The first time Darren Criss and Edgar Ramirez saw “Alone,” the complicated finale of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” they had no idea how their respective stories would end. For Ramirez, it turns out that Gianni Versace’s last scene came at the very beginning of his journey with the character.
“That was my very first scene in the show,” Ramirez said earlier this week at an “American Crime Story: Versace” screening event at the Directors Guild Theater in West Hollywood. Joined by assorted cast and crew from the entire season, Ramirez and his scene partner Darren Criss both spoke about their reactions to the finale — which they had just seen for the very first time, and were still struggling to process.
In one of the final moments of “Alone,” as federal agents are descending on Andrew Cunanan’s hideout, we trip back to the past, as Versace (Ramirez) and Andrew (Criss) have a conversation on the stage of an empty opera house. After a long discussion about the nature of beauty in the world, Andrew leans in for a kiss. Even when Versace gently declines, the sequence still ends on a note of peace and calm. Immediately shattering that atmosphere, the show snaps to its present, when Andrew fatally shoots himself in the head.
Although the two knew that scene might be used, it came as a surprise to both actors to see that on-screen conversation between their two characters placed where it ended up. For them, it created a sense of ambiguity about whether or not that interaction was meant to have occurred in real life.
“Were we watching one of Andrew’s machinations? Were we watching something that actually happened? I love the way that I wasn’t even sure anymore. And I kinda like that, because it made me think, ‘Is everything I just saw a machination of Andrew’s brain?’ I don’t know,” Criss said. “It was very effective to me because he lived in this nebulous sort of world. Considering how pivotal, whether fictional or non-fictional, that moment would have been, to put it right there at the end of his life was quite powerful to me.”
Added Ramirez, “I think that’s the beauty of good storytelling — that, in the end, it will fill the holes and connect the dots that reality can’t. No one will ever know what went through the heads of Gianni Versace or Andrew Cunanan. No one will ever really know if these two guys ever looked each other in the eye and connected or passed any kind of energy to each other.”
For Criss, the moment also crystalized an idea that he’d had after hearing questions about how many other Andrew moments actually transpired the way they did in real life.
“People constantly ask us, ‘Did that really happen?!’ I don’t know. But that’s irrelevant to me. It actually doesn’t matter to me. It’s the emotional content that we’re providing for this particular narrative. And that’s what hits me harder,” Criss said. “Whether it happened or not, if Andrew had believed that the emotional value of a moment like that happened, whether it was a handshake, a high five, a glance across the room, or a poster on his wall, the emotional content of that scene existed in his brain. It’s what carried him through what we watched these past nine episodes. That’s what’s more important to me.”
Many of the panelists reiterated that for them, the series is a reflection of love in many forms. Whether it was Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light), who returns in the finale for an affecting coda, Versace’s partner Antonio (Ricky Martin), or the memories of lost companions that Ronnie (Max Greenfield) refers to in his passionate interrogation room monologue, that message came through for them just as much as the pain that one young man inflicted twenty years ago.
“You know what really happened? The love between Gianni and Antonio. That really happened. I met people who know and were witnesses of that love. I think that’s what the show brings. We all feel that we know the story, but the reality is that we didn’t know the story,” Ramirez said.
In assembling the rest of the episode, writer Tom Rob Smith wanted to address the kind of reality that Andrew would have created for himself. But a central driving question of this episode came down to why Andrew would decide not to continue his moment of notoriety into a drawn-out court case.
“You’re looking at a man who everyone said is obsessed with fame, why does he not take the showcase of a trial? This is someone who was put on this earth to impress people. That’s what he wanted to do. He lost his money, he lost his looks, he lost the ability to impress people, and he turns to notoriety,” Smith said. “But I think when he gets to this endpoint, I think he’s disgusted with himself. That comes through very strongly in this episode. This is someone who wanted to be loved and who screwed that up so badly that when that news coverage fades, he’s left with this sense of profound shame. That was at the heart of the episode.”
Part of that process involved digging deep into what really happened during the Cunanan manhunt. Key scenes at the Miami Beach marina, the state of Andrew’s hideout, and even the priest’s refusal to take Antonio’s hand at Versace’s funeral all came from verified accounts of the aftermath of the murders.
“We know that the thing with the boat, they found bits of bread and Andrew’s newspaper clippings. We know that he was trying to escape. His dad did say that he rang him. That is all true. The ‘A Name to Be Remembered By’ title is the title that Modesto Cunanan wanted Andrew’s life to be called,” Smith said. “Actually, when you look at it, there were loads of fragments that were absolutely true. The Versace magazines by the head, again, that was real. And the coverage is all archive. We’re just trying to string them together.”
Executive producer Brad Simpson explained that the process of putting together the final episode was something that came at the very end of the process, a more gradual way to piece together the culmination of a season-long reverse approach to understanding the crime.
“It was the hardest episode. It was the only one that we didn’t have a plan at the beginning of how it was going to lay out. I think [Tom] did a brilliant job figuring out exactly how to let you know what’s going on inside Andrew’s hand and surmise what might have been happening,” Simpson said.
“We’re dealing with fragments, but when you have ten pieces of a puzzle and they’re all a cathedral, you can kind of work out the rest,” Smith said.
Tag: march 2018
‘American Crime Story: Versace’ Finale Is a Warning About How a Killer Is Made
While the weeks after the premiere of FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story illustrated the path that took Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) on a killing spree across the U.S., Wednesday’s season finale returned to the death of the famed fashion designer and the aftermath of his murder as Cunanan spent his frantic final days before killing himself on a Miami houseboat.
The episode brought back many of the series’ all-star guest roster — Judith Light as widow Marilyn Miglin, Max Greenfield as Cunanan’s junkie friend Ronnie, Annaleigh Ashford as Cunanan’s oldest friend Elizabeth Cote, Jon Jon Briones and Joanna P. Adler as Cunanan’s parents — to show how all of the series’ major players were coping with Cunanan’s crimes.
Miglin, on business in nearby Tampa, was hoping her husband’s killer would be caught. Adler’s Mary Ann was dumbstruck that her son was responsible for such heinous crimes, Cote pleaded for the return of her kind-hearted friend, and Briones’ Modesto, whom Cunanan called in a desperate haze after realizing he wouldn’t be able to escape the cops, told his son he’d help him but then gave an interview on the news about a potential movie instead.
Much of the hour-plus episode featured Cunanan becoming increasingly more emotional and hopeless as he took shelter in a houseboat, watching Gianni’s (Edgar Ramirez) Italian funeral on television and reminiscing about his time with the designer. “What if you had a dream your whole life that you were special, but no one believed it,” Cunanan asked. Versace responded that it wasn’t about potential, it was about following through.
Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin returned as Versace’s grieving sister, Donatella, and partner, Antonio D’Amico, respectively, for emotional scenes coming to terms with Versace’s death. And, after Cunanan ultimately shot himself, a final scene juxtaposing Cunanan’s unremarkable final resting place and lack of mourners with Versace’s opulent mausoleum and Donatella’s palpable grief.
For viewers surprised that Versace himself was present in so few of the series’ nine episodes, writer Tom Rob Smith tells The Hollywood Reporter that it was not his intention to tell Versace’s story.
“We were upfront about the source material,” he explains. “We were never doing a biopic of Versace, because that’s this amazing success story. We were always doing a crime story, and the crime story is Cunanan. And what is interesting in relation to the crime story is the symbolism of Versace. What he represents, how he overcame everything that Andrew failed to overcome: homophobia and relative poverty. All the things that made Versace a success compared to things that made Cunanan destructive.”
The finale, Smith explains, is “bringing together all of these people that were destroyed and damaged by Andrew, and really exploring what it is to lose someone. I think this is one of the few stories where the victim’s loss is at the center of this piece — this hole that was created by Andrew.”
While Cunanan’s final moments were largely fictional, since the killer was holed up in Miami alone, Criss tells THR that he first thought that Cunanan’s suicide was largely an act of desperation. But after speaking with Smith about it, he realized that the decision was very deliberate.
“This is a guy who could have gone to court,” Criss says.“He could have stretched it out forever. He could have been Charles Manson. If he was looking for fame and notoriety then he could have stuck with that. He could have been incarcerated and continued to be on magazines for the rest of his life.
He adds, "This is a guy who has curated his entire life’s story very specifically, to the T. His backstory, what his parents did. Different people knew different versions of him because he was very specific of how his image would appear and what his story was. So I think he must have come to a point where he realized that if he was incarcerated, that narrative was taken away from him and the only way to control or almost canonize his notoriety and infamy would be to take his own life.”
The season also touched on the internalized homophobia within law enforcement at the time that potentially hindered the investigation of Cunanan’s other murders before Versace — David Madson, Jeff Trail, Lee Miglin, William Reese — but Smith tells THR the way the homophobia affected Cunanan was also incredibly destructive.
“Ultimately the homophobia, I think, is much more about Andrew’s homophobia — the way it beat him as a person and the way he soaked up everything, rather than it just being a personified police officer doing it,” he says.
But the juxtaposition between the two men from similar backgrounds who grew up to do vastly different things with their latent potential is what the finale ultimately drove home.
“You can’t just say Andrew was beaten by society. Other people overcame the things that he didn’t,” Smith says. “You’re contrasting, I think, two very different people who have many similarities in the beginning and why one person was full of love and created so much — Versace and this genius — with one person who became such a monster. That, to me, is one of the central shapes of the story.”
‘American Crime Story: Versace’ Finale Is a Warning About How a Killer Is Made
’The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’ Ends With Cunanan ’Alone’
A few thoughts on the conclusion of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story coming up just as soon as the champagne cork pops…
Versace was a huge tonal and structural departure from the OJ season of American Crime Story. I admire Ryan Murphy’s willingness to gamble on Tom Rob Smith’s very different vision — half the fun of the anthology miniseries structure is the ability to radically change the show each time out — and appreciated the performances by Criss, Ramirez, Cruz, Martin, Light, and everyone else, but the experiment never quite came together for me.
Some of this was simply being forced to spend so much time in the company of Cunanan, when the show’s unflinching portrayal of his parastic sociopathy would be much more sustainable at movie length. And some was from Smith’s conceit of telling the story in reverse, so we only got proper context for things (the murder of Jeff Trail, that Cunanan’s story about having the master bedroom as a kid was true) well after the fact, which sucked a lot of the emotional power from the thing.
A show that went fully in reverse would have ended with last week’s “Creator/Destroyer,” the first episode to attempt to explain, and even slightly sympathize with, Cunanan as we saw how his father’s own pathological lies helped shape Andrew into the monster he became. It probably would have been a more potent end to the story than “Alone” turned out to be.
Some of this is Smith being bound by history. After murdering Versace, Cunanan eluded authorities for a week, then killed himself on that houseboat without a suicide note. So there’s no dramatic confrontation, no grand pronouncement about motive. Instead, the script lets the allegedly most important moment of Cunanan’s life flash before his eyes as the bullet enters, taking us back to his evening with Versace from the premiere, and to Gianni casually repudiating Andrew’s life philosophy by telling him to do something with his life rather than assuming greatness will simply come to him. It’s an effective scene — virtually every scene with Gianni was, which only left me wishing the show was more about him and Antonio and Donatella, and less about Cunanan — but doesn’t offer a huge amount of insight into Cunanan beyond what the previous eight episodes had told us.
This held true throughout the finale. Judith Light, Ricky Martin, and Penelope Cruz were all excellent again as Marilyn Miglin, Antonio, and Donatella each grappled with their losses. But other than perhaps Antonio reckoning with the limitations of his inheritance (due in part to not being Gianni’s legal spouse), their scenes were well-acted but thematically redundant.
The finale’s most effective reprise was the return of Max Greenfield as Ronnie, who was also there to reiterate ideas the season had put forth several times before, but in a manner so bluntly eloquent that it served his purpose. In particular, Ronnie telling the cops that they were “disgusted by him long before he became disgusting” neatly and viciously summed up the series’ attitude about why Cunanan was able to take and ruin so many lives before anyone in law-enforcement took him seriously.
Through those first eight episodes FX initially sent to critics, Versace felt like a collection of terrific pieces that added up to less than the sum of their individual parts. I had hoped the finale would retroactively elevate what had come before. Instead, it seemed a missed opportunity, like a lot of the season, down to the renewed emphasis on the Versaces after many weeks of focusing on Cunanan and, at times, his other victims.
’The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’ Ends With Cunanan ’Alone’
American Crime Story ends an uneven season with one final death
“Alone” B-
If nothing else, the finale for The Assassination Of Gianni Versace was always going to be interesting. The series started with ambitious goals to provide a true crime series, a character portrait of a killer, a time capsule of the ‘90s, and an overlapping examination of a number of issues ranging from classism to internalized homophobia to the AIDS crisis. Not all of it was successful (in fact, most were not) and it resulted in a fairly uneven season of television where, from episode to episode, it would somehow switch from too packed with information to too shallow. Inability to drum to a steady beat was Assassination’s biggest frustration: the first couple of episodes were almost maniacally paced and brimming with plot; the last few made me wonder why we needed a nine-episode order to tell a possible six-episode story. But seeing how all of this—and the constantly-jumping timeline—would come together, and wondering what’s left in the tank, was part of the intrigue for the back half. After all, all Assassination has left is Andrew’s final kill: himself.
“Alone,” almost bookending the premiere episode, returns to July 1997 and again shows us Versace’s murder. But then it shows us the days between the murder and Andrew’s death, speculating on what Andrew was doing, saying, and feeling. Of course, there’s no way for writer Tom Rob Smith (and journalist Maureen Orth) to know the truth. What the episode guesses is that Andrew was celebratory, poppin’ champagne and obsessing over the news coverage, watching the failed manhunt on the deck while looking oddly at peace. He squats on a houseboat (this much is true) and seems thrilled by his face plastered on the screen—until it becomes too much. He watches Lizzie read a letter begging him to give himself up, even bringing up Andrew’s godchildren (this tape is real; we have no way of knowing whether or not Andrew ever saw it), and an interview with David Madson’s father, wondering if the two were lovers.
Then Andrew breaks down and calls his father in the Philippines, sobbing on the phone. Modesto is Modesto to the end, basically scolding Andrew because “men don’t cry” but he says he’s going to come to Miami to help. Of course, Modesto isn’t to be trusted. Andrew later watches an interview where Modesto denies Andrew’s homosexuality and, we learn, just wants to make a movie about him. (Here’s a fun fact check: Modesto did indeed want a movie with the non-negotiable title A Name To Be Remembered. He thought John F. Kennedy Jr. could play Andrew, and that it would gross $115 million.) Andrew and Modesto never reunite; shortly after, the houseboat is surrounded and Andrew puts a gun in his own mouth.
Maybe that’s part of why “Alone” feels so incomplete (and why I’m hesitant to put the blame entirely on the writing for my lukewarm feelings), because it doesn’t have anywhere to go except back to that fantasy sequence, of Andrew and Versace, all talk of inspiration and lust but not much else. I’ve mostly avoided (I think!) comparing the two seasons but, sorry: American Crime Story had an easier time with The People v. O.J. Simpson in part because it’s an easier story—easier to tell, easier to digest, easier to format into a season-long narrative arc based around a trial. It had an ending where Simpson went free (spoiler alert!) and had a life (and eventually a prison stint) afterward, which writers could use to go back and inform the character(s) and actions (I would be surprised if they didn’t dip into If I Did It as well for some insight). But here, Andrew gave himself a final ending, meaning we’ll never get his side of things, or his reasoning, or closure outside of knowing he can’t kill again. It was an abrupt ending to the “largest failed manhunt in U.S. history,” and that in itself felt incomplete, which is mirrored in the finale.
But “Alone” isn’t just following Andrew, which means we see a struggling Donatella and Antonio mourning Versace, even while still at odds (they have continued to have a vaguely-contemptuous relationship long afterward). There’s another wonderful appearance from Judith Light who, as Mrs. Miglin, takes the police to task for having Andrew’s name and photo for months without catching him. “What has he been doing for two months? What have you been doing?” (And that perfume bit was an easy highlight, too.) The police also go to Mary Anne Cunanan who can only ask, “Did you kill my son?”
They interrogate Ronnie (oh, hey, Ronnie!) who basically shrugs his way through the police interview—but does confirm Detective Lori’s instincts that they should’ve been looking at particular gay bars, so we can get some bonus anger at the botched investigation. “Alone” reiterates one of Assassination’s most prevalent points: that Andrew, and other gay people, “all imagined what it would be like to be so rich and so powerful that it doesn’t matter that you’re gay” and “the truth is you were disgusted by him long before he became disgusting.” It should feel more powerful than it is but instead it’s a reminder of the show’s insistence on beating us over the head with the same points when it could instead cover new ground.
One thing that stuck with me in Orth’s book was the press/celebrity around the matter: Modesto’s Larry King interview, Mary Anne’s general presence on the press circuit, the way that various friends and former lovers of Andrew were paraded around to give their stories, the disgusting hunger of the press who found themselves in bidding wars for sensationalized pictures or interviews, the people who basically had lucrative mini-careers profiting on the many deaths. For much of Assassination, I’d assumed (or hoped) this would get touched on (especially thinking back to the pilot, with the woman’s magazine and Versace’s blood, or the Polaroid photo of his body) but we didn’t get that which certainly seems like a missed opportunity—particularly because the show was heavy on classism, and a general obsession with money and fame.
The ending of the series is a mixed bag: Mrs. Miglin finds out Lee was a nice guy who paid bills and helped a man’s career (is the show implying that these were also his lovers? I don’t know! I kind of don’t care!); Donatella is wracked with guilt because she was annoyed with her brother and didn’t answer his call, the last call he’d make to her before he died; Antonio is all alone without Versace and swallows a handful of pills in a suicide attempt; the series ends on a sweeping shot of a mausoleum where Andrew’s body is kept. And … that’s it. Which is how I felt after that: “Is this it?” But at the same time, I’m not sure what else there could be.
Stray observations
- Like always, I’m worried that this review makes it seem like I like it way less than I did, but it’s just easier to focus on the parts that left me cold or wanting. Overall, it was a solid season of television with a few bumps in the road, and the ambitiousness of it all helped to sell it. It’s just not a show that I will ever rewatch; I’d be surprised if I’m still thinking about it next week whereas the first season routinely enters my mind. But please, change my mind!
- Was that end disclaimer in all the aired episodes (I’ve been watching screeners) or just this one?
- The acting remained superb throughout and I would love it if Judith Light popped up in some future installments— though I must admit I don’t have high hopes for the Katrina season, and wish ACS would just skip ahead to Monica Lewinsky.
- Speaking of: What’s your dream American Crime Story season? In my opinion, Ryan Murphy’s most missed opportunity was not acquiring Jeffrey Toobin’s Patty Hearst book because that story is basically built for this.
American Crime Story ends an uneven season with one final death
American Crime Story: Versace Finale: Did the FX Drama Go Out With a Bang?
Wednesday’s finale of American Crime Story: Versace brought to an end the horrific escapades of Andrew Cunanan and checked back in with the people whose lives were forever changed by his twisted actions.
The episode picked up exactly where the season premiere began, with a sunkissed Andrew strolling down the streets of Miami Beach, gun in hand, waiting for the perfect shot at Gianni Versace. And we all know how that went.
Judith Light’s Marilyn Miglin was the first familiar face to reappear; the FBI showed up at her Miami hotel room to inform her that it was no longer safe for her to be in Florida, offering to help transport her to safety. She declined, demanding that they escort her to her scheduled home-shopping broadcast, but not before dressing down the bumbling agents who failed to capture Andrew:
How many more are going to die? How much more pain do you think I can suffer? Two months. You had two months. You had his name, his photo. What did he have, the money he stole from Lee? What has he been doing for two months? What have YOU been doing? And where is he now, that man? I won’t say his name. Where is he now? … You want me to run? You want me to hide from him? You provide whatever security you think necessary. I have never missed a broadcast in my life.
But Marilyn wasn’t the only shadow from Andrew’s past to take aim at the authorities. Max Greenfield’s Ronnie was also interrogated, providing him the platform to question how seriously they’d been taking this case.
“Oh, you were looking for him, weren’t you, the only lez on the force,” he said. “But the other cops, they weren’t searching so hard, where they? Why is that, because he killed a bunch of nobody gays?”
Meanwhile, Andrew was holed up in some stranger’s houseboat literally eating dog food, practically daring the feds to bust him. (Apparently Ronnie was right when he said, “Andrew is not hiding. He’s trying to be seen.”) He spent most of his time watching reports about himself on the news, including uplifting messages from his friends (Lizzie!) and exploitative interviews with his father — the latter of which made Andrew so angry that he shot his television screen. (Well, the television screen of the man who owned he house in which he was squatting.)
Speaking of the homeowner, it was his return that triggered the beginning of the end for Andrew. Shortly after he reported a burglary, police helicopters were circling overhead and a hostage negotiator was attempting to talk Andrew out of the house. But Andrew wasn’t about to give in — not on someone else’s terms, at least. He placed a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger before he could be apprehended.
Wednesday’s finale also took us inside Gianni’s funeral, during which Antonio discovered that he might as well have died along with his lover. Not only did the priest shun his greeting, but Donatella informed him that he wouldn’t be able to live on the property Gianni had promised him. As a member of the board that controlled the property, Donatella could have insisted that he live there — that is, if she had cared enough to do so.
American Crime Story: Versace Finale: Did the FX Drama Go Out With a Bang?
‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’: Ryan Murphy on the finale and the next ‘ACS’
Tonight was the haunting, operatic finale to The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. The end of the nine-hour miniseries found Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) taking his own life and the Versace family laying their beloved Gianni (Edgar Ramirez) to rest.
EW talked to executive producer Ryan Murphy about the finale, Criss’ revelatory performance, and whether Katrina is still planned as the next installment in FX’s critically acclaimed American Crime Story franchise.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You all shot in the Versace mansion for a month for the beginning of the series. Was this finale shot when you shot the initial stuff at Versace’s home? Or did you go back?
RYAN MURPHY: No, we went back. We had to build that houseboat. We built it based on the specifications of the mockup, so it took some time.This final episode feels almost like a curtain call for a lot of the actors, like Jon Jon Briones and Max Greenfield. Was that a conscious choice to have them back and, in some ways, take a bow?
Well, I think the point was to bring back as many of the players as you could. But they were all very active in those final days of Cunanan. Like, they really did think Cunanan might be coming for Marilyn Miglin. So it all dovetailed nicely. By the nature of the cross- country manhunt idea, the narrative was so spread out, so it was nice to finally have an episode where all of these great people could come back together. That was always part of the plan of the structure.Max Greenfield’s scene in the interrogation room at the police station feels like the thesis for Versace, in that homophobia was so much of the reason the police didn’t pursue Cunanan.
Yes, and also Marilyn Miglin [played by Judith Light] has a big monologue about family. So yes, but I think the reason I was interested in doing it initially and was drawn to it initially was because one of the crimes was apathy. Here was this manhunt, and it’s true that in Miami a lot of the police officers would not go into gay bars to put up the most-wanted posters because they thought people would think they were gay. So by pure apathy and being dismissed as, “Well, he’s taking out gay people, who cares!” that’s one of the reasons he ultimately had such a high body count — because people just didn’t care, particularly law enforcement.It’s so great to see Jon Jon, Judith, Max and even Ricky Martin get these great moments. Was that rewarding to give them these showcases at the end?
We gave all these great actors these solo arias. I love that about it. I thought it added something personal. One of the things we’ve done over the course over the show, it wasn’t a show just about Versace or Cunanan — it was about the victims and the victims of the time. They’re all such fantastic actors, so to give them these page, two-page-long monologues, I loved doing that and I know they were very grateful for that.So much of the houseboat stuff feels like a hallucination by Andrew. Was that something you were going for?
Yeah we did. Of course nobody can really know what happened in there other than a lot of physical evidence he left behind, like what he ate and what he watched. What I thought was so crazy about that houseboat was that there was a TV in every room and Andrew had found this television projector, so that was something that was really there. So he kind of did have TVs going in every room. At that point, Cunanan was on crystal meth and coming down off the drug in very painful withdrawal, and he had no food. The last couple days of his life were very fraught.Darren really leaves everything on the table for this role, even shaving his head. You were his biggest champion for this — how do you feel about his performance?
I am proud of him and I always knew he could do it and I think he proved he could do it. I was very adamant about his casting. I thought there was a great dramatic actor inside there waiting to come out. He took his responsibilities very seriously, and that’s the best thing I can ever do having the gig I have, is believing in people and giving the opportunities for them to shine. I do think it’s the best performance of the year, and I think it’s the hardest. It’s a nine-hour descent into madness.You began the series with Versace waking up, and you end it with Andrew in a mausoleum. Did you go back and forth on the final image?
Well, I liked the juxtaposition and I like what it said: In the end, Andrew didn’t get what he wanted. He was just one man out of thousands. When you pull out and the names surrounding him go on forever, as opposed to Versace. I liked the idea of the anonymity of Andrew’s legacy. I thought it was haunting to go back and forth to Donatella looking at the medusa in Versace’s mausoleum, and the grandeur and the love and the family and the spirit, versus the coldness and isolation of Andrew’s.So when will ACS: Katrina start? Soon?
I don’t quite know. We’re working on a couple of things. That’s a show where we have a lot of things cooking. We literally just edited the finale last week, so we haven’t made that decision yet. We’re never going to have a Crime Storyunless we have the scripts down. I think the reason why Versace went next is because Tom Rob Smith had such a strong take on it. I am not in a rush to move forward with anything unless it’s perfect. So we’ll see what’s next for that.What about Feud 2? Are you any closer with that?
Still talking about it. We’re still deciding it. I have the new Netflix deal and I have all my shows with Fox, I don’t want to do something unless the scripts are ready and the casts are ready. I’m taking my time and just trying to get everything right.I haven’t talked to you since the Netflix deal. How do you feel about this?
I’m really excited. I’m really excited to do something else. I’m excited to explore new worlds and do all different types of programming and make documentaries. I’m also really excited about the shows I have with Fox, two of those are my Netflix shows, Ratched and The Politician. At least for the near foreseeable future, nothing has changed. It’s business as usual and I’m still there, and we’re all still close and cool. I feel good about everything.
‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’: Ryan Murphy on the finale and the next ‘ACS’
“Alone” with Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson
Joanna Robinson and Richard Lawson discuss “Alone,” the final episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story and how the show chose to portray the final days of Andrew Cunanan. More from star Darren Criss and Executive Producers Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson are the featured interview.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Season Finale: A Perfect Boy
Season 2, Episode 9: ‘Alone’
It turns out that “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” this gorgeous mess of a television series, was neither about an assassination nor, really, about Versace, the fashion designer who was shot to death on the front steps of his Miami Beach mansion in 1997.
It would have been more accurately called “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Andrew Cunanan,” Versace’s killer, whose spectacular orgy of violence briefly dominated headlines around the world at the close of the American century.
Over the eight previous episodes, starting with Versace’s killing, the series drew us back in time, through Cunanan’s killings of four other people; his career as a drug addict and escort; his resentment of the fame and accomplishment of other gay men; his odd childhood; his troubled relationship with his doting but oppressive and mendacious father; and — in the closest thing to a “Rosebud” moment — an imagined encounter between Cunanan and Versace years before the murders.
The finale is a riveting hour of television, filled with anguish and revelation as Cunanan, played by Darren Criss, relives his crime spree through television and radio reports that fill the Miami Beach houseboat where he is hiding out — appropriately blown-up to larger-than-life proportions on a home theater projector, no less. But, like much of what preceded it, the episode is a muddle, never quite settling on a coherent thesis or a sustained argument.
That’s a pity, because the series writer — the novelist Tom Rob Smith, who also wrote the chilling British mini-series “London Spy” — has consistently given the characters flashes of brilliance and insight.
No moment manifests those qualities more than the brilliant monologue by Ronnie, a gay man whom Cunanan befriended as he was hiding out from the law during the two months before he killed Versace. Ronnie recognizes Versace’s significance. “We all imagined what it would be like to be so rich and so powerful that it doesn’t matter that you’re gay,” he says during a police interrogation.
But he is also angered about society’s homophobia. The authorities had been slow to alert the gay community and to solicit its help in the manhunt — until, as Ronnie notes, one of the victims was famous. “You’re so used to us lurking in the shadows and, you know, most of us, we oblige,” he says. “People like me, we just drift away. We get sick? Nobody cares.”
“But Andrew was vain,” he continues, as a flicker of something almost like pride, or at least defiance, lights his eyes. “He wanted you to know about his pain, he wanted you to hear, he wanted you to know about being born a lie. Andrew is not hiding. He’s trying to be seen.”
Maybe. But at that moment Cunanan is, in fact, hiding out on a house boat. If he had a message to communicate about his pain, he did not share it.
The series is loosely based on Maureen Orth’s gossipy book “Vulgar Favours,” but the dramatizations and embellishments are so extreme that the series appears more a flight of wishful fantasy than an act of journalistic reconstruction. Also extreme is the director Daniel Minahan’s insistence on making this finale a retrospective of horrors. Until now, the series was told in reverse chronological order. But the finale circles back to where it started, and it is bursting at the seams with tangential characters, visual cues and over-the-top emotions that leave a jumble of impressions instead of delivering a clear punch.
We pay a visit to Marilyn Miglin, a self-made cosmetics magnate who sells her wares on television and whose husband, Lee, a Chicago property developer, was the third of Cunanan’s five victims. She happens to be in Tampa, Fla., while the manhunt following Versace’s murder occurs. The local police urge her to return to Chicago for fear that Cunanan may be after her, but she refuses.
Her strength and resolve are admirable — and Judith Light turns in a magnificent performance — but we hardly learn anything that we didn’t know from Episode 3.
Similarly repetitive is a scene in which the father of David Madson, the Minneapolis architect whom Cunanan forced to flee home before he killed him, communicates his anguish on a TV interview. We knew from Episode 4 that the father and son were both pretty decent people.
The most strange and haunting moment of this finale comes when Cunanan, desperate and reduced to eating dog food, dials his father, Modesto, a disgraced former stockbroker who fled to his native Philippines after some shady financial deals. Andrew is sobbing, a man of 27 reduced to helplessness. “Dad, I’m in trouble,” he pleas. “I need help. I need you to come get me.” Modesto promises Andrew that he’ll drop everything and race to Miami to rescue him. “I will find you and I will hug you and I will hold you in my arms,” he says.
Of course he doesn’t. He’s a hustler.
The next morning, it’s clear to Andrew that Modesto isn’t coming. In fact, he hasn’t even tried to leave the Philippines. “My son is not and has never been a homosexual,” he tells television reporters. He adds: “He was a perfect boy, the most special child I ever saw. The idea that he could be a killer makes me angry.”
Modesto tells the reporters that Andrew called him a night ago. Asked what they discussed, he replies: “The movie rights to his life story. I’m acting as the broker calling Hollywood from here in Manila. Andrew was very particular about the title.”
The movie, he says, will be called “A Name to Be Remembered.”
It’s disturbing and nauseating, of course. But we already knew from Episode 8 that Modesto was a pretty despicable guy.
Then there’s a jarring shift to Milan, where Versace is honored with a ceremony akin to a state funeral. We are reminded — as we learned in Episode 2 — that his sister and de facto heir, Donatella, and his partner, Antonio D’Amico, have a frosty relationship. Antonio wants to move to one of Gianni’s properties, on Lake Como; Donatella says it’s up to the company’s board to decide. (Later, we are shown, Antonio is driven to such despair that he attempts suicide.)
Watching the live broadcast of the funeral, Cunanan kneels before the television and makes a sign of the cross: a shockingly sacrilegious moment, but hardly of great emotional power since Cunanan’s Catholicism hasn’t really been a theme at all. A scene with Cunanan’s friend Lizzie, whom we have barely heard from, is similarly lacking, as she begs him on television to turn himself in. Lizzie — a straight, older friend who asked Andrew to be the godfather to her children — has intrigued me throughout the series, but the underinvestment in her character makes her appeal seem wooden.
The one time when Cunanan’s eyes suggest remorse comes when he sees his fragile mother being hounded by reporters outside her home.
Otherwise, Cunanan’s victims flicker on the screen like Macbeth’s ghosts, and finally he is visited by one — himself, as a child of around 11. And then we have the “Rosebud” moment: a scene in which we return to a San Francisco opera house where, it is imagined, Versace and Cunanan met during a 1990 production of “Capriccio” that Versace designed.
Cunanan, at that point 21, tries to kiss Versace, but the designer turns away.
“It’s not because don’t find you attractive,” Versace says. “I invited you here because you are a very interesting young man. I want you to be inspired by this, to be nourished by tonight. If we kissed, you may doubt it.”
Versace, in this telling, had some useful advice for Cunanan: Success isn’t about convincing people that you’re special. Success is about hard work. It is sad that Cunanan didn’t learn this from his deadbeat father, but it takes us nowhere in explaining the blood thirst that followed.
Homophobia, mixed-race identity, sexual abuse, the lust for fame, the worship of celebrity — each of these themes is brought forward and then discarded.
Like many a true-crime drama, this second season of “American Crime Story” was more interested in the journey than the destination. I get it. But in the end, like Cunanan himself, the show was a beautiful, glittery, violent, extravagant mess.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Season Finale: A Perfect Boy
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Producing super-team Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson are responsible, individually and collectively, for major money-making franchises like Diary of a Wimpy Kid and the Hunger Games. When they decided to try their hand at TV in 2016, with American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, they hit ratings and awards-season gold. The second season of the FX franchise, titled The Assassination of Gianni Versace, wraps up Wednesday night to a slightly more muted reception, and the pair acknowledge that fans have wondered why there wasn’t more of the titular Versace family in this show.
“We’ve obviously seen the tweets,” Simpson said as part of a wide-ranging interview with Vanity Fair’s Still Watching: Versace podcast. “ ‘Oh, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is really Andrew [Cunanan]’s story.]’ There’s a lot of surprise and I think we were a little underprepared.” Jacobson and Simpson went on to explain how that reaction will impact the future of the American Crime Story franchise, and why, perhaps, we might not see any famous name at all in future season titles.
“We had done the People v. O.J. Simpson, which wasn’t really about O.J. Simpson,” Brad Simpson explains. “The surprise of that show was that O.J. Simpson was really a supporting character. After the first two episodes he just sits in court until the finale. Really it was about the lawyers. We were surprised by the way people thought the Versaces would be leads instead of supporting characters.”
According to Simpson, when the Versace team was figuring out episodes 3 and 4 of the season, which involve the deaths of Lee Miglin, Jeff Trail, David Madson, and William Reese, they felt it would be “disrespectful” to cut away from the deaths of these four men simply to spend time in the more luxurious and high-profile world of the Versaces. Though he concedes the story of the Versaces after Gianni’s murder was more “melodramatic,” he worried delving too deep into that world would result in criticizing the famous fashion family and break the rule of the season, which was to not “demonize” the victims in any way.
The finale, which was edited together a good deal after the first eight episodes, due to some availabilities, does, however, spend more time with Penelope Cruz’s Donatella Versace and Ricky Martin’s Antonio D’Amico—as well as a brief fantasy sequence with Edgar Ramirez’s Gianni Versace. But Simpson insists the increased Versace presence in the finale is not a reaction to audiences “clamoring” for more Cruz and Martin. “I honestly think if we had given people more Versace, they would have gotten tired of it.”
As for the future of the franchise, Jacobson said they are currently “up to our neck” in developing the next few seasons, which will reportedly still cover both the Hurricane Katrina disaster and the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal. She acknowledges that pursuing true-crime stories that serve as a mirror for the clash between “who we say we are as Americans and who we actually are as Americans” doesn’t always result in the “fastest turnaround time,” but neither producer sounds at all rushed in their process of trying to get it right.
In fact, Simpson explains, that in order to find a story that says something “bigger and deeper and more disturbing about America,” the duo are “on the hunt for a story that people don’t know,” similar to Netflix’s smash true-crime docuseries, Making a Murderer. They want an “untold story for future seasons” and tease that everyone should “stay tuned” for that announcement. In the meantime, however, for all the fans who are still cross over the missing Versaces in The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Brad Simpson has a promise to make: “We’ll be more careful on how we title future seasons.”
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‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ finale recap: A bug in a jar
We gave it a B+
It’s finally back to the beginning, the titular assassination. Remember Andrew Cunanan in a red baseball cap? Remember Gianni Versace bleeding out on his stairs, flanked by doves?
The second time, the assassination is shot almost like a music video: quickly paced, and in tempo. It’s more like a dance than a murder. The same is true of Cunanan’s breaking and entering of a Miami houseboat, where he pops champagne for himself and begins watching news coverage (focused on him, of course) on bigger and bigger screens until it’s finally projected onto the wall. It’s all almost choreographed — a perfect encapsulation of Ryan Murphy’s overly stylized style. A man on television remarks how he saw Versace’s head blown off just as the cap pops off the champagne. Cunanan descends into giggling hysterics. “Oh my god,” Cunanan says to himself when he hears his name on the news. He swings a massive silk scarf around his neck like a movie star, and lounges on a balcony chair. He looks like he’s pretending to be famous.
Lee Miglan’s wife, Marilyn, is informed that Versace was also killed by the suspect in her husband’s murder. “When will this end?” she says. “How many more are going to die?” Barely restraining her fury, she makes the most pointed case of the show: The police had months to find Cunanan, and they didn’t.
Ronnie makes the same point when he’s brought in for questioning. “Hiding? He wasn’t hiding. He was partying. The other cops: They weren’t searching so hard, were they? Why is that? Because he killed a bunch of nobody gays?” Ronnie finally gives the show’s thesis: “Andrew is not hiding. He’s trying to be seen.”
And now that the victim is famous, the police hunt has tightened. Cunanan can’t get out of the city with checkpoints set up to catch him. And so he flings his car keys into the ocean and screams — he’s famous, finally, but he’s also completely important. He is the bug trapped under a glass.
Cunanan sneaks onto a boat and eats stolen tortillas, barricading himself in the bedroom when a woman hears him onboard, and running away when he hears her tell someone to call the cops. He watches them arrive from his houseboat hiding spot, where he also watches Lizzie on TV talking about him, imploring him to end the standoff and give himself in. “The Andrew Cunanan I know is not a violent person. I know that the most important thing in the world is what others think of you.”
Cunanan’s mother watches television from under a blanket and lets the police in through a latched door. “Have you killed my son?” she says, voice soft as a ghost.
Starving, living on nothing but cable news and garbage, Cunanan succumbs to eating dog food. “Dad, I’m in trouble,” he cries on the phone to his father. His dad promises to fly in and come and get him.
“Twenty-four hours,” his dad says. “I will find you, and I will hug you, and I will hold you in my arms, and it will all be okay.” He promises again to come, and tells him to pack some clothes and be ready to leave as soon as he arrives.
And then Cunanan sees his father on television, talking about Cunanan’s innocence, telling them that they talked on the phone — to discuss movie rights to his life. Cunanan shoots the screen. He is fully alone.
Meanwhile, Antonio learns that the homes on Lake Cuomo where Versace told him he could stay are actually owned by the company, not Gianni. Donatella tells him he can take some time to stay there after the funeral. “And after that?” he asks. She tells him that it’s time for them to start a new life.
Eyes wide, Cunanan watches Princess Diana and Elton John parade into Versace’s lavish funeral. He sings along in falsetto with the church choir, eyes to heaven. He shaves his head, kneeling before the mirror.
Eventually, the police surround the houseboat and completely cut Cunanan off. Cunanan grabs his gun and hides in his bedroom, quietly sitting next to the childhood version of himself, and then, alone again. The police cut the power and deploy smoke bombs. They force their way in.
Cunanan takes off his glasses, cocks his gun, and shoots himself in the mouth after looking at himself in the mirror one last time.
Finally, we see the end of his interaction onstage with Versace — a polite rejection, a fundamental difference of understanding on the nature of art. Cunanan’s act, his charm, didn’t work on Versace. “Another night,” Versace says. “Another stage.”
Gianni’s remains are at a Lake Cuomo altar, gilded, surrounded by candles. Cunanan gets an anonymous block in an endless mausoleum. The final shot speeds away, his final resting place disappearing into anonymity.
The show was ambitious, beautiful, and impossible to look away from. Its conversations on the nature of fame and ego and homosexuality in the early 90’s were far more interesting in Cunanan’s story than in Versace’s — the latter’s plotlines were far thinner. But Andrew Cunanan is one of television’s most terrifying and memorable villains, a fully unique character equal parts tragic and despicable.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ finale recap: A bug in a jar
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