Tag: entertainment weekly

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ recap: A series of terrible decisions

We gave it an A-

We’re continuing backwards through Andrew Cunanan’s past, now all the way back to Minneapolis, one week before the murder of Lee Miglin in Chicago.

Cunanan is a master at ingratiating himself to people, worming his way into their lives and becoming close to them before he flips and reveals his terrifying face beneath the mask. That seems to be the situation with architect David Madson, with whom Cunanan appears to share a slightly tense but intimate relationship.

David is on the phone with his company and learns that he’ll be able to give a big presentation. “I’m so happy for you,” Cunanan says with ice in his voice. Everything about his body language is sinister: the slight hunch in the shoulders, the rigidity with which his arms fall to his side. As an actor, Criss has mastered the inexplicably creepy mannerisms of a killer.

Cunanan is about to take the dog for a walk when the buzzer rings — it’s Jeff, and Cunanan tells David to go let him in. “Give you a chance to talk about me,” Cunanan says, bitterly jealous. And they do talk about him: David and Jeff have both gotten Cunanan’s number; they know he’s strange, and a liar. They laugh about him. Until they get back to the apartment and David hears the dog whining from where it’s tied to a table. Cunanan slams the door shut and brutally beats Jeff to death with a hammer, splattering the entire apartment in blood and leaving his face red with American Psycho splotches.

“It’s okay,” Cunanan says, cooing to the stunned David. Still in a daze, understandably, David allows himself to be led to the bathroom, to be showered, and to not fight too hard when Cunanan tells him not to call the police. He does it with the slime of a practiced manipulator: They’ll lock you up to, people hate us for being gay, your dad will have to turn you in if you tell him. And David — perhaps too stunned to think rationally, or too scared by the gun in Cunanan’s waistband, agrees. “No one else will get hurt as long as you’re by my side,” Cunanan says.

The police show up to the apartment after one of David’s coworkers comes with the landlady to be let in, knowing that David would never just not show up to work. By then, Cunanan and David are long gone, David terrified into complicity and Cunanan getting what he wanted all along: the two of them stuck together, partners in crime, without Jeff around to steal any affection.

The police make the logical assumption that it’s David’s body rolled into the rug and guess that — based on the gay pornography on the bed — he had had a romantic encounter that turned sour and the murderer split. A neighbor lets them know that he had a man staying with him that weekend, an “Andrew Cunaynin?” who had black hair, unlike David’s blond. And so the body becomes Cunanan in the policemen’s minds. They leave as soon as they realize that the corpse isn’t David: It means he’s still alive and they’re in his apartment without a search warrant. Everything they find could be inadmissible evidence in court. Eventually they come to the truth: They find Jeff’s wallet and realize the true identity of the body — but not until David and Cunanan have gotten a hefty head start on their twisted road trip.

This episode is called “The House by the Lake” because it’s what David fantasizes about — the place he went with his dad when he was younger. They drank coffee together. David’s dad tried to get him to help him hunt, but it terrified young David. “I never want you to be sad,” his dad says in the car as they leave, telling him it’s okay that he doesn’t like hunting. That relationship between David and his father is at the core of this episode, which could have been just a bloody procedural crime-style episode. We’re anchored around David — the way he came to terms with his sexuality and how rooted he is by his father’s perception of him. That’s where his mind goes when he and Cunanan are driving. He wonders how his parents will react when they find out what happens.

David is rightfully terrified by the way a woman glares at them in a parking lot, but Cunanan is unfazed. He correctly assesses that she’s looking at them “like she hates [them]” because they’re gay, not because their crime has been reported. Cunanan is the same cool, calculating manipulator he’s always been, at least until the two stop in a bar (where Aimee Mann is playing guitar, in a cameo). David says he needs to go to the bathroom and breaks the tiny window above the toilet seat, contemplating escape. Cunanan just sits at the table, listening to the live music until he finally breaks down into sobs, the most genuine emotion we’ve seen from him, as if his first murder was able to crack though his exoskeleton into whatever exists beneath.

David, in his worst decision in a series of terrible decisions, returns to the table and touches Cunanan’s hand. We see in a flashback how he told his father he was gay. He falls asleep in the car, and when he wakes up, it’s as if they’re on a different world. The car is stopped in the woods; Cunanan seems to be gone, and David wanders without shoes. Until reality comes back, and Cunanan reappears from behind a tree, bearing his gun.

In a diner, David reminisces about the night he and Cunanan met with something akin to reverence: Cunanan had seemed so worldly and wealthy, outrageously popular and sophisticated. The two had stayed in an expensive hotel room, and David had told himself he would work as hard as he possibly could to be as successful as Cunanan had appeared to be. But it was all a lie, and David realizes that now. Cunanan never worked for anything. He was a skilled liar and manipulator and killed Jeff because he was in love with him and Jeff had seen what Cunanan really was. And here is David’s fatal mistake: He lets Cunanan know he sees it too.

The two drive in miserable tension for a while, while Cunanan repeats, “I don’t want to talk about it.” Their entire plan, the future he envisioned for them, required David’s love and respect. He has no use for this bitter and resentful man who sees him as a fraud.

“Why couldn’t you run away with me?” Cunanan asks when he’s out of the car, pointing a gun at David. “We had a future, David.” The past tense is essential there. David tries in vain to convince him that they still have a future, that he can lie and play the part Cunanan wants, but it’s too late. David runs, and Cunanan shoots him in the back.

David imagines making it to a shack in the field, opening the door, and finding his dad — they’re back in the house by the lake, and his dad is offering him a cup of coffee. But it’s just a fantasy. He’s lying on the ground, bleeding out, and Cunanan stands over him and shoots him in the face. Cunanan spoons David’s dead body for a while before getting back in the car.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ recap: A series of terrible decisions

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’: Judith Light on her devastating performance as Marilyn Miglin

The third episode of FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story focused on the brutal murder of Chicago businessman Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell) by Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss). But it also told the story of Miglin’s marriage to his wife, Marilyn, played by Judith Light in a bravura performance.

Almost unrecognizable, Light is haunting as a woman who tries to hold in all her emotions until finally she cracks. EW talked to the actress about the performance and what she hopes the world can learn from this story.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you get involved in this?
JUDITH LIGHT: I have wanted to work with Ryan [Murphy] forever. I just think he’s really extraordinary. This literally came out of the blue through a friend of mine who is a brilliant writer who’s working with Ryan. He said, “There is this part and I think you would be amazing in it.” And it was my friend Jon Robin Baitz who wrote Other Desert Cities and because of him and Joe Mantello, I got the Tony! [Baitz is working with Murphy on the second season of Feud] So when Robby wrote to me, he said the script Tom Robb Smith wrote is amazing and it’s Ryan and they’re such incredible people and I want you to know them and I want you to work with them. I come from reparatory theater and so when people have their rep companies wherever they are, their teams that work together beautifully, to do the kind of work that Ryan has done, you wanna get an opportunity to work with them.

It was crazy because it was last minute and I had to change my entire schedule around. They were so incredible with me. I said to them, “Look, I have to give a speech at the opening of the AIDS conference in Washington D.C. as part of the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.” They all said, “Got it. Go do it, girl, and just fly to us after that.” They were really extraordinary in making this all work. My agents said, “You HAVE to make this work!” I had all these people supporting me to have this come to fruition and I’m so excited. It was a most special experience.

Were you aware of the Miglins and this part of the story?
No! No! No! I knew the story about Gianni Versace because I’ve been an advocate for the LGBTQ community for so long. I knew the Gianni Versace part of the story and I knew about Andrew Cunanan. My parents lived in Ft. Lauderdale so I knew about all of that and I knew about the level of homophobia and the discounting of the gay community particularly at the height of the AIDS pandemic. I knew all about that but I didn’t know in detail what had preceded this killing spree and this rampage and then really didn’t know about it till I read this script and I read the book.

So you read Maureen Orth’s Vulgar Favors. What other research did you do?
Yeah. You look at that script and it’s the map and it’s the landscape. I didn’t need to be searching for anything else. It was all given to me.

Did you ever consider reaching out to Marilyn Miglin? Or did they discourage you?
No. First of all, nobody said anything to me. I don’t think it works to reach out. They gave me all the help and all the information I needed. I work on a character from an artistic perspective and from a psychological perspective and that’s how I work. I don’t need to know everything that goes on. Also, this is a very sensitive subject. I think it’s right to be careful in the way you relate to people and deferential.

What do you think of this marriage? Was it a marriage of friendship?
I literally have no idea. We also don’t know what is needed from somebody, in our personal needs when we get together with someone. You know how you look at some people and you go, “What are you doing together?” You would never do that with Lee and Marilyn. You don’t know what draws people together. We have no idea. I will tell you, particularly now in light of everything that’s happening in relation to women in business and around the world, this powerful woman with a real business head and sense had the support of someone who loved her and honored her and supported her. That I think is such an important topic when we’re relating to this relationship. Look at what she had and look at other women around her who had not had that and particularly at that time. This is huge! So you have to honor him and have to honor her for seeing what they had. The other stuff is private and intimate and who knows? We have no idea.

How was it working with Mike Farrell?
I loved him. You talk about somebody who was an artist and he was so kind and so gentle. He loves to do the work and we were connecting on all these different levels. I had such honor for him and such respect for him for so long. I think he’s remarkable. I just adored working with him. We would just have these little things. There’s one part of the episode where I’m honoring him, speaking about him. It was all truthfully as Judith about Mike as it was I think about Marilyn in relation to Lee — who he is as a person is just extraordinary and so kind and so gracious. So we would just do these little improvs with each other before I went out and to do the speech so we were connected in that kind of way. It was very special with him. And we practiced ballroom dancing together and that was great!

That final moment where you remove your make-up and finally crack is so emotional. What was that like to shoot?
There are all kinds of adjectives you can give to all of that stuff. It was challenging. I was concerned. It was interesting because when we shot it, I had been nominated for an Emmy and I think I had flown back and the next day I had that scene on that next morning. Lemme put it this way: To a person, there was this outpouring of support and generosity and Gwyneth Horder-Payton, who was the director, was taking me through all of it and all the steps and how we did the pieces of it. She allowed for me to figure out where I was going to be emotionally and how I was needed to move throughout the scene. It was just this kind of generous dance of everyone doing their work to support everyone else’s work. That’s all I can tell you. It took a long time to do it and we did it over and over and over again. There was a lot of dialogue that had to be memorized and that was a lot to deal with. But, as you can see, it’s written so beautifully. It was there and by the end of the time every one of us felt incredibly satisfied with what we had done and how we had worked together.

What do you want people to take away from this episode and this story?
I hope for what Ryan hopes for which is to make sure that we are facing the cultural devastations of what happened in a world where homophobia is still rampant. We have not handled that issue within ourselves or our culture or in the stories we are telling and that’s why we have to tell these stories. The LGBTQ community is a most extraordinary, powerful, dynamic community that has been shoved aside. Whenever you make anybody “the other” in order to make yourself feel more secure in any way shape or form, that you shove people back into a closet because you don’t feel comfortable, that is a top note and so important to talk about in the viewing of this. This didn’t have to happen. If the world were a different place, a safer place, a kinder place, a place where people could get help and talk out their issues and their problems and I don’t mean to make it sound simplistic but I really do believe that if we related to each other that we are one human family and we understand what it feels like to feel and be empathetic to other situations these things would not have to be happening.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’: Judith Light on her devastating performance as Marilyn Miglin

‘Versace’ Review: Episode 3 portrays the horrific end of a marriage

In the first season of American Crime Story, Cuba Gooding Jr’s O.J. Simpson was like snowball rolling down a mountain. His trial gathered together every wild idea about America, race, gender, class, celebrity.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace moves in different directions, backwards, and inwards. Wednesday’s third episode tracks Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) further back in time from the titular murder. But this episode also feels more intimate, miles away from the media circus of the bloodsoaked premiere. Much of the action in “A Random Killing” takes place in one location, a townhouse in Chicago. It’s home to the Miglins, an old married couple with old married secrets. Lee (Mike Farrell) is a real estate tycoon. Marilyn (Judith Light) owns a cosmetic company.

It’s great casting and great stunt casting. Farrell and Light are remarkable in delicate performances, balancing public image and private struggle, and their appearances carry the weight of their accumulated decades of TV history. We meet Marilyn in front of the cameras on the Home Shopping Network. She is an entrepreneur-performer peddling fragrances and a certain idea of herself. “I started from nothing,” she says, “Just an idea and a longing to explore what perfume is really about.” She’s talking about the American Dream, and in Versace‘s sorrowful vision, both Miglins represent a complication of that familiar national myth. We see Marilyn introduce Lee at a fundraiser for the Governor, telling the crowd about her husband’s own Horatio Alger-ish journey to real estate tycoonhood. “My Lee is the American Dream,” she explains.

Pay attention to one of Marilyn’s first lines, from the Home Shopping segment. “Perfume,” she says, “is about our bodies talking to each other without words.”

The Miglin marriage is built on some wordless talking. Director Gwyneth Hoarder-Payton lingers in closeup on the Miglins’ face, and then cuts to long shots that emphasize how empty their big house can feel. And there is love here, a mutual feeling of profound pride. “I could never stand in front of those cameras,” he tells her, marveling at her skills, and perhaps fearing that the cameras could see into the hidden corners of his soul.

Like many of the main characters in Versace, Lee lives inside some variant of the closet. When Marilyn leaves, Andrew arrives. We already know things won’t turn out well, since “A Random Killing” begins with the discovery of Lee’s body. Versace writer Tom Rob Smith uses non-linear storytelling to heighten the tragedy. We keep meeting people at the moment of their death, so when we see them alive, in flashback, we feel that there is already something half-dead about them.

Mike Farrell is heartbreaking in the scenes with Criss. He radiates pride showing off architectural plans for a magnum opus, a skyscraper that would be the Tallest Building in the World. And he radiates shame when Andrew cuts through the facade. “You’re trying to impress me,” says the young man, almost sneering as he points out how Lee is pretending “that there’s a genuine attraction between us.”

“You can pretend too,” says Lee. Farrell gives that desperate line deep melancholy. How much of his life is pretending? Andrew kisses him, ravenously. “You’ve never been kissed like that, have you?” he teases. “How did it feel?” Lee, exultant: “Feels like I’m alive.”

Not for long. The murder is violent, and pushes “A Random Killing” into a higher state of melodrama. “Concrete can build,” says Andrew with a flourish, “Concrete can kill.” This episode begins a miniature Versace trilogy, a very strong run of three episodes that explore Andrew’s killings in tragic depth. Lines like that feel overripe, come close to portraying Cunanan as horror-film character. But this episode, and the next few, are stunning in their exploration of the devastation Cunanan leaves in his wake. The police find Lee’s body, and seem more concerned about the “homosexual pornographic magazines” left around his bloody corpse than his corpse itself.

The death leaves Marilyn in a state of besieged grief: Devastated by her loss, devastated by how society itself is assaulting her marriage. “How dare they say our marriage was a sham,” she says:

Lee and I shared our whole lives. We shared all kinds of adventures. We rode in hot air balloons. When I was lost in the desert, he rescued me. How many couples can say they have that kind of romance?

The episode’s final act is boldly unstructured. We follow Andrew across state lines into his most random killing; all he wanted was a truck. But his victim’s last words resonate throughout the episode. “I’m a married man,” he says. “We have a son, Troy. I’d very much like to see them again.”

The mention of a family activates something. Andrew pulls the trigger. Earlier, Lee had told Andrew about his great dream: He would build the tallest building in the world, and then ride up the elevator with visitors. “All those families, those children…I could just roam among them, eavesdropping.” It’s a generous image and a lonely one: A man apart, hiding in plain sight. Andrew himself had told Lee something that could be equally revealing. “I could almost be a husband, a partner. I could almost be. Almost.” The life he’s describing seemed closed to Andrew at that time; in the American legal system, a gay man could be a husband, a partner, but the situation would need to resemble the Miglin marriage, full of secrets, full of almosts.

The portrait of this marriage is complicated, free of cliché or simple answers. “How many husbands believe in their wife’s dreams?” Marilyn asks in the final scene, returned to the Home Shopping Network. “How many treat us as partners?” It’s a truly demolishing moment. Light’s performance such a wonder, nails tapping on formica, makeup as body armor. She turns to face us, explaining a lesson she learned about living on camera. “Think of the little red light,” she says, “As the man you love.” The man is gone, but the red light remains.

‘Versace’ Review: Episode 3 portrays the horrific end of a marriage

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ recap: Lee Miglin’s terrible ending

We gave it an A

It’s a Versace episode without Versace. Week three takes us back a few months before Cunanan’s most high profile murder to his second-most high profile murder: that of wealthy Chicago real-estate developer Lee Miglin.

It takes some time before this episode even gets to Cunanan. Instead, we’re given a brief slice-of-life picture of the marriage between Lee and his wife Marilyn, a Home Shopping Network star. Marilyn returns home from a trip to promote her perfume on television to find that her husband isn’t at the airport to pick her up. And so instead she takes a cab, and returns home to eerie silence and the unmistakable sense that something isn’t right. The house is set like a stage, with creepy tableaus — ice cream melting on the counter, a hunk of deli meat in Lee’s office, stabbed with a knife. Marilyn enlists the neighbors and calls the police, who tell her what she already knew. Lee is dead.

Flashback to a week earlier, when Lee and Marilyn were at a fundraiser for Illinois governor Jim Edgar. Marilyn’s speech introducing her husband as a guest of honor gives us a clear picture of who he was and sort of relationship they had. He was wealthy and powerful. He and Marilyn were a partnership, working together to grow their individual careers. “Without a hint of cynicism, my Lee is the American dream,” Marilyn says to the full banquet hall.

Of course, the façade falls when they return home, but only slightly. This isn’t a marriage of convenience, but it’s not one of passion either. Not long after Marilyn leaves town for her television appearance, Lee invites over a certain young male escort: Andrew Cunanan. From their interactions, it’s obvious the two men have had a relationship for a while — Lee mentions that he’s wanted to show Cunanan his plans for the “Sky Needle” building for some time, and Cunanan kisses him deeply enough for Lee to be able to pretend that theirs isn’t just a financial transaction.

It’s at the Miglin house that we get see one of Cunanan’s most distinctive habits return: He loves to eat with his prey, stuffing his face with no regard for whether they’re eating too or whether they’re comfortable. It’s a disruption of social patterns (food is something to be shared, enjoyed together), almost an act of aggression on Cunanan’s part.

The real aggression comes a few moments later, when the men move to the garage and Cunanan initiates the most disturbing sequence we’ve seen on the show thus far. The interaction begins with the cadence of a consensual BDSM encounter until it becomes terrifyingly obvious that Cunanan has something awful in mind. When Miglin is fully bound, with duct tape around his face and cords around his ankles, Cunanan punches him hard enough in the face to break his nose and reveals that he’s killed two men already, and that he’s planning on killing him as well, leaving his body in women’s underwear, surrounded by gay porn. “What terrifies you more, death or being disgraced?”

Cunanan crushes Miglin’s ribs with a bag of concrete and stabs him with a gardening tool. He tears up the drawing of Miglin’s dream architecture project — the Sky Needle, 500 feet taller than the Sears Tower — and burns it at the altar where Miglin had prayed earlier that day. He leaves the meat with the knife in the study. He seems to spend the night.

The police arrive when Marilyn calls, and when they find the body, they understand that the situation surrounding the murder makes the case more sensitive than most. Marilyn — stoic and dry eyed in her interactions with the police, graciously bringing them free sandwiches — bears no anger when she hears that her husband was found surrounded by gay porn. It clearly belonged to the murderer. “That’s all I’ll allow that man to steal from me,” Marilyn says. “I won’t let him steal my good name. Our good name.” She and her awkward milquetoast son (a Hollywood actor, she brags) are staunch in their approach that this was just a random killing, and that Andrew Cunanan had no relationship with her husband aside from being the stranger who took his life.

The police traced an abandoned car a few blocks away to Cunanan, already wanted for two other murders, and because he stole a car from Miglin that had an attached phone, they are able to trace his movements and see that he’s making his way to New York. At least, they’re able to trace him until that strategy leaks to the paper. Cunanan hears from a news story on the radio, while driving Lee Miglin’s car, that the police are tracking the suspect through Lee Miglin’s cell phone. He snaps off the car’s antenna, but he knows that’s not enough. He need to swap out cars.

Cunanan pulls into a rest stop and watches for victims, waiting until he sees a man driving a red pickup truck. When the man starts driving away, Cunanan follows him, shadowing him through a graveyard as if the scene weren’t ominous enough. Finally, the man goes into his home, and Cunanan follows with a gun drawn. “Stay calm,” Cunanan says. “No one’s going to get hurt. I’m here to steal your truck.”

The man is terrified, and polite. He shows Cunanan the car keys and walks down to the basement to let Cunanan lock him downstairs. He gets on his knees when Cunanan asks, and he’s telling him about his wife and their son when Cunanan shoots him, point blank, in the head.

If any viewer had any sympathy or affection for Cunanan up until this point, this episode stripped that away entirely. He is terrifying and merciless, but not just merciless — cruel. The final moments of the episode are given back to Marilyn Miglin, back on the air, talking about how much her husband meant to her. Maybe she’s just speaking to the cameras, maybe their entire marriage had been something for appearances, but when she talks about their partnership of 38 years, it comes across as heartbreakingly genuine. There are many kinds of marriages. Theirs might have had secrets, but it would be flippant to dismiss decades of friendship and affection for Lee’s brief and fatal fling with Cunanan. Cunanan isn’t anyone’s partner. He is a taker. He takes food, and cars, and reputations. He takes lives. He is someone who consumes and never gives anything back.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ recap: Lee Miglin’s terrible ending

Max Greenfield on his haunting ‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’ role and the end of ‘New Girl’

One of the great surprises of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is the completely transformative performance by New Girl’s Max Greenfield. The actor plays Ronnie, a junkie who befriends Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) and is unaware that his new acquaintance is a wanted serial killer.

In only a handful of scenes, Greenfield creates a full-bodied tragic character — even Ronnie’s walk feels specific and thoughtful. The actor previously worked with executive producer Ryan Murphy on American Horror Story: Hotel, which also found the actor exploring a much darker side than New Girl fans were used to seeing.

EW talked to Greenfield about reuniting with Murphy, crafting his Versacecharacter, and, naturally, Darren Criss’ pink Speedo.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Was this just the case of Ryan Murphy calling you up and asking you to do this role? How did this come about?
MAX GREENFIELD: Ryan and I keep in touch. He knew that I had finished New Girl, and he knew I was off. We ran into each other and he was like, “What are you doing?” and I was like, “I don’t know, man.” I think I had wrapped that week. He goes, “I wanna show you a couple of things.” And this happened to be one of the things he showed me. He sent me the first two scripts. I went off and looked at it, and I thought it was incredible. I didn’t know that I could do it. I’m certainly not the person that you think of when you would read this on paper. Like, “Oh, that’s a no-brainer!”

So I put myself on tape for it. I wanted to see if I could do it, and I got to a place where I felt like, “Oh, now I sorta love this guy!” I sent Ryan the tape and I said, “I don’t know if this is any good, but this is what it would look like.” Two and a half weeks later, I was in Miami.

Did you lose weight? You look much skinnier, or maybe that was just your psychical performance.
It was probably a little bit of both. The previous summer I had done The Glass Castle, which was a great experience. But I was supposed to have an arm-wrestling match with Woody Harrelson in the movie. The one note from the director was, “Hey, man, this is a big scene in the movie. I know you’re like a fit guy. Can you not work out as much?” I was like, “I will not touch another weight.” And I didn’t for like a long time, and I ended up losing a lot of size. On New Girl, I’m always like in cardigans, and I just don’t think it really played. But in this, mixed with the fact that I’m like, “Oh, in two weeks I’m going to be in Miami? I don’t have to eat I guess.” But I also think it was the physicality and the buzz cut and the whole thing.

What was it about Ronnie that you responded to?
What I really loved about him and what I found so heartbreaking about him … I knew he was based on a real guy, but I knew physically we didn’t resemble one another. What I found so heartbreaking about him, and as I started to research the period of the time, but I knew a little bit about — it’s funny when you research something as an actor, you might know about that period of time. But when you’re then asked to come at it from a place of, I’m going to have to play this person, really understanding what 1997 and that the period around that meant for somebody in the LGBT community who has HIV, and the idea that a year and a half earlier they had figured out the correct medication to give patients who had accepted over the past 15-plus years that they were going to die! They watched everybody else around them die — how on earth would it be any different? You hear people who are still living with HIV who lived through that time to this day talk about the fact that they still have difficulty wrapping their head around that tomorrow isn’t going to be my last day? Or this isn’t going to turn on me?

But what I also loved about Ronnie and what he represented is you can see through Ryan’s other work and Larry Kramer’s work, these people from the ACT UP movement who were like taking it head on. But you never saw the people who gave into it and didn’t fight and just thought, “This is my fate and this is what I deserve.” And I think Ronnie was one of those people, and it broke my heart. I thought, “I love this guy.”

Did you find any comparisons between Ronnie and Gabriel, the character you played on AHS: Hotel?
I think in the sense maybe that these are two guys who were lost. Totally lost.

How as it working with Darren?
It was really great. It was intense. As heartbreaking as Ronnie was, part of that heartbreak was his relationship with Andrew and the fact that he was enamored by this guy, and also sort of thinking he had made a friend. He was so alone and thought this was a guy who came to Miami for the same reasons he had. Watching him sort of try to keep up with Andrew and carry on a normal conversation with him like friends might do and listen to this guy who was so all over the place. The humor of that is not lost on me. I mean, there is an element of like, man, this is an odd couple!

What was it like when Darren emerged from the bathroom with duct tape on his face?
The nice thing of a scene like that is they’re not very hard to play! If you’re in character and the scene is “Be freaked out by the guy who walks out of the bathroom with his head wrapped in duct tape,” I’d love to say I’m an incredible actor, but at that point it’s not that hard.

You also have to spend a fair amount of time staring at Darren in a pink Speedo; was that an odd day at work?
That is so par for the course on a Ryan show. Honestly, it couldn’t be less weird.

I guess you did previously yank Naomi Campbell through a bed on Hotel.
[The beach scene] was honestly one of the more casual days I’ve ever had on a Ryan set [laughs].

Why do you and Ryan work so well together?
Um, it’s not me. There’s a couple factors: I really love Ryan. I love what he does. He has set the bar so high for performances on his projects that if you don’t come prepared and ready to go, I don’t know why you’re there. That to me is all I wanna do.

Then, there’s the fun idea, which is like to surprise or excite Ryan, which is really hard to do.

The third thing, and this really is why it works out so well, is because the people that work for Ryan, his department heads, these people are so astronomically good at their job. If you utilize them as an actor under the umbrella of what Ryan has given us all for who this character is, the next thing you know you have the right clothes on, you have the earring, your hands are dirty, your head is shaved, you have the right mustache. Everything is just right, and you then don’t have to work that hard. To me I think the reason why I’ve been really happy and satisfied and why I think they’ve been successful collaborations is because of the people he surrounds himself with. They’re so good.

Now that New Girl is ending, would you want to be on a Ryan Murphy series?
Look, Ryan is one of those people if I saw his number pop up on my phone, I’d say, “I’ll be at Fox in five minutes.”

What can you say about the finale of New Girl?
What I love about the season and the way we wrap it up is I equate it to like a rock musician who plays a rock concert and goes, “You know what, you guys? Tonight I’m playing the hits! We’re just gonna play all the songs you love.” I love that they did that. I love what Liz [Meriwether] and the rest of the writers did. I think it’s a real love letter to the fans. It’s all of the greatest hits from seven seasons.

Max Greenfield on his haunting ‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’ role and the end of ‘New Girl’

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ recap: Welcome to Miami

We gave it an A-

This week’s episode begins like we’re seeing a bizarro-universe version of last week’s: Versace is in a hospital again, but this time he’s standing, looking at the bodies of two gaunt men in beds, while holding Antonio’s hand. At first glance, a viewer might mistake the sick bodies for theirs.

He’s getting treated for something, but the show is intentionally vague on what that something is. The Versace family has always maintained that Gianni Versace was HIV negative, and suffered from ear cancer in the final ears of his life, but the obvious implication here is AIDS — as a gay man living at the height of the epidemic, Versace would have been at risk, and the doctor’s comments about new possibilities with regards to treatment seems to line up. Artistically, it makes sense: It provides a counterbalance to Cunanan, who will emphatically deny being “sick” to Ronnie later in the episode. But vagueness is the best choice of all, mirroring the conversation and speculation that followed Versace in real life.

Versace returns home from the hospital to lounge on a gilded daybed in the center of a room, looking like Marat in the tub, with his sister sitting over him. “What is Versace without you?” she asks. “It is you,” he replies. The scene dissolves from tableau to familial drama: Donatella blames Antonio for Versace’s illness, or for failing to protect him (again, this subtext works better with the implication of AIDS. How was Antonio supposed to protect him from ear cancer?). Antonio asks for basic respect but Donatella balks. He gave her brother neither children nor safety. “If you had given him anything I would have given you respect, but you have given him nothing,” she says. Versace pleads for all three of them to be a family, but things seem prickly at best.

We are transported to the house after Versace’s death, with Donatella watching people place their offerings at the gate. “He is gone, Antonio. There is no need for us to pretend anymore.”

The mortician begins his work of making Versace look as near to his living photograph as possible. Donatella arrives to see his body, bringing a suit for him. She tenderly tightens his tie in the coffin and fixes his cufflinks. He looks perfect, almost living, and then he is cremated. All of that beautiful effort is turned to ashes, and put in a gold box to go back to Italy on a plane with Donatella.

Meanwhile, it’s 1996 again, and Cunanan drives a red pickup truck to Walmart, where he changes the license plate in the parking lot and smiles at a little girl staring at him before driving away. From the radio, we hear that he’s a suspect for the death of Lee Miglin (who had been Cunanan’s third victim), which confirms what we probably suspected: This is before the assassination of Versace. Cunanan, singing along to “Gloria” in the car, screaming out the window, dancing in his seat, is gleefully driving to Miami.

Using a fake passport, Cunanan books a room at the Normandy Plaza (where a massive art piece of Marilyn Monroe emphasizes the show’s theme of celebrity and notoriety) and we see another of Cunanan’s easy lies. “Born in Nice. Have you been?” He’s sociopathically smooth, and it’s a credit to Darren Criss that the oil leaks from his words.

Now that he’s made it to Miami, he heads to Versace’s home, only to find the gates locked. And so he’ll wait for his opportunity, buying sunglasses and a hat and a camera from beachside vender, taking dozens of pictures of the houses to set up a creepy serial killer collage back on the hotel wall.

Even before Versace’s death, Cunanan was on the FBI’s top 10 most wanted list, and the FBI came to Miami to inform local police that they’re operating with the assumption that Cunanan is in town or coming soon.

The FBI agents condescendingly rebuff Detective Lori Weider’s (Dascha Polanco) questions. The FBI only has 10 fliers of Cunanan, and they’re not paying attention to the Miami gay scene. “The fliers aren’t a priority for us,” the agent says. (That decision will come back to bite them in the ass when Cunanan uses his real name to pawn a gold coin, and the pawn shop owner will look over at the bulletin board of posters and not see his face.) Weider photocopies a few herself.

Even as a wanted man, Cunanan lives with complete freedom. He talks his way into an oceanfront room with a little practiced speech and befriends the HIV-positive Ronnie (Max Greenfield) who had been hanging around outside. Ronnie’s appeal is clear: Cunanan loves an audience. He talks endlessly about Versace’s fashion and their close friendship, balking only when Ronnie seems skeptical about his obvious lies.

On the beach, Cunanan does what is implied to have become a habit: becoming an escort for wealthy, older men. He finds one and returns to his hotel room, where the man’s suggestion (“I can be submissive”) is all he needs to duct tape around his head, neck, and eyes — and finally, his mouth.

The man begins to struggle. Cunanan turns up the music and flirts with a pair of scissors. “Accept it,” he repeats. “Accept it. Accept it,” chanting it like a mantra, or the chorus of a song. While the man flails for air, Cunanan dances around the room in the show’s most unsettling scene to date.

Finally, Cunanan in his tiny bathing suit straddles the man and raises the pair of scissors above his head. It’s not obvious what he’s going to do. He stabs the man in the face — allowing him to breathe.

The man, alive but still looking very shaken, answers the door for room service in a robe. Cunanan gleefully eats and tells pretty lies about his mother packing his lunch when he was growing up. The man locks the door after Cunanan and puts back on his wedding ring. He calls 911 but hangs up. Cunanan’s greatest ally is the shame men feel about their gay dalliances.

In Versace’s glamorous life, the designer is arguing with Donatella about which models to use for the show. He doesn’t want girls who look too skinny. He prefers girls who look like they enjoy eating, sex, life. What do these models enjoy?

“Front covers,” Donatella answers. She is the business end of the operation, the public face who understands how to stay relevant and get people excited about a brand. Versace designs the beautiful, beautiful clothing — he has a vision. And he executes that vision at the show, ending with a “Versace bride” in a silver mini-dress. Even Donatella gives him a thumbs up from backstage.

His relationship with Antonio is evolving as well. “I don’t want this anymore,” Antonio says about their open, polyamorous lifestyle while Versace is swimming in his pool. “I want you. I want to marry you.”

“You can say it in the morning, but can you say it in the evening?” Versace answers, and swims back to the other end of the pool.

Presumably only a few miles away, Ronnie and Cunanan are cohabiting a room, and Ronnie is beginning to realize how dangerous his new friend really is. While Ronnie talks through the bathroom door about wanting to open a florist kiosk, Cunanan wraps his entire head in duct tape, from the nose up. “Andrew,” Ronnie finally asks. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Cunanan says. “I’ve done nothing my whole life.”

Cunanan pawns a gold coin (stolen, I assume, from the man he duct-taped). The pawn shop woman, who knows enough to be suspicious, asks where he got it. “It’s a remarkable story,” Cunanan says, with his usual grease. We don’t even get to hear it, because we don’t need to. Everything is an easy lie. He is the talented Mr. Ripley without the talent at impressions.

While walking past the Versace house, Cunanan sees a woman with long blond hair trying to get in the front gate, pretending to be Donatella. Versace appears on the balcony. “Baby, I can only handle one Donatella, one is enough!” he calls out, trying to get the woman to leave. “Big kiss for you.”

Cunanan sprints home, thinking this is his shot. He grabs his gun and pulls all of the photos down on the wall before charging back down the hallway.

“We were friends, that was real, right?” Ronnie asks when he sees Cunanan leaving. He knows this is the end. “When someone asks if we were friends,” Cunanan says, “you’ll say no.”

But Versace isn’t home anymore — he goes out to the club with Antonio (who repeats his desire to get married, this time at night). And Cunanan gets a sandwich, where the clerk recognizes him from America’s Most Wanted and calls the police. Of course, by the time the police get there, he’s gone, managing to get to the same club where Versace went (again, just missing him). If only the police had staked out the clubs — this is one of the sites the detective mentioned specifically.

Cunanan doesn’t know Versace is gone yet, and so he frantically scans every face. When someone asks who he is, he rattles off every identity. I’m Andy. I’m a serial killer. I’m a banker. I’m a stockbroker, shareholder, set builder, importer. And then the most important identity: “I’m the person least likely to be forgotten.” It’s Cunanan’s desire above all else: to be someone like Versace, someone important, who’s created something incredible. He wants to be remembered, linked to Versace in death if not in life.

Which makes you wonder whom exactly this television show is serving.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ recap: Welcome to Miami

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ series premiere recap: Versace on the floor

We gave it an A-

Before we begin our recapping journey for The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, let’s be explicit about a few points. The Versace family has released a statement in opposition to the television show — which is based on the book Vulgar Favors by Maureen Orth — calling it a “work of fiction.” So I’ll be recapping this as a work of fiction; the people I’ll be discussing will be characters, based on the show’s portrayal of real-life people. I’m watching this as a television show loosely based on true events, as a piece of entertainment, and not as history. Good?

Right away, Murphy is doing what he does best with AGV: We open with a sweeping baroque string score, and a shot of Gianni Versace (Édgar Ramírez) waking up in his gilded palace, sliding his feet into slippers and gliding through his ornate home to a balcony where he overlooks Miami Beach like a king.

Down below, by the water, Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) wears a red hat, with a backpack by his side that contains a copy of The Man Who Was Vogue, and a gun.

The tension builds: Versace takes a pill; Cunanan screams in the ocean. Versace leaves his home and someone shouts his name, but it’s only tourists who want an autograph, which he politely refuses; Cunanan vomits into a toilet; and Versace continues his glide to a newsstand to pick up copies of magazines. Already, we know the intersection of these two men feels viscerally wrong; it’s as if they live in different galaxies, or entirely different parallel universes.

But then it happens. As Versace is reentering the gates of his home, Cunanan sees his chance. Cunanan walks towards him, arm outstretched, and shoots. There’s our introduction.

The episode immediately picks back up with Cunanan jumping into a bed where two of his friends are sleeping, bragging about meeting Versace. It takes a few seconds to register that this is a flashback — we’re now in 1990, in San Francisco — and it only takes a few more seconds to realize what sort of person Cunanan is. The real work in this scene is done by actress Annaleigh Ashford, whose polite smiles and subtle head tilts fully encapsulate a friend who’s gotten just a little bit fed up with that friend who’s too much.

Cunanan claims that he met Gianni Versace last night, and his friends humor him. He describes a scenario where Versace approached him and he rebuffed him with a perfectly flirtatious retort. As the audience, we’re privy to the real scene: Cunanan found Versace in the VIP section of a nightclub and talked his way next to him, pretending they had met before, bringing up his mother’s Italian heritage. This scene works on two levels: first, establishing that Cunanan actually did meet Versace, and second, establishing Cunanan as a liar, with delusions of grandeur and a remorseless way of ignoring the truth.

Our opinion of Cunanan is confirmed when we see him in conversation with another friend who calls him out: Cunanan has lied about being Jewish, he tells his straight friends he’s straight and his gay friends he’s gay. He lies so often that even we aren’t sure whether he’s telling the truth when he claims that Versace invited him to the opera, for which Versace designed the costumes. Andrew is there, in the next scene, but it’s possible the opera is just another place he manipulated his way into without an actual invitation. Maybe he just bought his own ticket.

But no, at the end of the opera, Versace is there, not surprised to see Andrew Cunanan. Their demeanor is flirtatious, and it’s implied that their relationship might have become sexual. Obviously, there are no witnesses here, and no way to confirm whether or not that actually happened, and so the show provides plenty of plausible deniability.

Back in the present (or rather, the 1996 present), we’re treated to some of the beautiful, slightly extra symbolism that feels so exquisitely Ryan Murphy: a bloody dove, also shot; the tourist who had asked for Versace’s autograph running past the police barricade to get his blood on her magazine page (beats a signature!); the medics cutting through Versace’s medusa logo on his T-shirt in the hospital.

Cunanan freaks out for a while in his car, and then pulls out a clean shirt — this was clearly a pre-meditated murder, not just an impulsive shooting. The police know the suspect is in the parking garage, and whether it was planned or luck, they end up tracking and tackling a stranger in an identical red shirt.

From the identification information on the car, the police are able to ID the suspect as Andrew Cunanan, already wanted for the murder from which he stole the truck. We learn Cunanan has already killed four people, but the FBI had apparently done an atrocious job of trying to track him down. No posters went out with his face on them. A woman who ran a pawn shop had reported him selling something a week before the Versace shooting (using his real name, and real ID) and no one followed up. It becomes sickeningly obvious that if anyone had been paying attention, Cunanan could have been stopped before his most famous murder.

Within the walls of the Versace compound, Gianni’s sister Donatella (Penelope Cruz) arrives to establish dominion over the Versace empire. The FBI have been interrogating Versace’s longtime partner Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin), trying to shift the conversation to frame him as a pimp or a cheater, and not as a boyfriend. It’s true that D’Amico brought men back for Gianni to sleep with, and their Greco-Roman inspired home was the site of all types of debauchery, but D’Amico tries to make it clear that he was different from the others. They lived together for 14 years.

Donatella is obviously not a fan of D’Amico. He symbolically extends his hand to her; she rejects him. And when she walks into a board meeting to discuss the future of the brand, she closes the door behind her, leaving D’Amico in the hallway. She doesn’t see him as a member of the family, and because the brand is Versace, he’s no longer relevant, especially because, in her view, he couldn’t accomplish his single task of keeping Gianni safe.

The FBI do manage to find Cunanan’s motel room, but when they break in, smoke and guns blazing, it’s not Cunanan in the bed but a twitchy junkie named Ronnie.

And there we have it: a pilot that sets all the pieces in motion and promises many more hours of fashion, intrigue, and stylistically splattered blood.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ series premiere recap: Versace on the floor

Darren Criss compares Versace killer Andrew Cunanan to an Instagrammer

There are a ton of great performances in FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story but perhaps the most revelatory is Darren Criss as serial killer Andrew Cunanan.

Previously best known for the sweet, Katy Perry-singing Warbler Blaine Anderson on Glee, Criss goes fully over to the dark side as Cunanan, a sociopath who killed five men in 1997, including fashion designer Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez).

EW talked to Criss about Cunanan, reuniting with Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy, and the show’s connection to our social media culture.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Were you at all nervous stepping into this? It’s the biggest and most complicated role you’ve tackled.

DARREN CRISS: There were no nerves whatsoever. This was the most exciting, I-can’t-wait-to-do-this experience I’ve ever had. This is an opportunity I’ve been waiting and working my entire life for… This is a role of a lifetime. I’m dripping with gratitude and overwhelmed. I’m so fully aware that this is not something that comes around often. So that’s what it felt like every day. There’s not nervousness or trepidation or fear. I sort of always loved things that look to other people like they’re hard to take on. I’m not saying anything is easy.

There’s so many things about this that are great. Not only is it a great role but it’s a fantastic story with a lot of fantastic weight that I really think sheds light on a lot of things that haven’t been able to be exposed.

So no, I wasn’t nervous at all. I think people have this fixation with dark things — they think they’re scary or hard. Maybe I’m just a dark person. I just find that all dark, scary, conventionally negative things come from pretty relatable places: fear, embarrassment, ambition, and disappointment.

You’re thinking about the emotions that bare them. It doesn’t come home to me. It doesn’t make me afraid of Andrew. It doesn’t make me love him or hate him any less. I get disappointed by him. My heart breaks for him, mainly because of all the good things we get to see about him.

On a professional level, it’s the excitement of being with people that I love working with within a story I think is really important and really matters. On a personal, role level, it’s so nice to be in something that has so many layers and has an opportunity to challenge audiences senses of empathy. Being able to be a part of that is like being able to go to do the most invigorating work one can do.

How did you get inside the character of Andrew? He’s so complicated and mysterious. What was the preparation?

Because he’s all over the place, it’s kind of an indoor safety net for me. I think because he’s a person who disassociates and compartmentalizes, I could likewise do that going to work or coming home. Also when you go to a certain place, he would turn on a dime and that would help me. There’s not a whole lot of preparation you can do. The people who knew him only knew one side of him. This is actually an advantage to me that this isn’t a person people are familiar with. It’s this sort of alibi. The only thing you can really do is not so much preparation but being available to all emotions at all times which I think is probably the most important thing. At any point, he’s ready to fire off in any direction. You can’t really prepare for that.

I did as much research as humanly possible. There’s not a whole lot to go on. At the end of the day, there’s the Andrew who walks and talks on this Earth. There’s the Andrew that people experienced. Then there’s this person who’s my guiding light, which is the person on this page. I did as much homework as possible. You just have to be available on the day and just play each scene.

What was the biggest challenge of this?

I really relate to Andrew mainly because I got to live with him in a different capacity. I had to live with this young man. Living with him as a teenager and a young man. We all remember what it is to want to be liked or stand out or use whatever wiles you have to assert yourself or not assert yourself. All these things that are extremely relatable that I really do relate to him and we have more similarities than that. Obviously, the things that make us different are big but I think they’re few in number.

Ryan Murphy launched your career in so many ways. What was it like working with him this time? He was adamant you play this role.

This was the first time I got to work with Ryan in a real sense as far as us getting in the kitchen and getting our hands dirty and really working on the material. By the time I got to Glee, he wasn’t really directing and he didn’t direct me on American Horror Story [Criss guest-starred on AHS: Hotel]. I never worked directly with him. We’ve been friends obviously as my boss and seen him at events and parties and stuff and he’s always been a great supporter of me. But we never had really made something like this together. It was cool for me to see.

Ryan is a very prolific guy and he’s created this whole brand around himself and that’s the guy I knew and would have rosé with. But seeing him actually at the helm, creating this world, doing what he does best is really cool. It’s really inspiring. It was really a thrill to work with someone in that capacity. Actors are only as good as the moments they get and he’s given me quite an extraordinary moment.

It could easily have veered into camp or gone over the top. But you all keep it very human and grounded.

If that’s what came out, great because I would like to think all of us were shooting for that. You always want something to be as grounded as possible. My interest from day one was showing the humanity of Andrew and that’s something everyone has been interested in from day one. If you just have a cut and dry good guy/bad guy, that’s not interesting. We can’t just vilify Andrew and then what’s the point of following this person if we’re not going to mess with her our sense of relatability to a conventional “villain.” We have to humanize him — that’s the only route to get to know him on a larger level.

I’m really excited to see a lot of the Ricky [Martin], Edgar, and Penelope [Cruz] stuff because I was not there for any of that. It was like shooting two completely different shows. I have no idea how it’s going to play out. I can’t wait to see the parallels.

What do you want people to take away from this?

I really want people to question their sense of empathy and really try and figure out at one point this could have been their own selves. It’s not about Andrew specifically and more people like Andrew: people who idolize excess and how they obsess over the things they don’t have and it ultimately destroys them and the dangers of that. Andrew is somebody that curated his image very well, like with doctoral accuracy, surgical accuracy. He really wants to make sure he was viewed a certain way by certain people. It’s not too dissimilar with how many of us filter our own lives now. I’m talking in extremes here but it can be related to the social media world with how we literally filter our lives and we’re obsessed that people perceive us in a certain way. It’s a totally natural thing but it’s that other side of the coin: looking at other people and what they have. People always say, “I hate going on social media when you’re single and seeing people in love and leading happy lives.” There’s a difference between letting that get you a little bummed and having it drive you truly mad and letting what you do not have not only destroy yourself but other people.

I think people will relate to that anguish and what it feels like to want to have your image of yourself be as fantastic and larger than life as possible, even if it is false. At what point is it a crime to want to embellish your life. I think he was the pre-Instagram filter Instagrammer. He filtered his own life. The thing people said about him was that he was a storyteller. He wanted people to think a certain way of him. That to me is less devious and more misguided and heartbreaking. I don’t get mad at Andrew — my heart breaks for him. The enormous potential that someone so creative and charismatic put his energies in a totally misguided place: that’s the stuff that really interests me.

Darren Criss compares Versace killer Andrew Cunanan to an Instagrammer

‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’: How Julia Roberts helped Penelope Cruz get cast as Donatella

Julia Roberts, Ryan Murphy and a pivotally placed rock all led to Penelope Cruz being cast on tonight’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.

Cruz is riveting as Gianni’s younger sister Donatella on the FX miniseries and established a rapport with executive producer Ryan Murphy on the set of 2010’s Eat, Pray, Love, the movie directed by Murphy and starring Roberts and Cruz’s husband, Javier Bardem.

“I think she came on set on one on the worst shooting days I’ve had in my life and sat next to me on a rock smelling like talcum powder and perfume and was so polite,” Murphy revealed to EW on the Miami set of Versace in May. “I always thought my first impression she must think I’m insane. We had a weird day once where we were on a yacht with Julia Roberts. When I called her on the phone, she was instantly interested because she had never done anything like that. She had never done American television. She said ‘I’m afraid to do this so I think that’s why I should do it.‘”

‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’: How Julia Roberts helped Penelope Cruz get cast as Donatella