Tag: ryan murphy

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’: 6 Things We Learned From FX’s First Screening

Darren Criss has taken on a “Shakespearean” role in bringing the tortured life story of serial killer Andrew Cunanan to life in FX’s “The Assassination of Gianni Versace.”

So said “Versace” director and executive producer Ryan Murphy on Monday night as he “played Barbara Walters” during a Q&A with stars and producers following the series’ first public screening, held at New York City’s Metrograph theater.

“Versace” stars Criss, Edgar Ramirez, Ricky Martin, writer Tom Rob Smith, author Maureen Orth, and executive producers Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson offered insights into the limited series, which has the hard task of following “The People V. O.J. Simpson” as the second installment of FX’s “American Crime Story” franchise.

Here are 6 things we learned from the first look at “Versace”:

  • Like “People V. O.J. Simpson,” “Versace” takes on larger cultural and societal issues beyond the sensational details of how Cunanan gunned down fashion superstar Versace on the steps of his Miami Beach villa on July 15, 1997. Through the once-and-future prism of a period drama, the first episode raises timely questions about discrimination against LGBT crime victims by law enforcement, disparity in health care for rich and poor, and the sick market for cashing in on grisly celebrity deaths. Versace was one of the first major public figures to live his life openly as a gay man, and, based on the first episode, the then-and-now perspective on cultural attitudes toward the LGBT community is clearly a major theme. “We want every season of this show to be about that crime that America is guilty of,” Jacobson said. “We wanted to re-conjure what it meant to be gay in the 1990s.”
  • Don’t expect a simple linear storyline in “Versace’s” nine episodes. “We’re telling the story backwards. The first and second episodes are about the assassination [of Versace] and the manhunt, and then we go back in time. In episode eight you meet Andrew Cunanan as a child. The final episode deals with his eventual demise,” Murphy said.
  • Orth, author of the 1999 book “Vulgar Favors: The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” said Cunanan’s obsession with achieving a measure of celebrity was a product of the modern age. He was “besotted” with the idea of fame. “He was willing to kill for fame. He wanted to be everything Versace was, but he wasn’t willing to work for it,” Orth said. She added a harsh observation about the nation’s current political climate: “The idea that he was willing to kill for fame — there’s a line from there to getting famous from a sex tape like the Kardashians down to becoming president of the United States because you’re a reality TV star,” Orth opined.
  • Criss became emotionally invested in playing the disturbed serial killer. The role is without question a career-accelerator for the former “Glee” star. Murphy noted that Criss is in every episode, as the story drills down on the factors that made Cunanan kill five people including Versace during his 1997 spree. “Stories that bend people’s sense of empathy are what interest me,” Criss said. “We’re trying to humanize somebody who is so conventionally vilified.” Murphy added: “We’re not interested in the killer-of-the-week approach,” he said. “We’re trying to understand the psychology of someone who would be driven to do those deeds.”
  • Ramirez also got under the skin of Versace, even though his character spends most of episode one on a gurney in the morgue. Recreating the scenes of Versace’s murder on the actual site of his villa in Miami was a challenging process, said Martin, who plays Versace’s longtime lover, Antonio. “It was a profound, moving experience,” Martin said. “The crew was crying, the actors were crying — it was very intense.” Ramirez felt he channeled the soul of his character during his big death scene. He believed Versace lived through the trauma of being taken to the emergency room before he was declared dead at 9:21 a.m. “He was there,” Ramirez said. “He wanted to express something, but he couldn’t, about the insanity and the tragedy that [his murder] could have been prevented and it wasn’t.”
  • Criss also emphasized the importance of the production having access to the Versace villa. “That house — it bleeds his soul,” Criss said. “His creativity exits in every wall and every doorknob in the house. It’s a living vestige of his legacy. I did feel his presence. I had to say a prayer for thanks and an apology for us exposing it. I’m hoping some light can be made from this very, very dark thing.”

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’: 6 Things We Learned From FX’s First Screening

Ryan Murphy on Andrew Cunanan, ‘Versace’ casting

LOS ANGELES—In person, Ryan Murphy is as engrossing as the shows he produces and directs, including the recent “Feud: Bette and Joan” and “The People v. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story.”

Last May, we were in the late Gianni Versace’s lavish Miami mansion named Casa Casuarina. Ryan was shooting crucial scenes for FX’s “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” right where they happened, including the front steps where Fil-Am Andrew Cunanan (played by Darren Criss) shot Versace (Edgar Ramirez) to death.

Penelope Cruz (Donatella Versace) and Ricky Martin (Antonio D’Amico, Versace’s longtime boyfriend) complete the main cast of the series, which airs in early 2018.

Ryan, sitting in one of the rooms with ornately decorated walls and ceilings, dished fascinating details of this Spanish-style mansion, built in 1930 by an oil fortune heir and inspired by Alcázar de Colón, the home of Christopher Columbus’ son in the Dominican Republic.

“There are three levels of the house,” began the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning creator of “Glee,” “American Horror Story” and “Nip/Tuck.” “There are about 20 rooms. There’s the pool area where Versace would have his famous parties for Naomi Campbell, Madonna, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista and Elton John. There’s a room that was apparently Madonna’s favorite suite.”

For Ryan, who started as a journalist, there was no question they had to film in this house. “We bought out the house for two weeks. It was not inexpensive. The interesting thing about this house is that since the day Versace left us and died, nothing has changed except the furniture and the art. Some of it has actually been restored. We got permission.

Soul and sadness

“As soon as Versace was dead, Donatella came and took all of the art, his personal effects and all of that great stuff away. We spent a lot of time and money looking at photos and recreating the stuff that we could.

“I don’t think we could have done it if we weren’t allowed to shoot here, because this house is him. You can feel his soul and the sadness. The pool is just bats**t crazy, with the attention to detail.

“Every day, I’m finding rooms I didn’t know existed. Yesterday, we found a walk-in shower for eight people. So we had to shoot in there (laughs). There’s no place on earth like this house. It’s been a great gift to be here.”

The miniseries is still in production and is filming in other locations.

Excerpts from our talk:

Talk about why you cast Darren Criss, Edgar Ramirez, Ricky Martin and Penelope Cruz. Whenever I do something like this (like “OJ”), I always have one person in mind. So, Darren was the obvious choice. I was friends with him. I wanted people to see something I saw—which was, he’s a great dramatic actor.

In the case of Edgar, he looks exactly like Versace. When we have the prosthetic and the wig, it’s amazing. Edgar has that grandiose gravity as a human being that Versace had. He was my only choice.

Ricky is so soulful and intimate. I’ve worked with him once before. Antonio, the boyfriend, was a tragic figure because he was with Versace for 15 years and loved him. When Versace was killed, he was thrown out of this palace. He had suicide attempts.

So, I met Ricky. At the end of the meeting, we both got teary because he didn’t tell me that he and Edgar were close friends. Edgar wanted Ricky to do this part so bad, but he was not going to tell him, “Do it.”

The thing about Donatella was a little trickier because I obviously adore Gaga. We briefly discussed it, but she was doing “A Star Is Born” with Bradley Cooper. I know Penelope because of Javier Bardem and “Eat Pray Love.” She said “yes” instantly.

In researching on the story, what did you learn about Andrew Cunanan? We had the book that we bought and optioned, “Vulgar Favors” (by Maureen Orth). Cunanan was a mystery in many ways. The things that I was fascinated about are the creator/destroyer idea of Cunanan, and that he and Versace had the same beginning.

They came from immigrant families, and wanted to be famous.

Tragic story

Cunanan was also a tragic story. He was lied to by his parents, specifically his father, who told him they were incredibly wealthy and were almost like royalty in the Philippines.

He was treated like a celebrity in his own family. Then, it was all taken away, and he was shattered by it.

There was also sexual abuse in his family that we could never verify. He also wanted fame and fortune so desperately that when he killed the first victim, that was probably in a fit of pique and rage, he decided, well, I’ll go to jail, so I want to be famous.

Taking the life of a famous person became his fame, which is also a very American story that we see time and again.

Also, the key to this show is when you have somebody like Cunanan, who’s thought of in many circles as a monster and the person who took away Gianni Versace from us, you also have to talk about his childhood. Something along the way made him snap.

What surprised you along the way? The most devastating thing that I learned, because the family doesn’t talk about it, was what was happening with Versace. He had HIV and almost died. At the time, there was no cocktail (AIDS combination treatment). It was a death sentence. But, miraculously, he got his health back.

[But,] Versace was snuffed out instantly with two bullets to the face. That was the really devastating thing to me.

Barbaric, awful

The other thing is the sadness of the victims, how the Lee Miglin (one of Cunanan’s victims) killing was so barbaric, cruel and awful. Miglin was a closeted gay man. He (Cunanan) dressed Miglin up as a woman, with women’s panties and a lot of sex toys around so that his family would find that and be humiliated.

It was a very difficult show to shoot. We spent two days shooting the assassination. I was very upset throughout the filming of that.

How did you structure the story? For this story, the first 15 minutes involve music—opera, no dialogue, and it’s Versace restored to health, and starting his day with his staff, then walking to the News Café, intercut with Cunanan stalking him. So it starts with Versace’s murder.

What we wanted to do was tell the story backwards. So, we end with the Cunanan figure as a young man, and Versace as a young man trying to make a stab of it as a designer.

The interesting thing about this show is that there’s only violence and murder in the first four or five episodes. The last episode, of course, is of Cunanan on the houseboat and making a decision to kill himself before they can arrest him.

Did you have any contact with the Versace family about the show? Donatella has been very kind and lovely. As a mother, she has been protective of her children. That was her only request, which she conveyed to me through Penelope—she really wanted to make sure that her kids weren’t portrayed onscreen and that there was nothing about them in the show.

Ryan Murphy on Andrew Cunanan, ‘Versace’ casting

Backstage tour of ‘American Horror Story’: The devil’s in the details

For “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” set to premiere in early 2018, Murphy insisted that his crack research team chase down the most trivial of factoids: the backpack and shoelaces favored by killer Andrew Cunanan, the ashtray where Versace stashed his keys, the orchid plant on his dining room table.

“Detail is everything,” said producer Alexis Martin Woodall, who has worked with Murphy for a decade. “If you have to stop in the midst of a great moment because you’re looking at the artifice, then we’re not doing our job. Every bit of polish has to be there so the minute you hit ‘play’ or turn on the TV, you’re in it. We’re all obsessive about that.”

With at least three series in production at any moment, Murphy doesn’t have time to personally sweat over every prop and color scheme. He’ll meet with department heads months before the cameras roll, offer general notes and then have his team report back with miniature models and storyboards a few weeks later. Even after the sets are up, Murphy still must give his stamp of approval — and a thumbs down can come at any time.

Mossa, for example, had to pull a driftwood sculpture in the “Cult” living room because Murphy decided it didn’t fit.

“He makes decisions very quickly, which I find great,” said set designer Judy Becker, who is overseeing the look of “Versace” and whose work on “Feud” is up for an Emmy. “I don’t take things personally. If he doesn’t like something, I’ll say, ‘Fine,’ and find something else. It’s the people who are indecisive that are hard to work with.”

For “Versace,” the film crew shot scenes at the designer’s home in Miami Beach, capturing his lavish swimming pool (now part of a hotel). Becker made sure that the decorated picture frames in his hallway mimicked Versace’s taste.

Film crews won’t actually shoot in Minnesota, where Cunanan’s killing spree began, but they scouted areas of Los Angeles that could double for downtown Minneapolis and screenwriter Tom Rob Smith pored over 400 pages from Twin Cities police reports to help shape the interior scenes featured in two of the 10 episodes.

Being detail-oriented doesn’t always mean historically accurate, however. Becker and Murphy took liberties in reproducing Versace’s Milan workplace.

“He and [his sister] Donatella worked in a bare white space. We felt we had to improve upon reality to make it interesting to a TV audience,” said Becker as she showed off the Italy-based set, which is so swank it could double as a nightclub. “In ‘Feud,’ Hedda Hopper really lived in a ranch house. That wouldn’t have looked good on-screen. I like to know what reality is and then we can decide whether to go with it or not.”

That philosophy may not win Murphy and company any hurrahs from historians, but it’s made his shows catnip to viewers. In addition to “Cult” and “Versace,” he’s developing miniseries about Hurricane Katrina and Princess Diana’s divorce.

Expect the details to be dazzling.

“That, to me, is one of the joys of the work,” Murphy said.

Backstage tour of ‘American Horror Story’: The devil’s in the details

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” Will Detail American Homophobia In The ’90s

dcriss-archive:

Yesterday, television critics got a first glimpse of the opening scene from The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story as part of the TCA Press Tour. Premiering January, the FX mini-series recounts the fashion designer’s murder in reverse—beginning with the day he was shot outside of his Miami Beach home and then unraveling the events leading up to that day across 10 episodes.

Creator Ryan Murphy was joined by screenwriter/executive producer Tom Rob Smith, EP Brad Simpson, and series stars Darren Criss, Edgar Ramirez and Ricky Martin for a panel about the series, which is still in production. Ramirez stars as Versace, who was at the height of his success when he was gunned down by Andrew Cunanan (Criss) in 1997. Martin plays his lover, Antonio D’amico, who recently expressed his distaste for the show.

“The picture of Ricky Martin holding the body in his arms is ridiculous,” D’Amico said. “Maybe it’s the director’s poetic license, but that is not how I reacted.” But during the panel, Martin revealed he’d since spoken with D’Amico.

“The first thing that came out of my mouth when he picked up the phone [was], ’I’m so happy we’re talking. And I just want you to know that this is treated with utmost respect,‘” Martin said at the panel. “But more than anything, there is a level of injustice with this story.”

“I told him that ’I will make sure that people fall in love with your relationship with Gianni,” the out singer added. “That is what I’m here for. I really want them to see the beauty and the connection that you guys had.’ And he was extremely happy about it.”

Like all Murphy productions, painstaking detail was put into The Assassination of Gianni Versace, with scenes shot in Versace’s home, Casa Casuarina, now a hotel.

“I was very emotional shooting it, as we all were,” Murphy said. “I mean, Darren and I were, and Ricky. The assassination was important and tough to shoot, and the crew was crying, and we were very emotional doing it. We shot exactly on the exact step where he died.”

Production designer Judy Becker (Carol) was also able to recreate the home and Versace’s design studio/office on the Fox studio lot.

“It is tiny things I love,” said Murphy, who placed Versace’s favorite orchid on a table as a tribute. “There was an ashtray that was actually made that year that he designed that Edgar snatches the keys out of. I really loved hunting those things down and finding them as a tribute to that character.”

Murphy has long been a fan of Versace, whom he called a fearless designer and an inspiration for being out when even fashion designers seldom did.

“I was always very moved by him. He was a very important and cultural figure, and he lived outrageously and daringly, and he was a disrupter,” he said. “And I think his life was opera… I remember being so proud and excited when he did that interview in theAdvocate, because, at the time, there wasn’t really a lot of people who were brave enough to live their life in the open. I was very emotional shooting it, as we all were.”

Murphy’s inspiration for the series was two-fold: Besides his love of Versace, he also wanted to explore the cultural context in which his murder took place. As EP Brad Simpson mentioned, Versace was killed just three months after Ellen DeGeneres came out.

“Nobody was out. There were no out celebrities,” Simpson said. “There was Elton John. There were no out fashion designers. You know, Versace had given an interview with his lover, and chosen to live openly as a gay man, and that was part of the reason why he was targeted and killed. Andrew Cunanan was a serial killer who killed other gay men.”

The exploration of Cunanan’s motives are a huge part of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, something Murphy believes hasn’t been touched on yet. Cunanan was a 27-year-old hustler who had relationships with wealthy older men. Those who knew him describe his desire for status symbols—lavish houses, fine clothes, vacations. But his access to the men who could provide these luxuries was limited and eventually, he began a killing spree, murdering five gay men across the U.S.

“We pay tribute to all of the victims that are in many ways forgotten and not talked about,” Murphy said. “And I think having episodes that center on their lives and how they were taken too soon is important.”

Cunanan’s other victims include his ex-lover David Madson, Chicago real estate developer Lee Miglin, friend Jeffrey Trail, and cemetery caretaker William Reese. The murders of Trail and Miglin were particularly violent—Trail was beaten to death with a claw hammer, and 72-year-old Miglin was stabbed more than 20 times with a screwdriver, his throat sawed open with a hacksaw.

“Nobody’s really, sort of, traced the Andrew Cunanan of it all that I think Darren does so brilliantly,” Murphy said. “The pain that he brings to that, and why and answer why did he do it. Was he a madman or was he a victim of the times? And I think the answer is, sort of, both. And both things we examine in the show.”

Criss met with dozens of people who knew Cunanan at different points in his life, all of whom describe him very differently.

“There’s a lot left a lot of blanks to fill in, which has been a very interesting ride,” he explained. “Andrew was so many different personalities to so many different people,” he added. “That makes things a bit easier because we’re not just following what we would assume to be a murderous, horrible person all the time. We see him at his best; we see him at his worst; we see him at his most charming; we see him at his most hurt.”

Screenwriter Tom Rob Smith penned all 10 episodes, largely based on Maureen Orth’s 2000 true crime book Vulgar Favors. He said he wanted to connect any similarities Cunanan and Versace had, like their interest in living large. But of course, Versace’s career provided for him in a way that was out of Cunanan’s grasp.

“It’s much closer to a story of radicalization than a typical serial killer,” Smith said. “I mean, he killed five people… Technically, he went on a spree. But if you go back a year from most serial killers, they’re committing crimes of one description or another, like assault or arson. There are these signals. With Andrew Cunanan, you go back a year and he’s in a million-dollar condo in La Jolla talking about politics or art, and charming people. How do you get from that person in that condo to someone who can attack someone with a hammer and brutally kill them?”

Smith said it was important for him to present Cunanan “not just someone who is intrinsically monstrous, but who, has similarities to Versace from the outset” and explore “why his footsteps go in one direction and Versace’s go in a completely different direction.”

But don’t expect the series to be a pity party for Versace’s killer.

“It’s about the choices you make,” said Smith. “We’re tracking those choices and seeing how society impacted them, and how he chose various things and the people around him. You’re taking a murder that we all know… and you’re taking it apart and going back to the very nuts and bolts [of it.]”

For Murphy and the other producers, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is a larger story than just a celebrity murder. It’s about being out of the closet in 1990s America.

“I think it’s more than why [Versace] was killed. It was sort of why it was allowed to happen,” Murphy said. “I think the thing about American Crime Story is that we’re not just doing a crime. We’re trying to sort of talk about a crime within a social idea. Versace, who was the last victim, really did not have to die. Part of the thing that we talk about in the show is one of the reasons Andrew Cunanan was able to make his way across the country and pick off these victims, many of whom were gay, was because of the homophobia at the time.”

He recalled how police in Miami refused to put up wanted posters for Cunanan even though they knew Cunanan was a major suspect and likely headed toward the city. “I thought that that was a really interesting thing to examine,” Murphy added, “particularly with the president we have now and the world that we live in.”

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” Will Detail American Homophobia In The ’90s