to humanize the person you play. As an over-empathetic person, I enjoy the challenge of people looking in and me saying, ‘How could you possibly find something good about this person?’ But there’s still that bleeding idealist [in me] who wants to find the good in everybody. I have to find that and exploit it as much as possible because we will [only] see the worst if not.“
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, premieres Wednesday, January 17 at 10 p.m. on FX.
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