Tag: january 2018

‘American Crime Story’ Designer on Quickly Duplicating Gianni Versace’s Nineties Style

Accurately re-creating the lavish and vibrant wardrobe of Gianni Versace was one of the most crucial elements of Ryan Murphy’s forthcoming “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” which premieres Jan. 17 on FX.

For the nine-part series, which shows the time leading up to Versace’s tragic 1997 shooting by serial killer Andrew Cunanan, Murphy enlisted the talent of costume designer Lou Eyrich, who admits that duplicating the late Italian’s craftsmanship and design within a limited time frame posed a laundry list of challenges.

“It’s very hard to find authentic Versace pieces [from the early to mid-Nineties],” explains Eyrich on the phone from Los Angeles. “We tried to produce clothing of that couture quality, but the most daunting part was that we only had a matter of days [to do it].”

Filming for the series took place over several months last year in both Los Angeles and on-location at the late designer’s Miami home (where the fatal shooting took place), but according to an official statement released by the Versace family last week, the series is being characterized as “a work of fiction.” Murphy based the series on a 1999 book by Maureen Orth titled “Vulgar Favors,” which the family asserts is “full of gossip and speculation.”

Veracity of the storyline notwithstanding, Eyrich along with a team that included tailor Joanne Mills and designer Michael Costello, worked tirelessly to capture the colorful world of Gianni Versace, played by Édgar Ramírez, without actually having cooperation or guidance from the Milan-based company.

“I totally had the ‘I’m not worthy’ feeling,” explains Eyrich when hired by Murphy, the director with whom she also collaborated with for “American Horror Story,” “Feud” and “Glee.” “It’s especially daunting to me because I don’t really know that world of high fashion and couture, but because it’s a story that is a historical moment, I [thought] I could do my research and create this story.”

The on-screen narrative will show Versace’s opulent lifestyle in tandem with that of the serial killer, played by Darren Criss, who committed at least four additional murders over three months leading up to Versace’s July 1997 attack. “There are two different worlds going on,” she adds. “It’s very interesting working on costumes for these two parallels that are opposites, actually.”

The Minnesota-born Eyrich scoured online retailers and vintage shops for original pieces from the design house and for the Donatella Versace character, played by Penélope Cruz, created a reimagined facsimile of one of the brand’s iconic safety-pin dresses, which made its debut on the runway in the fall of 1993.

“We searched and searched and searched and finally found a belt with 18 of the safety pins from that famous collection,” recalls Eyrich. “But they were silver and we wanted gold.”

In order to achieve the look, the designer and her team “mutilated” the belt and had each safety-pin gold-plated — all within a matter of hours. Where the real-life Versace would take months in his atelier to create a couture gown, Eyrich and Mills would have only a matter of days. In fact, the process was so quick that the wardrobe team never actually made costume sketches. “If you look closely, then you shutter,” reveals Eyrich. “But for TV, it works — although in the world of HD and huge screens, it’s a little more daunting.”

The three-time Emmy Award winner says she would “stay awake at night trying to figure out how to create that Versace world” in a way that would be respectful to the brand’s integrity. “We just didn’t have the time frame to come up with all the details and that sometimes frustrates me.”

But it was paying respect to the brand’s eponymous founder that was of top importance to Eyrich and her colleagues on-set. “It was very eerie,” she explains. “Many of us were choked up being [at the murder location] with that feeling of needless loss. Everybody had moments of reflection.”

‘American Crime Story’ Designer on Quickly Duplicating Gianni Versace’s Nineties Style

‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’ ably wears ‘Crime Story’ mantle

“American Crime Story” faced a daunting challenge in following up the compulsive appeal of “The People v. O.J. Simpson.” The result, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” carves out its own distinctive approach to another high-profile, salacious murder without, perhaps inevitably, wearing the mantle quite as well.

To their credit, the producers have demonstrated the format’s elasticity by delving into the 1997 slaying of Versace, the famed fashion designer, as part of a killing spree by Andrew Cunanan.Working from Maureen Orth’s book “Vulgar Favors,” the narrative jumps around in time, filling in bits and pieces of the story out of sequence, in a manner that galvanizes attention and gradually builds in intensity.The show’s point of view, however, unfolds pretty squarely from the perspective of Cunanan, a compulsive liar and hustler whose grandiose vision of himself and pangs of economic anxiety triggered his tragic behavior.

While Darren Criss (who previously teamed with producer Ryan Murphy on “Glee”) delivers a strong, compelling performance, the underlying efforts to humanize Cunanan and, indeed, explain him drifts down some troubling and questionable corridors. As Murphy’s projects often do, the effect at times risks not just providing insight into a murderer, but glamorizing him and his grisly actions.

Understanding what drove Cunanan is at the heart of the project, but “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is frankly more notable for some of its smaller roles, and for what it says about the toll exacted by homophobia and being closeted during the 1990s, which contributed to the authorities’ slow response.

Cunanan, for example, pursues wealth through relationships with older men, whose skulking around to hide who they are actually makes them prey for a sociopath eager to exploit them. In that regard, the project is exceptionally well cast at the margins, including Mike Farrell and Michael Nouri as two of Cunanan’s benefactors, as well as Judith Light as Farrell’s oblivious spouse.

Versace’s family has already criticized the series, but his experience is actually dealt with far less expansively. Edgar Ramirez plays him, with Ricky Martin as his lover and Penelope Cruz a perfect choice as his protective sister Donatella, who endeavors to be the business-minded ballast to her brother’s artistic genius.

“American Crime Story,” of course, has been victimized to a degree by its own success. The latest edition premieres as practically everyone in TV has been drawn to the true-crime genre, both in documentary and scripted form.

The challenge, of course, is that while there are plenty of sensational cases out there to mine and adapt, only a handful of them have the immediate recognition and heft to justify eight or 10 episodes, much less the allure of the Simpson trial.

Viewed that way, allowing for the stated misgivings, the latest “American Crime Story” nimbly demonstrates the latitude that FX has to operate under this banner. And if it doesn’t rise to the same level as its predecessor in terms of racing through an airport to catch the next episode, “Versace” ultimately aces the watch-ability test with flying colors.

‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’ ably wears ‘Crime Story’ mantle

How FX’s ‘Versace’ Tackles Homophobia and the Family’s Main Point of Contention

The Versace family has now issued two statements denouncing FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. But the producers and stars all maintain that the second season of FX’s Emmy-winning anthology is a respectful portrayal of the famed fashion designer, who was gunned down by wanted killer Andrew Cunanan on the steps of his Miami mansion in the summer of 1997.

“The primary thing is that we are celebrating Versace,” writer Tom Rob Smith tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We are exploring why he was a genius, why he was important, the impact that he made, and why it was such a loss when he was murdered — both on a personal level in terms of all the people that loved him, all the people that admired him, and on a cultural level as well. It’s a show that celebrates and admires him.”

The family’s main point of contention seems to be the portrayal of Gianni Versace as HIV-positive, which reporter Maureen Orth contended in her book Vulgar Favors. (The season is based on Orth’s book and reporting.) Orth, who covered the hunt for Cunanan for Vanity Fair at the time, was told on the record by a Miami Beach detective that blood tests done after Versace’s death confirmed his HIV-positive status. Orth, for her part, told THR that more than a decade later, she stands by her reporting.

“I was told on the record by the lead detective on Miami Beach that he had heard from the medical examiner who did the blood work that he was [HIV-positive],” Orth said. “And it also goes along with other people who told me that he was very weak at one time and he needed [partner] Antonio to help him walk, and they came over to his house when he was having breakfast and he had 27 bottles of pills in front of him. Now, does that mean they’re for HIV? But the blood thing from on record from the Miami Beach, that’s pretty [solid].”

The Versace family has blasted the FX drama as a “work of fiction” and Orth’s book, saying that the FX series relies on a book they say is “full of gossip and speculation.”

“Orth never received any information from the Versace family and she has no basis to make claims about the intimate personal life of Gianni Versace or other family members. Instead, in her effort to create a sensational story, she presents second-hand hearsay that is full of contradictions,” the family said in a statement. “Orth makes assertions about Gianni Versace’s medical condition based on a person who claims he reviewed a postmortem test result, but she admits it would have been illegal for the person to have reviewed the report in the first place (if it existed at all). In making her lurid claims, she ignores contrary information provided by members of Mr. Versace’s family, who…were in the best position to know the facts of his life…. Of all the possible portrayals of his life and legacy, it is sad and reprehensible that the producers have chosen to present the distorted and bogus version created by Maureen Orth.”

Showrunner Ryan Murphy responded to the family’s criticism, telling THR that Donatella Versace’s actions seemed to indicate she wasn’t entirely displeased with the series. “Donatella Versace sent Penelope Cruz [who portrays her in Versace] a very large arrangement of flowers when she was representing the show at the Golden Globes,” he said. “I don’t know if she is going to watch the show, but if she did, I think she would see that we treat her and her family with respect and kindness, and she really is sort of a feminist role model in my book because she had to step into an impossible situation, which she did with grace and understanding.”

But regardless of Versace’s status, the fact that he overcame a serious illness and was excited about his life provides a sharp contrast to the desperation of Cunanan’s outlook.

“To me if you look at just the facts of his illness, he did get very sick at that time, and he did recover at the time of the new [HIV/AIDS] drug therapy. So it does seem to fit that,” Smith said. “But even all that aside, what I found most amazing about it is this is a guy that came so close to death, and still clung on. He really fought for life. Life was very important to him. Contrast it with someone who gave up, and someone who was beaten by circumstance. And what’s interesting in some of the reactions was, ‘Oh, he’s the killer. He must have AIDS.’ Actually, Andrew didn’t have it.”

Cunanan (played by Glee alum Darren Criss) shot Versace as he returned from his morning walk to the newsstand, something the designer did regularly when he was staying in Florida — even when he was sick.

“Gianni did the walk to the magazine store in Miami often. Once he did it when he was so sick he could barely make it that couple of blocks. He was carrying the magazines back, and he couldn’t even hold them. That morning [of his death] when he walks, he’s so alive again. It’s really powerful to think that he must’ve been like, ‘This life is great,’ and he can do that walk and carry the magazines. And then Andrew comes up,” Smith said. “It’s really terrible when you look at those two. I thought that was a really powerful part of his story, so that was why we did it.”

Edgar Ramirez, who plays the late designer, did not contact the Versace family for both legal and personal reasons when he was preparing to take on the part in theMurphy-produced drama.

“What this family went through was a horrible tragedy, and I would understand [not wanting to discuss it], had it been my case to be contacted to talk about something that caused so much pain and also was infused with so much misrepresentation, prejudice, and so much stigma and confusion,” Ramirez told THR. “I was lucky enough to have people who were very very close to Gianni to talk to me and to open to me. They were the ones that were very generous to me.”

Ricky Martin, who plays Versace’s longtime partner, Antonio D’Amico, did speak to the man he portrays, and said he now counts the designer among his friends. But before they spoke, he simply wanted to get a small amount of justice for Versace’s murder, a crime he says shouldn’t have even happened in the first place.

“There’s so much injustice,” he told THR. “Why did we allow it to happen when this killer was on a killing spree for weeks, killing gay men? He was on the list of the FBI’s most wanted. He was not hiding. Why did it happen? Just the fact that we are still dealing with this level of ignorance frustrates me.”

As a gay man, he wanted to bring the story not only of the homophobia that contributed to Versace’s death, but the struggle he faced in his life.

“The fact that someone as successful and as powerful as Gianni Versace was struggling to come out of the closet, it was like, give me a break,” Martin said. “That was in 1997, but I know now in 2018, there are men and women that are still struggling with this kind of fear, of their career going to collapse if they come out. Everybody’s going to hate them at home if they come out. It is sad. But it was important for me to be vocal about how unjust life is for some of us. I’m so lucky, but it’s not right. Something needs to be done.”

How FX’s ‘Versace’ Tackles Homophobia and the Family’s Main Point of Contention

The Assassination of Gianni Versace Isn’t What You Expect

You’ve got to hand it to Ryan Murphy: Love him or hate him, he never gives you quite what you expect. The first season of his FX anthology series American Crime Story (not to be confused with Murphy’s other anthology, American Horror Story) was an acclaimed ten-part look at the O.J. Simpson criminal trial that examined the subject matter from multiple perspectives, including those of the defense, the prosecution, and the jury, and illuminated the case’s wider context while allowing its central character, Simpson, to remain an enigma until the end. Season two, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, about the titular fashion designer’s murder by a serial killer, does all of those things, more or less (including the enigma part) while swapping in homophobia, AIDS, and gay rights for the first season’s focus on racism, sexism, and police misconduct.

But the tone, the pace, the feel of the season are all quite different. Adapted by novelist and London Spy screenwriter Tom Rob Smith from a 2000 nonfiction book by Maureen Orth titled Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History, it prizes atmosphere, characterization, architecture, and, yes, fashion over traditional storytelling virtues. It doesn’t attempt anything like the intricate structure of the O.J. season, which was as meticulously organized as a good lawyer’s evidence files, but it’s not disorganized, either. If anything, the structure of this one is much simpler, built around a conceit that has a certain poetry: We start with the murder and work our way backward chronologically, à la Memento or Irreversible.

The pilot, directed by Murphy in a series of gliding, faintly sinister long takes, starts by introducing Versace (Édgar Ramírez), his longtime partner Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin), and his soon-to-be-killer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) in Miami on the day of the fashion designer’s 1997 murder, and builds inexorably to Cunanan shooting Versace to death outside the gates of his mansion. (The cinematography, by Murphy’s regular director of photography Nelson Cragg, is exceptional, using very wide-angle lenses to abstract the lines, colors, and shapes of rooms, hallways, building exteriors, and landscapes, so that you appreciate them as you might a suit or dress.) From that point on, the story moves according to its own slowed-down rhythms, choosing to focus its attention on people and events that might seem unconnected to the Versace murder until it dawns on you that you aren’t watching a procedural, or even what certain news outlets call an “explainer,” but something more like a psychologically oriented nonfiction novel — one that uses a combination of careful research and blatant dramatic license to speculate on why real people did the things they did, and how some of them ended up crossing paths in the first place.

Fans of the O.J. season might get whiplash from this one. Murphy’s direction sets a fresh template in the pilot — elegant and decadent, anxious and solemn, steeped in unglamorous, workaday details and historical milestones. The latter include the U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which drove many qualified gay and lesbians into the closet or out into civilian life; the AIDS epidemic, which was also explored in Murphy’s divisive but vigorous HBO adaptation of The Normal Heart; and key events in the life of the Versace family, including Gianni’s decision to come out, his murder by Cunanan, and his sister Donatella’s (Penélope Cruz) attempt to carve out her own identity in the family business. Throughout, however, more time is devoted to Cunanan than either of the Versaces, and despite Criss’s memorably creepy-enthusiastic performance as Cunanan, the killer never seems like more than an unnerving bundle of insecurity, grandiosity, deceptiveness, and petulance, with a touch of Norman Bates’s birdlike insistence and Patrick Bateman’s obsession with brands. He’s a character who’s tailor-made for viewer projection and thinkpiece generation, but who never registers as a human being as powerfully as the major supporting characters, the Versaces in particular. (The dialogue doesn’t always do him or anyone else favors. Not even a performer as skilled and charismatic as Cruz can put across a sentiment like, “You live in isolation, surrounded by beauty and kindness. You have forgotten how cruel the world can be.”)

And yet — odd as this might sound — Cunanan ultimately works rather well as kind of storytelling device, moving the tale backward through time, and all over the continental U.S. This strategy won’t be to everyone’s liking, and I won’t pretend that it works like gangbusters all the time. But it’s a valid storytelling approach that’s been used in everything from Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar to Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, and it gives Murphy & Co. a pretext to spend quality time with other Cunanan victims who weren’t particularly famous, which is opposite of what productions like this usually do.

The cast of characters who are each granted the equivalent of their own short film includes closeted real-estate developer Lee Miglin, touchingly portrayed by former M*A*S*H star Mike Farrell, and Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock), a former Navy lieutenant driven out the service by institutional as well as personal bigotry. Although it’s regrettable in some ways that it took the story of a gay serial killer to create the framework for a series of sketches about gay men of different ages and social classes (all white except Cunanan, who was half-Filipino), it’s also remarkable to see a major cable drama devote one-and-a-half episodes to somebody like Trail, an intriguingly complex noncelebrity who defended a fellow gay sailor from two homophobic attacks, cut a tattoo off his own leg to prevent investigators from using it to identify him in one of their witch hunts, and ultimately resolved to move away from San Diego because the sight of Navy ships in the harbor was breaking his heart.

Throughout, the variety of locales is more wide-ranging than could’ve been anticipated: Besides ‘90s-era Miami, we briefly visit San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Chicago, New York City, and Pennsville, New Jersey, and the fetishistic production design and costuming consistently nail the little details that help sell a moment, from the high-waist, stone-washed jeans Cunanan sometimes wears to the blocky TVs and computers in every home, apartment, and office. And even when the story spends more time marinating in a subplot or scene than its dramatic content might justify, you can be confident that if you just stick with it for another five or ten minutes, there’ll be a scene unlike any you’ve ever encountered, like the flashback to a victim’s childhood that shows him going on a hunting trip with his father, running away in horror after the old man shoots a duck, then being consoled rather than chastised afterwards, and sincerely assured that hunting is “not for everyone.” The Assassination of Gianni Versace isn’t for everyone, either, but it’s sincere and committed as it follows its own path. When you get to the end, the reversed storytelling could seem sad, because you’re thinking about the inevitable tragedies to come, or restorative, because the dead have been systematically resurrected and have at least a bit more living to do.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace Isn’t What You Expect

The new American Crime Story is a worthy successor to O.J. anchored by a star-making performance

At the end of the second episode of The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, “Manhunt,” the culprit of the show’s titular homicide details an unbelievable curriculum vitae.

“I’m a banker. I’m a stock broker, I’m a shareholder. I’m a paperback writer. I’m a cop. I’m a naval officer—sometimes I’m a spy. I build movie sets in Mexico and skyscrapers in Chicago. I sell propane in Minneapolis. I import pineapples from the Philippines. You know, I’m the person least likely to be forgotten.”

The biography is partially true, partially borrowed, partially made up of poses that actor Darren Criss strikes throughout The Assassination Of Gianni Versace so his character can accumulate ill-gotten wealth and status. Criss has his own impressive résumé (albeit one he can actually back up), a charmed career that includes stints as a boy wizard, a show-choir heartthrob, a genderqueer glam rocker, and a song-and-dance supervillain. But he’s never been as impressive as he is in the role whose name he calls out after “Manhunt” cuts to black, one in which the actor reveals previously unseen layers of poise, magnetism, vulnerability, and menace: “I’m Andrew Cunanan.”

In the annals of American serial killers, Cunanan’s name isn’t quite as infamous as your Jeffrey Dahmers, John Wayne Gacys, or Aileen Wuornoses. That’s bound to change following the nine episodes of American Crime Story’s second season, a worthy successor to The People V. O.J. Simpson anchored by Criss’ career-making portrayal of the murderer whose multi-state, three-month spree culminated in the 1997 shooting death of fashion designer Gianni Versace. With a chilling intensity owing its hair-trigger tics (and taste for Phil Collins) to Christian Bale’s turn in American Psycho, Criss does a shocking, winning about-face from his image as the apple-cheeked dream boyfriend of his Glee days.

It’s also a towering lead performance that threatens to upend The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’s nobler aims. This is Cunanan’s story, to be sure, a tragedy of wasted potential and unrealistic expectations complicated by internal and external homophobia. But The Assassination Of Gianni Versace also seeks to give life back to his victims, and despite the valiant efforts of Edgar Ramírez, Mike Farrell, Finn Wittrock, and newcomer Cody Fern, those men never quite feel like more than satellites orbiting the show’s central figure. What we learn about them is typically stated by other characters praising the genius of Versace (Ramírez) and budding architect David Madson (Fern) or the generosity of Chicago developer Lee Miglin (Farrell).

And as deeply reported as the source material—Maureen Orth’s Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, And The Largest Failed Manhunt In U.S. History—is, the nature of the crimes depicted in The Assassination Of Gianni Versace means that Tom Rob Smith (who wrote or co-wrote all nine scripts) must fill in a lot of the blanks involving the relationships between predator and prey. Unlike those of his People V. O.J. Simpson predecessors, Smith’s characters weren’t on TV, making on-the-record statements, round-the-clock for the better part of a year. Cunanan is shown relishing the coverage of his crimes, but the quest to bring him to justice is far from an all-consuming media phenomenon. This feeds into Smith’s most pointed barbs about law enforcement’s mishandling of the Cunanan killings; along with The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’s reminders of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and the prohibition of same-sex marriage and adoption, it’s an indication that 1997 is both ancient history and not as far in the past as we might like to think in 2018.

Told in a reverse order that begins with Versace’s death and works backward toward Cunanan’s childhood, the limited series disposes of the murders before delving into the murdered; we know the names, the locations, the evidence before it actually factors into the larger story. And that’s what The Assassination Of Gianni Versace is: A story, one that constantly keeps the viewer on their toes as to when Andrew is and isn’t fibbing. While that sometimes leads to events being described in one episode, then dryly reenacted somewhere down the line, it also produces genuine surprise the few times the show confirms one of Andrew’s whoppers. Show and character alike know that the most compelling lies are built on a foundation of truth.

As such, The Assassination Of Gianni Versace plays better as parable than reportage. While it never quite becomes the twin narrative of Versace’s and Cunanan’s lives that’s hinted at in the early episodes, it continues using them as mirror images of one another: creator and destroyer, mother’s apprentice and father’s favored child, doting brother and prodigal son. When Versace is seen surrounded by family and collaborators in his gilded villa or sun-dappled studio, then Andrew is alone in unfurnished rooms, the camera pulling back to diminish him within the empty void. In scenes of startling horror and grueling humiliation, he’s a chimera of sins that are part biblical, part American: Wrath, greed, envy, lust, sloth, entitlement, exceptionalism. On paper, it seems so academic; with Criss’ energy and command, this version of Cunanan is as seductive and terrifying as the statue of Medusa that inspired the Versace logo. He could be a stock broker, a spy, a pineapple-exporter—he’s just that good a liar.

The new American Crime Story is a worthy successor to O.J. anchored by a star-making performance

American Crime Story’s Versace season is far more about the murderer than the murdered

The most important word in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story isn’t “Versace.” It’s “assassination.” That’s going to throw some people, but I think it’s key to why the new FX miniseries works at all.

Assassination is the follow-up to 2016’s massively acclaimed, heavily viewed The People v. O.J. Simpson, which won nine Emmys and was nominated for even more. It was a smartly conceived look at an event in American history that had been written off as tawdry tabloid fodder, but one that nevertheless spoke to conversations we’re still having in America about race, class, gender, and power. And yet it was also a lot of fun, if you didn’t want to dive any deeper than wondering what the hell John Travolta’s performance was supposed to be about.

Assassination is … not that. It’s a grim tragedy whose structure moves backward in time and forces you to keep thinking about the dark ends that many of its characters will meet at the hand of spree killer Andrew Cunanan, who killed five people in 1997, culminating in the death of famed fashion designer Versace.

There’s not as much Versace as you might expect, and it barely delves into his fashion empire. The designer is, instead, a kind of ghost haunting the proceedings, an out gay man who lives openly with the love of his life, insulated by the money that has given him the security to be open about himself.

Assassination may not be as enjoyable to watch as O.J., but it’s striking to see how thoughtfully all involved approach a very different story in a way that gives it its own tone, its own themes, and its own grandeur. This is a more difficult but more ambitious work, and it stands as a worthy companion.

Assassination’s most notable structural element is the way that writer Tom Rob Smith (who wrote all nine episodes — of which I’ve seen all but the finale) begins the story with Versace’s death and then mostly slides backward in time. The first two episodes deal, somewhat, with the bungled manhunt for Cunanan, but from episode three onward, the series traces the killer’s tracks backward through the country, turning three of his other victims into characters in their own right.

Thus, Cunanan kills David Madson, the man with whom he shared the most vivid romantic connection, in one episode, and then Smith fills in the details of their relationship and its splintering over the next several episodes. It’s vaguely similar to the structure of the Christopher Nolan film Memento, which uses its backward structure to mimic the way its protagonist suffers from short-term memory loss. But Smith has something more on his mind.

As with O.J., the central idea of Assassination is that this crime allows viewers to examine certain dynamics of American life that allowed for this to happen. This idea can express itself in something as straightforward as authorities not picking up Cunanan because there was an unexpressed disinterest and distaste for a killer who targeted gay men, or as complex as a military man trying to cut off his own distinctive tattoo so he won’t be outed by a fling who spotted said tattoo and, thus, kicked out of the armed forces. American society in the ’90s didn’t force Versace or Cunanan into the closet — both were out, Versace very publicly so — but it was all too happy to build the closet, leave the door open, and gently coax them toward it.

Some of this allows the miniseries to play around with the idea of just how much things have changed in terms of LGBTQ rights since the 1990s. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” no longer exists as policy, for instance, and the idea of two men having a long-lasting relationship with each other is no longer seen as a curiosity in the public eye. But the series is also about how the inability to live your life and sexuality openly becomes a kind of buried trauma for an individual, for their family, for their nation.

The series is never as simplistic as “Society is the real monster!” It’s very clear-eyed about the idea that Cunanan might very well have been a sociopath. (We still know strikingly little about him.) But the existence of a killer like Cunanan requires a society that’s all too comfortable with burying secrets as deeply as it possibly can. Thus, the backward-tracking structure becomes central to the series’ larger themes: Here, secrets are thrust out into the open, with blood and fury, and then Smith’s scripts push them back down beneath the surface.

A closeted businessman is murdered, and even as the details are covered up by his family — who to this day insist the murder was completely random, despite the fact that the man had clearly let Cunanan into his house — the scripts move backward in time, both resurrecting him and restoring whatever secrets he kept. Truth is glimpsed, and then you look away.

This structure means that Assassination ends up in an intriguing but potentially frustrating place for many viewers. It’s perhaps the most somber piece of work producer Ryan Murphy (who directs the premiere) has ever been associated with, and watching eight episodes over two days put me in a bit of a sour mood (in a good way, I think). A lot of people won’t want to take this particular wallow, and I don’t know that I’d blame them.

But the deeper I got into Assassination, the more I became convinced it’s somewhat brilliant in how its structure mirrors the story it’s telling. And as with any given 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 Cruz has absolutely nailed her performance.

The actors playing the less famous characters have even more room to win over viewers. As Madson, Australian actor Cody Fern plays the closest thing the series has to a conscience, and both he and Finn Wittrock (as Cunanan victim Jeff Trail) are mesmerizing as young men who have to live with the compromises of being openly (or not so openly) gay in the 1990s. Judith Light pops up in a one-episode role that stays on just the right side of camp (and the great TV director Gwyneth Horder-Payton, who directs three of the nine episodes, gives her a terrific final shot).

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’s career, and it deserves to.

If all of this sounds like the series is more interesting to think about than it is to watch, well, sometimes that’s true. But it’s still fascinating to observe Smith and his collaborators navigate a story filled with pitfalls (not least of which is how many stories in our culture have depicted gay men as vicious, vacuous killers — a description that could maybe fit Cunanan) and make it about more than just itself.

The characters in Assassination of Gianni Versace come so close to glimpsing a better life for themselves, only to find it was a mirage all along. Things have changed since the 1990s, sure, but not as much as we might hope they have. The closet is less visible, but its shadow remains.

American Crime Story’s Versace season is far more about the murderer than the murdered