You can catch Ricky on "The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” Wednesdays on FX. This segment aired on the KTLA 5 Morning News, Thursday, January 18, 2018.
Grammy winner Ricky Martin sits down with Hoda Kotb to talk about his latest projects, including his dramatic role in the FX series “American Crime Story,” in which he plays the boyfriend of fashion designer Gianni Versace, who was murdered in 1997. He also talks about his recent marriage and his upcoming return to Las Vegas. | 23 January 2018
Wednesday’s second episode of FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, “Manhunt,” tells the story of the hunt for Versace’s killer, Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss). But it also shines a light on the loving relationship between the fashion designer (Edgar Ramirez) and his sister, Donatella Versace (Penelope Cruz), the one between Versace and his partner, Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin) and the final friendship Cunanan formed before Versace’s murder, with an HIV-positive Miami junkie named Ronnie (Max Greenfield of New Girl fame).
While many of the people Cunanan was close with in the final months of his life wound up victims of his killing spree, Ronnie had a different relationship with the serial killer.
“Andrew is a friend to him — or at least he really wants him to be,” Greenfield tells The Hollywood Reporter of his character. “It starts to dawn on him that something is off, and he really doesn’t want to believe it because he values the friendship more than what he feels like this might end up being.”
Although the Versace family has continued to deny that Versace was diagnosed with HIV before his death, the Ryan Murphy’s FX anthology (and Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors, on which it is based) posits that he was — and contrasts Versace’s illness with Ronnie’s positive status. Greenfield said that meeting Ronnie, who had also recovered from his sickest days, helps bring context to the new lease on life many HIV-positive people faced at the time.
“Two years before, they had just come up with the medication that treated HIV, and you had these people who had accepted their own fate and had all of a sudden been given this new lease on life,” Greenfield said. “I’m sure a lot of them were lost, and had lost so many people, and didn’t understand why they, all of a sudden, were spared.”
The series jumps back and forth in time to depict Versace in the throes of his alleged illness, which caused him to lean heavily on his sister and on D’Amico. Ramirez told THR that though he and Cruz are Latinx and the Versaces are Italian, their cultures have two very important factors in common: their deep Catholic roots, and the fact that they’re comfortable with expressing emotion.
“That was something that was key to Gianni’s relationships in general, especially within his family, and that’s something that, based on all the accounts that I had access to — people who were close to him would tell me — he was very respectful; he was a generous guy; but passionate, and in touch with his emotions. So was Donatella, and so was the relationship. Penelope and I, we connected to that. We understood that well. Gianni used to say that the beautiful thing about working with family is that you would fight in the morning and then you would have dinner at night as if nothing had happened.”
As for Versace’s relationship with D’Amico, “they were very much in love … and we really wanted to pay tribute to what we think was a beautiful love story,” Ramirez said. “They were very close and they were real partners, not only in love but also in business and in creativity and in the enjoyment of life, and that was very important to them.”
But the relationship between Donatella and D’Amico was not nearly as close — their battle for Versace’s estate played out in newspapers and courts in the years following the designer’s death, and plays out on screen in Wednesday’s episode.
“You have to think of Gianni as an emperor, like the sun of a universe that would swirl an orbit around him,” he said. “So, of course when he was gone in such a horrible way and drastic way, no one was prepared for that and that whole universe collapsed. Without the sun, everyone spun out of control.”
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The first thing you notice about American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace is that it doesn’t spend much of its time with the famous fashion designer in its title. The second thing you notice is the person the show does follow for most of its run: the man who murdered him. As Andrew Cunanan, the darkly charismatic and deeply disturbed man who killed Gianni Versace, Darren Criss is the unquestionable star of the show. Of course, he wouldn’t blame you for not knowing that from the start. After all, neither did he.
“I knew as much as most people know about it,” Darren Criss tells me during lunch while promoting Versace in New York. “But I’ve spoken to a lot of people… and they said, ‘I didn’t even know he was killed!”
At first, you might not know what to make of Criss’s performance as the notorious murderer. He spends much of the show’s premiere evading capture after having killed one of the most prominent figures in the fashion world and largely getting away with it. As the show stretches back into Cunanan’s history, the overwhelming completeness of Criss’s transformation becomes remarkable. He shifts from sinister gunman to a darkly enchanting boy genius, a guy who belts the lyrics to Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” as he arrives in Miami to kill Versace, wining and dining victims and cohorts alike with a chilling talent for cycling through whatever emotion or approach will get him what he wants.
It’s a huge shift for the energetic and irrepressibly pleasant actor who became an overnight teen idol for playing Blaine Anderson on Glee—a role that put him in the orbit of Ryan Murphy, who years later, would reach out to Criss with the role that will doubtless cause many Blaine fans great distress.
“Andrew is kind of the stuff of urban legend, especially in the gay community. I had a friend who told me, ‘Oh you’re playing the gay boogeyman?’” Criss tells me. “And I was like, really? This was a guy who was a young man in the ‘90s, and he was like ‘Oh yeah, we would joke about it, like, Oooooo Andrew Cunanan is gonna come get you,’ obviously very irreverently.”
Maureen Orth answers questions about the series The Assassination of Gianni Versace, inspired by her book Vulgar Favors. The author is happy with the work of Ryan Murphy. | 22 January 2018
(Conclusion)
LOS ANGELES—In this part two of my column on “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” here’s more of Ricky Martin and Édgar Ramírez talking about their roles. The entire cast of the FX Networks’ production is getting enthusiastic reviews, including this one by critic Todd VanDerWerff of Vox:
“…As with any given (Ryan) Murphy production, the show’s cast is electrifying. Édgar Ramírez and Ricky Martin craft a deeply believable love for a lifetime in the handful of scenes they share together as Versace and his partner Antonio D’Amico, while Penélope Cruz might seem over the top as Donatella Versace, until you check out actual footage of the woman and realize the actress has absolutely nailed her performance.
“But it’s Darren Criss as Cunanan who leaves the biggest impression. Criss is best known as a dreamy song-and-dance man from ‘Glee,’ and his take on Cunanan is the very best kind of take on a dark character. He doesn’t want to create empathy for Cunanan so much as a kind of understanding. You are invited to think about him less as a person and more as an aberration, like some dark part of America’s worst self-made flesh. This is going to redefine Criss’ career, and it deserves to.”
Ricky Martin
The pop star, who recently announced his engagement to Jwan Yosef, a Syria-born, Sweden-raised artist (they held hands at the recent Golden Globes, where he, Penélope, Edgar and Darren were presenters), was also grateful that the story was filmed in chronological order, except for the series’ opening scene which shows that tragic day in 1997.
“Something that I’m thankful for was that my scenes were shot in chronological order,” Ricky pointed out. “I had a natural buildup. The first scene I shot was me walking down the stairs, going to pick up my racquet ball, because I’m going to play tennis and Gianni saying, ‘Ciao,’ and me saying, ‘Ciao bello.’
“All I needed to do was go back to those eyes and him saying goodbye, and I get emotional. I was really immersed in this.”
The 46-year-old shared more on D’Amico, who’s often referred to as Versace’s lover and nothing else. “Antonio was raw,” Ricky began. “His honesty was cutting. That was why Gianni was obsessed and so in love with him. Antonio would tell him, ‘I’m sorry you’re wrong. And that’s a horrible sketch, by the way.’ That is the relationship that they had, and that’s what Gianni needed.
“Gianni was surrounded by yes people. The only person who would tell him, ‘You’re wrong,’ was Antonio. I think Antonio would also ask Gianni, ‘Come on, go out, have fun and live. Life is short.’ That stimulated Gianni in many ways.
“Most of the experiences that dictated Gianni’s collection was because of how Antonio exposed him to a pretty tough, heavy, funky sexual hallucinogenic life. I was asking around what happened when people would come to Gianni to talk bad about Antonio. He would become a lion.
“There was a special connection between Gianni and Antonio. They just had to look at each other, and they knew what they both needed. Antonio was a bit of a caregiver. He was the one who’d give him his vitamins every morning. So, Gianni felt protected by Antonio.”
Édgar Ramírez
Édgar spoke about his different challenge when they shot the opening scene, which took days. “It was an interesting exercise of abandonment and trust because I spent days with my eyes closed, being handled by all the [actors playing] paramedics and witnessing the emotions that Ricky put into it,” said the Venezuelan actor.
“Gianni was declared dead roughly an hour after he was shot, so he might have been alive. He might have been listening to all the things that were going on around him, without being able to react because his body was shut down.
“I can’t fall asleep, but I had to be as quiet as possible. It was an exercise of trust.
“When we shot in LA, when they put me on the gurney for the first time and strapped me, I had like seven people around. I had a panic attack. My mind knew that it was fine, but my body was reacting to people talking.
On working with Darren, Édgar remarked, “Darren is great. I have never worked with him before. He has such a strong energy—he is a singer, musician, composer and a very fine actor. It’s interesting because we hardly encounter each other, but we share the same space many times. So we became closer personally on set. I’m very happy to be doing this with him. I know his work before from ‘Glee.’ ”
Édgar also discussed the dynamics between Gianni, Antonio and Donatella, as portrayed in the limited series. More than a week before “The Assassination…” premiered in the US on Jan. 17, the Versace family issued a statement blasting the series as a “work of fiction.”
“…The Versace family has neither authorized nor had any involvement whatsoever in the forthcoming TV series about the death of Mr. Gianni Versace, which should only be considered as a work of fiction,” the statement read.
Despite this statement, Donatella recently sent flowers to Penélope, according to Ryan. He told The Hollywood Reporter, “Donatella Versace sent Penélope Cruz a very large arrangement of flowers when she was representing the show at the Golden Globes. I don’t know if she’s going to watch the show, but if she did, she’d see that we treat her and her family with respect and kindness, and she really is a feminist role model in my book because she had to step into an impossible situation, which she did with grace and understanding.”
Donatella was quoted by The New York Times in 1999 as saying, “My relationship with Antonio is exactly as it was when Gianni was alive. I respected him as the boyfriend of my brother, but I never liked him as a person. So the relationship stayed the same.”
For his part, Édgar was diplomatic in his comments: “That’s one of the most interesting interactions in the story. The house of Versace had everything to do with that relationship. At times, it feels like a Greek tragedy. Also, the way it’s written and told, it feels almost like ‘The Borgias.’ It has a very classic element, which has to do with the cultural component.
“Gianni and Donatella were very close. They completed each other in many aspects. The first woman Gianni ever made dresses for was his little sister. She was his muse in many ways and, at the same time, she was his wild side.
“She was like his presence out in the world. She’d go out and inform Gianni about what was going on. She was in tune with what was going on in society.
“The house of Versace is a result of their interaction together. Gianni was at the center, but it was a family business. It’s a very Italian and Latin thing to have a family business for generations, for better and for worse.
“Because there is no one that you can trust more than your family. At the same time, you’re talking about business, so it always gets complicated. It’s a very endearing, intense, high-voltage relationship. But, there was a lot of love. For Gianni, family was a priority, and it was very important.”
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Edgar Ramirez interview on Live With Kelly and Ryan on January 19, 2018
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