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(Conclusion)

I feel so strange,” admitted Darren Criss about being inside the Gianni Versace mansion in Miami one morning in May.

He plays Andrew Cunanan, who shot the designer twice in the head just outside this palatial house in July 1997, in FX’s “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.”

“I was telling someone about how weird it was to be in this room,” the Fil-Am singer-actor shared about filming the assassination scene a few days earlier. “I was dressed as Andrew Cunanan, in the outfit that he murdered Versace in, and I was inside. I was walking around and I was taking pictures. I took a picture of the pool, and I saw myself. I was like, oh my God, I’ve got to delete this photo. It’s horrible, how irreverent, because Andrew never made it inside.”

In this part two of our column on Darren, we continue our talk about his biggest and most challenging role to date.

Excerpts:

What did you learn about Cunanan that informed your performance? The thing that we want to show in this is that we have two brilliant minds—we have Versace, the creator, and the destroyer (Cunanan). A lot of people who knew Andrew in his younger life described him as a promising, brilliant and charming young man. You go, what happened? It doesn’t follow the same blueprint of that of many serial killers, the Dahmers and the Mansons of the world. They’re off the rails from the get-go.

Whereas Andrew, it was heartbreaking for a lot of people who knew him because we show some of his friends in the series. Andrew was the godfather of the children of a friend from high school who was mortified to hear that this had happened. Because he was this caring friend and godfather.

So, he was not just an abomination. Yeah. That isn’t only on my shoulders, but in the order that we tell the story, without giving away too much. The structure of the show goes in such a way that we get to see Andrew at his worst and his absolute best. Then, it’s up to you to juxtapose those against each other.

How do you tell a story where the moral compass is clearly fixed? We can all agree this is a horrible thing. Versace was murdered on the steps of his house. We’re in this house. The first day I came in here, I got emotional thinking about it. Versace is here, the man is still alive in this house, everywhere. Coming in, seeing this and being a part of it, you go, wow, this man had everything that the man who killed him couldn’t have and wanted so badly.

I get very sad when I think of somebody like Andrew. We’ve all had these dreams of doing something great. That’s something we can relate to. It’s that sense of wanting something so bad and just being misdirected on how to get it.

Following up on that, Asian immigrant families, including Filipinos, are known to be model immigrants. What do you think about him or his family that contributed to his downfall? I don’t have any credentials in psychology and child development but, to me, after diving into what his background is, it seems a pretty textbook case, as far as what happened later in his life.

As a young man, Cunanan came from a very poor family and in one of the poorest neighborhoods in San Diego. His mother was mentally unstable, was very difficult to deal with. I don’t know what she had, but she self-medicated—a very tough situation.

His father, on the other hand, was a crook. He was embezzling people out of thousands of dollars. It was a loveless marriage, but they adored and spoiled this little boy. They gave him their master bedroom as he grew up. He was raised with this sense of entitlement from a very early age. That’s very dangerous as you get out in the world.

Narcissism involves people who think they’re pretty, but it’s more than that. It’s a psychological belief that if you believe something about yourself, it is true.

In that sense, Andrew believed that if he could say something about himself, then that’s true. And if he deserves something, he didn’t have to work for it. So, the decisions he made before the murders were unintentionally implanted by his parents. His father was caught. He sold the house and had to eventually flee to the Philippines.

This was where Andrew switched gears. He went to see his father [in the Philippines]. At this point in his life, Andrew has told a lot of lies about himself. He sometimes would totally discount his Filipino heritage. He would say he was Jewish, or that his father’s an Israeli pilot.

He went to the Philippines believing in this façade that his father was this rich pineapple plantation owner. He saw this man living in relative squalor. I think when he saw his father being everything he wasn’t, and against everything that he ever wanted, that was a point where most of us would learn from that and go, OK, you know what? I can change from this. I don’t want to be like this. I want to work hard for things.

Instead, he came back to the United States. For the rest of his life, he would make up stories. He’d blow up his own image of himself that would lead him to these grandiose acts of murder. Thinking that he’s above the law and above [the laws of] morality, because he doesn’t have to deal with the things that are real in his life.

What insights did you learn about Cunanan’s homophobia? What’s fascinating to me? This is a wonderful extension of where we all are. Not once in my entire time that I’ve been involved with this has anybody ever brought up the fact that he was gay.

I think mainly because it was eclipsed by the fact that he was a serial killer. That seems to be at the forefront of facts that people stick to. But, he was gay. I don’t think there was a homophobic bent to his series of murders. I think his homosexuality did lend him to certain scenes that he got to be a part of.

The people he dealt with and ultimately ended up murdering were people he had met through different underworlds of the gay scene in San Diego and Minneapolis. He had self-hatred. I think there were other feelings of ineptitude and being not good enough that really drove him. I don’t know how much of that had to do with him being gay. But that is a big part of our story.

It was the largest failed manhunt in FBI history. That seems like a big f***ing deal. A lot of people didn’t know about it. You have to scratch your head and you go, “Wait, so this guy killed how many people before Versace? How was he not caught?” He was on America’s most wanted list. Then, you start realizing, there’s a lot of fear and anxiety in law enforcement. And this is right after the worst part of the AIDS crisis in the mid-’90s.

You have a lot of this other stuff that’s happening that does lend itself to how this guy got away with it. That is important to mention. One thing I’ll say about “American Crime Story” that I’m truly proud to be a part of is the fact that, to me, “OJ,” the series, wasn’t just about OJ.

So, for our story yes, it’s about the horrible murder of an icon. And it’s about the journey and the downfall of the person who did it. But it’s also about everything that’s happening around—and how that echoes what we fear and deal with now

Darren Criss talks about his most challenging role to date—playing Andrew Cunanan (Part 2)

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LOS ANGELES—In a room inside the Versace mansion in Miami, just a few steps from where Andrew Cunanan fatally shot the designer, Darren Criss was told that Ryan Murphy, who cast him in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” paid him the supreme compliment.

Hearing that the award-winning executive producer-director cast him as Cunanan because he always knew there was a great dramatic actor in him, Darren gave a fittingly serious answer. Playing the serial killer, who murdered at least five people, is a big shift for Darren, who first worked with Ryan as Blaine Anderson in the musical TV series, “Glee.”

“Oh, how far we’ve come,” Darren quipped with a laugh. He has taken off his gray suit jacket. “Miami heat is getting to my head,” he explained.

We were in a room with walls gilded with mosaic tile work and stained glass windows, typical of the designer’s lavish home.

Like Cunanan, Darren is Filipino-American. The actor— the son of a Cebuana, Cerina (nee Bru), and Charles William Criss from Pennsylvania— noted his eerie resemblance to Cunanan. The latter’s mom (Mary Anne Schillaci) is Italian-American, while his dad, Modesto Cunanan, is Filipino.

For the actor who starred on Broadway in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” this role represents his biggest and most dramatic challenge yet.

Ryan, on a career high with his “Feud: Bette and Joan” and “The People v. OJ Simpson,” picked a fine cast to join Darren: Edgar Ramirez (Versace), Penelope Cruz (Donatella Versace) and Ricky Martin (Antonio D’Amico, Versace’s longtime lover).

The FX miniseries, which continues to shoot, debuts in early 2018.

Excerpts from our interview:

Ryan Murphy said he always knew there was a great dramatic actor in you, and he wanted people to see that in this show. How scary or daunting is that for you? Actors are only as good as the parts they get to play. It’s a passive art form. People will hate me for saying that because obviously, when you’re doing it, it isn’t passive. But if I’m a musician, I can pick up my guitar and play it. If there was no one in this room, I can still play my guitar. I can proactively be a musician.

I always say the best actors in the world, we’ll probably never know about. We’ll never get to see that guy do “King Lear,” that woman do “Hedda Gabler.” You have to wait for those moments.

This is a moment for me, and I recognize that. I do feel like my ship came in for this one. “Glee” was a big hit before I was on it. I had a very objective relationship with it. I was in college when it was all over the place. So, to suddenly be thrust on it was a strange but very wonderful experience.

It brings me here for which I’m unfathomably grateful. But I studied acting. I treat acting like a real craft as much as you love to roll your eyes at that little word. But it’s true. There’s no sense of entitlement. But I worked hard. I believe in doing the necessary steps to get to a certain place.

So, to be finally be given this opportunity, I feel prepared. Whether or not it’s good is a whole other story. It could be horrible, crash and burn. But it’s like that—give me the ball, coach. And Ryan certainly gave me a good throw. So I’m very excited about that.

You were 10 when Versace was killed. At what point in your life did you know about him? I knew Versace was killed in front of his home. I’d been here before, the first time I went to Miami. I remember looking it up, seeing the steps. This is so eerie. I vaguely remembered that he was half-Filipino. If there’s any half-Filipino in the media, you tend to pay attention to it.

I had, through the fabulous world of “Glee,” met Donatella. I had been to Versace’s home in Milan. But, that was about as far as a connection that I had.

Can you talk about filming the crucial assassination scene? It was gruesome. Because we were not shooting this in a sound studio in Los Angeles. This is the house—and people walking around here were there for that. We couldn’t hide it. It was in broad daylight. So, to feel that energy of this very real event, it weighed heavily on me.

When I shot it, I was thrilled because Edgar wasn’t here for that. If I had to look in Edgar’s eyes and do something like that, that would have been tough, because it weighs on your conscience.

But, as an actor, when you’re doing something like that, I’m not thinking of my conscience. As far as I’m concerned, I’m the hero in this story. That’s how I have to play it. There’s a certain longing, loss, confusion, hurt and just a f**kload of pain that is coming into an act like that.

That’s what you have to channel. It helps that we’re in paradise because we do this really gruesome stuff, then I can go home and have a cocktail on the beach. It’s like, “All right, real life is OK.”

Can you clarify why you didn’t film that scene with Edgar around? Only because that had to do more with the technical aspects. It’s highly technical, but the biggest meat of the shot was of me making the decision [to kill Versace] and going up [to him]. It’s giving a little bit away. So now, you know about that shot. Sorry, Ryan.

How did you research on Andrew Cunanan? The series is mainly based on the book of Maureen Orth, who’s an extraordinary journalist and did mind-bending work and collection of data from friends, family and all records available.

What’s interesting about this particular case is, as famous as Versace is, there’s not a whole lot of stuff [about it]. There’s only one book, at least one that’s pretty serious. The others are trashy pulp novels.

There are three different versions of Andrew that I have to deal with. There’s the real version that none of us knew. There is the version that people did know, then there’s the version that we’re telling.

As an actor, I can contact the family members or friends, but they’re all going to have different answers of who he was. My job is to serve the script. As much as I want to stay true to who Cunanan was, we really don’t know what kind of person he was. We just have to humanize him as much as possible and hope for the best.

(Conclusion tomorrow)

Darren Criss talks about his most challenging role to date—playing Andrew Cunanan