ACS: Versace: “House By the Lake” Is The Greatest Episode of TV Ryan Murphy Has Ever Produced

Last night’s episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, titled “House by the Lake,” is a turning point in the season. If last week’s episode, “A Random Killing,” took a break from the Versace narrative to tell a contained story about the murder of wealthy, closeted Lee Miglin in Chicago, this episode sets the series even further down the dark and ultimately shattering path of Andrew Cunanan’s murder victims. Beginning with the most brutally horrific scene of the season and ending with the most heartbreaking, it’s an hour that holds the audience fully in its thrall. It’s also the hour that most clearly depicts Ryan Murphy’s big-picture vision for the season. This isn’t about Versace. It’s not even fully about Cunanan. It’s about the cold grip of societal homophobia that keeps these characters locked into the tragic paths they’re on: killer and victims, none willing or able to divert from the path.

Continuing the season’s backwards chronology, episode 4 backs up to show Cunanan’s first killing, the Minneapolis murder of his acquaintance, Jeff Trail. The nature of that acquaintance will get fleshed out in a further episode, as you might have guessed from the fact that Trail is played by Murphy repertory player Finn Wittrock. Leaving the reasons for the Trail murder almost entirely undefined in this episode gives the actual killing — which takes place in the film’s opening ten minutes — an even more terrifying edge. It also opens the rest of the episode up for the character of David Madson.

For anyone with a familiarity with the Cunanan case, Madson is the biggest question mark. The Trail murder occurred in his apartment, which is where Trail was found by police, wrapped up in a rug. By that point, both Cunanan and Madson had gone on the run. The finger of suspicion pointed to Madson as a possible accomplice (at least), and between that point and the time six days later that Madson’s body was found near a lake 60 miles north of Minneapolis, no one really knows what transpired. It’s a gap in the narrative, and Murphy — along with writer Tom Rob Smith and director Daniel Minahan — takes that blank canvass and fills it in with something altogether devastating. Does it take liberties? Sure. It would have to. But David Madson’s story, as depicted here, tells a bigger story than just his own.

After witnessing Cunanan murder Trail, Madson is in a state of shock, yes, but he still knows a murder when he’s seen it. His and Trail’s relationships with Cunanan — from the fragments we get of it — appear to have soured after initial closeness. Cunanan fancied himself in love with David, had asked him to get married, and was visibly jealous of Madson and Trail together. Madson was altogether over it with Andrew in the moments leading up to the murder. And then after the murder, with a gun-toting Andrew calling the shots, David accompanied Andrew on the run. There was a gun, yes, but we see Andrew using much more than just a weapon to coerce David’s cooperation. David wants to call the police, but Andrew convinces him that the cops — who hate people like them, a pair of fags — will throw him in jail. David wants to call his father, but Andrew also preys upon his insecurities there too. Does he really want to bring his father into this sordid gay murder he’s gotten himself into?

The first three episodes of Versace have done such a deft job of seeding the rest of the story with a pervasive, but low-key, hostility and fear of gay people. From the police questioning Versace’s lover about their trysts with other men to the incredulous looks on the faces of the detectives investigating Lee Miglin’s death, even to the way that Donatella Versace — fashionable icon of the gays, future Maya Rudolph character herself — bristles (maybe even sneers) at her brother’s lifestyle. The cops who show up to investigate the Trail killing are at best pitiless as they poke around David’s apartment (“a gay thing”). Here’s where those deep-rooted attitudes begin to bear their rancid fruit. Here’s where they start claiming lives.

Murphy and Smith sketch out Madson’s backstory: a smart, handsome, kind young architect who so sought his conservative father’s approval. We see David come out to his dad under the pretext of announcing an academic achievement. It’s an achingly recognizable portrait of the hidden tolls of a homophobic society. David’s father’s reaction to his coming out was far from the nightmare scenario, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a maelstrom of conflict and doubt and fear inside David that at any point it might be. His relationship with his father, clearly so important with him, rested upon a thin ice of tolerance.

So Cunanan takes David on the run with him and continues to spin out these fantasies of a life together, David growing increasingly horrified, then disgusted, finally arriving at a kind of scornful pity at the empty shell that Andrew is and has always been. Then we get to the moment that should devastate audiences (it sure devastated me). Andrew and David pit-stopping for the evening at some podunk bar, Andrew temporarily distracted by his own dark thoughts as a bar singer (Aimee Mann in a cameo that feels tacky at first but ultimately deeply affecting) covers The Cars’ “Drive.” This is David’s moment, as he excuses himself for the bathroom and spots a window. All he needs is to make a break for it; but all he can think about is his dad finding out what’s happened. With escape at hand, he freezes, with Aimee Mann darkly intoning “Who’s gonna drive you home tonight?” on the soundtrack. On paper, it’s classic Too Much Ryan Murphy. The song, the cameo, the overly perfect lyrics giving the audience the message on a platter. But in its execution, with the heft of Mann’s vocal paired with the delicacy of the editing, and most especially Cody Fern’s revelatory performance in the role of David Madson, it’s nothing short of gutting.

Given the over-the-topness of pretty much every single episode of Ryan Murphy shows like American Horror Story, not to mention the frequent clumsiness of shows like Glee and The New Normal, it’s a surprise to see an episode like “House by the Lake” manage to hit so hard but with such precision. Murphy’s shows generally have a big impact but they almost always leave a bunch of collateral damage as well. With Versace, it’s been stunning to watch him bypass the temptation to wallow in the gaudy, the sordid, the Miami, the fashion of it all and instead to zero in on this particular story. The story of a world so hostile that it kept David Madson frozen in place inside that bathroom, wondering who would drive him home if he ever got out.

There’s Another Sordid Scandal Behind ‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’

At its core, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is a pointedly sad show. Gianni Versace‘s murder was a needless and hurtful crime, but the show’s last two episodes — “A Random Killing” and “House by the Lake” — have taken the show’s sad tone a step further, recreating the imagined final moments of Lee Miglin and David Madson. However, there’s another side to the story about Andrew Cunanan‘s murders that makes this moment in history so much more powerful and devastating. For all of the excellent work The Assassination of Gianni Versace has done to transform Cunanan’s victims from merely names into people who were sadly taken before their times, the FX series glosses over the police fumbles that ultimately led to Vesace’s death as well as the callous media circus this story became.

Whereas the first season of American Crime Story, The People v. O.J. Simpson, felt like a modern recreation of a well-known story, The Assassination of Gianni Versace feels far more character focused. Between detailed plot points taken directly from real life, the series spends most of its time imagining the emotions and relationships between everyone connected to Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) and Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez). It’s a touching approach, one which makes the deaths of these murdered men feel far more painful and humanizing than the more scandalous news cycle from this time ever did. However, in between examining the shocking similarities between Versace and the life Cunanan imagined for himself, it’s sometimes difficult to remember one of the main reasons why this story is being told in the first place. Versace’s murder was an almost completely preventable crime.

“I think it’s more than why he was killed. It was sort of why it was allowed to happen,” show creator Ryan Murphy said during FX’s panel for The Assassination of Gianni Versace during TCA’s summer tour in 2017. “Part of the thing that we talk about in the show is one of the reasons Andrew Cunanan was able to make his way across the country and pick off these victims, many of whom were gay, was because of homophobia at the time. Homophobia, particularly within the various police organizations that refused in Miami to put up ‘wanted’ posters, even though they knew that Andrew Cunanan had probably committed many of these murders and was probably headed that way, all of which we deal with in the show. So I thought that that was a really interesting thing to examine, to look at again, particularly with the president we have and the world that we live in.”

There are instances of this overwhelming police incompetence in American Crime Story, but the most compelling moments in Versace often don’t point them out. However, they are absolutely worth exploring because they are largely what transform this story from a serial killer’s spree to a crime of cultural significance. One of the most glaring examples of incompetence from law enforcement happened early in Cunanan’s killing spree. Following the murders of Jeff Trail and David Madson, who were believed to have been murdered in Minnesota, Cunanan traveled to Lee Miglin’s home in Chicago, Illinois. Shortly after Miglin’s murder, there was a stalemate between Minnesota and Illinois authorities as both law enforcement agencies wanted to bring the serial killer to justice. Things only got more complicated with the murders of William Reesein New Jersey and Gianni Versace in Florida.

That is nothing to say of the subtle homophobia that characterized the case. In Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History, Maureen Orth writes at length about how Cunanan’s sexuality affected how he was pursued. The most clear example of this is lack of flyers in Miami. The Assassination of Gianni Versace covers this oversight in its first two episodes. By the time Cunanan made it to Miami, he had already murdered four people and was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives List. Instead of alerting all of the gay bars in the Miami area, authorities chose to target a few, believing that Cunanan’s status as a male escort would mean he would only visit certain nightclubs. This spoke to a misunderstanding of Cunanan’s character and the South Florida LBGT community that would come to haunt authorities. Cunanan visited several nightclubs while in Miami and even allegedly admitted he was a serial killer to one customer.

More than perhaps anything else, the failures of the Cunanan case boil down to homophobia. The fact that Versace’s murder happened highlights how little authorities understood and wanted to understand the LGBT community as well as how that same community mistrusted them. One one hand, Vulgar Favors takes care to note that the Miami Police Department is one of the busiest in the country, as it largely has to deal with cartel and drug-related crimes. But on the other hand, it’s hard to argue that Cunanan was anything resembling a criminal mastermind. Authorities suspected him of these murders almost immediately, and most of his murders were equally brutal and sloppy. Two of the only reasons he got away with so many deaths for so long are because he happened to cross state lines and because he targeted a population that needed protection from authorities the most but was overwhelmingly unprotected. That’s the real crime of Gianni Versace’s death. It could have been avoided at so many points if people would have paid attention.

During a recent interview with Decider, executive producers Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson revealed that the original scripts for The Assassination of Gianni Versace did focus more on missteps from authorities. However, that element was edited because of the lack of overarching narrative and to make more room to tell the victims’ stories. “Part of it was the difficulty that, because it was this national manhunt with different states involved, there wasn’t necessarily one person or one character story that you could tell of somebody who was on the hunt, putting the clues together,” Jacobson said. “So we didn’t feel as though we had as much character drama coming from the police investigation side.”

However, there’s a third party at least partially responsible for Versace’s murder — the mainstream media. The way Orth presents it, the media climate surrounding Andrew Cunanan’s crimes was initially nonexistent and then overwhelming. There was very little coverage around the murders of Jeff Trail and David Madson in publications not catered to LBGT audiences, but Lee Miglin’s status as a fairly well-known member of Chicago society changed that. After his murder, Cunanan started to be discussed more by the mainstream outlets, which took advantage of Chicago law enforcement’s many leaks. Specific details about the brutal way Miglin was murdered were published, but the leak that changed the course of history was the one connected to Lee Miglin’s car phone. After murdering the esteemed real estate developer, Cunanan stole his car, which authorities tried to track through the car phone’s GPS. It was later found that Cunanan had ripped out the phone’s antennae, an action he presumably took after learning about the tracking from the news.

Whatever interest there was in the case transformed into a media frenzy during the eight days between Versace’s murder and Cunanan’s suicide. In Vulgar Favors, Orth dedicates an entire chapter to the absurd amount of money that was thrown around by tabloids, the appropriately titled “Show Me the Money.” Enquire allegedly paid one of Cunanan’s old roommates $85,000 for a dubious story about Cunanan’s sexual fantasies about Tom Cruise. An old friend of the serial killer’s was allegedly offered anywhere from $15,000 to $25,000 for an exclusive story and received 175 requests from press and television (he eventually turned them all down). One of Cunanan’s old acquaintances was paid $4,000 from Hard Copy to talk about Cunanan on TV. In the course of researching Vulgar Favors, Orth even reveals she was turned down for a few interviews from Cunanan’s more affluent friends because she didn’t pay.

Together, this is what makes the Cunanan case so truly horrific. Very early in the investigation, authorities knew that Andrew Cunanan was responsible for these murders. The killer even used his real name on at least one form that was supposed to be processed by the Miami PD (a pawn shop form) and used his real name during his daily life. Despite this transparency and despite the fact that Cunanan left a shocking trail of evidence in his wake, his killing spree lasted from April 27, 1997 until he killed himself on July 23, 1997. He was largely ignored when he was the most dangerous to the LGBT community, but after he claimed his most famous victim, he became, if only for a brief period of time, a must-watch spectacle. That’s the real tragedy buried at the center of The Assassination of Gianni Versace. It’s a story about how America failed a minority community when they needed it most, and it may be the saddest one Ryan Murphy has ever tackled.

Before writing Vulgar Favors, Orth covered the Cunanan case for Vanity Fair in the article “The Killer’s Trail.” You can read that piece in full here.

There’s Another Sordid Scandal Behind ‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’

Get Ready For Judith Light On Tonight’s ‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’

Through two episodes, you may think you have a good idea of the story that The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is telling you. The tragic opulence of the Versace lifestyle, gay chameleon Andrew Cunanan moving through the gay underworld of Miami and beyond, Penelope Cruz as Donatella upholding the family legacy through grief and pride. Was Versace HIV positive? How well did he and Cunanan know each other? Did Donatella really hate Gianni’s longtime lover? Was the police investigation botched? These are all the questions that seem to be driving the show through two episodes. Well, starting tonight with episode 3, titled “A Random Killing,” The Assassination of Gianni Versace steps towards becoming the show that it’s really about. And it does so featuring one of the all-time best single-episode performances in a Ryan Murphy series from Tony- and Emmy-winning actress Judith Light.

“A Random Killing” steps away from the Versace story entirely, focusing on Andrew Cunanan’s encounters with Chicago real-estate tycoon Lee Miglin. If you know the Cunanan story, you know Miglin was his third victim, murdered in his Chicago home. Whether Miglin knew Cunanan before his death — whether the two were sexually involved leading up to and including the day of Miglin’s death — has been a point of speculation that has been vigorously denied by Miglin’s surviving family. Ryan Murphy and writer Tom Rob Smith clearly have their own take on the story and don’t really mince words about it. But we also get the character of Marilyn Miglin, Lee’s wife and home-shopping cosmetics queen.

Marilyn, as played by Judith Light, is a quintessential Ryan Murphy character. She’s a perfectly put-together older woman who, by episode’s end, is holding her life together by the tips of her impeccably manicured fingernails. She keeps up appearances but she’s haunted by something she refuses to put a name to. In the real world, we can make up our own minds about whether Lee Miglin was gay or closeted or having sexual relationships with male escorts. In Murphy’s depiction of the story, Marilyn Miglin’s vehement denial of the circumstances of her husband’s life (and death) double as a vehement defense of her own life.

It’s also somewhat wild that it’s taken this long for Ryan Murphy to loop Judith Light into his stable of actors. She’s pretty much everything he tends to value in a performer: older actresses who haven’t been well served by the television (and movie, though Light has kept her career on TV and the stage for the most part) roles being offered to them. Light got nationally famous starring opposite Tony Danza on the ABC sitcom Who’s The Boss?, but before that, she was a two-time Daytime Emmy winner for the soap opera One Life to Live, where she played a character who, in her most notorious and well-remembered storyline, has a courtroom breakdown confessing her secret life as a prostitute.

In the years since Who’s The Boss?, Light’s career might have gone the way of many sitcom stars of the ’80s, but the fact that she held on, returned to her Broadway roots, won a couple of Tony Awards in the process, had that great role as a publishing matriarch on Ugly Betty, and has recently been such a strong presence on Transparent, it all adds up to the perfect Ryan Murphy muse: a steel-spined actress of a certain age who’s experienced the best and the worst of the entertainment industry and has come out on the other side. It’s all there in Light’s performance as Marilyn. She gets a monologue at the end of the episode that would make her a shoo-in for a Guest Actress Emmy Award, if only the guest-actress categories included limited series. Maybe it’s time they should, because between Robin Weigert’s brief but brilliant work as the therapist on Big Little Lies last year and Light’s work this year, there is some phenomenal acting that is slipping through the cracks.

And while Judith Light’s award-worthy acting is a big reason to tune in to tonight’s episode, you should also be there for when the series makes its pivot. It’s not that the Versace case ceases to matter, but it becomes less of the focal point of the show. Versace’s killing was the last in a string of murders. And while, in real life and on the show, it’s not easy to string one constant motivation for Cunanan’s actions throughout all five murders (rumors at the time that Cunanan had been diagnosed HIV-positive and was acting out of vengeance against men he’d slept with have been debunked), Murphy and Smith have done a good job laying the groundwork of a homophobic society. Starting tonight, we begin to see the insidious role that the closet plays in the Cunanan murders. Here’s where the show stops being a B-minus true-crime story and starts becoming an A-grade tragedy.

Get Ready For Judith Light On Tonight’s ‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’

‘American Crime Story’: FX’s Nina Jacobson And Brad Simpson Talk About The Challenges Of Creating Socially Conscious TV

At times it feels as though Ryan Murphy has an overwhelming number of shows, but there’s something special about American Crime Story. The first season of the anthology series, The People v. O.J. Simpson, swept the world by storm, dominating both critical conversations and achieving stellar ratings. For its second season, The Assassination of Gianni Versace may not be as all-encompassing as the first season of the show. However, there’s a sense of urgency, consciousness, and care about the portrayal of these real-life people baked into the DNA of Versace that makes this season a worthy sequel to the O.J. season of the show.

The creators of American Crime Story know the show’s reputation and strengths and are cautious about capturing the perfect balance of pulpy drama and socially conscious storytelling. As we’re in the middle of the first big show of 2018, Decider had the opportunity to Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson, executive producers for American Crime Story and FX’s upcoming musical drama Pose. The duo discussed the importance of telling the Versace and Cunanan story, the challenges of Ryan Murphy’s brand of storytelling, what it’s like working with FX, and what’s going on with the Monica Lewinsky and Hurricane Katrina seasons of American Crime Story.

“The first thing that Ryan pulled for was that we shoot in Miami, which is hard to do on a basic cable TV show,” Simpson said when asked about The Assassination of Gianni Versace‘s gorgeous cinematography. To achieve the show’s highly stylized and bright look, the team brought in two directors of photography — Nelson Cragg, who also directed Episode 2 “Manhunt” and worked on the O.J. season, and Simon Dennis, who worked on six episodes of the series.

“There’s a consistency [to the look of the show], but the show is darker and less vivid as we go back in time and see some of the murders. But also Ryan really wanted pink to be a central color of the show,” he said. “It’s important metaphorically because the show is in many ways about being gay, and pink is associated with that, but also we thought it was important because it was a big color in Miami, and it plays throughout the show with very clean lines.”

Simpson also revealed that the team used American Gigolo and the original Miami Vice for inspiration. “We hope that people enjoy the look while also getting more and more unnerved by it,” Simpson said.

The real story of Andrew Cunanan‘s murder spree was fairly sensationalized. However, the team was careful to be sensitive to these victims’ stories and portray them as people first. “The only victim that people really knew anything about was Versace and we wanted — to the best of our abilities — to tell the story of these other lives that were lost and for them to not sort of be lost in the shuffle of the celebrity victim who was the final victim and the one that everybody knew about,” Jacobson said. The team wasn’t able to learn much about William Reese, the victim who was murdered for his truck. However, they were able to expound on the stories of three of Cunanan’s other victims —Lee Miglin, David Madsen, and Jeff Trail.

“They had such complex stories to be told,” she said. “So much of what they experienced, the themes of homophobia and shame, the policies of being out at that time [are relevant], and we actually felt that rather than sensationalizing those murders, we wanted to humanize those victims.”

Though FX’s series largely sticks to its source material, there is a key difference between Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors and The Assassination of Gianni Versace. While Orth outlines police missteps and the media’s response to this case, Versace largely glosses these details. When asked why these elements were excluded, Jacobson pointed to editing.

“A lot of details from the book were in our script and were shot. And then through the editorial process we found that sort of where you wanted to be was you with the people who were the center of the story,” she said. “Part of it was the difficulty that, because it was this national manhunt with different states involved, there wasn’t necessarily one person or one character story that you could tell of somebody who was on the hunt, putting the clues together. So we didn’t feel as though we had as much character drama coming from the police investigation side.”

Just as The People v. O.J. Simpson was just as much about race relations as it was about national scandal, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is equally about these horrific murders as it is about homophobia and what it was like to be gay during this time. The Versace season is one of the best forms of socially conscious television, a brand Murphy has perfected. However, there are challenges that come with creating TV this way.

“I think the central thing is that you can’t start with the issues, you know? We like a good page turner, in terms of our movies, in terms of our TV shows. Ryan understands, and in a weird way he’s sort of been able to cloak shows that actually have a lot of radical change under just really good storytelling,” Simpson said. “I think Glee did a lot of hurrying up the acceptance among millennials and teaching their parents about difference and homosexuality.”

Simpson admitted that when Murphy first presented the Versace story to them, they weren’t very familiar with all of Cunanan’s murders and didn’t fully see the larger meaning. “As we got into it we realized this is a show about what it was like to be gay during this incredibly complicated time in America. People were trying to come out of the closet across the country, and half the people were trying to shove them back into that closet,” he said. “We’re able to tell that story because it’s a really griping story about this really griping thriller. And I think that’s the secret sauce for Ryan and what we’re interested in too. This sort of literary pulp is compulsive, but it has something to say.”

Simpson expects Pose, FX’s 1980s musical that currently has the largest transgender cast ever announced for a scripted series, to have that same balance. “What Ryan’s doing essentially is telling a musical about people’s hopes and dreams. I think that’s the reason an audience is going to connect to it,” he said. “That’s exactly what makes for compelling TV.”

Jacobson also explained how timeliness has effected both seasons of American Crime Story. “So many of the cases of black deaths at the hands of police were unfolding just right when we were writing and producing O.J., so it felt incredibly immediate even though it was a period piece,” she said. “[Versace] too is a period piece, but this was a time when I was coming out.”

“Versace is the first, really the first major designer to come out not because he was visibly ill with AIDs, which the only other out designers were dead. They had come out because they were visibly ill, and that was the final image that people had of them,” Jacobson said. “Ellen wasn’t out yet. Elton John was out, but very few other celebrities were. And certainly I would say I remember few women were out at that time and how few role models there were. You tend to tell stories that you identify with, that speak to you in a way that moves you, and for us this was a story that moved us.”

Speaking of timely stories, when asked if there had been any talks about moving up the Monica Lewinsky season of American Crime Story in the wake of the #MeToo movement, Simpson those conversations have happened, though nothing is official yet.

“I think we’re kind of glad that we didn’t do Monica right after O.J. I think that this conversation [in Hollywood about sexual misconduct] will inform how we do it. I think that it will inform our perspective on it in a way that’s probably good and cause us to explore issues of consent and what it means to be in a relationship with a powerful man and a younger woman that maybe wouldn’t have been as nuanced before this conversation,” he said. “We might have focused more on the politics. But all of these [shows], we handcraft them … the reason we haven’t been rushing things on the air and pressed pause on Katrina is because we want them all to have resonance.”

As for Katrina, the Five Days at Memorial season is still happening, but there are no official developments yet. “We have a writer working on it,” Simpson said. “We decided to stop announcing when we’ll in production on things because we’ll be in production when the scripts come in, right? We’re hopeful that this new approach is going to be the right one.”

For FX’s part, from Donald Glover to Noah Hawley, the network has been outspoken about allowing its creators to take their time when it comes to producing quality seasons of new shows. “We put a lot of work into a few things, and they’re appreciative of that. They only make pilots that they think they want to program, and they’re not throwing things against the wall,” Simpson said. “I think it’s the smartest group of people working in TV. And it’s been great because our first couple of seasons of working on TV and working with Ryan, who’s also been a great mentor to us, has also coincided with John Landgraf’s team really getting recognized for what they do. As we watch shows like The Americans and Atlanta get noticed along with our shows, we feel like we’re in great company.”

As for FX’s future, the executive producers seemed optimistic about that as well. When asked how she thought Disney’s acquisition of Fox might effect FX, Jacobson said her former employer likely bought Fox because of its content. “It’s been a long time since I’ve worked there, and a lot has changed since I’ve worked there,” she said. “The offerings, I think, from Fox and FX are quite different, and I would assume that … they want those differences in terms of launching Hulu as a major competitor to Netflix and Amazon. But I have to assume they bought Fox because they see the talent that’s there and the library of great shows, and they want some of the differentiation.”

‘American Crime Story’: FX’s Nina Jacobson And Brad Simpson Talk About The Challenges Of Creating Socially Conscious TV

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Episode 2 Recap: Light Is the Left Hand of Darkness

If you thought the saintlike halo surrounding the title character in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story‘s premiere was striking, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Not to get all Manchurian Candidate about it, because there’s no reason to believe writer Tom Rob Smith’s take on the designer is anything but sincere. But based on “Manhunt,” the riveting, rhapsodic, terrifying second episode, it’s safe to say Gianni Versace is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life, which makes the hour’s ever-deeper plunge into the abyssal psyche of his murderer — the “white guy who killed four white guys,” as a witness who nearly helps nab him (inaccurately) describes him — all the more frightening to endure.

When the episode opens, Gianni has been stricken with what appears to be but is never referred to explicitly as HIV/AIDS — the real-life Versace family’s principal objection to the series and to reporter Maureen Orth’s Vulgar Favors, the book on which it’s based. He does not push away his partner Antonio for initiating him into the rollicking open relationship that likely exposed him to the virus, even as his sister Donatella blames the younger man for Gianni’s illness. (Their exchange includes some dynamite dialogue sure to be quoted far and wide: “I am not a villain, and he is not a saint.” “My brother has a weakness for beauty. He forgives it anything. But I am not my brother.”) In fact, Gianni quite literally leans on his boyfriend of many years for support when he’s too weak to walk by himself. The sickness’s main effect on him is to dull his creative impulse, because, simply put, he cannot create when he’s sad.

And when he rebounds thanks to the era’s miracle drugs, he’s like a man reborn. He bucks the era’s trends towards scary-skinny models (“They look ill,” he says, perhaps recalling the emaciation of HIV sufferers who weren’t so lucky) and just plain scary designs, arguing that strength, health, and joy are precisely what his clothes are meant to highlight and celebrate in the women who wear it. He challenges his skeptical sister Donatella to a design-off, pitting his bright and buoyant designs against her severe and on-trend approach, and wins over a fashion-show crowd dulled into quiescence by Donatella…but because they love and respect each other so much, Donatella seems legitimately happy his philosophy came out on top, and he certainly does nothing to rub his victory in her face. You can dig on the terrific music cue for the runway scene, the Lightning Seeds’ trip-hoppy Austin Powers soundtrack cover of the Turtles’ “You Showed Me”, or get a kick out of the cattiness involved in making real models’ names recognizable in the scene where Gianni calls out the vogue for emaciation (Shalom! Irina! Karen!), but mostly the effect is just to win us over the same way the designs won over the folks in the front row at the show.

The better angels of Versace’s nature don’t stop flying at the runway’s edge, either. When Antonio brings a guy back to their place for a threeway, Gianni’s too busy working to join in the fun, but he gives his partner his blessing to continue without him, and smiles with quiet delight at the sounds of pleasure coming from the man he loves in the background as he draws. When Antonio proposes, Versace gently rebuffs him, knowing that the younger man would chafe under the commitment but loving him no less for that. For God’s sake, Gianni is even nice to the Donatella impersonator who tries, not for the first time apparently, to crash his compound while Andrew stakes it out! I don’t know if there’s a word in Italian that covers all the connotations of mensch, but Versace is that to a tee.

Compare the love on Gianni’s side of this episode’s ledger to the fear, hate, and horror on Andrew’s. Just two episodes into the series, Darren Criss is cementing the status of his portrayal of Cunanan as one of the all-time great on-screen serial killers, not just calling to mind Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates, Tom Noonan as Francis Dolarhyde, Ted Levine as Jame Gumb, or Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman, but actually earning the comparisons.

He’s certainly helped in this respect by Smith’s script and the direction of People v. O.J. cinematographer Nelson Cragg. The reference set they assemble for Andrew to inhabit includes a genderbent shower scene by the beach with Andrew’s ersatz friend and escort manager Ronnie (a warm, wounded, marvelously understated Max Greenfield), combining Psycho‘s defining visual with the pre-shower/murder rapport between Norman and Marion Crane, not to mention its star Perkins’s closeted sexuality. (A motel also figures prominently, again with roles reversed: Andrew’s the guest on the run from the law, not the person at the front desk, and he must ingratiate himself to her instead of the other way around.)

Elsewhere, a scene of excruciating sadism, in which an underwear-clad Andrew dances to the Big ‘80s strains of Phil Collins and Philip Bailey’s pounding “Easy Lover” while an escort client slowly suffocates beneath the duct-tape mask Cuanan wrapped around his head (“You’re helpless…accept it…accept it…ACCEPT IT…”) drags the male-on-male-gaze subtext of Bret Easton Ellis and Mary Harron’s respective American Psychos squirming into the harsh Florida light. Simultaneously hitting Pulp Fiction‘s gimp sequence, Boogie Nights‘s “Sister Christian”/”Jesse’s Girl”/”99 Luftballoons” coke deal gone bad, and Silence of the Lambs‘ Buffalo Bill/”Goodbye Horses” buttons as well, this is a scene people will remember. (A closing scene in which Cunanan prefaces his usual torrent of bullshit about his life by straight-up saying “I’m a serial killer” to a prospective suitor also tears a page from the AP playbook.)

And in the most chilling allusion of all, Ronnie — a sweet guy who moved to Miami because he’d heard “people like living by the ocean who don’t have much living left,” then got unexpectedly healthy, and now dreams of opening up a small florist shop with the money he and Andrew have amassed from his escort gigs — knocks on the bathroom door and finds Andrew in full Manhunter Great Red Dragon mode on the other side, the top half of his face rendered obscure and inhuman by the duct tape he’d applied to himself. Because the context of each of these scenes is so specific to who Andrew and Ronnie are, none of it feels derivative or plagiaristic, the way the generic King/Carpenter/Spielberg rehash of Stranger Things does, for example. Indeed, it’s no different from the way it alludes to Christ telling Peter he’d deny him three times when Andrew tells Ronnie, who’s desperate for connection even as Cunanan flees, “When someone asks you if we were friends, you’ll say no.” As I’ve argued before, the horror genre exists in conversation with itself, and Versace is simply using the language established by its forebears to tell a story all its own.

Yet I think the episode’s two most moving and crushing moments don’t fit neatly in either category. The first involves Versace’s final repose: cremated, his ashes are placed in a bag monogrammed with a V, like everything else in the Versace empire. The gold box in which the bag of ashes is placed for transport back to Italy gets its own seat on the plane. Even in death, beauty and luxury are everything.

The second involves Andrew, making his getaway following the murder. After replacing his stolen car’s plates in a Wal-Mart parking lot — grinning like the cat who got the cream at the girl who spots him doing it, pleased beyond reckoning that he’s getting away with it — he drives down the highway with the windows down, blasting Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” and singing along at the top of his lungs while flubbing every other lyric. Contrasted with his petty glee at committing a crime in front of a little kid, this an utterly brutal portrait of forced happiness and feigned freedom. He’s going through the motions of every Brat Pack flick and Bonnie & Clyde knockoff he’s ever seen, but this brat has no pack, this Clyde has no Bonnie. He’s alone with his horror, and he can’t drown that out forever. How do the lyrics go? “I think you’re headed for a breakdown, so be careful not to show it.”

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Episode 2 Recap: Light Is the Left Hand of Darkness

Why’d It Take Us This Long To Catch Onto Darren Criss?

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This month, FX premiered its long-awaited sequel to 2016’s cultural event, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story. There was a lot riding on The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Season 1 of the Ryan Murphy anthology series didn’t just show up during awards season. It dominated awards shows while becoming a must-watch show. The Versace season of American Crime Story may not have the culturally-halting effect of the O.J. Simpson season of the show, but it does have something remarkable we need to discuss. Versace has finally given Darren Criss a place to shine.

If you’re a little late to one of the first must-see TV events of the year, Criss plays the serial killer Andrew Cunanan in what is arguably one of the most complicated roles Murphy and his team has ever created. Versace‘s version of Cunanan is very similar to Maureen Orth’s depiction of the murderer in nonfiction book Vulgar Favors. This portrayal paints Cunanan as a charming killer who cannot be trusted as long as his lips are moving. There’s a sensuality to the character, a characterization that aligns with his status as a male escort but also stands as an overt depiction of raw sexuality that LGBT characters are rarely allowed to display on TV. There’s a danger to every move he makes and every lie he tells, but underneath that danger is a sort of manic, self-hating energy, some nebulous thing that immediately signals to the reader or viewer that this character is not well. And on top of all of these things, in Versace the Cunanan character has to be able to carry the story while competing against stronger, more established characters like Gianni Versace and Donatella Versace. This means holding his own against great performances from Edgar Ramirez, Penélope Cruz, and Ricky Martinall without becoming too sympathetic. As history reminds us, Andrew Cunanan murdered five people before killing himself. Even in the middle of a miniseries where he is cast as a protagonist, Cunanan should never be hailed as a hero.

And yet after watching the first eight episodes of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Criss has been able to balance all of these conflicting and complicated themes beautifully.

There are many roads that led to Criss being the perfect choice to portray Andrew Cunanan. The actor’s biggest break actually came from Ryan Murphy, a show creator who is now partially known for collecting his favorite actors and actresses. After Criss starred in an arc on the ABC show Eastwick, Murphy cast the musically-inclined actor as Glee‘s Blaine, a character who quickly become a major love interest for Kurt (Chris Colfer). After his five-year run on Glee, Criss went on to portray another influential LGBT character, the lead and titular character in Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Criss and Cunanan are both relatively the same age and look similarly. Cunanan killed himself when he was 27 years old, and Criss is currently 30. Both are even half Filipino. There are a shocking amount of similarities, especially when you consider Criss is now living a life Cunanan always craved.

But more than perhaps anything else, Criss is an actor who was almost destined to happen. Before being a YouTube star was an actual profession, Criss’ work made an impression on the platform. Through StarKid Productions, a musical theater company Criss co-founded along with some University of Michigan classmates, Criss’ name was attached to two of the biggest amateur musicals to grace YouTube — Me and My Dick and A Very Potter Musical. Part 1 of Me and My Dickcurrently has over 1.8 million views and scored a place on the Billboard 200 charts. A Very Potter Musical has over 14 million views and two sequels. That’s not all. Criss’ version of “Teenage Dream” for Glee earned a place on the Billboard Hot 100 for a period of time and is still regarded as one of the best songs from that song-filled show. That’s not even mentioning the fact that Criss’ run as J. Pierrepont Finch in the Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying — a role he somewhat ironically took over from Daniel Radcliffe — made a shocking $4 million. Darren Criss was going to happen.

So what’s taken us so long? It seems to be a combination of lack of roles on creators’ part and lack of interest from Criss. The actor was on Gleeuntil 2015 and part of the traveling tour of Hedwiguntil later 2016. He’s been busy, and we as audineces have had a million other projects to pay attention to. However, now the actor has the time, the platform, the intricate role, and the guiding creator to become a household name.

It’s time for us all to embrace how incredibly talented (and incredibly creepy) Darren Criss is. If you’ve been a longtime Criss fan, congratulations. Your time has come. As for everyone else, welcome to the club.

Why’d It Take Us This Long To Catch Onto Darren Criss?

Holy Schmidt! Max Greenfield Is Nearly Unrecognizable In ‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’

Never underestimate the power of a mustache. While they’re often used as a joke when it comes to disguises, some of them truly do get the job done. Especially the one Max Greenfield grew for his role as Ronnie in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.

In a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him moment, he appeared for a few brief seconds in the first episode of the series when the police busted into his hotel room on a search for Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss). But the second episode gives us so much more of Ronnie, and if you don’t recognize him at first, you aren’t alone. You’d think that after six whole seasons of New Girl, we would all be able to spot the man we now affectionately know as Schmidt, but with his hair trimmed up top and grown in over his upper lip, this is a whole new man we’re dealing with.

Greenfield sinks into the character, in his walk and his posture, and his cutoff jean shorts and half-unbuttoned shirt (what would Schmidt think?!), as he puffs on cigarettes and reluctantly strikes up a friendship with Cunanan. It took me two whole scenes of dialogue before I realized who I was watching. He keeps Ronnie casual, ambivalent, and a little chatty at times but nice enough, throughout an episode that not only sets the scene of Miami in the ’90s, but establishes the structure of the storytelling and episodes to come.

Not that this is the first time Greenfield has stepped away from the clean-cut, nice guy roles we so often see him in to work with Ryan Murphy: he also made our eyes widen in 2015’s American Horror Story: Hotel, with a bit of an appearance transformation there as well. And while the hair and the mustache and the clothes all add to the compelling character he brings to the screen for Versace, not everyone is a big fan. As he explained to Ellen earlier this month, his daughter was “just furious” about the mustache. With New Girl‘s seventh and final season airing this spring, it will be interesting to see if Greenfield reteams with Murphy for future projects, and if so, his daughter, and audiences, should plan to brace themselves.

Holy Schmidt! Max Greenfield Is Nearly Unrecognizable In ‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Episode 1 Recap: This Man, This Monster

Can Ryan Murphy return to the scene of the crime and get away with it?

At least as much as any mystery behind the titular slaying, this creative question is what The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story must solve. The Gleemastermind and workaholic TV creator/producer/director’s work is as wide-ranging as it is prolific, with ACS in production at the same time as his other series American Horror Story, FEUD, 9-1-1, the now-canceled Scream Queens, and the forthcoming Pose, Ratched, and ACS‘s third season, Katrina, which may as well be a whole different series.

But however you feel about his other projects, ACS‘s debut season, The People v. O.J. Simpson, is unquestionably his apotheosis. In conjunction with writer-creators Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, Murphy revisited a media-circus murder case nearly everyone thought had been exhausted of any creative or sociopolitical potential, and the result was a kaleidoscopic, knockout-powerful examination of racism, sexism, celebrity culture, journalism, the judicial system, the rise of reality TV, domestic violence, police misconduct, and the whole goddamn human condition. It was one of the best television shows of all time, full stop. Can Murphy, now working with writer Tom Rob Smith and adapting journalist Maureen Orth’s book on the case Vulgar Favors, draw water from that same dark well a second time?

Yes.

“The Man Who Would Be Vogue,” the premiere episode of ACS Versace, is every bit as gripping and impressive as its predecessor, but with two major structural differences. The first is that there’s not even a shadow of a doubt as to whodunnit, and no trial to determine the suspect’s guilt on the horizon. Andrew Cunanan, a handsome young social-climbing sociopath who’d crossed paths with Versace and become obsessed, killed the great Italian fashion designer at the tail-end of a cross-country murder spree; it’s his story as much as the title character’s, if not more so. From the start, this gives Versace a tighter focus, with a tone more in keeping with a serial-killer biopic or a dark Coen Brothers murder-morality play (I honestly catch major Barton Fink/Fargo/No Country/Blood Simple vibes from this thing) than O.J.‘s sprawling canvas.

The second structural change is that while Versace, too, centers on a high-profile crime involving a wealthy ’90s celebrity, it appears poised to tackle virtually the only hot-button issue O.J. didn’t: homophobia. From Cunanan’s quasi-closeted status and resentment of a man able to live more freely on his own terms, to the culture clash between Miami’s thriving gay scene and its reflexively bigoted cops, the era’s prejudices come across like unindicted co-conspirators.

This gives the assassination a truly tragic air. After all, the show’s approach to Versace himself, per writer Smith’s own characterization of it, is one of straight-up celebration. In this episode he emerges as the opposite of what you might expect from his almost grotesquely lavish, Young Pope-esque taste in furnishings and home design: a real man of the people, a guy who’s kind to his employees, who’s friendly to the neighbors, who (as he tells Andrew) wants nothing more than for his “love for life” to shine through in the clothes he designs. He and his partner Antonio (Ricky Martin, restrained and heartbreaking) have an open relationship, but it’s an openness they share together — an “if you’re happy and feeling good, I’m happy and feeling good” kind of deal that the tawdry imaginings of the local cops can’t even begin to encompass.

He’s also a family man. To the extent that there’s any strife in Versaceland at all, it’s because his partner Antonio and his sister-slash-heir apparent, Donatella, are basically locked in a contest over who loves the guy more. As he tells Andrew, his sister is his muse, and their childhood adventures together exploring the local ancient ruins inspired the Versace brand’s legendary Medusa logo. (“I know that many people call it pretentious, but I don’t care. How could my childhood be pretentious?”) For pete’s sake, the thing that wins him over to Andrew is when the young man tells a story about his beloved Italian mother! More than a fashion designer or a gay icon, the Gianni Versace of ACS is a secular saint.

And if you’re going to kill an angel, you need a demon. That role falls to Darren Criss as Andrew Cunanan, a performance that in this hour alone looks headed for cinematic serial-killer hall of fame. It’s not too soon, I think, to compare Criss’s work as Cunanan — a straight man playing a gay predator — to Psycho‘s Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates — a gay man playing a straight predator. Physically and verbally they’re not so far apart: lean physiques, softly handsome features, gentle voices, a tone of good cheer that sits atop a wellspring of hatred, resentment, self-loathing, and violence like the lid of a pressure cooker. Cunanan’s love of the finer things, his ability to convincingly portray himself as a “normal” young upper-class up-and-comer, and his penchant for creeping around bare-chested and bikini-briefed will also call to mind Christian Bale’s iconic Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. Indeed there are several times throughout the episode — most notably the moment where Andrew sees a news report on the murder he’s just committed and literally mimics the shocked reaction of a nearby onlooker — where you can see Cunanan physically applying Bateman’s “mask of sanity.”

The difference between this killer that one, the thing that makes him closer to the original Psycho than its American descendent, is the sense that underneath that mask of sanity there really is something, someone. The show isn’t above portraying Andrew’s personality in a comical way to make that point, either. With his hoity-toity manner of speech, his compulsive social climbing, and his constant stream of impressive names to drop, places he’s gone, things he’s done, et cetera an ad nauseam, he often comes across like David Hyde Pierce on Frasier, if Dr. Niles Crane had happened to be a murderer.

But there’s pain in Andrew, too. Recall how he screams into the ocean water during his pre-slaying swim, how he vomits into a public toilet as he works up the nerve to pull the trigger. When he bullshits his way into Versace’s presence and winds up attending the opera for which he’s the costume designer, the music moves him to tears. After the show, he clearly wants to believe all the kind, supportive things Gianni is saying about him as they hang out on stage together. (And there’s every reason to believe Gianni means every word, him being such a mensch.) Andrew sucks people in with lies and sucks life out of his resulting proximity to wealth, glamour, sex, and power to fill a hole in his heart, yes, but his heart really does exist. He’s a vacuum, not a void. It’s a subtle distinction, but so far it seems to be a crucial one.

There’s so much more to talk about here: the gauzily gaudy cinematography by Nelson Cragg, capturing the splendor of Versace’s Miami mansion with a lens so wide it’s almost fish-eyed; memorable cameos by Mad Men‘s Jay R. Ferguson and Raging Bull‘s Cathy Moriarty; Edgar Ramírez’s instant likability as the powerful but kindly designer; Penelope Cruz’s appropriately mush-mouthed but resolutely non-caricatured turn as the larger-than-life Donatella; all the stranger-than-fiction touches, like Antonio’s blood-spattered tennis whites, the wannabe model striking poses in front of news cameras at the crime scene, the cops and FBI’s multiple blown chances and near misses in their pursuit of the killer, the bird that got caught in the crossfire when Cunanan made his move. Between the subject matter’s milieu and the swirlingly stylized approach the show takes to it, you may be tempted to describe the result as camp. To do so is to deny the depth of what’s happening here, and the moral seriousness with which Murphy, Smith, Criss, and company are depicting it. Until it all wraps up eight weeks from now, a killer walks among us.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Episode 1 Recap: This Man, This Monster

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Paints A Devastating Portrait of 1990s Homophobia

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is going to disappoint a lot of people, I think. The people who had such a blast with The People v. O.J. Simpson, who rolled around in the ’90s nostalgia and gawked at how well the actors were playing these pop culture footnotes whose faces and actions we’d remembered from 20 years ago — those people are not going to find very much fun in revisiting the killing spree of Andrew Cunanan, who murdered five people beginning in April 1997, culminating in the murder of Italian designer Gianni Versace in front of his palatial Miami home in July of that same year. This wasn’t a media circus nor a long-running judicial soap opera, and it doesn’t say the Big Things about the American justice system or racial dynamics that The People v. O.J. did. That show was a perfect storm; a thrillingly multi-faceted story that we all remembered with a mixture of fascination, disbelief, and humor, even as we took the appropriate moments to nod mournfully at the deaths of two people. It was good and good for you, and it was also a whole lot of fun. This is not that.

Versace will also likely disappoint anyone looking for a deeper look at the life and accomplishments of its title character. Though Versace’s death is the focal point of the first episode, and his character recurs throughout the series in scenes from earlier in his life, this is no more a series about Gianni Versace — famed gay Italian fashion designer whose clothes and runway presentations brought a pop celebrity element to fashion in the ’90s — than The People v. O.J. was about Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. …Okay, he’s not that absent from the narrative; you don’t cast Edgar Ramirez, Penelope Cruz, and Ricky Martin to play the Versace wing of this story and completely cut them off. But anyone looking for a gaudy Ryan Murphy take on the excesses of the Versace lifestyle, with Cruz doing her best Maya Rudolph “get ooooooout” as Donatella will have to be content with the first episode. That hour pauses to stare lasciviously at the decor of Versace’s Miami mansion; the servants who hold trays with orange juice in champagne flutes for Gianni’s morning routine. It’s luxurious and excessive, and since the one thing we do know about this story is that Versace will soon be dead, it feels sharply cruel. It feels, in short, like a Ryan Murphy series, which often gives you exactly the sex/violence/intrigue you want and then slaps you a little bit for watching it.

But beyond those first minutes, Versace fades into the background to make room for, as cosmically unfair as this may seem, his killer, Andrew Cunanan. It may not turn out to be a popular decision — I’ll be shocked if The Assassination of Gianni Versace is even a fraction of the hit that People v. O.J. was — but creatively, it’s hard to quibble, because here’s the thing: the show that we get, the show about Andrew Cunanan and his murder victims and the systems that kept them hidden away, either in the shadows or behind gilded gates, that show is a bit of brilliance.

Produced by Ryan Murphy, written by London Spy‘s Tom Rob Smith, based off of the Maureen Orth book Vulgar Favors and told in reverse chronology, from the Versace movie on backwards, the story of Andrew Cunanan — con artist, drug addict, rent boy, striver, liar, killer — doesn’t lend itself to the kind of armchair quarterbacking (forgive the football pun) that the O.J. Simpson trial did. It’s all murkier, dirtier, sadder than any of us remember. While Versace’s murder and the subsequent manhunt for Cunanan made national news, the details of the killing, and the four murders that preceded it, weren’t the kind of kitchen-table fascinations that Marcia Clark and F. Lee Bailey were. There is a sense, after watching the series (8 of the 9 episodes were made available to press), that the Cunanan killings were treated in the American imagination as a kind of niche gay horror, mired in the darkened clubs and closeted assignations that still characterized the gay experience of the 1990s.

As successful as the series is at following Cunanan, played by Darren Criss as a frighteningly unknowable cipher whose desperation to feel important (rich, famous, beautiful, loved) leads him inexorably to murder, it’s even better as a depiction of the role homophobia and the closet played in both the murders and their subsequent investigations. Four of Cunanan’s five victims — excepting cemetery caretaker William Reese, who was murdered essentially as a bystander as Cunanan stole his truck — were either gay or rumored to be gay, and their relationship to Cunanan (lovers? objects of desire/envy?) unclear. The low-key but persistent homophobia of the time period is insidious and pervasive. It’s there as Miami police question Versace’s partner Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin) about his and Gianni’s sex lives. It’s there as investigators question Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light) about her husband, Lee, the Chicago real estate tycoon and Cunanan’s third victim. (Miglin’s relationship to Cunanan has long been in dispute, and while Murphy and co. keep the technicalities shrouded, it’s clear where the show stands on the matter.) It’s there in the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell minefield traversed by Jeff Trail (a fantastic Finn Wittrock), Cunanan’s first victim, who met Cunanan in the San Diego gay bars he visited in secret while he was in the Navy. And it’s there behind the haunted eyes of David Madson (the utterly revelatory Cody Fern), Cunanan’s second victim.

The David Madson killing is the one we know least about, and as a result the one that Murphy and Smith take the most liberties with. But where you might expect “Ryan Murphy takes liberties” to lead to something gaudy and over-the-top, the show instead imagines a devastating series of events that lays bare the show’s clearest theme: 1990s American attitudes about LGBT people kept these murders quiet, kept these victims trapped, kept their salvation out of reach.

In Darren Criss, Ryan Murphy has found one of his most deeply committed and terrifying muses. He disappears into a character who himself disappears into whomever he’s trying to be. He’s not a Catch Me If You Can-style chameleon. Andrew’s is a sneaker and more darklyrelatable kind of malleability. He’s whatever version of himself he wants to be. He can come from wealth, he can be building sets for the upcoming Titanic movie, he can work in the financial sectors of the entertainment industry, he can have met Gianni Versace one night at a San Francisco club. Criss does this all with a frightening amount of charm in a performance that’s as deeply committed as anyone on a Ryan Murphy show to date.

The Versace material, beyond the first episode, acts in a kind of counterpoint to the events of the Cunanan story. Versace’s bold move to out himself publicly, at a time when even the most obviously gay celebrities never talked about it in the media, is contrasted with Trail’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell struggles. Donatella Versace’s determination to keep her brother’s fashion empire in the family finds a mirror later in Marilyn Miglin holding tightly to her and her husband’s legacy. Anyone looking for Penelope Cruz to burlesque her way to an Emmy will probably walk away disappointed that the show doesn’t give her enough to do, but for once Murphy has opted for moderation.

Rather than a portrait of the life and death of a fashion icon, Murphy and Smith have created a diffuse collage of tragedy and crime that will probably confound and frustrate the very audience that found The People v. O.J. so intoxicating. But there’s real gravity to this story and a frustrated, heartbroken scream into a hostile void that cuts far deeper than mere rubbernecking. It’s not fun, but it’s not to be missed.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Paints A Devastating Portrait of 1990s Homophobia

‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’ Is Disturbing, Excellent, And Absolutely Necessary

Andrew Cunanan‘s killing spree couldn’t have existed without silence. For four months in 1997, the serial killer claimed five victims, including the iconic fashion designer Gianni Versace. Cunanan wasn’t able to get away with these crimes because he was a master criminal. He was able to take so many lives largely because of an overprotective and unfocused police force that made countless major missteps and a media climate that didn’t care about a serial killer who targeted gay men until it was too late. It’s a story about the unspoken effects of silent discrimination. To this day, Versace’s murder is defined by silence. The murder of one of the first openly gay celebrities should be common knowledge instead of the often forgotten historic footnote it currently is. However, after the premiere of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, it will be next to impossible to forget the horrors of Versace’s murder.

Versace marks the second installment in Ryan Murphy‘s anthology series American Crime Story, and at first glance, it seems like an odd story to follow the groundbreaking The People V. O.J. Simpson. Though both criminal cases were defined by all-consuming amounts of media attention toward their end, Versace’s murder hasn’t stood the tests of modern history like O.J. Simpson’s trial has. In this way, Versace is a far more subtle season of the anthology series, dwelling longer in imagined conversations and alleged interactions than its predecessor ever did. But in every other way, Versace is the more direct season of the two. The series is one of the creepiest things Murphy has ever created, and it refuses to be ignored.

Almost all of Versace’s gripping yet unsettling elements can be attributed to Darren Criss‘ revolutionary performance as Andrew Cunanan. Criss brings an over-eager and rambling energy to the killer that initially starts as charming but then falls into the depths of being unhinged the more he lies. And FX’s version of Andrew lies a lot. From the series’ first episode, Andrew breathlessly drawls on about how vulgar he finds Versace’s designs before later obsessively tearing through every Versace ad and story he can get his hands on. As a viewer, it’s impossible to know what Andrew is thinking or motivated by at any given time, a choice that reflects the winding narrative of the book the Versace season is based on, Maureen Orth’s Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U. S. History. That unhinged uncertainty also makes for one of the most disturbing television has seen in recent years.

In comparison, Édgar Ramírez’s take on the iconic Gianni Versace is defined by authenticity. Tragically and pointedly, Gianni Versace is the beating heart of this story. FX and Murphy portray the designer as a giving and wise man who understood the value of loving life and deeply loved his family. Seeing the designer teach his sister Donatella Versace (Penélope Cruz) about the emotion behind fashion and reassuring his partner Antionio D’Amico (Ricky Marty) about his deep love for him are two of the best parts of the series. There is light and goodness to this dark series. It’s evident even when Donatella and Antonio are at each other’s throats. However, it’s because the series works so hard to make Gianni Versace such an immediately endearing character that the Versace installment is so tragic.

This season doesn’t mince words. The first 10 minutes of the series painstakingly show Versace’s brutal murder, allowing the rest of the series to work backwards from that moment. If anything, it’s this format that prevents the second season of American Crime Story from ever feeling too exploitative. Versace seems obsessed with trying to figure out why these murders were allowed to go on for so long, sorting through Cunanan’s life in an attempt to find an answer. By the end of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Andrew Cunanan doesn’t merely stand as Versace’s killer. He emerges as a terrifying monster who murdered five people who only wished him well. Likewise, Versace isn’t presented as just a talented designer. He emerges as a genius of his industry who was struck down far before his time. The saddest and most morbid note the series makes is how similar these two very different men truly were.

Versace is a deeply disturbing and confusing season of television. For every horrifying detail the series revels in, there is a beauty and sexiness that defines every one of its main characters. However, Versace does a few great things for this crime that have been sorely missing for a while. It gives names and faces to all of Cunanan’s victims, fully confronts the LGBT discrimination that was baked into this case, and it serves as a study of one of modern day history’s most chilling serial killers. The circumstances around Gianni Versace’s murder may have been categorized by silence, but American Crime Story’s take on Cunanan’s killing sprees is one of the loudest and boldest sagas on television.

‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’ Is Disturbing, Excellent, And Absolutely Necessary