The Emmy nominations brought a much-deserved accolade to Darren Criss for his extraordinary work in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.” Criss was nominated for Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. There is stiff competition in the category, including Antonio Banderas for “Genius: Picasso” and John Legend for “Jesus Christ Superstar,” among others, but we think the breadth of Criss’ amazing performance, the nuance with which he presented Andrew Cunanan as both tortured, closeted gay man and vicious, sociopathic serial killer, deserves the win.
If you didn’t see the series, binge it. Criss is mesmerizing. Our only surprise is that the Emmys didn’t recognize some of the other players in that amazing series, notably Judith Light. The series itself is nominated for Outstanding Limited Series, and we don’t see anything else in the category that is as good. Ryan Murphy and Bryan Falchuk should get the win.
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The Bay Area Reporter Online | ‘Versace’ finale was full of darkness
It was even harder to let go of “ACS: Versace.” The finale was extraordinary, full of pathos, yearning and darkness. We’ll say again, Darren Criss deserves all the awards for his tour de force performance as serial killer Andrew Cunanan. The range of his portrayal is sheer magnificence, particularly in the gutting last two episodes, where Cunanan’s relationship with his fabulist father is revealed, as are his final days trapped on a houseboat eating dog food until he takes his own life. Matt Bomer made his directorial debut with episode eight, which details Cunanan’s relationship with his sexually abusive and emotionally suffocating father.
Judith Light’s performance as Marilyn Miglin, widow of Cunanan’s real estate tycoon victim Lee Miglin, was one of several standout performances by guest stars. The Tony- and Emmy-winning actress took what was a small role and turned it into a template: Her Marilyn Miglin was every woman ever married to a closeted gay man, and through her performance we see the turmoil created by internalized homophobia. She adored her husband. Discovering his sexual orientation in the way she did, through his grisly murder, shattered her world, but she kept it together. Marilyn Miglin provides the coda in the finale.
Other riveting performances include Edgar Ramirez’ Versace, a warm, unprepossessing man with few pretensions, given his fame and wealth. He was always the boy from Calabria, his mother’s son, cutting out patterns in their dining room. Ramirez’ Versace gave voice to the gay 80s and 90s, the complexity of coming out famous and also living with HIV. It was an understated performance that was pitch-perfect and made us love Versace right from the intense opening scene in the first episode to the very end.
Ricky Martin as Versace’s longtime partner Antonio D’Amico felt real and deeply emotional. Martin played D’Amico as the sexy, younger lover of Versace who was nevertheless devoted to the designer. Martin would bring other men home for threesomes that Versace appeared to engage in reluctantly until he finally said no more. Then D’Amico said he would give up all other men because his love for Versace came first.
All of which made the way Donatella (Penelope Cruz) cut D’Amico off both personally and financially after Versace’s murder particularly cruel. When the priest at Versace’s funeral never mentions D’Amico, his pain is palpable. His suicide attempt in the final episode is searing.
Every scene in this lush, rococo tale of a murdering fabulist and his victims is visually sumptuous, whether set indoors or out. The Miami sky is always on the verge of storming by day, while the skyline by night is supersaturated color and incredibly alluring.
“ACS: Versace” was Murphy’s least-watched series, which is hard to fathom. So if you were one of the many who never saw it, binge all nine episodes over a long weekend. It will leave you aching.
The Bay Area Reporter Online | ‘Versace’ finale was full of darkness
The Bay Area Reporter Online | Gay heroism on & off the ice
We forget from the vantage point of 2018 what 1995 was like. We forget how hard it was to be gay and out. We took our eyes off the Olympics briefly this week to watch the latest episode of “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” and the counterpoint of what Ryan Murphy is doing with this deeply incendiary and political series to the extraordinary presence of Adam Rippon and Johnny Weir at the Olympics. (We haven’t forgotten you, Gus Kenworthy, you just aren’t flaming for us like they are.) Murphy took us back to 1995. To Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. To the simmering violence always just below the surface, waiting to erupt against us.
In 1995, Adam Rippon was six years old. Johnny Weir was 11. Jeff Trail was 28. Gianni Versace was 48. In 1995, no one was imagining an out gay star at the Olympics or even the end to DADT, which itself was a net-positive to what had come before. In 1995, when Andrew Cunanan met his first victim, Jeff Trail, and Gianni Versace came out on the pages of The Advocate, the fight for our rights was still a nascent movement despite a quarter-century since Stonewall, despite the impact of the AIDS pandemic, despite the work we had done collectively to get Bill Clinton elected and how visible David Mixner was.
Murphy, who was just 29 in 1995, does a masterful job of positioning Andrew Cunanan at the epicenter of the fear of coming out for gay men who had survived the AIDS crisis. When Andrew meets naval officer Jeff Trail on his first time in a gay bar, Trail’s just come off saving the life of a fellow sailor who was nearly beaten to death by other sailors. His career in the Navy is threatened, but his own desire to be in the company of other men propels him into that bar and into a relationship with the then-fabulist, soon-to-be serial killer.
There are so many things happening in this series that we expect thesis papers will be written about it in the future. Each scene has its own trajectory, and the non-linear telling of the tale makes it all the more disturbing to watch. The foreshadowing has been removed: we already know the outcome beforehand. Yet that seems to make the impending tragedy in these men’s lives all the more real.
The most chilling juxtaposition for us was between Trail speaking to CBS “48 Hours” reporter Richard Schlesinger about his experience as a gay naval officer, and Versace talking with The Advocate.
The “48 Hours” interview was real. In late 1993 DADT is about to become law, and Trail decides to speak out about his own experience as a gay man in the military. The episode of “ACS: Versace” begins with an out-take from that episode in which a group of Navy men talk about what they would do if a gay sailor were onboard with them. It foreshadows the violent beatings we see later.
In “ACS: Versace,” the back-and-forth between the two scenes (both Trail and Versace were being interviewed in hotel rooms, where no one else would see them) borders on being heavy-handed, yet overcomes that because each new reveal elevates this from easy comparison to heartbreaking reality.
As Trail relates what he’s going to do to Cunanan as they sit in the bar together, Cunanan warns him against doing it. He says Trail is being hidden in silhouette, like a criminal, while the real criminals, the Navy men who are beating fellow sailors within an inch of their lives, are being shown without masking, because the world still views gay men as criminals, and those who would kill them if given the chance as normal. It’s stark, because we know that soon Cunanan will kill Trail.
Prior to doing The Advocate interview, Versace has a conversation with his sister, Donatella. She is horrified that he’s contemplating this option. She reminds him that when designer Perry Ellis, who was then dying of AIDS, did his final show just weeks before his death, he had to be supported by two assistants on the runway. Versace tells her that was Ellis’ greatest show, and she says no one bought his clothes after that. But he explains to her, “I was sick, and I did not die. And I have been asking myself, what have I done to deserve it?” So he’s doing this: he’s coming out. He’s hoping to make a difference.
One of the most heartbreaking elements of “ACS: Versace” is, we love Versace from the outset. He’s a kind and generous man, a caring lover, a great designer, a humble visionary. Even as we know Cunanan will murder him because we’ve seen the killing in the first episode, we hope somehow he will survive.
We feel equally for Trail, who risks everything to save another Navy man’s life and to tell the story of how hard it is to live under DADT. We’re heartbroken for his family that as his sister is giving birth, he is already dead, his body in a rolled-up rug, bludgeoned to death by Cunanan.
The Bay Area Reporter Online | As the dystopian world turns
FX has been promoting “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” Ryan Murphy’s latest creation, for months in sumptuous, super-saturated color. These promos have been visually stunning, even as the undercurrent of violence has never been more than a blink away, reminiscent of a Helmut Newton photo montage.
Last season’s “Feud” was tremendous, but “Versace” is brilliant. It is Ryan Murphy’s piece de resistance. It is the most breathtakingly real of all his creations and the gayest. It is an exquisite exposition of two lives running in parallel: that of the designer and that of his killer, serial murderer Andrew Cunanan.
In an opening scene, a detective asks Versace’s partner Antonio D’Amico, whose white shirt is stained with his lover’s blood, “But who was [Versace] really?” D’Amico takes a breath and says, “He was a genius.” Every scene plays like this, like grand opera, yet never over-the-top. It’s a balance that Murphy has not always been able to achieve, but when he has, the results have been perfection.
The cast is seamless. Darren Criss plays against type as the tortured killer Andrew Cunanan, in the role of his career. We were never fond of Criss’ bland Blaine on “Glee,” but here he sears through the story, projecting Cunanan’s mix of beauty and sociopathy with ease. Criss takes us deep into Cunanan, who developed shifting personae from the time he was in middle school, changing both his look and his affect to attract those he wanted in his orbit. Cunanan was also a life-long fabulist, and Murphy has written that deftly into the role.
Murphy told EW Criss was his only choice for the role after seeing him on Broadway in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” “I just knew he could do it,” Murphy asserted. “More than that, I knew that he was superhungry and ambitious. When I saw ‘Hedwig,’ I knew he was capable of great darkness.”
Come for Criss, stay for Ricky Martin (Versace’s partner Antonio D’Amico), Edgar Ramirez (Versace) and the sublime Penelope Cruz (Donatella Versace). Icing? Matt Bomer will direct the eighth episode. Premieres Jan. 17 on FX. Not to be missed.
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