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Season two of Ryan Murphy’s true crime epicAmerican Crime Story is, like season one, decidedly not-a-murder-mystery. There’s no process of deduction. No great whodunnit, at its core. In fact, the series’ most famous killing happens in the opening few minutes, in broad daylight, as it did in real life, on the steps of the Casa Casuarina, that baking hot morning in July of 1997.

At the time, Gianni Versace was the most famous fashion designer in the world. His killer, 27-year-old Andrew Cunanan, by contrast, was not famous. At least not nearly as famous as he should have been, as someone on the run for the brutal murders of four other people.

“I think unless you were in the gay community, in San Diego, in Miami, in a certain part of the 90s, or in Versace’s personal life at the time, the story seems quite distant,” says Darren Criss, who plays the killer with startling visual likeness.

The former Glee actor grew up in San Francisco when Cunanan would have been going out there. He’d have been in the city around the time Cunanan may or may not have first met Versace (a point of contention the series cleverly side steps). “My parents even went to Capriccio, the opera that Versace designed for,” he says. “So, I was there, but, you know, my parents were both bankers – they weren’t going to be like, ‘Oh, Darren, Gianni Versace was murdered on the steps of his home’. We wouldn’t have talked about it at the dinner table.”

And therein lies the part of the crux. You see, the “American Crime Story” of season two is not the murder of Gianni Versace alone. Rather, it is the failure to prevent the murder of Gianni Versace – a negligence, ignorance, lack of awareness or other that lead the book upon which the series is based [Maureen Orth’sVulgar Favours] to be subtitled: The Largest Failed Manhunt in the US History.

FULL ARTICLE | I-D VICE.COM

darren criss on playing versace’s killer in american crime story