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Darren Criss on Seth Speaks with Seth Rudetsky on Sirius XM
Darren on the Broadway.com Show (August 4, 2017)
ACS part starts at 5:17
Darren Criss on American Crime Story and Third Annual Elsie Fest | Elvis Duran Show (August 3rd, 2017)
Since Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace was shot dead outside his Miami Beach home in 1997, his murder has been pored over in countless articles, books and films. Now the shooting will be examined on television next year in the award-winning American Crime Story.
Amid the speculation, Antonio D’Amico, Versace’s boyfriend of 15 years and the person who found him sprawled on the steps of the mansion, has remained remarkably taciturn. But the forthcoming series, in which he will be played by singer and actor Ricky Martin, has spurred D’Amico to speak his mind.
“There has been so much written and said about the murder, and thousands of suppositions, but not a trace of reality,” D’Amico told the Observer.
The 58-year-old has not been consulted for the series, which will be entitled American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, and said the images he has seen online of how he reacted are incorrect.
“The picture of Ricky Martin holding the body in his arms is ridiculous,” he said, adding that it was like looking at a mimic of Michelangelo’s Pietà, which depicts the body of Jesus in the arms of his mother after the crucifixion. “Maybe it’s the director’s poetic licence, but that is not how I reacted.”
D’Amico says the tragedy of his lover’s murder on 15 July 1997 tipped him into a deep and long depression. Even now he will only briefly discuss it. Versace, who was 50 when he died, was killed shortly before 9am as he returned to his Ocean Drive home after buying a newspaper at a nearby cafe. D’Amico was drinking coffee on the veranda close to the mansion’s entrance when he heard the shots.
“I felt as if my blood had turned to ice,” he said. He and Versace’s butler went outside to investigate.
“The house had stained glass windows so we couldn’t see what had happened from inside, so we had to open the gate. I saw Gianni lying on the steps, with blood around him. At that point, everything went dark. I was pulled away, I didn’t see any more.”
Just days before, Versace had celebrated the successful launch of a collection at a show in Paris. He was shot by Andrew Cunanan, a 27-year-old gay man who had murdered at least four other people in a three-month killing spree before turning up at the fashion designer’s home. After a huge manhunt, the body of Cunanan was found eight days later in a Miami houseboat. He had apparently shot himself with the same gun that killed Versace.
Twenty years on, it is not known whether the murder was planned or carried out at random, leading to much gossip and speculation, including a rumour that Versace may have been murdered by the mafia due to debts he owed to the criminal organisation. There was also speculation that Versace may have met his killer years earlier.
D’Amico insists: “They never knew each other … so much has been fictionalised. Unfortunately Gianni died, unfortunately this guy killed him, unfortunately it happened: but now, let it drop.”
The murder tore D’Amico’s world apart. He went from partying with the likes of Elton John and Sting to shutting himself away in solitude. Meanwhile, tensions with the Versace family, in particular Gianni’s sister Donatella, put paid to him receiving what was left to him in the will – a monthly pension for life of about €26,000 and the right to live in Versace’s homes.
As the properties belonged to the Versace fashion house they came under the control of Donatella (to be played by Penélope Cruz) and older sibling Santo, as well as Gianni’s niece Allegra. D’Amico, who had been a designer at Versace Sport, received just a fraction of the pension and walked away from fighting for the rest. He then slipped into a depression lasting several years.
“I had never been through a depression and never saw a therapist as I was advised to: why did I need to tell someone else what had happened when I knew I was this way because Gianni’s death had torn me in two? I was in a nightmare, I felt nothing and gave no importance to anything … the house, the money … because it felt false to have expectations of life.”
In an interview last June, Martin, who came out as gay in 2010, spoke about a scene in the television show in which Gianni, played by Edgar Ramirez, is walking along the beach with Antonio when he suddenly becomes weak. His boyfriend touches him and Gianni responds: “Don’t touch me! The paparazzi!”
But Versace never tried to hide his sexuality, D’Amico said, and was one of the first people in the public eye to declare being gay in the late 1980s.
“We lived like a natural couple, there was never a problem,” he said. “It was the right moment for him to come out in public, but everyone involved in our world knew. He never tried to hide who he was.”
D’Amico doesn’t plan to watch American Crime Story but said he’d be happy if Martin got in contact to get some insight into his relationship with Versace. “It’s getting to know the small things about a relationship … for example, Gianni was so ordered and focused at work but in his private life everything was disorganised. He’d leave the bathroom in a mess. At a certain point I said ‘enough’! And when it came to cooking, he didn’t even know how to [boil] an egg.”
D’Amico eventually emerged from his depression after deciding it was a question of either starting to live again or stopping completely. He found love again in 2005, and now lives a simple life with his partner in the northern Italian countryside. He has also relaunched himself as a designer, recently bringing out a collection of sportswear for the golf sector.
“Sincerely, after two decades, I will always be connected to Gianni as a person I loved for more than 15 years,” D’Amico said.
“But today, I am a different person … the world continues to go around … You can look back at the past until a certain point, [but] then you need to look ahead to the future.”
‘My life was torn in two when Gianni was shot’ – Versace’s lover breaks silence
Darren talking about ACS: Versace on Extra (source)
Darren Criss as Andrew Cunanan in ‘Versace: American Crime Story’ with Annaleigh Ashford as Elizabeth Cote and Nico Evers-Swindell as Phil Cote (Photo by Jeff Daly/FX Networks)
Los Angeles – The weather in Miami was hot but Darren Criss, wearing a long-sleeved white shirt, was hotter.
The 30-year-old former “Glee” actor who portrayed Blaine Anderson, the lead singer of The Dalton Academy Warblers, has indeed gone a long way.
The Fil-Am actor, whose parents are Cerina Bru from Cebu and Charles William Criss from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, met with us one day at the late fashion designer Gianni Versace’s former home in Miami.
The charming, eloquent and talented actor talked to us about portraying the Fil-Am serial killer Andrew Cunanan who killed the famous fashion designer just outside of his Miami mansion in Ryan Murphy’s third season of his anthology series, “The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.”
Asked what he discovered about Andrew in his research of him, Darren replied, “That’s a very loaded question, a half hour is not enough time for me to go through that. I think the main thing to remember about any character you’re playing whether they’re real or not is your job as an actor, as a storyteller. I don’t even want to make it specific to actors. This goes to anybody who is a creative person. It’s your job to find as many common denominators with that person as possible.
“It’s important, especially for me for this particular story. This is a real person who did really horrible, tragic things to real people. Their families are still affected by the things that he did. But I still maintain the idea that we all have more in common with someone like Andrew than we don’t.
“Obviously, there are big variables. I’d like to think most of us don’t have actual murderous tendencies. However, at the end of the day, we are flesh and blood. We have mothers; we have fathers; we have dreams; we have hopes; we have regrets and failures that all make us who we are. So, the short answer is I found that we really do have a lot in common and that shouldn’t be misconstrued with the things that we know him for, which are obviously these horrible acts.
“But there’s a certain point in all of our lives that could have taken us into this certain path. You really have to identify what those moments are so that as a viewer, you’re not just antagonizing this person from the get go because you know what he’s done. You have to understand how he got there and what the links are between you and that person. So I found an awful lot of those.”
Sides to a story
Darren explained further that there are three different versions of Andrew Cunanan that he has to deal with.
He said, “There is the real version that none of us knew. There is the version that people did know but even that person was like 20 different people and then there’s the version that we’re telling. So as an actor, I can try and contact these family members or friends but they’re all going to have a different answer of who he was because he had different names. He had different looks. He had different attitudes that weren’t parallel to each other. So for me, my job is to serve the script. And whoever the persons that we’ve painted in this particular version, which I’m sure people who knew Andrew will be like, he wasn’t like that. However for our story and for the way that we’re characterizing him, I have to honor what’s on the page.
“So to me, what’s on the page and what’s in the script is my leader in this, and in Ryan and in people who are creating this. I’m serving their image of this story as much as I want to stay true to who he really was. We don’t know what kind of person he was so we just have to humanize him as much as possible and hope for the best.”
Darren was just 10 years old when Versace died. So at what point in his life before this project, did he learn about Andrew, we asked.
“I knew about the Versace murder just from general world facts,” Darren revealed. “I knew Versace was killed in front of his home. I’d been here before, the first time I went to Miami. I stopped by here. And I remember looking it up going, God, seeing the steps and I can’t believe they’re still here. This is so eerie. I vaguely remembered that he was half Filipino.
“I think growing up half Filipino if there’s any half Filipino in the media you tend to pay attention to it. That was about it. I had, through the fabulous world of ‘Glee’ I had met Donatella. I had been to Versace’s home in Milan. And I had seen things about his history. But that was about as far of a connection that I had.
“I don’t know if Ryan told you the story of how this came up. He brought this up to me about two, almost three years ago. I was having lunch with him in New Orleans. And I was joking with him about ‘Horror Story’ because he just announced Lady Gaga was going to be in it. So I jokingly said, hey let me know if you need a wily bellhop to show up on that show, I’ll do it. And he was, no, but there’s this other thing that I’m thinking about doing – Andrew. I looked it up and I was kind of spooked because he looks like me and my brother.
“That was it. I didn’t think he would actually make the show. I ended up diving in pretty hard on researching the guy. I had to wipe my hands clean of it because I was, I don’t want to have to know all this stuff if I don’t need to know about it. It’s a very dark place to be in. So, cut to now, here we are and he kept up with his word.
“While it is a very gruesome and dark project, it is an exciting project to be with him and with this prestigious group of people. So that was about all I knew. I definitely sense being involved I have this profound new connection to Versace and to the story. Like I said, being in this house for the past week has been extraordinarily moving. This isn’t to be romantic or spiritual, but he’s just in the house. Everything that he’s made that we all know the iconography of Gianni Versace, it is present in every turn. So seeing that has really given me a new profound appreciation of his work and appreciation of a great creator, someone who just wanted to relentlessly wreak beauty upon the world.”
(Conclusion)
I feel so strange,” admitted Darren Criss about being inside the Gianni Versace mansion in Miami one morning in May.
He plays Andrew Cunanan, who shot the designer twice in the head just outside this palatial house in July 1997, in FX’s “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.”
“I was telling someone about how weird it was to be in this room,” the Fil-Am singer-actor shared about filming the assassination scene a few days earlier. “I was dressed as Andrew Cunanan, in the outfit that he murdered Versace in, and I was inside. I was walking around and I was taking pictures. I took a picture of the pool, and I saw myself. I was like, oh my God, I’ve got to delete this photo. It’s horrible, how irreverent, because Andrew never made it inside.”
In this part two of our column on Darren, we continue our talk about his biggest and most challenging role to date.
Excerpts:
What did you learn about Cunanan that informed your performance? The thing that we want to show in this is that we have two brilliant minds—we have Versace, the creator, and the destroyer (Cunanan). A lot of people who knew Andrew in his younger life described him as a promising, brilliant and charming young man. You go, what happened? It doesn’t follow the same blueprint of that of many serial killers, the Dahmers and the Mansons of the world. They’re off the rails from the get-go.
Whereas Andrew, it was heartbreaking for a lot of people who knew him because we show some of his friends in the series. Andrew was the godfather of the children of a friend from high school who was mortified to hear that this had happened. Because he was this caring friend and godfather.
So, he was not just an abomination. Yeah. That isn’t only on my shoulders, but in the order that we tell the story, without giving away too much. The structure of the show goes in such a way that we get to see Andrew at his worst and his absolute best. Then, it’s up to you to juxtapose those against each other.
How do you tell a story where the moral compass is clearly fixed? We can all agree this is a horrible thing. Versace was murdered on the steps of his house. We’re in this house. The first day I came in here, I got emotional thinking about it. Versace is here, the man is still alive in this house, everywhere. Coming in, seeing this and being a part of it, you go, wow, this man had everything that the man who killed him couldn’t have and wanted so badly.
I get very sad when I think of somebody like Andrew. We’ve all had these dreams of doing something great. That’s something we can relate to. It’s that sense of wanting something so bad and just being misdirected on how to get it.
Following up on that, Asian immigrant families, including Filipinos, are known to be model immigrants. What do you think about him or his family that contributed to his downfall? I don’t have any credentials in psychology and child development but, to me, after diving into what his background is, it seems a pretty textbook case, as far as what happened later in his life.
As a young man, Cunanan came from a very poor family and in one of the poorest neighborhoods in San Diego. His mother was mentally unstable, was very difficult to deal with. I don’t know what she had, but she self-medicated—a very tough situation.
His father, on the other hand, was a crook. He was embezzling people out of thousands of dollars. It was a loveless marriage, but they adored and spoiled this little boy. They gave him their master bedroom as he grew up. He was raised with this sense of entitlement from a very early age. That’s very dangerous as you get out in the world.
Narcissism involves people who think they’re pretty, but it’s more than that. It’s a psychological belief that if you believe something about yourself, it is true.
In that sense, Andrew believed that if he could say something about himself, then that’s true. And if he deserves something, he didn’t have to work for it. So, the decisions he made before the murders were unintentionally implanted by his parents. His father was caught. He sold the house and had to eventually flee to the Philippines.
This was where Andrew switched gears. He went to see his father [in the Philippines]. At this point in his life, Andrew has told a lot of lies about himself. He sometimes would totally discount his Filipino heritage. He would say he was Jewish, or that his father’s an Israeli pilot.
He went to the Philippines believing in this façade that his father was this rich pineapple plantation owner. He saw this man living in relative squalor. I think when he saw his father being everything he wasn’t, and against everything that he ever wanted, that was a point where most of us would learn from that and go, OK, you know what? I can change from this. I don’t want to be like this. I want to work hard for things.
Instead, he came back to the United States. For the rest of his life, he would make up stories. He’d blow up his own image of himself that would lead him to these grandiose acts of murder. Thinking that he’s above the law and above [the laws of] morality, because he doesn’t have to deal with the things that are real in his life.
What insights did you learn about Cunanan’s homophobia? What’s fascinating to me? This is a wonderful extension of where we all are. Not once in my entire time that I’ve been involved with this has anybody ever brought up the fact that he was gay.
I think mainly because it was eclipsed by the fact that he was a serial killer. That seems to be at the forefront of facts that people stick to. But, he was gay. I don’t think there was a homophobic bent to his series of murders. I think his homosexuality did lend him to certain scenes that he got to be a part of.
The people he dealt with and ultimately ended up murdering were people he had met through different underworlds of the gay scene in San Diego and Minneapolis. He had self-hatred. I think there were other feelings of ineptitude and being not good enough that really drove him. I don’t know how much of that had to do with him being gay. But that is a big part of our story.
It was the largest failed manhunt in FBI history. That seems like a big f***ing deal. A lot of people didn’t know about it. You have to scratch your head and you go, “Wait, so this guy killed how many people before Versace? How was he not caught?” He was on America’s most wanted list. Then, you start realizing, there’s a lot of fear and anxiety in law enforcement. And this is right after the worst part of the AIDS crisis in the mid-’90s.
You have a lot of this other stuff that’s happening that does lend itself to how this guy got away with it. That is important to mention. One thing I’ll say about “American Crime Story” that I’m truly proud to be a part of is the fact that, to me, “OJ,” the series, wasn’t just about OJ.
So, for our story yes, it’s about the horrible murder of an icon. And it’s about the journey and the downfall of the person who did it. But it’s also about everything that’s happening around—and how that echoes what we fear and deal with now
Darren Criss talks about his most challenging role to date—playing Andrew Cunanan (Part 2)
LOS ANGELES—In a room inside the Versace mansion in Miami, just a few steps from where Andrew Cunanan fatally shot the designer, Darren Criss was told that Ryan Murphy, who cast him in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” paid him the supreme compliment.
Hearing that the award-winning executive producer-director cast him as Cunanan because he always knew there was a great dramatic actor in him, Darren gave a fittingly serious answer. Playing the serial killer, who murdered at least five people, is a big shift for Darren, who first worked with Ryan as Blaine Anderson in the musical TV series, “Glee.”
“Oh, how far we’ve come,” Darren quipped with a laugh. He has taken off his gray suit jacket. “Miami heat is getting to my head,” he explained.
We were in a room with walls gilded with mosaic tile work and stained glass windows, typical of the designer’s lavish home.
Like Cunanan, Darren is Filipino-American. The actor— the son of a Cebuana, Cerina (nee Bru), and Charles William Criss from Pennsylvania— noted his eerie resemblance to Cunanan. The latter’s mom (Mary Anne Schillaci) is Italian-American, while his dad, Modesto Cunanan, is Filipino.
For the actor who starred on Broadway in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” this role represents his biggest and most dramatic challenge yet.
Ryan, on a career high with his “Feud: Bette and Joan” and “The People v. OJ Simpson,” picked a fine cast to join Darren: Edgar Ramirez (Versace), Penelope Cruz (Donatella Versace) and Ricky Martin (Antonio D’Amico, Versace’s longtime lover).
The FX miniseries, which continues to shoot, debuts in early 2018.
Excerpts from our interview:
Ryan Murphy said he always knew there was a great dramatic actor in you, and he wanted people to see that in this show. How scary or daunting is that for you? Actors are only as good as the parts they get to play. It’s a passive art form. People will hate me for saying that because obviously, when you’re doing it, it isn’t passive. But if I’m a musician, I can pick up my guitar and play it. If there was no one in this room, I can still play my guitar. I can proactively be a musician.
I always say the best actors in the world, we’ll probably never know about. We’ll never get to see that guy do “King Lear,” that woman do “Hedda Gabler.” You have to wait for those moments.
This is a moment for me, and I recognize that. I do feel like my ship came in for this one. “Glee” was a big hit before I was on it. I had a very objective relationship with it. I was in college when it was all over the place. So, to suddenly be thrust on it was a strange but very wonderful experience.
It brings me here for which I’m unfathomably grateful. But I studied acting. I treat acting like a real craft as much as you love to roll your eyes at that little word. But it’s true. There’s no sense of entitlement. But I worked hard. I believe in doing the necessary steps to get to a certain place.
So, to be finally be given this opportunity, I feel prepared. Whether or not it’s good is a whole other story. It could be horrible, crash and burn. But it’s like that—give me the ball, coach. And Ryan certainly gave me a good throw. So I’m very excited about that.
You were 10 when Versace was killed. At what point in your life did you know about him? I knew Versace was killed in front of his home. I’d been here before, the first time I went to Miami. I remember looking it up, seeing the steps. This is so eerie. I vaguely remembered that he was half-Filipino. If there’s any half-Filipino in the media, you tend to pay attention to it.
I had, through the fabulous world of “Glee,” met Donatella. I had been to Versace’s home in Milan. But, that was about as far as a connection that I had.
Can you talk about filming the crucial assassination scene? It was gruesome. Because we were not shooting this in a sound studio in Los Angeles. This is the house—and people walking around here were there for that. We couldn’t hide it. It was in broad daylight. So, to feel that energy of this very real event, it weighed heavily on me.
When I shot it, I was thrilled because Edgar wasn’t here for that. If I had to look in Edgar’s eyes and do something like that, that would have been tough, because it weighs on your conscience.
But, as an actor, when you’re doing something like that, I’m not thinking of my conscience. As far as I’m concerned, I’m the hero in this story. That’s how I have to play it. There’s a certain longing, loss, confusion, hurt and just a f**kload of pain that is coming into an act like that.
That’s what you have to channel. It helps that we’re in paradise because we do this really gruesome stuff, then I can go home and have a cocktail on the beach. It’s like, “All right, real life is OK.”
Can you clarify why you didn’t film that scene with Edgar around? Only because that had to do more with the technical aspects. It’s highly technical, but the biggest meat of the shot was of me making the decision [to kill Versace] and going up [to him]. It’s giving a little bit away. So now, you know about that shot. Sorry, Ryan.
How did you research on Andrew Cunanan? The series is mainly based on the book of Maureen Orth, who’s an extraordinary journalist and did mind-bending work and collection of data from friends, family and all records available.
What’s interesting about this particular case is, as famous as Versace is, there’s not a whole lot of stuff [about it]. There’s only one book, at least one that’s pretty serious. The others are trashy pulp novels.
There are three different versions of Andrew that I have to deal with. There’s the real version that none of us knew. There is the version that people did know, then there’s the version that we’re telling.
As an actor, I can contact the family members or friends, but they’re all going to have different answers of who he was. My job is to serve the script. As much as I want to stay true to who Cunanan was, we really don’t know what kind of person he was. We just have to humanize him as much as possible and hope for the best.
(Conclusion tomorrow)
Darren Criss talks about his most challenging role to date—playing Andrew Cunanan
This is the third installment of Ryan Murphy’s acclaimed anthology, American Crime Story: Versace.
Edgar Ramirez stars as the openly gay designer, who was tragically gunned down on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion in 1997 by serial killer Andrew Cunanan, played by Darren Criss.
The limited series chronicles the bizarre murder and the manhunt for Cunanan, who targeted gay men and was responsible for five murders.
Casting Darren Criss as Cunanan
Ryan Murphy: I didn’t have to convince him at all. What I like to do is give people opportunities sometimes that they would never have. And Darren is obviously a brilliant singer and a performer and a showman and did “Glee” and has been on Broadway. When Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson and I were first talking about this idea of doing Versace as sort of the O.J. follow-up, which was around two years ago, I immediately called Darren. Because to me he was the only one for that part. And I just said, I’m thinking about doing this, would you be interested. And he said, well yes, very much so because it’s such a great part. And I said, ok I’ll get the contracts drawn. And then it took two years because you have to write it and you have to get it green-lit. But he was always the only person I had in mind for it because I knew that he would push himself because he was so hungry to prove himself in a different way. And it’s a truly insane dramatic part. And he really wanted to go there. So he was the only person we talked to. He hadn’t heard from me and then he was getting ready to do another show and the day it was announced that Versace was up, he was, oh shit what am I going to do. But we all worked it out so he was able to get out and commit pretty much a year to it. And he was great. Brad and Nina went to see him in “Hedwig” and he knew they were in the audience so of course he came out and sat on Brad’s lap and did the whole showbiz thing.
Relationship to Versace
RM: I never met him but I know a lot of people who did meet him. I sold my first script in late 1996 so I was just starting. And he obviously was killed a year later so I never got to meet him. I knew a lot of people who were very close to him. I’ve worked with Naomi Campbell who was very close to him, who told me a lot of interesting things about him. Madonna, there’s the Madonna guest suite upstairs which is the first place I went to when we came here. She used to sit in the bathtub and stand up and tease them all out in the courtyard. I never got to meet him, but he was always somebody I was very interested in. I loved him. I felt like I had a lot in common with him, what he did and where he came from and how he really dedicated his life to beauty and style and was obsessed with a vision of things. And I related to him. I was at restaurant called Off Vine in L.A. when I first heard the news. And weirdly was also at the same restaurant when Princess Diana died. So I’ve stopped going to Off Vine after the Princess Diana announcement. I was just very moved and shattered by it. It was somebody who’s gay, who is in the gay community, of course then, half the people I knew who had had ties to Hollywood and San Diego said, I was at a bar, I met Andrew Cunanan. So there was always a very mythical thing about that guy. But it was just a real tragedy. And the reason I wanted to do this story so badly was because if you do O.J., what do you do to top O.J.? You have to do something completely different. And I wanted to do something smaller and more intimate. And, it’s a different kind of crime. When we do “American Crime” we’re not just going to do Jon Benet, we’re not going to just do something salacious. It has to be about something that has American social issues in it. And this period of time that we’re talking about, 1997, there were really two people who were out in entertainment, Elton John and Gianni Versace.
Versace as Openly Gay
RM: Versace really struggled with it. There were a lot of conversations with Donatella. Should I come out of the closet? Because my business is going public. He was terrified that by not being able to be himself he would be discriminated against and lose everything. That was also the period of don’t ask, don’t tell, which we dive into. The reason why it’s such an interesting American crime is because Gianni Versace was only killed because of homophobia. Andrew Cunanan killed and targeted people who were gay or who were in the closet. And his murders tend to out them. There was a gentleman who was in his 70’s named Lee Miglin who was one of the early victims, whose family was so upset and terrified of his personal life coming out that they just sort of said, motive unknown. And the police didn’t pursue it. And by the time Cunanan got to Miami, the police officers in town had thousands of wanted posters in the trunks of the cars that they would not put up because they would not go to gay bars. They just wouldn’t do it. So we’re delving with all this very dark period of American society that is obviously personal to me, and very upsetting.
Cunanan as Character
RM: We had the book that we optioned, “Vulgar Favors.” The thing about Cunanan was a mystery in many ways. The things that I was fascinated about is the creator-destroyer idea of Cunanan and Versace sort of were the same beginning. They came from immigrant families, they wanted to be famous, they wanted to be celebrated and one person did the work and took the risk, which was Versace, and one person didn’t, who was Cunanan. Cunanan was also a tragic story. He was lied to by his parents, specifically his father, who told them they were incredibly wealthy, almost royalty in the Philippines. And in his teenage years he discovered that his father had been lying the entire time. He was treated like a celebrity in his own family. When he was very young his parents gave him the master suite. So he sort of grew up with this kingly idea of who he was and who he could be. And then it was all taken away and he was shattered by it. And he had real psychological difficulties dealing with. There was also what we could never verify or prove, sexual abuse in his family. So he was also a very tragic figure and wanted fame and fortune so desperately that what happened with him was when he killed someone, the first victim, that probably was in a fit of pique and rage, he decided well, I’m going to go to jail, I’m going to be destroyed, so I want to be famous so I’m going to move towards that. And in taking the life of the famous person became his fame which is also a very American story that we see time and time again, that’s gotten progressively worse with social media over the years and threats and violence. When you have somebody like Cunanan, who is thought of in many circles as a monster, and the person that took away Gianni Versace from us, you also have to with the actor say, well let’s talk about his childhood. He was a real person. Something along the way made him snap. So we’ve talked a lot about that. And Darren did a lot of research on his own and showed up ready to go.
Edgard Ramirez as Versace
RM: Whenever I do something like this, or like O.J. or, I always have one person in mind that I think of, always. So, Darren was the obvious choice. I was friends with him. I knew him. And I wanted people to see something that I saw which was a great dramatic actor. In the case of Edgar, if you look at Edgar, Edgar looks exactly like Versace. When we have the prosthetic and the wig and can show you pictures it’s amazing. And Edgar has that sort of grandiose gravity as a human being that Versace had. And he was my only choice. And I met him. And I always have this thing when I give this really long, impassioned spiel, I’m going to die if you don’t do it. And at the end of the meeting I was, what do you think? And he was, well, let me think about it. I was, what? What do you mean? And then I was, ok I’m going to get you no matter what, and I did. And he met with Brad and Nina and loved them and I really pushed hard. And by the time I gave him a second script you can’t deny the power of the part. And he was, ok, I get it, I love it, I’ll do it.
Ricky Martin as Versace’s Lover
Ricky was another example of somebody that, people think of Ricky as “La Vida Loca” and a Vegas showman and he’s doing Sting. But Ricky is so soulful and intimate. And I just saw something in him. I’ve also worked with him once before. And you know the boyfriend, Antonio, was a very tragic figure because he was with Versace for 15 years and loved him and Versace was killed and he was out. He was thrown out of this palace and this life. And he had suicide attempts. And I thought, well I think Ricky could really go there and would want to do this. I met Ricky, I just called him up and said, can I talk to you? And I explained to him the role. And then I offered him the role. And at the end of the meeting we both got really teary because he didn’t tell me that he and Edgar were very close friends. And Edgar was, oh I want you to do this part so bad but I’m not going to, do that.
Penelope Cruz as Donatella
RM: was a little bit trickier because I obviously know and adore Gaga. And we briefly discussed it but she was doing “A Star Is Born” with Bradley Cooper, that’s basically shooting this whole year and I had to shoot the show this year. So then I was sort of thinking about people and I know Penelope because of Javier and “Eat, Pray, Love” and I spent a lot of time with them. And I just asked if I could speak with her. And she is friends with Donatella. And I thought that was a great in because she knew her, she would be an advocate for her. But again, she is an Oscar winning actress and a great one at that so I thought it would be interesting. And she said yes instantly too. So I had great luck with it. And I also love that for all of them, you’ll see a different side of them. You’ve never seen Penelope do something like that. You’ve certainly never seen Ricky Martin or Edgar do something like that. And it’s been exciting to see.
Surprises: Versace was HIV+
We have a brilliant writer named Tom Rob Smith who’s writing the episode and has really taken an auteur approach to the material. And so he’s really immersed in it. And he’s constantly coming up with great nuggets that are surprising. I think the most devastating thing for me that I learned was that he had HIV and almost died. And at that time there was no cocktail. And he was really devastated because he was a person who loved life and he was trying to figure out a way to pass the company to Donatella because he was going to die. It was a death sentence. But miraculously, right around the time the cocktail had started to come back and he took the right cocktail of pills and got his health back. He felt he had so much left to say and then he was killed out on his steps that morning. He was creating again and designing again and he was crying all the time because his life had been given back to him. You can imagine for Donatella and Gianni and Antonio to have this second life, this great lion of a man was restored to vigor. And he was just snuffed out instantly with two bullets to the face. That was really devastating to me.
Other Victims
The Lee Miglin killing was just so barbaric and cruel and awful. He was a closeted gay man. And Cunanan did that and had such rage, obviously self-loathing, that he killed him in such a violent way. And then dressed him up as a woman with panties and lot of sex toys around so that his family would find this and be humiliated. We spent two days shooting that assassination. And it was really tough. The crew was crying and the actors were crying because it was the exact spot he was killed and you can feel him. Like, who does this in a room? And what else could he have done? He was taken so soon. And you can just imagine the gifts he would have given us.
Actual Filming
Every story has its own organic thing. So for this story we did a really cool thing, we’re starting the story with, the first 15 minutes are music, opera, no dialogue, and it’s Versace restored to health, getting up and starting his day with his staff and then walking to the News Café, intercut with Cunanan stalking him and tracking him. It starts with his murder. And then what we wanted to do was tell the story backwards. Versace was the last murder but in our show he’s the first. And then we go back in time. We tell the story backwards, ending with the Cunanan figure as a young man and Versace as a young man trying to make a stab of it as a designer.
There’s only violence and murder in the first four or five episodes. And then you really get into the psychological struggle of how does one person become a creator and how does one become a destroyer. And then the last episode is Cunanan on the houseboat making a decision to kill himself before they arrest him. I’ve never done anything backwards. But I loved the storytelling of it because I think you’ll be so moved because it starts with a violent act and by the time you’ll get to the end you will really realize what Versace had to go through to become Versace and what Cunanan went through to become that killer.
Donatella
RM: We have had some contact with Donatella. I met Allegra when she was younger, she came to the “Glee” live tour. I was very excited to meet Allegra Versace. Donatella had been very kind and very lovely. As a mother she really has been very protective of her children. And that was really her only request was, which she conveyed to Penelope and thus to me, is she really wanted to make sure that her kids weren’t portrayed on screen and that there was nothing about them in the show. I’m a parent and I can understand, I don’t want them to see that and go through any pains. We removed them at her request. And I think it was the right thing to do. But that was it. She has been sort of hands off, and that was her only request. I’m sure it will be incredibly difficult to see. But in a weird way I hope that the family can see it because it really is a tribute to his genius. And also, she comes off incredibly well because it’s really a very modern idea about a woman who is the sister of a very famous person. She’s also creative but suddenly he’s dead and what do I do? Do I fold up the tent or do I keep the business alive? That was incredibly difficult for Donatella to do. And I think she did a very heroic job of it. She saved the company. She mobilized the family. She kept the business afloat and became a modern heroine.
American Crime Story: Versace–Interview with Ryan Murphy | Emanuel Levy
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’
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