Penelope Cruz’s bizarre portrayal of Donatella and outstanding acting by Ricky Martin were two of the more startling features that stood out in The Assassination Of Gianni Versace.
But, as with The People vs. OJ Simpson the reality the drama was based on was even stranger. The white dove found lying by Versace’s body, also killed in the shooting for example, was a detail the best crime writers couldn’t make up.
There’s one big problem with making a show as universally acclaimed and exactly right for the times as The People vs. OJ Simpson and that’s what do you do next?
The Assassination Of Gianni Versace was not just the perfect follow-up but arguably, amazingly, even better material.
It made similar observations about the downside of celebrity, the appetite of the media, and flawed police procedure and prejudice (sexual this time rather than racial) but was more glamorous, more intriguing, and revealing than the first American Crime Story mini-series – largely because most viewers knew the details of the OJ case/murder (the Ford Bronco chase, the gloves etc) beforehand.
In contrast, this had an assassin few of us knew much about, that (strangely) never became as famous as the likes of Mark Chapman or John Hinckley Jn, despite killing Versace and being wanted by the FBI for four other murders at the time.
Episode One suggested that instead of facts established by a court case and endless analysis in the media, the story here revolves around speculation and ambiguity.
Even the show wasn’t sure we could believe what we were seeing, or saying that we should.
The issue whether Gianni Versace had ever met his killer Andrew Cunanan before their fatal encounter on July 15 1997 is disputed by the designer’s family.
Here though we saw Cunanan approach him seven years earlier in the VIP area of a nightclub in San Francisco and subsequently meet him at the opera he had created the costumes for.
The various versions of how these came about (and whether they did at all) was a product of three sources: the book Vulgar Favours by Vanity Fair writer Maureen Orth who supposedly uncovered them; scriptwriter Tom Rob Smith who by the series’ own admission ‘filled in a lot of the blanks involving the relationship between predator and prey’; and anecdotes by Andrew Cunanan himself.
The problem was, as we saw, that Cunanan was an inveterate liar, a pathological fantasist, and seemingly a sociopath – unable to empathise with other people emotionally or understand why telling the truth even mattered.
‘Is it real?’ a friend at Berkeley asked him about the story of meeting Versace.
‘How do you mean?’ frowned Cunanan, genuinely puzzled. ‘Honestly, truthfully, I really do swear I have a date with Gianni Versace !’
Given the lies he’d told about being half-Jewish and his sexuality his friend (like us) found Cunanan’s claims unlikely.
‘You tell gay people you’re gay and straight people you’re straight,’ he pointed out.
‘I tell people what they need to hear !’ countered Cunanan gleefully.
Darren Criss (Blaine Anderson in Glee) was superb portraying Cunanan’s dual personalities: the American Psycho-styled loser with ‘nothing’, consumed by self-hatred, torment over his sexuality, and jealousy of Versace’s lifestyle also able to pass himself as a handsome, camp, student at UC Berkeley and then blend into Miami’s beach scene.
He was wearing a grey t-shirt, shorts, and ordinary orange baseball cap when he walked up to the designer and shot him in broad daylight outside his house on Ocean Drive.
Criss certainly had a whale of time depicting Cunanan’s derangement (mimicking the shocked response of a woman watching Versace’s death on TV, placing his hand over his mouth as she did – except to conceal his glee at the news), not to mention his chilling charm and penchant for elaboration.
‘For my first job I worked for my father on his pineapple plantation in the Philippines ! Can you imagine that?!’ he purred to Versace (supposedly), before claiming his father had also been a pilot for Imelda Marcos and that he was writing a novel about his ‘crazy’ family.
Edgar Ramirez was equally brilliant as Gianni Versace (not to mention eerily similar physically) but the contrast between characters couldn’t have been greater.
Every time Versace spoke about his childhood and his family, his stories were touching and admirable.
His inspiration was his mother’s ethos as a dressmaker and the Versace company logo (the head of Medusa) far from the crass, pretentious, symbol people regarded it but a memory of his childhood playing in Rome’s ruins.
‘For me family is everything,’ Gianni gently explained to Cunanan (again allegedly). ‘The first dress I ever made was for my sister Donatella. Maybe every dress I make is for her.’
Penelope Cruz as Donatella made a late entrance but predictably a drama one, descending from a private plane wearing trademark leather trousers and a huge pair of shades.
When she took them off she didn’t look much like Donatella, or sound like her (or even Italian) when she confronted Gianni’s partner Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin), dismissing his sobbing snapping: ‘that’s not what I need from you right now. You are not to speak about my brother without consulting me first.’
D’Amico had just been grilled by the police – the scene that showed most that the Versace story may lack the resonance of OJ Simpson’s but it still has a striking relevance to modern-day politics/prejudice.
Asking about the lovers and one-night stands Antonio arranged for Versace, one FBI officer wondered: ‘did they consider themselves to be his partner too? Do you see why I’m confused? What’s the difference?’
‘I lived with Gianni for 15 years. I was his companion not his pimp !’ D’Amico wept. ‘It’s a good length of time,’ conceded the Fed. ‘Were you paid?’
Cruz came into her own when Donatella declared she was cancelling her brother’s plan to float Versace on the New York stock exchange and intending to keep it in the family.
‘Gianni grew his company from one small store in Milan, from a single rack of clothes, a little simple bench,’ she reiterated to their lawyers. ‘This company was his life. My brother is still alive as long as Versace is alive. I will not allow that man, that nobody, to kill my brother twice.’
Admittedly her words (and her accent) were more reminiscent of a woman announcing she was taking over South American drug cartel than the heir to an Italian fashion empire.
Everything about her portrayal of Donatella right down to the styling was suitably flamboyant without ever necessarily being completely convincing.
But even this was a reason to watch, to see how it/she progresses, and part of what made The Assassination of Gianni Versace as mesmerising as its predecessor about OJ.
Tag: february 2018
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: ‘A new American Psycho’
On paper, a script based on the dramatic murder of Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace in 1997, set in perma-tanned Miami and with a cast including Ricky Martin and Penelope Cruz, might sound like a recipe for the biggest slice of cheesecake melodrama you will get to see all year. Not that there’s anything wrong with cheesecake melodrama. From Dynasty to Nashville, when US dramas borrow the high-octane emotion of Latin American telenovelas and mix it up with cinematic opulence, it can be alchemised into TV gold.
You saw it glittering when Penelope Cruz, playing sister Donatella, magnificent in a peroxide blonde wig and skin-tight black leather, clomping around in high heels with the thuggish gait of bruiser in Doctor Martens, addresses a shadowy looking board room hours after Gianni has been shot dead outside his Miami palace by serial killer Andrew Cunanan. “I will not allow that man to kill my brother twice,” she hisses.
The Spanish actress doesn’t make much of an attempt to pretend she’s Italian – sniggering perhaps at English-speakers conception that they all sound the same and when all the Americans pronounce her brother’s name as ‘Johnny’. As a consequence, she reminds you of her wonderful she was in the same late 90s period in the films of Pedro Almodovar. Ricky Martin turns out to be a revelation as Gianni’s partner, vilified and shut out by both family and the police.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace is not just an excuse for some great fashion and Latin passion though but a real horrific tragedy, overshadowed in history by the death of Princess Diana only a month later. Edgar Ramirez gives Versace a poetic tenderness that makes you feel the senseless waste and brutality of his murder. But it’s Darren Criss who steals the show as the real American Psycho (with plenty of nods to the Mary Harron’s film) dissembling and deceiving with alarming ease, dancing to Phil Collins, his eyes flashing behind his preppy glasses.
The first American Crime Story series, The People v O. J. Simpson combined ersatz performances with an acute dissection of the growing fault lines in American society over race and the power of celebrity.
The second series suggests there will be similar analysis of how painfully and dangerously closeted homosexuality was and how glamour and money circulates and distorts passions like drugs. But without a long court case, the exploration this time seems more psychological than sociological – what drove Cunanon to kill Versace? Did he know him? The confabulation of fact and possible fiction and glamorisation of Cunanan, despite the beauty and drama, might make this slice of real life harder to swallow.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: ‘A new American Psycho’
The Assassination of Gianni Versace review – Ryan Murphy’s fashion fable is flawed but fab guilty pleasure
The mood and effect of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace is best exemplified by the fact that, when his boyfriend of 15 years, Antonio D’Amico, hears gunshots and races to find his dying lover riddled with bullets and bleeding upon the steps of Casa Casuarina, their Xanadu-like villa, you don’t think: “Oh, sweet fragility of life! Oh, the endless evil that man will visit upon man! But playthings to the gods are we!” You think: “Ooh, that’s Ricky Martin! In tennis whites! Isn’t he ageing well?”
Which is to say that, in the opening episode at least, the soapy sensibility of Ryan Murphy, the show’s creator, has some emotional distance to close between the subject and its viewers. There’s also the inescapable high camp elements of the story of the Italian fashion designer’s murder, with which series two of Murphy’s pop culture anthology is concerned. It’s not helped by a weirdly clunky script that has the murderer, Andrew Cunanan, disgorging great lumps of exposition that pop the narrative bubbles we would otherwise be chasing after. On the other hand, maybe it’s not a problem at all. Maybe keeping us at a distance is as knowing and deliberate an artistic decision as Versace’s every design choice in Casa Casuarina.
Like Murphy’s first and Bafta-winning American Crime Story, The People vs OJ Simpson, The Assassination is at least in part a commentary on the lenses in front of which a febrile piece of social history played out. When Cucanan’s bullets first met their mark in real life, the reaction from the public was, after all, just as shorn of genuine sorrow. A brand has been shot! Look, there’s Donatella arriving! And Diana and Naomi crying at the funeral! It was only ever deliciously unreal to us.
The nine-part series opens with the murder and the first 50-minute episode flashes back and forth from there to 1990, interleaving the evolution of Cununan’s obsession with his victim and the development of the murder investigation. Cunanan is played by Darren Criss, who is a touch stagey. But Criss was a fine turn as Blaine Anderson in Glee, and hopefully he will find his groove over the next eight episodes.
Edgar Ramirez as Versace does wonders with his part, managing to evoke the man’s fabled charm and a sort of commanding gentleness that explains why so many clients were drawn to him, and how he built a tiny Milan shop with a single rack of clothes into a billion pound fashion house.
Quite what is fact and quite what is fiction is never clear. Donatella et al have disowned the series as “a work of fiction”. The programme itself carries the disclaimer: “Some events are combined or imagined for dramatic and interpretative purposes. Dialogue is imagined to be consistent with these events.”
It is entirely in keeping with the genre that it is the bits that you are most sure are made up that are actually true. A fragment of one of the bullets that killed Versace also hit a dove and brought it down next to him. The police had failed to distribute the posters advertising Cunanan – who had killed four men in six months before Versace – as one the FBI’s 10 most wanted. And if the fact that a bystander ran to his car to get his Polaroid camera to capture the dying man’s body being loaded into the ambulance doesn’t seem stranger than fiction now, children of the smartphone world, let me assure you it did then.
Having looked a little ahead at the series, it does begin to thicken and deepen. You don’t need to feel too guilty about what promises to be a glorious and, given its central subject, eminently unjustifiable pleasure.
Via Darren’s Instagram Story (February 28th, 2018)
What Finn Wittrock Found ‘Admirable’ About Darren Criss’ ‘American Crime Story’ Transformation
Finn Wittrock gives one of his most powerful performances to date as real life Andrew Cunanan victim Jeff Trail on “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” someone Wittrock admits he didn’t know too much about when he signed onto the show.
The 33-year-old actor became a breakout star of the Ryan Murphy TV universe after his debut as murderous Dandy Mott on “American Horror Story: Freak Show” in 2014. He followed that up with two roles on “Hotel” and a barely-recognizable turn as a hillbilly cannibal on “Roanoke.” For his most recent pairing with Murphy, however, Wittrock tapped into a completely different kind of mindset to play a military veteran and Cunanan’s first victim.
Based on Maureen Orth’s book, “Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History,” and written by Tom Rob Smith, the new season of “American Crime Story” explores the serial killer’s past and the lives of those he killed, while highlighting the homophobia and gay panic rampant in the ‘90s. The Feb. 14 episode revolved almost entirely around Finn’s character, showing how Trail spoke out about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in a “48 Hours” interview and delving into his complicated relationship with Cunanan (Darren Criss) before his eventual murder.
With Wittrock returning Wednesday night – reminder: each new episode takes place before the last – TooFab caught up with the actor to talk about the research he did for the role, what it was like witnessing Criss’ transformation on set and how his storyline is still relevant today.
How familiar were you with the case beforehand?
I kind of knew as much as most people that I talked to I think. I kind of vaguely knew about the murder but didn’t know much at all about Cunanan, and so it was a big education. I mean the book, Maureen Orth’s book, was a huge piece of research for all of us and sort of created an incredible insight into that whole unfolding of the story. I think it’s funny, I talked to people from Florida though, like anyone who is from Miami or almost anywhere in Florida. And everybody I’ve talked to is like, ‘I know all about that.’ It’s like they know Cunanan, they know the other guys, they know the manhunt. I think for people who were living there at the time, especially around Miami, they got so invested in that story. It was like as big as OJ.
The show works backwards. What was your first day of filming? And did you guys film chronologically at all?
No. If there was a way to be the most opposite of chronologically, that’s the way we shot it. It was literally all over the place. My first day I think was in the airport when we go to pick up Andrew. And then like the next day or the day after I was getting killed and then the day after that I was on the aircraft carrier. I mean it was like all over the place.
I like tore the script apart and I put all the scenes together in chronological order so that I wouldn’t get confused. Like that death scene, is over the course of two episodes, so people were like, ‘It’s scene 96 in episode four, but it’s scene three in episode 5’ or actually vice versa. And it’s like I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Tell me where to fall.
Is this different than it usually is for you? That’s kind of what it seems like.
You know, I think any actor – anyone who works in TV – is used to it. I think because of the nature of the way the story was being told, I think like Tom Rob Smith had such an interesting structure out of working backwards like that. It kind of added a new challenge for everybody to kind of piece together where they were, what happened and you know. It’s like you already shot the future so you have to make the past that gets to to that point.
And now I know some of these scenes, they’re very serious or very dark. And when you are jumping around that much, how do you kind of get into the headspace for the day?
We trust a good script. If the arc of it is clearly defined in your head and you have people that you can really work with, then you can kind of jump anywhere and it doesn’t really matter. It can even sometimes be fun to go towards the end of something before doing the beginning scene. You can kind of figure out how to build up to it. It’s definitely a challenge, but there are perks to the challenge.
There is a lot of talk about Darren because he just loses himself completely into this role. What was it like seeing the light switch on and him becoming Andrew Cunanan?
It’s so cool because he really did, sort of, it was like a mask he threw on and off when he was in it, when he wasn’t. And I think it was maybe in some way the survival mechanism to not stay in it too much, you know. But it was really admirable to kind of watch him be his sort of buoyant energetic self and then sort of drop in at the drop of a dime to this sociopath. But he hates when you say sociopath. Understandably, because he has to play him.
Your character’s storyline, Jeff’s storyline, most of your solo episode was about ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ It’s crazy to think we’re still talking about similar bans, like the transgender ban, 20 years later.
It’s so funny, when I first read the script I was like, ‘Ahh, it’s probably a little dated to talk about ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ And then like a couple weeks later that whole transgender thing came out.
I know you watched the real “48 Hours” Jeff did to prepare. What was it like the first time you watched it and kind of getting into Jeff’s frame of mind at the time he filmed it?
You don’t see his face. He does allow his voice, but like you don’t see him. But you can see read so much off of him because he’s so composed, he’s such a put together, upright young man you know, who really believes in God and country, like really actually does and has a real patriotic feeling inside of him.
But you can also just tell that he’s bursting out of his skin, like right underneath of that composure. So that, I mean I just watched it over and over probably for the physical elements of replicating his voice a little bit and that, but that’s just also like hearing him and seeing him, you just really could feel by osmosis kind of internal struggle that was going on inside him.
What Finn Wittrock Found ‘Admirable’ About Darren Criss’ ‘American Crime Story’ Transformation
The woman recreating the iconic Versace looks for American Crime Story
It feels like we’ve been waiting a lifetime for this moment (or, at least since the show was announced at the beginning of last year), but tonight, The Assassination of Gianni Versace finally hits UK screens. The brainchild of Ryan Murphy, the man behind 2016’s The People vs. OJ Simpson, the series chronicles the lead up to – and aftermath of – the iconic Italian designer’s brutal murder at the hands of serial killer Andrew Cunanan on July 15, 1997.
Versace’s ostentatious collections were definitive of the late 80s and early 90s, epitomising the excessive glamour of the era, as he and sister Donatella jetted back and forth between lavish houses in Florida, New York and Italy. The moment he was gunned down, on the steps leading up to his Miami mansion, was a dark day for fashion: marking the end of an era of such levels of opulence within the industry, maximalism gave way to minimalism and the overstated became decidedly less so.
Central to the show, then, were the costumes worn by the cast. Step in American Horror Story and Glee costume designer Lou Eyright, who was tasked with outfitting Donatella (Penelope Cruz), Gianni (Édgar Ramírez), Gianni’s boyfriend Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin), Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), et al: a daunting task, given the designer’s formidable legacy. “It was hugely intimidating starting work on the show,” Eyright tells us over the phone from LA. “You know, I was such a fan of Gianni’s work and everything Donatella has done over the course of the last two decades, so of course there was some apprehension there. But it was also really exciting. He had such a distinct aesthetic and we had to kind of tread the line between being authentic to Versace and making it our own.”
Eyright needn’t have worried. The show is a flamboyant visual feast for the eyes, as Donatella struts around the set in (fabulous and hugely-covetable) vintage Versace pieces, Gianni sweeps down the halls of his Miami home in luxurious Baroque-printed silk shorts and gowns, and Antonio lounges on the (Medusa-mosaiced) pool in some v barely-there logo pants. Ahead of The Assassination of Gianni Versace’s launch, we caught up with the costume designer to talk about the search for the perfect Versace pieces, the challenges she faced during production, and her favourite looks from the show.
How did you prepare in the time leading up to the show’s production?
Lou Eyright: Well, I started by educating myself on the era and the style of the time beforehand, and I particularly studied Versace’s work in the 80s and 90s, you know the Baroque collection, and the pop art one too. For weeks and weeks I pored over every book I could get my hands on, not just from a fashion point of view, but from art and culture and everything that went with it; Versace’s collection of artworks, his houses, everything. Allison (Leach, co-costume designer) and I spent time at the Fashion Institute of Design in LA as well: they have a huge archive of Versace pieces that we studied prior to shooting. And, of course, the series is also about Andrew Cunanan’s life, so we needed to understand the era thoroughly to be able to dress him properly. There was a lot of trips to the library and late nights scouring the internet involved (laughs).
How was it working between two completely opposing styles simultaneously: the high-octane, OTT glamour of the Versaces and the more grungy, downbeat look Cunanan has?
Lou Eyright: Well, you know, that’s what we do! We set out to tell a story through clothing and whether we have one aesthetic to cover, or 10, or 20, it’s part and parcel on the job. But working on American Crime Story was particularly daunting as we didn’t have as much time as I’d have liked to research. Pressure is good though, you have to live up to the challenge. So it was fun for us to cover both ends of the scale, from Gianni and Donatella and Antonio’s fabulous looks, right through to Andrew’s more downtrodden, understated costumes.
Going back to Versace, were there specific pieces you set out to find when you were creating Donatella and Gianni’s costumes?
Lou Eyright: So some of the garments were scripted very specifically: there’s a point where Gianni was designing all of these Western-inspired pieces – the leather jeans, the leather shirts with the gold collar tips, and the heavy gold Medusa detailing – they were all part of the script, so really we had to find those. We searched the web for weeks to find some of the pieces. Some we managed to get on eBay, and we found a number of styles through private collectors that we got in touch with, including a few in LA, which was quite lucky. We managed to source a few original pieces and then have them replicated, which was great. It was important to Ryan for it to be authentic, and both Penelope and Edgar were both thrilled to be wearing pieces that were actually designed by their real-life counterparts.
The Versace family denounced the show early on in production. Were you a little disappointed that they’d declined to be involved with the show?
Lou Eyright: Of course, I was a little disappointed they’d distanced themselves from it, but I never imagined they’d really be involved to be honest. It’s a story that must still carry a lot of hurt for them, and it was important for everyone involved that it would be handled sensitively. I wanted to make sure I represented the house of Versace as well as I possibly could, though, whether they were involved or not. If they did see it, I wanted them to be happy with the way it looked at least.
Penelope Cruz has been lauded for her performance and capturing the essence of Donatella. Which look epitomises Donatella for you?
Lou Eyright: My favourite was one that didn’t actually make it into the show! It was an authentic Versace shirt with this really bold baroque print from around 1994 and it was cut in the editing suite. But to be honest, I don’t know if I do have a favourite for her, actually. I think what was most important was that Penelope was able to pull off Donatella’s silhouette and stance. And so it was more about finding the right corsets and shapewear to help her transform into Donatella. We went to Agent Provocateur, we went to trashy lingerie stores, we had some made for her. But key to Penelope’s portrayal was the silhouette, definitely.
Did Penelope have a lot of input when it came to costumes? She’s friends with Donatella in real life, so I imagine she must have felt a lot of responsibility on her shoulders…
Lou Eyright: She did have a lot of input, yeah, and she definitely felt a lot of responsibility to portray Donatella in the best possible light. So we worked closely with her to ensure the garments had the highest level of respect and precision that they could have. Very early on, Allison flew out to Madrid to fit Penelope for the first time, and she put on the clothes and just slipped into character, like, she was Donatella! She was very instrumental in making sure everything was just right, which really helped us out.
Did Penelope wear anything other than Versace?
Lou Eyright: For the most part, she wore Versace, like Donatella herself did. But there were a few pieces in there that weren’t: a couple of Alaïa dresses, a Dolce & Gabbana corset, and I think one of the pairs of studded leather pants was vintage. Mainly we tried to stick to Versace, though.
Is there anything you would have done differently? Any pieces that you’d have loved to get your hands on?
Lou Eyright: I wish I’d had a little more prep time to really thoroughly study Gianni and Donatella, and really been able to get to grips with their relationship and the essence of their being. But that’s television, you know, you only get a few weeks to put it all together. I would have loved to have been able to go into all the Haute Couture work, and maybe visit the atelier if I’d been allowed to. But we just didn’t have the time or the resources to do that.
What did you think when you saw the show for the first time?
Lou Eyright: Oh, of course, I picked everything apart (laughs). But overall, on the whole, I think it looks beautiful. There’s always something you wish you’d done differently, or something you think you missed. That said, I’m very proud of the team that worked to create the show, and helped Ryan (Murphy) realise his vision. It’s a beautiful show and I’m so happy we all pulled it off.
The woman recreating the iconic Versace looks for American Crime Story
Inside ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’s’ Story of High Fashion, Homicide and HIV
Are you watching The Assassination of Gianni Versace on FX? The series is the second in the American Crime Story anthology, the folks who brought you The People versus OJ Simpson. It’s based on the book Vulgar Favors by Maureen Orth about Andrew Cunanan’s murderous spree in 1997 that ended in the shooting of the famous designer on the steps of his Miami mansion.
With openly gay Hollywood producer Ryan Murphy (executive producer, known for creating Nip/Tuck, Glee, Feud, and American Horror Story, among others) at the helm, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is sensational. Truly, it causes all the sensations. It’s super gay. It’s got fabulous ‘90s Versace fashions. It’s violent, bloody, and disturbing. It’s a little bit sexy (as sexy as you can be in a series about a spree killer) with a soupcon of nudity and a smidge of S&M. There are drugs, nightclubs, models, and hot military guys. It’s got an amazing cast, starring Darren Criss as Cunanan, Penelope Cruz savagely portraying Donatella Versace, Ricky Martin as Versace’s partner Antonio, and Edgar Ramirez – who looks and acts so much like the real Versace that it’s spooky – and featuring performers such as Judith Light, Mike Farrell, Finn Wittrock, and Broadway’s Annaleigh Ashford. The plot contrasts the pampered opulence of Versace’s privileged life with the underbelly creepiness of Cunanan and his development from a pathetic, disillusioned liar into a deranged, notorious killer. It’s fantastic, delicious television.
The show also includes a very powerful HIV storyline. Gianni Versace is revealed as being HIV positive at a time in history when homophobia and AIDS panic were rampant. Not only is Versace portrayed as HIV positive, he is shown to be at times so weak from advanced sickness that he needs help even to walk. Then, in later scenes, he’s shown to be recovered after (presumably) being put on antiretroviral therapy, which became available in the mid-1990s.
After his recovery, Versace decides to use his new lease on life not only to continue creating fashions but also to come out as gay at a time when not many celebrities were brave enough to do so.
“I was sick, but I didn’t die,” he says in Episode 5 of the show. “I have a second chance. It’s a miracle that I’m alive. And yet, I ask myself every day, what have I done to deserve this? Why am I still here? To be afraid? No. I’m alive, and I must use it.”
The Assassination of Gianni Versace might be the first major media movie or television show to present a person sick with advanced HIV infection and then recovered and vibrant due to the miracle of HIV medications. This is an amazing and important landmark for HIV in film/television, and the storyline is told with a lot of respect for those of us living with the virus. By exploring other aspects of the AIDS crisis and its implications in the aftermath of Versace’s murder, the series shows in living color what it was like to be living in the good ol’ bad ol’ ’90s.
I had a phone conversation with award-winning executive producer Brad Simpson and screenwriter and author Tom Rob Smith about the production, the creative process, and the decision to use HIV in the storyline.
Charles Sanchez: Why do you think it’s important to tell this story about Andrew Cunanan and Gianni Versace at this time?
Brad Simpson: This story, in a lot of ways, was a journey through the politics of gay identity and what it meant to be out in the 1990s. The 1990s being this volatile time – even though it’s still volatile for a lot of people – of the Defense of Marriage Act, and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and celebrities starting to come out, and the sort of shift and also the transformation with AIDS drugs that happened and a generation of activists who’d been politicized by the AIDS crisis, all intersecting in this decade – and it felt like, you know, for us, true crime is bigger than just a murder. It really felt to us like there was something to be said about the 1990s and about where we are today, by telling this story.
Tom Rob Smith: [Cunanan] is very unusual. One of the things we’ve confronted is that people are talking about him as being a serial killer, and that’s just simply not the case. This is someone who didn’t have a pathology of violence. He wasn’t committing arson or sexual assault, all of the early warning signals that you have with lots of serial killers. This is someone that, if you had jumped back and met him at age 20, and said, “You’re going to be a killer,” he would have found it impossible to believe. Exploring him presents lots of challenges, and … it was very interesting to contrast [Versace] as someone who creates, as someone who is curious about the world, and someone who experienced intolerance and managed to navigate around it, with Cunanan, who just seemed to be defeated by it.
Simpson: Gianni Versace was one of the few people who were celebrities who were out [as gay] in the 1990s. It was actually shocking to us. We went back to make a list of who was out pre-Ellen [DeGeneres] coming out, and the list is 5, 6, 7 famous people? No fashion designers.
I think this is a show that only Ryan Murphy could get on the air. Because I like to think that we’re incredibly advanced, but the show is deeply gay and touches on things that you haven’t seen dealt with on TV before. There’s a freedom that Ryan’s success gives to allow us to tell a story like this.
Sanchez: Speaking of things we’ve never seen before, I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen [on film], from an HIV standpoint, a person with HIV, sick and near death, turning around and becoming miraculously better through medications. What was the process of deciding how to tell that part of the story?
Smith: The reason we told that … it was just very powerful that Versace was very sick in ’93-’94 when his symptoms became severe, and it’s debated by the family, so I should put it in as a caveat that the family, they dispute this, but …
Sanchez: I believe in the book it says that, publicly, he had cancer.
Smith: Yeah, that’s right. I think they say “ear cancer,” and we know that is infamous [as code for HIV]. But we do know that he was very sick in ’93-’94, that he was on the brink of death, that is uncontested, and we know that he was refusing to submit to this illness. And that he would walk, still, when he was very sick, from his house in Miami to that news kiosk; he would go with Antonio [his partner], and he’d be so weak that Antonio would have to carry the magazines back. I thought it was a remarkably powerful structure [for the script] to have that walk contrasted with the walk when he’s then fully recovered. And he is then, in ’97 [when he’s shot], walking to that newsstand, not needing anyone’s help. He’s full of the joy of life in many ways. This medication gave him a rejuvenation.
And it was a great life force, you know, [Versace] was saying: “I want to live, I have so much more to give. I have so much more work, but also in terms of the people I love, my grandchildren, my family. I’m going to cling on to life for as long as I can.” And this new wave of medication came along, and he was saved.
Simpson: There’s something bittersweet about the fact that he thought he was going to die and had been given this new lease on life. There was this generation of men who thought they had a death sentence and then were slowly realizing maybe they didn’t. He was starting to create again, and right at that moment, his life was taken away.
There were rumors that ran at the time, the hysteria after Versace was killed, there were these rumors spread by the media and some nefarious friends of Andrew that Versace gave Andrew AIDS and this was a revenge murder, and this is a widely held belief that is actually still held by a lot of people. It was revealed in Andrew’s autopsy that he was actually HIV negative. It was a narrative that was out there and one that we wanted to correct with the show: The evil murderer was actually not the one who had AIDS; it was the victim.
Sanchez: What do you think the responsibility of the media and artists of your caliber is in telling stories about HIV in the modern world?
Smith: It’s hard to come up with a generalized formula for it. I think you have to react to the nature of the period and the people involved. In the ’80s, the stories were horrific. It’s very hard to go into the ’80s and find stories that weren’t heartbreaking. And so, if you were telling that story, I don’t see how you could put a demand that somehow people be upbeat about it.
The responsibility just comes from looking at the truth of it and not landing on what appears to be an easy explanation. I think that’s both wrong and offensive.
Simpson: Ryan, you know, obviously did The Normal Heart. We had a lot of conversation in terms of how to portray the AIDS-related illnesses. We’re adapting Maureen’s book, and this is her position that, you know, [Versace] was positive. We felt that to not portray that would be to play into the stigma that still surrounds HIV to this day.
Sanchez: Speaking of stigma, I wanted to ask you about that. You and Nina Jacobson [Simpson’s producing partner] were on NPR at the end of January, and you both stated [while talking about the series] that HIV stigma was no longer prevalent. Then, two prominent HIV bloggers [Josh Robbins and Mark S. King] called you out on it on social media. I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you about it.
Simpson: Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, I feel horrible about it. On radio, unlike an interview like this, you’re like racing through it and trying to be compact in your answers. I did not say want I meant to say. That’s not an excuse; it’s just an explanation.
We talked about this a lot in terms of how to talk about Versace’s HIV status. One of the conversations we had, we felt that were we to ignore our belief in that status and Maureen’s beliefs on that status, then we would be playing into the very stigma that we’re all trying to get rid of, that we would be reifying the stigma and shame of living with HIV by denying that part of a character. What I meant to say was that we didn’t want to play into the stigma of having HIV. What I ended up saying was that there is no stigma to having HIV today. I don’t believe that at all!
I’m not going to pretend that I know what it’s like to live with HIV or how complicated it is to decide how public to be about your status with partners, with friends, with family, or how to navigate the health care system. That’s something that I can’t know, that I can only hear about. But obviously, or maybe not obviously, I’m sorry that I misspoke, and I regret it. Of course, I know that there’s a large and unfortunate stigma to having HIV, still, in so many ways.
Smith: One of the reasons we wanted to do this [show] is to attack the stigma. This stigma is so wrong, and it’s so corrosive. It still exists today; we’re not just talking about something that is historic. We talk [on the show] about the idea that you could build a company that’s worth billions of dollars, be a fashion icon, and that it could be reduced to having no value simply by the factor of an HIV diagnosis. That isn’t an exaggeration. It seems to me to be a real injustice.
Yet, when you look at Gianni Versace’s words, you know, to me it was code. I can’t declare for sure what he was saying, but when he says in the ’90s after he recovers from the most severe symptoms, “I’m not going to live my life filled with regret and shame anymore,” to me, that’s him saying: “I’ve recovered, and I’m not just recovered physically. I’m not going to walk around feeling terrible anymore. I’m going to live; I’m going to love.” And I found that very powerful, and I really wanted to capture that.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Inside ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’s’ Story of High Fashion, Homicide and HIV
https://ia601507.us.archive.org/12/items/jfsaudio2341234/jfsaudio.mp3?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio
https://acsversace-news.tumblr.com/post/171385267984/audio_player_iframe/acsversace-news/tumblr_p4vhf2cAD41wcyxsb?audio_file=https%3A%2F%2Fia601507.us.archive.org%2F12%2Fitems%2Fjfsaudio2341234%2Fjfsaudio.mp3
Ross Sinclair, Claire Morrall and the Tuesday Review
Plus the Tuesday Review: Claire Sawers, Pete Ross and James Crawford review new BBC2 series Civilisations, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, and Tracey Thorn’s new album Record. | 28 February 2018
@bbc5live: “It’s the kind of story that everyone saw but no one saw”
Writer @tomrobsmith on showing the ‘darker story’ behind the assassination of Gianni Versace in new TV drama. #ACSVersace
Interview with Tom Rob Smith on BBC Breakfast | 28 February 2018
ACS news 