At times it feels as though Ryan Murphy has an overwhelming number of shows, but there’s something special about American Crime Story. The first season of the anthology series, The People v. O.J. Simpson, swept the world by storm, dominating both critical conversations and achieving stellar ratings. For its second season, The Assassination of Gianni Versace may not be as all-encompassing as the first season of the show. However, there’s a sense of urgency, consciousness, and care about the portrayal of these real-life people baked into the DNA of Versace that makes this season a worthy sequel to the O.J. season of the show.
The creators of American Crime Story know the show’s reputation and strengths and are cautious about capturing the perfect balance of pulpy drama and socially conscious storytelling. As we’re in the middle of the first big show of 2018, Decider had the opportunity to Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson, executive producers for American Crime Story and FX’s upcoming musical drama Pose. The duo discussed the importance of telling the Versace and Cunanan story, the challenges of Ryan Murphy’s brand of storytelling, what it’s like working with FX, and what’s going on with the Monica Lewinsky and Hurricane Katrina seasons of American Crime Story.
“The first thing that Ryan pulled for was that we shoot in Miami, which is hard to do on a basic cable TV show,” Simpson said when asked about The Assassination of Gianni Versace‘s gorgeous cinematography. To achieve the show’s highly stylized and bright look, the team brought in two directors of photography — Nelson Cragg, who also directed Episode 2 “Manhunt” and worked on the O.J. season, and Simon Dennis, who worked on six episodes of the series.
“There’s a consistency [to the look of the show], but the show is darker and less vivid as we go back in time and see some of the murders. But also Ryan really wanted pink to be a central color of the show,” he said. “It’s important metaphorically because the show is in many ways about being gay, and pink is associated with that, but also we thought it was important because it was a big color in Miami, and it plays throughout the show with very clean lines.”
Simpson also revealed that the team used American Gigolo and the original Miami Vice for inspiration. “We hope that people enjoy the look while also getting more and more unnerved by it,” Simpson said.
The real story of Andrew Cunanan‘s murder spree was fairly sensationalized. However, the team was careful to be sensitive to these victims’ stories and portray them as people first. “The only victim that people really knew anything about was Versace and we wanted — to the best of our abilities — to tell the story of these other lives that were lost and for them to not sort of be lost in the shuffle of the celebrity victim who was the final victim and the one that everybody knew about,” Jacobson said. The team wasn’t able to learn much about William Reese, the victim who was murdered for his truck. However, they were able to expound on the stories of three of Cunanan’s other victims —Lee Miglin, David Madsen, and Jeff Trail.
“They had such complex stories to be told,” she said. “So much of what they experienced, the themes of homophobia and shame, the policies of being out at that time [are relevant], and we actually felt that rather than sensationalizing those murders, we wanted to humanize those victims.”
Though FX’s series largely sticks to its source material, there is a key difference between Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors and The Assassination of Gianni Versace. While Orth outlines police missteps and the media’s response to this case, Versace largely glosses these details. When asked why these elements were excluded, Jacobson pointed to editing.
“A lot of details from the book were in our script and were shot. And then through the editorial process we found that sort of where you wanted to be was you with the people who were the center of the story,” she said. “Part of it was the difficulty that, because it was this national manhunt with different states involved, there wasn’t necessarily one person or one character story that you could tell of somebody who was on the hunt, putting the clues together. So we didn’t feel as though we had as much character drama coming from the police investigation side.”
Just as The People v. O.J. Simpson was just as much about race relations as it was about national scandal, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is equally about these horrific murders as it is about homophobia and what it was like to be gay during this time. The Versace season is one of the best forms of socially conscious television, a brand Murphy has perfected. However, there are challenges that come with creating TV this way.
“I think the central thing is that you can’t start with the issues, you know? We like a good page turner, in terms of our movies, in terms of our TV shows. Ryan understands, and in a weird way he’s sort of been able to cloak shows that actually have a lot of radical change under just really good storytelling,” Simpson said. “I think Glee did a lot of hurrying up the acceptance among millennials and teaching their parents about difference and homosexuality.”
Simpson admitted that when Murphy first presented the Versace story to them, they weren’t very familiar with all of Cunanan’s murders and didn’t fully see the larger meaning. “As we got into it we realized this is a show about what it was like to be gay during this incredibly complicated time in America. People were trying to come out of the closet across the country, and half the people were trying to shove them back into that closet,” he said. “We’re able to tell that story because it’s a really griping story about this really griping thriller. And I think that’s the secret sauce for Ryan and what we’re interested in too. This sort of literary pulp is compulsive, but it has something to say.”
Simpson expects Pose, FX’s 1980s musical that currently has the largest transgender cast ever announced for a scripted series, to have that same balance. “What Ryan’s doing essentially is telling a musical about people’s hopes and dreams. I think that’s the reason an audience is going to connect to it,” he said. “That’s exactly what makes for compelling TV.”
Jacobson also explained how timeliness has effected both seasons of American Crime Story. “So many of the cases of black deaths at the hands of police were unfolding just right when we were writing and producing O.J., so it felt incredibly immediate even though it was a period piece,” she said. “[Versace] too is a period piece, but this was a time when I was coming out.”
“Versace is the first, really the first major designer to come out not because he was visibly ill with AIDs, which the only other out designers were dead. They had come out because they were visibly ill, and that was the final image that people had of them,” Jacobson said. “Ellen wasn’t out yet. Elton John was out, but very few other celebrities were. And certainly I would say I remember few women were out at that time and how few role models there were. You tend to tell stories that you identify with, that speak to you in a way that moves you, and for us this was a story that moved us.”
Speaking of timely stories, when asked if there had been any talks about moving up the Monica Lewinsky season of American Crime Story in the wake of the #MeToo movement, Simpson those conversations have happened, though nothing is official yet.
“I think we’re kind of glad that we didn’t do Monica right after O.J. I think that this conversation [in Hollywood about sexual misconduct] will inform how we do it. I think that it will inform our perspective on it in a way that’s probably good and cause us to explore issues of consent and what it means to be in a relationship with a powerful man and a younger woman that maybe wouldn’t have been as nuanced before this conversation,” he said. “We might have focused more on the politics. But all of these [shows], we handcraft them … the reason we haven’t been rushing things on the air and pressed pause on Katrina is because we want them all to have resonance.”
As for Katrina, the Five Days at Memorial season is still happening, but there are no official developments yet. “We have a writer working on it,” Simpson said. “We decided to stop announcing when we’ll in production on things because we’ll be in production when the scripts come in, right? We’re hopeful that this new approach is going to be the right one.”
For FX’s part, from Donald Glover to Noah Hawley, the network has been outspoken about allowing its creators to take their time when it comes to producing quality seasons of new shows. “We put a lot of work into a few things, and they’re appreciative of that. They only make pilots that they think they want to program, and they’re not throwing things against the wall,” Simpson said. “I think it’s the smartest group of people working in TV. And it’s been great because our first couple of seasons of working on TV and working with Ryan, who’s also been a great mentor to us, has also coincided with John Landgraf’s team really getting recognized for what they do. As we watch shows like The Americans and Atlanta get noticed along with our shows, we feel like we’re in great company.”
As for FX’s future, the executive producers seemed optimistic about that as well. When asked how she thought Disney’s acquisition of Fox might effect FX, Jacobson said her former employer likely bought Fox because of its content. “It’s been a long time since I’ve worked there, and a lot has changed since I’ve worked there,” she said. “The offerings, I think, from Fox and FX are quite different, and I would assume that … they want those differences in terms of launching Hulu as a major competitor to Netflix and Amazon. But I have to assume they bought Fox because they see the talent that’s there and the library of great shows, and they want some of the differentiation.”
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