The long-awaited second installment of the miniseries American Crime Story may include Gianni Versace’s name in the title, but this season truly focuses on the sociopathic serial killer who murdered him —Andrew Cunanan. In 1997, the 27-year-old ended a three-month cross-country murder spree by shooting and killing the beloved Italian designer, Versace, outside of his Miami, Fla. home.
Like its O.J. Simpson-centric predecessor, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (10 p.m. Wednesdays, FX) — based on Maureen Orth’s nonfiction book Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History — examines a very public and publicized crime. But many don’t remember or even recognize Cunanan the way they do the players of the Simpson trial, and even less so his bizarre story and the murderous path that led to Versace’s South Beach doorstep.
Similar to how The People vs. O.J. Simpson featured a limited amount of Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Simpson, this season is really about Cunanan. While viewers are treated to indulgent glimpses of Versace’s life, there are entire episodes devoted to his killer’s journey. Cunanan was a chameleon — he exhibited the unique ability to significantly alter his appearance with just a pair of glasses and haircut — and could be very charismatic and convincing. The same can be said of actor Darren Criss, who nails Cunanan’s manic, psycho killer ways. Cunanan wasn’t a skilled murderer, but he was a deranged one — one who managed to evade authorities for months. Getting to know Cunanan’s background and what makes him tick — as much as can be understood — makes him all the more terrifying.
Where The People vs. O.J. Simpson delved in to the larger race issues of the time, The Assassination of Gianni Versace contemplates the implications of being gay, particularly for men in the 1990s. And those experiences vary greatly between characters. Of course you have Versace, who was an openly gay man with a partner of 13 years, Antonio D’Amico. As the founder of an international fashion house, Versace was able to publicly come out in Advocate magazine in 1995, despite his sister Donatella’s concerns about the effect it would have on the company. He was no stranger to personal struggles; in the show, it is revealed that Versace was HIV positive (his family has long denied this).
But being a wealthy celebrity, Versace saw some privileges that most gay men at the time did not experience. Cunanan’s first victim was a former U.S. naval officer who we see struggle with “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and gay-bashing in the military. Cunanan himself used his sexuality to take advantage of and manipulate people. He frequently befriended wealthy, older men — sometimes closeted men with wives and families — and bragged about the lavish gifts he’d receive. In a split second, he’d hold the arrangement over their heads as a threat.
Iconic figures and lesser known real-life characters come to life thanks to a phenomenal cast. Criss will undoubtedly receive award attention for his role; the Versace siblings are uncannily portrayed by Édgar Ramírez and Penélope Cruz. Ricky Martin’s take on D’Amico is surprisingly solid. Other supporting actors like Finn Wittrock and Max Greenfield (regular players for producer Ryan Murphy) and newcomer Cody Fern give fantastic performances, if only for an episode. The top-notch acting, paired with colorful, extravagant sets, thoughtful storytelling choices and a spot-on soundtrack make this season a feast for the senses.
Versace is truly Murphy at his finest — it’s scarier than American Horror Story, with dark humor à la Nip/Tuck and dotted with his signature camp featuring a heavy dose of glamour and the grotesque. And yes, I think it’s better than Simpson.
The TV giant just signed a five-year, $300 million deal with Netflix (one of the biggest in TV history), but that doesn’t mean Murphy’s many 20th Century Fox projects are making the move or getting cut short. American Crime Story will continue for at least two more seasons, which will focus on Hurricane Katrina and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal; his other projects American Horror Story, Feud and 9-1-1 all have new seasons in the works. As if he isn’t already, Murphy is about to be everywhere, but let’s hope he focuses on quality, not quantity. Because when he’s on his game, he can produce a work of this caliber — one that’s not to be missed.
Tag: .thanks musexmoirai for the links
TV Guy: From the White House to the ‘Big Brother’ house
The ruthless materialism championed by Bravo and the notion of gay men as magical ambassadors to otherwise unattainable “good taste” is precisely what writer-producer Ryan Murphy has so savagely satirized in Andrew Cunanan on “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” (10 p.m., FX, TV-MA).
The series takes place in a gay milieu, but Cunanan’s compulsions transcend sexuality. As in the film “American Psycho,” the character’s homicidal tendencies are a neurotic outgrowth of his brand-name perfectionism.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace | Inside Season 2: Édgar Ramírez as Gianni Versace | FX
Storyteller. Disrupter. Genius. Go behind the scenes with the cast and crew for a look at the legacy of Gianni Versace. | 20 January 2018
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
American Crime Story S02E01 (The Man Who Would Be Vogue)
Book title: The Man Who Was Vogue: The Life and Times of Condé Nast (1982) by
Caroline Seebohm
A powerful dramatisation of the murder of Gianni Versace
The 20th century may be considered America’s greatest, but gay men had a miserable time. Sodomy was a felony in every state until 1962, and it remained illegal in 13 states until 2003. Gay men were sacked from jobs in government and left to die in an epidemic many considered a punishment for their “sinful” behaviour. They were hounded out of bars, the only public places they could be themselves. They were beaten and arrested by gangs of untouchable police (the same tactics are used today in many of the 72 countries that continue to criminalise homosexuality). In short, gay men were kept out of the portrait of American society.
Towards the end of the century, however, times were changing. The picture of acceptable America had expanded to include, even celebrate, some gay men. In particular Gianni Versace, a fashion designer from Italy, was able to let gay stigma slip like a silk gown to the floor. He had grown a business from a single boutique in Milan to a global fashion label—an Italian-American dream. He had good looks, money and a palace with an ocean view in Miami. Tourists stopped outside to snap photos to say they had stood where the great man lived.
But on the morning of July 15th 1997, as Versace returned from his morning walk, Andrew Cunanan approached him on the steps of his mansion and shot him in the head with a semi-automatic pistol. The murder was a sensation, and the tragic story is now portrayed in “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace”. Like the previous season, which dramatised the racially charged trial of O.J. Simpson, an NFL player accused of two counts of murder, the show takes on cultural issues. It explores the standing of gay men in America through the twisted pathology of Cunanan, who killed five men on a three-month spree in 1997, including men who, like himself, had sex with other men. The series was written by Tom Rob Smith, based on a book by Maureen Orth, a journalist, and some creative liberties have inevitably been taken (the Versace family have distanced themselves from the show, calling it a “work of fiction”). By probing Cunanan’s sense of entitlement but also the stigma around his sexuality, the story shows how America’s prejudices endured despite the giddy heights of a few golden boys such as Versace.
What makes the show terribly watchable is seeing Cunanan’s rage form (Darren Criss’s thrilling performance, pictured, both seduces and terrifies the viewer). As something of a nobody, Cunanan is drawn to the idea of power, and the powerful; he wastes no time in penetrating loftier circles. One victim was the traditional picture of American success: a real-estate tycoon, married with a son, living in a big house. Cunanan achieves his own kind of success, of course—but only by committing horrific crimes. He doesn’t have the cynicism of Patrick Bateman, Bret Easton Ellis’s “American Psycho”, but he similarly penetrates the glassy penthouses of capitalism and hacks their residents to death.
Cunanan’s crimes are also seemingly designed to subvert traditional family values. It is not just that he sleeps with and murders married men. In one episode he murders a love rival, claims the boyfriend and then pops out to walk the dog with him. In trying to appear normal despite having left a body bleeding out at home, their stroll becomes an unnerving parody of a domestic situation gay men were often denied. Before he kills Versace in the show, Cunanan boasts of men who have proposed to him. He is delusional—the stories are probably lies, but even if they are true he does not acknowledge that gay marriage is legally impossible.
These different spheres of private experience are evident again when Donatella Versace bitterly asks Antonio, Gianni’s bereaved partner, what he gave her brother. “Stability? Safety? Children?” she spits. “You’ve given him nothing.” With far more grace than Donatella—who is supposed to be the one with style and elegance—Antonio says: “We’re not allowed.” Nor do police officers understand the sanctity of the relationship. When Antonio describes how other partners were occasionally welcome, one cop cocks an eyebrow. If being gay doesn’t throw the cop’s suspicion on Antonio, being promiscuous does.
Perhaps the most important influence on Cunanan’s behaviour is his sexuality. Cunanan does not always deny that he sleeps with men (“I tell people what they want to hear,” he informs a friend), but he is clearly troubled by the dominance of heterosexuality and the shame of his own sexual subversions. “I want the world to know you’re a sissy,” he hisses at one married man he sells sex to. His sexual practices are of the dangerous and kinky kind that exemplified moral panics towards gay people. While Cunanan was on the run, the press speculated that his rampage was a reaction against being diagnosed as HIV-positive (he was not). Nineteen years later, in the aftermath of the massacre of 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando by Omar Mateen, the press speculated that his motive, too, was revenge for discovering that a male partner had HIV.
Cunanan did not choose to rage on behalf of the gay men beaten by police, those made homeless by their families or those failed by the government. It is thought he suffered from a personality disorder, but Mr Smith knows that the 20th century’s treatment of gay men provided the parameters for its expression. This eight-part series is as unsettling as it is alluring; in considering the overlapping spheres of disenfranchisement and violence, “American Crime Story” acts as a warning.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Writer On Why Equality Means More Complicated Gay Villains
If the first time you ever heard the name “Versace” was in “Showgirls,” know that you might have missed a key layer of meaning behind the joke.
In the 1995 Paul Verhoeven film, young stripper Nomi (Elizabeth Berkeley) finds herself with some extra cash, so she buys a tight short dress from a Versace shop on the Las Vegas strip. You might think that the point of the bit is that Nomi reveals her trashy roots when she pronounces the name of the brand as “Ver-sase,” as opposed to its proper pronunciation of “Ver-sa-che.”
But according to showrunner Tom Rob Smith, it goes far deeper than that. “It’s not that someone classy doesn’t know it’s ‘Ver-sa-che,‘” he told IndieWire. “Because that person wouldn’t be wearing Versace.”
Instead, the point is that an unclassy person not only doesn’t know how to say “Versace,” but would actively chose to buy a dress from his label. “And that’s the unfairness of it, because actually, I mean, his outfits were extraordinary,” Smith said. “He was adding sex, that’s true. But he was so skillful. I think it’s the misogyny, actually, about it, that, you know, if you add sex to a woman’s dress, that makes it not classy. I don’t know quite where that logic comes from.”
It speaks to just one of the underreported elements of Gianni Versace’s life that fascinates in this new installment of “American Crime Story.” As guided by Smith — a UK native who came to the attention of “ACS” producers Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson after his critically acclaimed 2015 miniseries “London Spy” — the show digs into two lives: Versace (Edgar Ramirez), the designer behind some of the most daring fashion of the 1990s, and Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), the man who killed him.
The show’s split focus means that there are a lot of competing elements in the first season, but one ongoing theme is the idea that the public perception of who Versace was has little relationship with the truth.
“His rise was very neat and tidy,” Smith said. “He started in Calabria, he went to Milan, and conquered the world from there. And it was just a series of steps… Just the most tenacious, driven, brilliant, out of the box thinking. Combining fabrics that have never been combined before. Combining materials that have never been combined before. Fearless of making a mistake. He would career off in one direction and then pull back another, and you fall in love with him.”
But Smith wasn’t in love with Versace before he started working on the series. “I don’t think I had a clear perception of him. I think, in a weird way, the perception was of the cliches,” he said. “Of his clothes and the stereotypes around his clothes, which are unfair and which have overwhelmed his name in a way that is sad. I don’t know quite whether he’s been understood. I think there’s a really interesting case to do a reconsideration of his life and his work.”
It’s a dark-hued tale due to Cunanan’s murder spree, in an era when so many stories featuring gay characters end up featuring a lot of death. But that’s something that Smith felt wasn’t just essential to “Versace” as a narrative, but also the general progression of gay-themed narratives.
“I write thrillers. And in thrillers, someone’s always in jeopardy and in danger. And I think, this is an interesting story because Cunanan was this complicated liar, this murderer, and this destroyer, and he was gay,” he said.
Mortality, too, is an inescapable factor given the period setting. “The ’80s are a big part of the story. And people lost a lot of their friends in the ’80s and ’90s in the most horrific circumstances,” Smith said. “If you were making a story set now, to deal with AIDS or not is entirely up the writer, but it’s hard to see how it’s not part of that world in the ’80s and ’90s. It was overwhelming communities.”
Added Smith, “If you want quality, the quality means that some of your stories are going to be disturbing and jagged and not all just upbeat and positive representations of people. The next step in the evolution of equality is, ‘Oh, wait a minute. I want to see a gay ‘Revenant.’ You know, straight men didn’t come out of that feeling, ‘Wow, we got a really bad rap in that movie.’ But they do! They’re the worst people ever! They’re like murderers. They’re terrible! But straight white men are so secure in their identity, the thought didn’t even flicker through their minds.”
Ultimately, Smith is interested in telling character stories that don’t idealize gay lives, but celebrate their complications. “The icon is that [Versace] achieved these great things. But everyone is messy, and I love people’s mess. I love the complications of people.”
Versace’s complications are as much a part of the “American Crime Story” narrative as his successes, especially his health struggles and battles with sister Donatella Versace (played by Penelope Cruz). “The icon thing is interesting, but it doesn’t, to me, rule out that real complexity and sometimes darkness, too,” Smith said.
“No actors want to play just sort of nice people. It’s not interesting. Where do they exist? I don’t know, in the world. So I’m like, I don’t want that. Everyone I know is really complicated. I want the complicated people.”
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Writer On Why Equality Means More Complicated Gay Villains
‘American Crime Story’ Star Darren Criss On Serial Killers and Queer Narratives
The title for the second season of Ryan Murphy’s true crime anthology series, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, is misleading. Yes, it concerns the murder of the famous Italian designer, but it is about the man who killed him, the serial killer Andrew Cunanan. Versace was the last of his five victims, before Cunanan killed himself.
Murphy’s first American Crime Story, which premiered in February 2016, was a critically acclaimed no-brainer for American audiences: The People v. O.J. Simpson focused on America’s most infamous modern crime. Gianni Versace’s murder, which happened in 1997, was shocking at the time and is now mostly forgotten. The luxury label Versace has been run by his sister, Donatella, for so long, a generation of fashionistas think it was she, rather than her older brother, who started it. And Cunanan? Even in a country fixated on serial killers, his name rarely comes up.
But it certainly makes sense for Murphy and his producing partner Brad Falchuk to take on this tale. The duo’s résumé of shows—Nip/Tuck, American Horror Story, Feud—are stories of excess, envy, greed and revenge; Versace lived a fabulously extravagant lifestyle in Miami, and his luxurious clothing and ad campaigns were created to titillate. Murphy’s casting hallmarks are well represented too; there are offbeat choices (Ricky Martin plays Versace’s boyfriend), A-list movie stars slumming it on TV (Penélope Cruz plays Donatella) and a plum part for a regular—in this case, Darren Criss as Cunanan.
On Glee, Murphy’s hit musical comedy, Criss played happy, confident high school student Blaine Anderson, the openly gay leader of the Dalton Academy Warblers. Cunanan is a tonal about-face. But because of some superficial similarities between Criss and his character—both half-Filipino and California-raised—Criss told Murphy, “I defy you to find somebody else.”
Murphy didn’t need persuading. He’d seen Criss on Broadway, in the musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, playing a tortured, genderqueer German rocker—a notoriously taxing role. “I just felt there was an untapped, dramatically darker side of him,” says Murphy. “He was hungry and anxious to push forward. When Glee ended, that was graduation day for [American Crime Story]. I always thought he was the only one for Cunanan.”
The serial killer will certainly put a creepier spin on the 30-year-old performer’s career, which began with A Very Potter Musical, a 2009 parody of J.K. Rowling’s universe. Criss co-wrote and starred in it with University of Michigan theater friends, and it quickly went viral. “I don’t think I’m being delusional when I say that was the genesis of my career,” says Criss. “It brings a huge smile to my face when people approach me about that.”
Glee took a viral fan base and quadrupled it. The TV show’s fastest-selling single was Criss’s version of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream,” and he was nominated for a 2015 Emmy for writing the song “This Time” for the show’s finale. Last March, he debuted his indie rock band, Computer Games, with brother Chuck, and in December, he released a solo EP, Homework, which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Heatseekers Chart.
Criss expects to get more serious attention for Cunanan than for covering Perry, even if he sees no distinction in the effort made. “There’s a notion, which I’m allergic to, that the darker the role—the more a departure a role is from somebody—the more weight it has,” says the actor, who took the part of Cunanan because it allowed him to “tackle someone with a huge emotional range. It was my job to understand Andrew, as hard as that may seem, [without] glorifying someone who was monstrous.”
Versace gets the titular murder out of the way in the first eight minutes of Episode 1. The rest of the nine-episode series pieces together Cunanan’s story, in reverse chronology, with glimpses of Versace (Édgar Ramírez) and his family, before and after his death. Series writer Tom Rob Smith based the show on the 1999 book Vulgar Favors, by investigative journalist Maureen Orth, who conducted hundreds of interviews with people who knew Cunanan.
Good looks and intelligence got Cunanan in doors—particularly those of older, wealthy gay men in San Francisco. A pathological liar, he spun tales about his past that eventually began to fray, as did his behavior; an affable charmer one minute, he could be calculating and menacing the next. By the time he made his way to Miami, and Versace, he was one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives and clearly unhinged.
Criss, who was only 10 at the time of the murder, had never heard of his character before Murphy offered the part. “I knew that [Versace] was murdered,” he says. “That was about it.” According to Murphy, Criss had numerous conversations with Orth, but, says Murphy, “I don’t know if you can ever prepare for this sort of role, besides learn everything you can about the real guy.”
Research revealed that Cunanan was from a broken home, that there was mental illness in the family, and that his father encouraged an inflated sense of entitlement. But where many people would have sought help, says Criss, “Andrew chose the path of destruction.”
Many scenes are necessarily fictional, since there are no existing interviews with Cunanan, says Criss. But what he came to understand was that Cunanan, like an actor, was always performing. “I gave lots of different takes for every scene, because Andrew was giving the world so many different versions of himself,” says Criss. “I would do a scene at an 11, then do another take at four. I still don’t know which ones they ended up using.”
Criss “thought about Cunanan’s victims every day”—William Reese, Jeffrey Trail, David Madson, Lee Miglin and, of course, Versace, all killed within the span of three months. “My greatest fear was that suddenly [members of Trail’s family] hear there’s going to be a series about Uncle Jeff’s murder. How bizarre and twisted that must be,” says the actor, who considered contacting the victims’ families but decided that wasn’t a good idea. “I realized we had to finish the work and let it speak for itself.”
He encourages people who knew the victims to reach out to him once they’ve seen the series, “not for research or for vanity, but just to let them know that I’ve been thinking about them.” (The Versaces have condemned the series, saying, in a statement, that “it should only be considered as a work of fiction.”)
As a gay man in the ’90s, Cunanan was living in a country still struggling to accept the queer lifestyle. Orth’s descriptions of Cunanan’s wild sex life caught flack; a 1999 New York Times review said the author was “guaranteed to flout political correctness and court charges of homophobia.” Murphy, who is openly gay, avoids any stereotyping and makes homosexual discrimination a main theme of the series via Cunanan’s closeted victims. (Both Murphy and Criss have nothing but kind words for Orth, who spent time on set.)
“Your heart aches for those who have lived these lives of suppressed identity,” says Criss. He found his character’s murder of Lee Miglin (played by Mike Farrell) particularly painful. Cunanan outed the Chicago real estate tycoon, leaving him to bleed out in sexual bondage gear, surrounded by gay porn. “Andrew wreaked havoc on this closeted, sweet, good man,” says Criss. “It didn’t help that Mike Farrell is a very dear, sweet man. I just went, ‘I’m so sorry!’”
The intention behind the show, says the 52-year-old Murphy, was to expose the entrenched homophobia he grew up with. “I’m continually amazed at the pain and difficulty of being an out or in-the-closet gay person in the ’80s and ’90s,” he says.
Unlike the other victims, Versace was openly gay. “Andrew not only envied the wealth and success of Gianni, but also that he was a famous, out man who had love in his life,” says Criss. “For Andrew, whose homosexuality keeps leading him to dark places, to see somebody so victorious at it had to be infuriating.”
The actor, who describes himself as a “straight, cisgendered white dude,” has now played three queer characters. Without having experienced the emotional toll of coming out, he has great empathy for those who go through it. An advocate for the Trevor Project, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing suicide among LGBT youth, Criss says he wants “to give as much positive representation as I can to those characters offscreen.”
And for Murphy, it is less the murders committed by Cunanan than this country’s narrative of queer oppression that makes The Assassination of Gianni Versace an important American Crime Story. “It was a crime, and it continues to be a crime,” he says. “Is it getting better? A little bit. Can we do a lot better? I think we can.“
‘American Crime Story’ Star Darren Criss On Serial Killers and Queer Narratives
‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’ Is Disturbing, Excellent, And Absolutely Necessary
Andrew Cunanan‘s killing spree couldn’t have existed without silence. For four months in 1997, the serial killer claimed five victims, including the iconic fashion designer Gianni Versace. Cunanan wasn’t able to get away with these crimes because he was a master criminal. He was able to take so many lives largely because of an overprotective and unfocused police force that made countless major missteps and a media climate that didn’t care about a serial killer who targeted gay men until it was too late. It’s a story about the unspoken effects of silent discrimination. To this day, Versace’s murder is defined by silence. The murder of one of the first openly gay celebrities should be common knowledge instead of the often forgotten historic footnote it currently is. However, after the premiere of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, it will be next to impossible to forget the horrors of Versace’s murder.
Versace marks the second installment in Ryan Murphy‘s anthology series American Crime Story, and at first glance, it seems like an odd story to follow the groundbreaking The People V. O.J. Simpson. Though both criminal cases were defined by all-consuming amounts of media attention toward their end, Versace’s murder hasn’t stood the tests of modern history like O.J. Simpson’s trial has. In this way, Versace is a far more subtle season of the anthology series, dwelling longer in imagined conversations and alleged interactions than its predecessor ever did. But in every other way, Versace is the more direct season of the two. The series is one of the creepiest things Murphy has ever created, and it refuses to be ignored.
Almost all of Versace’s gripping yet unsettling elements can be attributed to Darren Criss‘ revolutionary performance as Andrew Cunanan. Criss brings an over-eager and rambling energy to the killer that initially starts as charming but then falls into the depths of being unhinged the more he lies. And FX’s version of Andrew lies a lot. From the series’ first episode, Andrew breathlessly drawls on about how vulgar he finds Versace’s designs before later obsessively tearing through every Versace ad and story he can get his hands on. As a viewer, it’s impossible to know what Andrew is thinking or motivated by at any given time, a choice that reflects the winding narrative of the book the Versace season is based on, Maureen Orth’s Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U. S. History. That unhinged uncertainty also makes for one of the most disturbing television has seen in recent years.
In comparison, Édgar Ramírez’s take on the iconic Gianni Versace is defined by authenticity. Tragically and pointedly, Gianni Versace is the beating heart of this story. FX and Murphy portray the designer as a giving and wise man who understood the value of loving life and deeply loved his family. Seeing the designer teach his sister Donatella Versace (Penélope Cruz) about the emotion behind fashion and reassuring his partner Antionio D’Amico (Ricky Marty) about his deep love for him are two of the best parts of the series. There is light and goodness to this dark series. It’s evident even when Donatella and Antonio are at each other’s throats. However, it’s because the series works so hard to make Gianni Versace such an immediately endearing character that the Versace installment is so tragic.
This season doesn’t mince words. The first 10 minutes of the series painstakingly show Versace’s brutal murder, allowing the rest of the series to work backwards from that moment. If anything, it’s this format that prevents the second season of American Crime Story from ever feeling too exploitative. Versace seems obsessed with trying to figure out why these murders were allowed to go on for so long, sorting through Cunanan’s life in an attempt to find an answer. By the end of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Andrew Cunanan doesn’t merely stand as Versace’s killer. He emerges as a terrifying monster who murdered five people who only wished him well. Likewise, Versace isn’t presented as just a talented designer. He emerges as a genius of his industry who was struck down far before his time. The saddest and most morbid note the series makes is how similar these two very different men truly were.
Versace is a deeply disturbing and confusing season of television. For every horrifying detail the series revels in, there is a beauty and sexiness that defines every one of its main characters. However, Versace does a few great things for this crime that have been sorely missing for a while. It gives names and faces to all of Cunanan’s victims, fully confronts the LGBT discrimination that was baked into this case, and it serves as a study of one of modern day history’s most chilling serial killers. The circumstances around Gianni Versace’s murder may have been categorized by silence, but American Crime Story’s take on Cunanan’s killing sprees is one of the loudest and boldest sagas on television.
‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’ Is Disturbing, Excellent, And Absolutely Necessary
“American Crime Story: Versace” Complicates The Serial Killer Tale
Serial killers have always been a macabre form of titillation, but it feels like they’re having an especially big moment right now. Mindhunter introduced us to the people who first coined the term. TNT’s upcoming The Alienist will put a period piece twist on serial killing. And, American Horror Story has been trafficking in the topic for years. Now, Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s other FX brainchild, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, will tell TV’s latest serial killer tale from an entirely different perspective. While watching Versace, premiering January 17, be prepared to ask yourself, “Am I sympathizing with a mass murderer?”
Where ACS’s premiere season, The People v. O. J. Simpson, took great pains to investigate the lives of the lawyers behind the “Trial Of the (20th) Century,” Versace isn’t nearly as preoccupied with the lives of the people who make up the justice system. You’ll see the police officer hot on the trail of Versace’s villain, serial killer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss at his most frightening), but you shouldn’t expect to check in with their kids every week. Or, for that matter, even remember if these cops have kids.
Although this is mostly a good choice on the anthology’s part, it means fans will see less of Orange Is The New Black’s Dascha Polanco, who plays Miami Beach detective Lori Wieder. The real-life cop was one of the two openly gay members of the police force during the actual 1997 hunt for Andrew Cunanan, according to the book Versace was based upon, Vulgar Favors. Since ACS takes great pains to explore the pervasive homophobia of the late ‘90s, it would have been great to see the miniseries explore the perspective of lesbian woman of color in such a traditionally conservative, male world. Alas, with all but one episode made available to critics, it looks like Versacedidn’t find the time for such a deep dive.
While the lack of much law enforcement intrigue means less of Polanco, her button-ups, and certain nuanced looks at the LGBTQ+ sphere, it means there is a lot more time to spend with the person who commits Versace’s titular Assassination, Criss’ Andrew, and the victim of that assassination, iconic designer Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez). Thanks to the lush settings, beautiful clothes, and so-good-they’re-scary performances, it’s extra time you’ll appreciate.
We first meet these men on the morning one of them will slaughter the other on the steps of his own home. We know little about them other than the fact Cunanan is a person clearly battling some dangerous demons; Versace, on the other hand, starts his tranquil mornings by putting on his self-designed boxer briefs. Cunanan screams on the beach while carrying around a gun and an obsession with powerful men. Versace takes in the views of that beach from his overwhelmingly grand seaside palace. These are two men who seem like they couldn’t live in worlds farther apart.
The trick of Crime Story season 2 is in trying to convince you murderer and victim aren’t very different at all. Criss’ version of Cunanan, like all true-to-life reports of the infamous serial killer, reveals a shockingly likable, charismatic man, in a similar style to Versace’s genuine, beloved presence. The only difference is, Cunanan’s charming persona masks a violent, disturbing pit of cruelty.
We’re not dealing with the generally unattractive, immediately unnerving imprisoned murderers of Mindhunter here. Rather, Cunanan is a predator who hunts by camouflage. Because his hunting grounds are the highest, most expensive echelons of gay culture, he perfectly embodies the ideals of that time. He’s handsome. He’s inviting. He has the right watch. Even though you know Cunanan is actually a serial killer, it’s difficult not to enjoy simply seeing him move through the less bloody portions of Versace — and that’s the point. All of those little feigned personality manipulations are what helped Andrew Cunanan get away with actual murder for so long.
But, Cunanan isn’t all flash and likability. He’s also an obsessive killer who ended the lives of at least five men. That is why most people I’ve talked to about the show immediately yell, “Darren Criss is so scary!” and admit to having nightmares about the guy best known for being Blaine from Glee. Darren Criss is so scary in Versace, putting on and removing Andrew Cunanan’s many masks — affable, gay up-and-comer, heterosexual fashionisto, stone cold killer – on a second-by-second basis solely rooted in whatever suits him best in a precise moment. At times, you watch him copy emotions obvious to others around him as a simple way to go sight unseen. It’s chilling.
If people’s first reaction to Crime Story season 2 is to shriek in terror over Andrew Cunanan, their second is, and should be, swooning over the strength of Penelope Cruz as Gianni Versace’s devastated, famed sister Donatella Versace. Many people could be considered the beating heart of the series, including Gianni himself or his bereaved boyfriend Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin), but Donatella is its unquestionable powerhouse. From the second you see a grief-stricken Donatella in all her platinum blonde glory enter the proceedings, still wearing an all-leather ensemble despite the Miami heat, you know she isn’t here to play.
“American Crime Story: Versace” Complicates The Serial Killer Tale
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