Tag: june 2018

Penélope Cruz on Woody Allen: “The Case Has to Be Looked at Again”

[…] Cruz also reunited with Darren Criss at the lavish afternoon polo match, her co-star in American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Both are top Emmy contenders for their work in the FX limited series, which has been praised by critics—though Cruz isn’t sure whether the real Donatella Versace, whom she played in Versace, has watched her emotional performance.

“I don’t know if she has seen it, because I think it’s a tricky subject,” Cruz said. “But she sent me flowers as good luck at the premiere. I sent things to her, and we both talk about each other. Somebody asked her in Spain during an interview, and she talked a little about me with affection, so that’s very important for me that she knows that I have played her with a lot of respect.”

Cruz also said that the role of the famed designer, whom she has met only four or five times at parties, was one of the most “challenging” performances in her career.

“I have a lot of respect and affection for her, so I was very intimidated by the idea of playing her. I wanted to show that she’s a force of nature that she is,” said Cruz. “So when I talked to [Versace show-runner] Ryan [Murphy], I knew he wanted to do the same. I talked to Donatella and she said, ‘If someone is going to play me, I’m happy that it is you.’ So it was like her blessing for me to do it.”

Cruz’s dramatic physical transformation, meanwhile—which required multiple blonde wigs to replicate Donatella’s iconic platinum hair—was the least stressful aspect of embodying the character.

“I’ve been blonde before for other projects, so I wasn’t very shocked when I saw myself with the wig on,” she said with a smile. “I liked it!”

Penélope Cruz on Woody Allen: “The Case Has to Be Looked at Again”

Conversations THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE: AMERICAN CRIME STORY

Program Type:

CONVERSATIONS

Location:

NEW YORK

Title:

THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE: AMERICAN CRIME STORY

Featuring:

Penélope Cruz

Date:

Monday, June 4, 2018

Time:

3:00 PM
Check-in begins at: 2:15 PM

Join us for a screening followed by a Q&A with Penélope Cruz.

Moderated by Kristen Baldwin, Entertainment Weekly.

Estimated program end time: 4:30 PM

SYNOPSIS
Inspired by actual events, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is the second installment of FX’s award-winning limited series, American Crime Story.

Ryan Murphy, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, Brad Falchuk, Alexis Martin Woodall, Dan Minahan, Tom Rob Smith, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski are Executive Producers of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. It is written by Tom Rob Smith, and Ryan Murphy directed the premiere episode of the series, which stars Darren Criss, Edgar Ramirez, Penélope Cruz and Ricky Martin.  The series is produced by Fox 21 Television Studios and FX Productions.

Conversations THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE: AMERICAN CRIME STORY

Serial thriller with designs on Versace

dcriss-archive:

Gunned down by a serial killer on the steps of his Miami Beach home, the murder of fashion icon Gianni Versace in July 1997 captivated the world. But the crimes that festered around, and later were exposed by Versace’s death, most fascinate Darren Criss, the 31-year-old actor who plays killer, Andrew Cunanan, in a new TV drama series. After his breakout role as Blaine in Glee, Criss has made a string of TV appearances; wowed Broadway as Hedwig in the musical Hedwig And The Angry Inch; developed the alt-pop band Computer Games with his brother, Chuck; and in January this year got engaged to his longtime girlfriend, writer-producer Mia Swier.

American Crime Story 2: The Assassination of Gianni Versace has already aired in the US, what’s been the reaction?

I’m just thrilled people have watched it — not for my own ego — but because it’s such a fascinating and compelling story that raises so many questions. It’s the kind of show that I’d like to talk about, even if I wasn’t in it!

We don’t totally know Cunanan’s motivation for the serial killings, do we?

I don’t think it is as simple as this guy wanted fame and fortune or glory. It’s sort of a pretty big cocktail of a lot of unfortunate factors.

And the crimes around that crime?

The show tries to hone in on this theme of homophobia in the United States. One of the great things about American Crime Stories is that we centralise our story on a crime, but we kind of really investigate and explore the other crimes around that, and how they affected the central crime, and vice versa. The first series (The People v O.J. Simpson) obviously is centred on the murder, but what it is really investigating is racism in Los Angeles; and what that trial meant for national black identity. What we focus on here (Versace) is how homophobia plays a hand in these crimes — not just for Cunanan and Versace, but how it manifests itself in the FBI and in the military.

20 years on, those issues are still relevant.

Absolutely. It’s unfortunate, fear and prejudice always seem to be in fashion in one way or another.

Aimee Mann guest stars in a powerful scene for Cunanan, where she sings “who’s going to drive you home tonight?” (The Cars, Drive). How psychologically revealing are those lyrics?

Oh, yeah. It’s a great scene. He’s terrified of being left alone. There’s a key line — and I’ll summarise — where he says, ‘I’m a new person. Now I just need someone to be a new person for’. He just needs these people so he can share this fantastical version of himself.

Segueing now, The Cars, ’Til Tuesday, did they influence your band Computer Games?

Sure. Any popular good music. Everything influences you either consciously or not. So, yeah, sure, I’ve played my fair share of Cars covers in my day.

Hedwig creator John Cameron Mitchell will be in Brisbane next month. Did John give you any advice on the role when you took over from him on Broadway?

He’s been such a great friend and a great mentor in general, that I can’t boil it down to one specific piece of advice. But I will say John was always very encouraging of me to learn my own stuff to sort of add to the internal narrative that is Hedwig. And, yep, I’m a ‘Hed-head’ myself. I was a Hedwig fan that got to wear the wig!

American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Foxtel, showcase, Thursdays, 8.30pm; also available Foxtel On Demand

The Origin of Love: The Songs and Stories of Hedwig, QPAC Concert Hall, July 17, 8pm, qpac.com.au

Serial thriller with designs on Versace

From Dunkirk to Mad Bastards: what’s streaming in Australia in June

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (US, 2018) by Ryan Murphy – new episodes on Thursdays

The failure of the American dream has always made for juicy storytelling. Now, in the follow-up to The People v OJ Simpson: American Crime Story, it gets the Ryan Murphy (Glee) treatment, spun through the tale of the assassination of Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace in Miami in 1997.

Murphy’s American Crime Story series has always been pulpy, high-production melodrama; this season is no different, right from the luxuriously lengthy opening sequence that introduces Versace (Édgar Ramírez) and his agonised killer, Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss). The rest of the season works backwards from there as a period piece and police procedural that emphasises trademark Murphy themes of queerness, wealth and celebrity, spun through the lens of 1990s fashion culture, as well as the homophobia that inhibited the investigation. It is as satisfying and schlocky as we’ve come to expect from a Murphy production, and features Penélope Cruz as Gianni’s sister, Donatella Versace, and Ricky Martin as Antonio D’Amico, his partner.

From Dunkirk to Mad Bastards: what’s streaming in Australia in June

Scoop: Upcoming Guests on LIVE WITH KELLY AND RYAN 6/4 – 6/8 on ABC

Friday, June 8 – President BILL CLINTON and author JAMES PATTERSON speak about the thriller “A President Is Missing,” and RICKY MARTIN talks about the series “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: AMERICAN CRIME Story.” Plus, Kelly and Ryan get into THE KITCHEN with the next griller for “Live’s Fired-Up Friday: Fan Foodie Face-Off.”

Scoop: Upcoming Guests on LIVE WITH KELLY AND RYAN 6/4 – 6/8 on ABC

FX launches FX+ VIP streaming service just for Emmy voters

FX is making it easier than ever to ensure Emmy voters can watch all of its shows any time they want. The network has launched FX+ VIP, a commercial-free streaming service for TV Academy members that contains all seasons of its current series.

Academy members can sign up by downloading the app and entering the unique code that was sent to every member. The service is available to members until Aug. 31, four days after voting ends to determine the winners.

FX has lots of contenders in play this year, including Best Comedy Series favorite “Atlanta,” “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” “American Horror Story: Cult,” “Baskets,” “Better Things” and “The Americans,” which ended its six-season run on Wednesday.

As a bonus, if members join Thursday, they will get a special preview of the “Pose” series premiere on the app starting at 12:01 a.m. ET / 9:01 p.m. PT. “Pose,” Ryan Murphy‘s last new series for FX before he moves to Netflix, will debut on Sunday at 9/8c, but won’t be eligible until next year’s Emmys.

Writers on ‘Versace,’ ‘Tupac’ and More Reveal Secrets to Bringing True Tales to the Screen

While the challenge often is truncating an abundance of material, sometimes the dilemma is the opposite. In producing the follow-up to the hit limited series American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, producer Nina Jacobson found that FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace proved a more difficult story to tell than its predecessor.

“Whereas with the O.J. Simpson trial virtually every person involved with the story had written a book, in the case of Versace, we had much less information available to us,” she says.

The series creators based many of the key events in the story of Andrew Cunanan, who murdered the famous fashion designer outside his Miami home, on Maureen Orth’s 2000 book Vulgar Favors. They gathered additional information from newspaper accounts and available video footage. “But what happened between David Madsen and Andrew Cunanan, for example, when they went missing for several days, or how exactly some of the murder scenes went down — the only people who know about them are dead,” says exec producer Brad Simpson. “They had to be imagined based on what we knew of the personalities and the crime scenes.”

That’s where the storytellers must rely heavily on what they call “emotional truth.” “Marcia Clark used that phrase after she saw [People v. O.J.]. She said, ‘It’s not a documentary, but they captured the emotional truth of what happened,’” recalls Simpson, adding that producers did not, for either season, contact any of the people involved. “We want to be cognizant of the victims, but at the same time we think it’s best to tell the story based on historical evidence and to try to unpack what happened but not be beholden to telling one particular story in one particular way. That’s been our approach for the Crime Story series in general.”

Writers on ‘Versace,’ ‘Tupac’ and More Reveal Secrets to Bringing True Tales to the Screen