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Do Ratings Still Matter? Ryan Murphy Argues There Are No Rules Any More

Ryan Murphy’s freshman series 9-1-1 is the most watched show on Wednesdays, and the most watched show on all of Fox, with 14.3 million viewers.

With more than 400 scripted shows vying for your time, let’s just give you the highly scientific data here: Those kind of numbers are about as easy to come by as a unicorn crapping gold on your front lawn.

For Murphy, whose shows are often adored by fans and critics, but aren’t always necessarily heavy-hitters in the Nielsens, this kind of ratings bonanza, right out of the gate, feels a little surreal.

“I really did 9-1-1 as an experiment with [Fox Television Group Chairman] Dana Walden,” Murphy tells E! News. “Like, what’s not on network television? I had no expectations of it, but I just wanted to surround myself with people that I’d worked with and loved. And then when those live numbers were coming in, they were so high, comparatively, and it won every night during its run, and I was pleasantly surprised.”

And perhaps a little conflicted, given that 9-1-1’s numbers were coming in at the same time as the second installment of Murphy’s American Crime Story, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, which appeared to underperform compared to the series’ first installment, The People vs. OJ Simpson, on FX.

(Both Versace and 9-1-1 air their season finales tonight.)

O.J. was clearly a ratings behemoth—and an awards-show beast. But while Versace hasn’t garnered quite as much buzz or live-viewing luster, it does seem well positioned for its own awards glory, and plenty of streaming clicks when it hits Netflix. (Not only is it a natural binge-watch series, you actually can watch it in reverse for a second go-around, to put the events in chronological order, if you so desire.) 

So for perhaps the first time in his storied career, Murphy—who just signed a massive overall deal with Netflix—is re-evaluating the metric by which he measures his own success.

“What the past six months have taught me is, there are no rules any more,” Murphy tells E! News. “There are no rules of success. There used to be. You were a winner or a loser overnight, and you knew overnight exactly where you were. And I think that it’s not about that any more. I never feel that overnight ratings on anything tell the story. I feel like it’s just the tip of the iceberg. I don’t watch live television. In my life, I don’t do that. I watch things in delayed viewing. And Versace’s numbers have grown each week.”

More so than ratings, Murphy says he’s deeply invested in feedback from those who are watching. “Versace has been a show were it has elicited the most response of people coming up to me on the street or at award shows or on sets and saying, ‘I’m watching it and loving it.’ So I do feel people are watching Versace. Most people don’t know about Andrew Cunanan. Everybody knows about O.J. So right there, it’s just a different entry way, but I think that Versace is doing tremendous numbers in delayed viewing, it sold incredibly well overseas, and it’s going to be on Netflix were it will have a long life next to OJ.”

In the past five years, as Netflix has poured massive funds into original programming and sent the number of original series soaring, networks have fought hard to make linear TV feel urgent again. And that’s precisely what Murphy’s 9-1-1 has done, with its focus on first responders on the scene of some incredibly intense emergency calls.

“I’m interested in the Netflix model,” says Murphy, “because you don’t get the daily report card. But I’m also interested in the 9-1-1 experience, which proved to me that there is sort of an excitement and there is still an appetite for immediate water-cooler conversation shows. It’s still there.”

Murphy says it will be “business as usual” with the projects he already had in the works under 20th Century Fox (Pose, The Politician, American Horror Story and Ratchet are next in the pipeline) as he begins developing new projects for Netflix under his new deal.

“All I can ever do is try and do my best work and try and connect with an audience. I’ve just decided that I don’t have a judgment about anything, because the business is in such flux, that every time you think you understand how it’s going to be, there’s some new wrinkle and something has changed.”

Do Ratings Still Matter? Ryan Murphy Argues There Are No Rules Any More

Why Ryan Murphy Can’t Care Too Much What Donatella Thinks

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story comes to a chilling conclusion tonight on FX, and spoiler alert: Ricky Martin’s heartbreaking performance as Gianni Versace’s lover Antonio D’Amico may leave you in pieces.

“I want to give Ricky [Martin] his own show,” executive producer Ryan Murphy tells E! News. “He and I have been talking about that, so we are working on that. I feel the same way about Ricky as I did Sarah Paulson when I gave her Marcia Clark—which is, I knew Sarah was capable of anything. Ricky is, too. I knew that, given the opportunity, he could really surprise people.”

With Murphy’s massive new deal with Netflix, while maintaining his commitments to FX and Fox, it seems a safe bet he can find more work for Ricky.

And Ricky isn’t the only stand-out in tonight’s final episode, which shows the manhunt following Versace’s death for spree-killer Andrew Cunanan. In an exclusive chat with E! News, Murphy reveals how he knew Darren Criss, as Cunanan, could take the show to the depths it needed, his thoughts on the man behind the monster, Andrew’s father, Modesto “Pete” Cunanan, and why he can’t concern himself too much with what Donatella might think.

There was some skepticism when Darren Criss was cast as Cunanan that he could pull it off, and the finale feels like his most challenging work yet. Did you initially have any doubts?

I did not. It’s something Darren and I have been talking about for a long time and I was never going to make this show unless he did it. The stars aligned and I was proud of him. He showed up every day very prepared. He worked longer and harder than anybody. He sensed this could be really the role of a lifetime because they don’t write roles like this for young actors. This part is Shakespearean. It’s the most difficult, multi-faceted role of the year. It’s essentially nine hours of somebody having a nervous breakdown. He went for it. I knew he would.

The final two episodes shed a lot of light on Andrew Cunanan’s relationship with his father. Do you feel like his dad was the real monster behind this tragedy?

In no way did I want to glamorize what Andrew Cunanan did, because what he did was monstrous and horrific and took the lives of five people. I was interested in showing the trail of destruction that he left but also interested in… nobody is born a monster. Nobody is born a psychopath or sociopath and I thought, unlike OJ Simpson, where we never really went into OJ’s backstory or childhood in that way, here was an opportunity that we could.

And I thought that Andrew’s father being a Filipino man and chasing the American dream and having to win at all costs – were things that he passed down to his son. And I think the physical abuse, the sexual abuse, that Andrew witnessed his father hitting his mother repeatedly, the violence that he grew up with, he became desensitized to it and that was all in the water and part of the reason why he was able to kill so easily and with very little remorse.

What is known about whether Andrew was physically or sexually abused by his father? The show strongly infers it, but doesn’t actually go there.

It’s hard because it’s hard to substantiate that. We had people discussing his childhood, who claimed in Maureen Orth’s book that, look, any boy that’s given the master bedroom…you have have to question what those motivations are about. But obviously, we had a point of view, and Maureen Orth had a point of view, and eye witnesses and people who knew Andrew. But everybody was a victim in it. It’s such a dark, American story about identity and the quest for fame and all of that stuff, which are issues that I’ve always been interested in.

Have you heard anything from the Versace family in recent weeks? Do you know if their stance on the authenticity of the series has softened at all after seeing it? 

I don’t know. I don’t know if they’ve watched it. I don’t know if they’ve softened. I think that Donatella is really connected in the world of celebrity, and everyone has remarked that the portrayal of Donatella and Gianni are beautiful. And you know, I think Penelope [Cruz] and Edgar [Ramirez] did an amazing job.

But I also think what [Donatella] did to Antonio was really sh–ty, and so, I really don’t care what she thinks, other than we were really truthful to Maureen’s book and we did our own reporting. But I also really admire [Donatella], because I think what she did was impossible. Her brother was gunned down, he was the love of her life, other than her children, and he was taken from her. And she was faced with an insurmountable position and she kept that business going in the face of great odds and she really accomplished something. And I think that Penelope portrayed her as such. I don’t know. I can never think about that because that would cloud how we created the work and I was just trying to find the truth.

Spoiler alert, and it’s a small thing, but … Did Darren Criss really eat dog food for the scene in tonight’s finale?

Andrew Cunanan definitely ate dog food. Darren did not eat dog food, although I don’t know what that stuff was, but whenever I would watch the edits, it would make me gag. It was wet and moldy. I wouldn’t recommend it.

Why Ryan Murphy Can’t Care Too Much What Donatella Thinks