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The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is best when it leaves Versace behind

The People v. O.J. Simpson was an epic take on the Trial of Last Century, merging complexities of race and gender into a saga of celebrity gone criminal. But the debut iteration of FX’s American Crime Story was a retelling, investigating an incident so famous that it could be the American crime story. To be blunt, it had brand recognition. The Assassination of Gianni Versace doesn’t carry the same built-in awareness, even if the title literally contains a brand name. It’s also a trickier work, crisscrossing the country and most of the ’90s. If O.J. was an epic, this is a short-story collection. Some hit, some miss, all share a heartbreaking theme.

The premiere, directed by Ryan Murphy, doesn’t waste time getting to the crime. We see designer Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramírez) in his gold-coated Miami villa, while nearby a young man named Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) sits on a beach, cradling a pistol and an apocalyptic attitude. There’s a gunshot, then the cameras and a surreal media circus. One onlooker dabs a Versace ad in the designer’s bloodstain, a grotesque style-icon variation on the Shroud of Turin.

The nine-episode series then becomes a story told in reverse, tracking Cunanan and Versace backward from their fatal meeting. Almost every major character is gay, and there is a haunting mood of paranoia, everyone trapped in their respective closets. We meet Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell), a real estate magnate married to cosmetics empress Marilyn (Judith Light). We get to know David Madson (Cody Fern) and Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock), young men close enough to Cunanan to know too many of his secrets. Ricky Martin gives a sensitive performance as Versace’s partner Antonio D’Amico. They’re all victims of Cunanan, but they’re also victims of an uncaring world. At one point, Antonio’s interrogated by cops more interested in Gianni’s sex life than his brutal death: Another violation, and he hasn’t washed his lover’s blood off his tennis whites. In this not-distant-enough past, so much of gay identity was secret identity. And Cunanan’s rampage occurred because law enforcement agencies didn’t care about gay people. (And they knew it.)

But there’s something flimsy in the foundation. I’m a fan of Criss, who ranks high in our Sacred Council of Darrens (right behind Aronofsky and the First One From Bewitched). But the structure renders Cunanan a bogeyman, and it’s only later in the season that he gets to shade him with real depth. And the portrait of the Versace family feels respectful to the point of hagiography. Ramírez is trapped in a conventional great-man biopic, while Penélope Cruz as sister Donatella mouths fashion-industry bromides like “For a woman, a dress is a weapon.” I love the show’s willingness to explore everyone orbiting Cunanan’s murder spree, but the central characters feel held at a worshipful remove. Oddly, Versace is best when it leaves Versace behind.

Murphy’s FX anthologies comprise a welcome revisionist history of injustice, of what had been accepted truths or simply ignored in the past, from the misogynistic ’60s of Feud: Bette and Joan (and even American Horror Story: Asylum) through the identity-soaked ’90s bloodshed of American Crime Story. Versace is a middling work in this corpus, but the message still shakes you. You want to reach through the TV screen to these men suffering in the shadows and promise them: “It gets better!” Won’t it? B

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is best when it leaves Versace behind

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This Week’s Must List: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Paddington 2, and Red Clocks (January 12th, 2018)

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story

The second installment of Ryan Murphy’s true-crime anthology series is a visceral, compelling, and disturbing look at the murder of the titular designer — and the man who killed him, Andrew Cunanan, played by a gripping Darren Criss. (FX, Wednesdays, 10 p.m.)

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ boss Ryan Murphy says he knew Darren Criss was ‘capable of great darkness’

Cover your eyes, Gleeks. Darren Criss, who played squeaky clean, bow-tie aficionado Blaine Anderson on Fox’s Glee is about to shed that image.

The actor has his darkest and most challenging role to date as serial killer Andrew Cunanan in FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, premiering Jan. 17 on FX. Cunanan not only killed the titular designer, played by Edgar Ramirez, but also four other men in 1997. Portraying the sociopath, Criss vacillates between being charming, pathetic, ruthless, and psychotic.

“I did as much research as humanly possible,” says Criss. But, “there’s not a whole lot of preparation you can do. The only thing you can really do is being available to all emotions at all times. At any point, he’s ready to fire off in any direction.”

Executive producer Ryan Murphy was adamant that Criss play Cunanan after seeing the actor on Broadway in Hedwig and the Angry Inch. “I just knew he could do it,” reveals Murphy. “More than that, I knew that he was super hungry and ambitious. I think people thought of Darren as a musical comedy star first. But, when I saw Hedwig, I knew he was capable of great darkness.”

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story premieres Jan. 17 at 10 p.m. on FX.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ boss Ryan Murphy says he knew Darren Criss was ‘capable of great darkness’

Darren Criss: From a Warbler on ‘Glee’ to a Killer in ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

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Ryan Murphy was adamant that Darren Criss — best known for his five seasons on Murphy’s Glee as sweet, bow-tied Blaine — play the Andrew Cunanan, the twisted serial killer in The Assassination of Gianni Versace. A Talented Mr. Ripley-type character, Cunanan charmed his way into wealthy circles before his violent break; he’s far from a one-note monster. 

It’s unquestionably the biggest and most challenging role of Criss’ career so far. “Actors are only as good as the parts they get. You can only be as good as those moments you get,” Criss says. “This is one of those ship-coming-in moments where Ryan has really given me this massive opportunity, and I’d like to think I am up for the challenge. There’s zero anxiety.” 


It’s a definite about-face from the squeaky clean Blaine, but Criss says he treats all roles with equal intensity. “I don’t like quantifying one [role is] harder or easier or funner or more significant than other characters,” says the 30-year-old. “Blaine, by comparison, could be put into a cartoonish box. The very patter of Glee exists in a different world than the one we’re dealing with. But all the same, I treat that silly hairdo and the clothes he wore and the way that he spoke and the things he believed in with the same currency that I treat someone like Andrew, who was a real person and had real friends and family.” 


To sell his creative team on his vision, Murphy sent Smith and executive producer Brad Simpson to see Criss in the touring production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. “Once every night he jumps into somebody’s lap and makes out with them,” says Simpson. “In the middle of the show, he jumps in the audience and rips my glasses off and makes out with me. It was very charming and a very Cunanan thing to do, to be a little devilish. Cunanan charmed people and then turned them off. We’re talking about a serial killer people liked.” Criss jokes: “I casting-couched the s— outta that! In my defense, I didn’t know it was Brad Simpson. I’m glad I didn’t know.”

Darren Criss: From a Warbler on ‘Glee’ to a Killer in ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

Trump Gets a ‘Bracing Cold Slap’ from ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace,’ Says Ryan Murphy

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Ryan Murphy has never been one to shy away from bold storytelling and provocative themes. Last year’s The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, which Murphy executive produced, was about the iconic trial but also delved into issues of racism, sexism, and fame obsession in our culture.

For ACS‘s second installment, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, the TV producer hopes to once again use a crime as a way to explore social issues. In particular, Murphy sees the 1997 murder of the fashion designer as a chance to discuss sexuality and homophobia in the 1990s. “The more I had read about it the more I was startled by the fact that [Versace killer Andrew Cunanan] really was only allowed to get away with it because of homophobia,” says Murphy. “There was this great apathy about it and nobody cared and I think part of that was because it seemed like gay people were disposable in our culture.”

He also believes the current political climate makes Versace‘s themes even more relevant. “I think it does open a discussion and I think it’s the perfect timing based on this president we have,” says Murphy. “One of the reasons I wanted to do this was I felt that Obama was a president who I revered. He was my president. I felt there was so much progress in terms of gay rights and rights for any marginalized group of people. Suddenly, it felt like Trump is inaugurated and the door closed and there’s fear again and they’re trying to take away everything that we fought for for so long. This is a bracing cold slap against the policies that the current government has. We celebrate gay people and gay creativity. So I think it’s the perfect time to put that on.”

Trump Gets a ‘Bracing Cold Slap’ from ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace,’ Says Ryan Murphy

How Ryan Murphy Plans to top ‘People v. O.J. Simpson’ Phenomenon with ‘Gianni Versace’

How do you top a phenomenon like last year’s The People v. O.J. Simpson? Opulence, sex and Ricky Martin, naturally. Those are just a few of the elements viewers can expect when The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story premieres in early 2018, focusing on the tragic killing of the fashion titan (Martin plays his long-time love Antonio D’Amico). FX’s follow-up to Simpson, featuring the same team of executive producers including Ryan Murphy, Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson, won’t premiere for months but EW was exclusively on the set in May as the cast shot in Versace’s former home, Casa Casuarina. “It was very moving, sometimes disturbing,” says Penelope Cruz, who plays Gianni’s sister Donatella, of shooting in the house. “We all felt a very powerful energy. It just made me have more passion to tell this story.”

On July 15, 1997, Gianni Versace had left to go on his regular run to Miami Beach’s News Cafe. As he returned home and was opening his front gate, Andrew Cunanan, a sociopath who had become fixated on the designer after reportedly meeting him years earlier, walked up behind Versace and shot him twice in the head. The openly gay Versace was one of the most exciting and provocative designers of the moment, famous for his bold skin-baring designs. “Gianni was a disrupter,” says Edgar Ramírez (Joy), who plays the colorful figure. “He was doing things at the time that no one else was doing. He had this rock-star vision of couture and was the master of combining fashion, celebrity, and fame in a way that had never been combined before.” But his future was snuffed out by Cunanan (Glee’s Darren Criss), an intelligent, handsome, and highly disturbed young man from San Diego. Versace, based on the book Vulgar Favors by Maureen Orth, hopes to show how these two men’s paths crossed and ended so violently. “Here are two men from comparable backgrounds that had all kinds of similarities,” explains writer Tom Rob Smith (London Spy). “They came from parents who were striving but not wealthy. They had the Italian-heritage connection. This feeling of being an outsider. The sexuality connection. Why does one go on to become this incredible creator and great life force? And the other young man ends up destroying so much?”

The tale haunted Murphy, who pitched doing it even before Simpson aired. “I kept going back to Versace because it was different from O.J. tonally,” says the executive producer, sitting on the back patio of Casa Casuarina. “It was a manhunt and it takes place all over the country.” And just as the O.J. Simpson trial was a lens through which to examine racism, Murphy sees the Versace murder as a chance to do the same with sexuality and homophobia in the ’90s. “The more I had read about it, the more I was startled by the fact that Cunanan really was only allowed to get away with it because of homophobia,” says Murphy. “There was this great apathy about it, and I think part of that was because it seemed like gay people were disposable in our culture.”

The ACS team now not only has to live up the legacy of Simpson‘s success but also a glut of other true-crime scripted series. “I would only feel pressure if we were doing, like, the Menendez trial,” says ­Murphy. “But this is so dramatically different, and it’s about fashion and celebrity. Everything feels like you’re jumping off a diving board for the first time because there’s no template.” In this week’s cover story, EW has your exclusive deep dive on how Murphy brought together an Oscar winner, a Glee favorite, and a music superstar for one of 2018’s most anticipated television events.

How Ryan Murphy Plans to top ‘People v. O.J. Simpson’ Phenomenon with ‘Gianni Versace’