Tag: tom rob smith

Versace: Andrew Cunanan’s Relationship with Norman Blachford

There was a brief time between 1994 and 1996 when Andrew Cunanan was living the gilded life of luxury he had long envisioned for himself. As a man of minimal work ethic, though, the route he took to richness was a shortcut—existing as the paid companion of Norman Blachford, a socialite who made his money in sound-abatement equipment. According to reports, Blachford was not Cunanan’s first sugar daddy. He had a darker distinction—being the last benefactor before Cunanan began the downward trajectory that would conclude with his multi-state murder spree.

As Vanity Fair contributor Maureen Orth reported in Vulgar Favors: the Assassination of Gianni Versace, on which the current season of American Crime Story is based, Cunanan met Blachford in 1994—shortly after Blachford, then 58, lost his partner of over 25 years to AIDS. “Norman was alone and very eligible,” wrote Orth. And Cunanan, well, “Andrew did his homework,” according to a San Diego restauranteur who spoke to Orth for a report that ran in Vanity Fair. “He would investigate older, wealthy gay men who didn’t have families, and he would place himself in those circles. And that was his living.”

“Andrew had his own rise,” explained American Crime Story writer Tom Rob Smith. “He found these various, wealthy older men to live with. He ended up in a multi-million-dollar condo in La Jolla—this beautiful paradise. He was given an allowance and traveling to the South of France. And he throws it all away—he can’t tolerate the notion that he is a kept man.”

Indeed, in Wednesday’s episode, “Descent,” a friend of Blachford’s astutely tells Cunanan, “What a volatile mix you are: too lazy to work and too proud to be kept.”

The irony of Cunanan’s commitment to being kept is that he worked hard to be considered “a jewel in the crown of La Jolla’s closeted society”—according to a source for The Washington Post. The same friend alleged that Cunanan could “hold a conversation on nearly anything—politics, antiques, wines, Elton John. If an older man was interested in orchids, Cunanan would go out and buy every book available on orchids and plants and soon he would be talking about the subject as if he had studied it all of his life.” He ensured that he was cultured—visiting the opera, museums, and society events—and he studied the interests of eligible men as though he was preparing for a test.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, Smith made an important distinction about Cunanan’s motivations.

“I think it’s wrong to think of him as the ‘Talented Mr. Ripley,’ [the cutthroat, scheming character Patricia Highsmith created],” Smith said. “Mr. Ripley is someone who is always hustling and is aware that he’s angling things… . I think Andrew thought he was a husband or a partner in his own right. I don’t think he understood that he was a hustler, otherwise he would’ve been happy with his lot.”

“Descent” provides a snapshot of Cunanan at the moment he should have been satisfied. He had found Blachford, a man who reportedly provided him a monthly allowance of $2,500; a brand-new Infiniti; trips to New York to see Broadway shows; international vacations; access to credit cards; and a front-row seat in his high-society circle. He had been able to convince Blachford to sell his property in Scottsdale, Arizona—as he told his friends, he disliked the climate and allergies he suffered in Arizona—and eventually upgrade the La Jolla home to a handsome property atop Mount Soledad, overlooking the bay. He finally had found the means to live the illusion he had been spinning. In his mind, though, Cunanan deserved more.

According to Orth’s reporting, Cunanan complained to friends about Blachford’s cheapness, and suggested that he was actually doing Blachford a favor by being his companion—alleging that the relationship disqualified him from a (fictional) large family inheritance. Cunanan was restless, and according to a report in New York Magazine, by the time the couple made it to Southampton for a week in the summer of 1996, “Cunanan struck out several nights on his own and popped up at a round of gay house parties, introducing himself as ‘Andrew DeSilva.’ To exacting South Fork playboys, his act was pretty transparent. ‘He was a flaccid conversationalist, and there was nothing really distinctive about him at all,’ says the man who put Cunanan and Blachford up at his house. ‘Every other word from his mouth was about how rich his father had been in La Jolla.’ ”

Blachford was able to look past Cunanan’s obvious tall tales, and see his potential. Blachford encouraged Cunanan to go back to school, but Cunanan would not have it. Cunanan’s ego had inflated to fit his grandiose illusions. When the couple returned from their vacation in 1996, Cunanan threatened to leave Blachford if he did not buy him a $125,000 Mercedes convertible; fly him first-class; raise his allowance; and write him into Blachford’s will. In “Descent,” when Blachford refuses to acquiesce to the demands, Cunanan packs his bags, expecting Blachford to beg him to return. Blachford does not, though. And Cunanan, having miscalculated, finds himself in free fall. Not only is he suddenly without a benefactor, but he is without a lifestyle and a love interest. (Though the American Crime Story episodes paint a hazy timeline, David Madson had pulled away from Cunanan by this point because of his secrecy.)

“Andrew’s descent is that [after the breakup with Blachford] he moves into a small apartment in Hillcrest and descends into crystal meth until he’s lost everything,” explained Smith, who notes that in next week’s episode, viewers will see how Cunanan’s fall from grace mirrors his fathers.

“Whereas his dad flees to Manila and restarts, Andrew has nowhere left to go … [so] he goes to Minneapolis and has a breakdown,” said Smith. “When you look at the shapes of [Cunanan and his father’s] lives, that, to me, was absolutely the key of Andrew. As a child, Andrew absolutely believed his dad’s lies and that he was this amazing man. And then suddenly that was all ripped away [when his father left the family].”

In “Descent,” Smith wrote a brief exchange that cuts through the complex psychological saga of this serial murderer with ice-cold precision. At Cunanan’s 36th birthday party, he is cornered by a skeptical friend of Blachford’s who sees through Cunanan’s duplicitousness. When the friend insults him, Cunanan replies by pointing to the party guests in the next room, saying, “That room is full of people that love me.”

Without hesitation, the friend replies, “Then that room is full of people who don’t know you.” And for a split second, before shifting back into delusion autopilot, even Cunanan seems to agree.

Versace: Andrew Cunanan’s Relationship with Norman Blachford

Inside ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’s’ Story of High Fashion, Homicide and HIV

Are you watching The Assassination of Gianni Versace on FX? The series is the second in the American Crime Story anthology, the folks who brought you The People versus OJ Simpson. It’s based on the book Vulgar Favors by Maureen Orth about Andrew Cunanan’s murderous spree in 1997 that ended in the shooting of the famous designer on the steps of his Miami mansion.

With openly gay Hollywood producer Ryan Murphy (executive producer, known for creating Nip/Tuck, Glee, Feud, and American Horror Story, among others) at the helm, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is sensational. Truly, it causes all the sensations. It’s super gay. It’s got fabulous ‘90s Versace fashions. It’s violent, bloody, and disturbing. It’s a little bit sexy (as sexy as you can be in a series about a spree killer) with a soupcon of nudity and a smidge of S&M. There are drugs, nightclubs, models, and hot military guys. It’s got an amazing cast, starring Darren Criss as Cunanan, Penelope Cruz savagely portraying Donatella Versace, Ricky Martin as Versace’s partner Antonio, and Edgar Ramirez – who looks and acts so much like the real Versace that it’s spooky – and featuring performers such as Judith Light, Mike Farrell, Finn Wittrock, and Broadway’s Annaleigh Ashford. The plot contrasts the pampered opulence of Versace’s privileged life with the underbelly creepiness of Cunanan and his development from a pathetic, disillusioned liar into a deranged, notorious killer. It’s fantastic, delicious television.

The show also includes a very powerful HIV storyline. Gianni Versace is revealed as being HIV positive at a time in history when homophobia and AIDS panic were rampant. Not only is Versace portrayed as HIV positive, he is shown to be at times so weak from advanced sickness that he needs help even to walk. Then, in later scenes, he’s shown to be recovered after (presumably) being put on antiretroviral therapy, which became available in the mid-1990s.

After his recovery, Versace decides to use his new lease on life not only to continue creating fashions but also to come out as gay at a time when not many celebrities were brave enough to do so.

“I was sick, but I didn’t die,” he says in Episode 5 of the show. “I have a second chance. It’s a miracle that I’m alive. And yet, I ask myself every day, what have I done to deserve this? Why am I still here? To be afraid? No. I’m alive, and I must use it.”

The Assassination of Gianni Versace might be the first major media movie or television show to present a person sick with advanced HIV infection and then recovered and vibrant due to the miracle of HIV medications. This is an amazing and important landmark for HIV in film/television, and the storyline is told with a lot of respect for those of us living with the virus. By exploring other aspects of the AIDS crisis and its implications in the aftermath of Versace’s murder, the series shows in living color what it was like to be living in the good ol’ bad ol’ ’90s.

I had a phone conversation with award-winning executive producer Brad Simpson and screenwriter and author Tom Rob Smith about the production, the creative process, and the decision to use HIV in the storyline.

Charles Sanchez: Why do you think it’s important to tell this story about Andrew Cunanan and Gianni Versace at this time?

Brad Simpson: This story, in a lot of ways, was a journey through the politics of gay identity and what it meant to be out in the 1990s. The 1990s being this volatile time – even though it’s still volatile for a lot of people – of the Defense of Marriage Act, and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and celebrities starting to come out, and the sort of shift and also the transformation with AIDS drugs that happened and a generation of activists who’d been politicized by the AIDS crisis, all intersecting in this decade – and it felt like, you know, for us, true crime is bigger than just a murder. It really felt to us like there was something to be said about the 1990s and about where we are today, by telling this story.

Tom Rob Smith: [Cunanan] is very unusual. One of the things we’ve confronted is that people are talking about him as being a serial killer, and that’s just simply not the case. This is someone who didn’t have a pathology of violence. He wasn’t committing arson or sexual assault, all of the early warning signals that you have with lots of serial killers. This is someone that, if you had jumped back and met him at age 20, and said, “You’re going to be a killer,” he would have found it impossible to believe. Exploring him presents lots of challenges, and … it was very interesting to contrast [Versace] as someone who creates, as someone who is curious about the world, and someone who experienced intolerance and managed to navigate around it, with Cunanan, who just seemed to be defeated by it.

Simpson: Gianni Versace was one of the few people who were celebrities who were out [as gay] in the 1990s. It was actually shocking to us. We went back to make a list of who was out pre-Ellen [DeGeneres] coming out, and the list is 5, 6, 7 famous people? No fashion designers.

I think this is a show that only Ryan Murphy could get on the air. Because I like to think that we’re incredibly advanced, but the show is deeply gay and touches on things that you haven’t seen dealt with on TV before. There’s a freedom that Ryan’s success gives to allow us to tell a story like this.

Sanchez: Speaking of things we’ve never seen before, I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen [on film], from an HIV standpoint, a person with HIV, sick and near death, turning around and becoming miraculously better through medications. What was the process of deciding how to tell that part of the story?

Smith: The reason we told that … it was just very powerful that Versace was very sick in ’93-’94 when his symptoms became severe, and it’s debated by the family, so I should put it in as a caveat that the family, they dispute this, but …

Sanchez: I believe in the book it says that, publicly, he had cancer.

Smith: Yeah, that’s right. I think they say “ear cancer,” and we know that is infamous [as code for HIV]. But we do know that he was very sick in ’93-’94, that he was on the brink of death, that is uncontested, and we know that he was refusing to submit to this illness. And that he would walk, still, when he was very sick, from his house in Miami to that news kiosk; he would go with Antonio [his partner], and he’d be so weak that Antonio would have to carry the magazines back. I thought it was a remarkably powerful structure [for the script] to have that walk contrasted with the walk when he’s then fully recovered. And he is then, in ’97 [when he’s shot], walking to that newsstand, not needing anyone’s help. He’s full of the joy of life in many ways. This medication gave him a rejuvenation.

And it was a great life force, you know, [Versace] was saying: “I want to live, I have so much more to give. I have so much more work, but also in terms of the people I love, my grandchildren, my family. I’m going to cling on to life for as long as I can.” And this new wave of medication came along, and he was saved.

Simpson: There’s something bittersweet about the fact that he thought he was going to die and had been given this new lease on life. There was this generation of men who thought they had a death sentence and then were slowly realizing maybe they didn’t. He was starting to create again, and right at that moment, his life was taken away.

There were rumors that ran at the time, the hysteria after Versace was killed, there were these rumors spread by the media and some nefarious friends of Andrew that Versace gave Andrew AIDS and this was a revenge murder, and this is a widely held belief that is actually still held by a lot of people. It was revealed in Andrew’s autopsy that he was actually HIV negative. It was a narrative that was out there and one that we wanted to correct with the show: The evil murderer was actually not the one who had AIDS; it was the victim.

Sanchez: What do you think the responsibility of the media and artists of your caliber is in telling stories about HIV in the modern world?

Smith: It’s hard to come up with a generalized formula for it. I think you have to react to the nature of the period and the people involved. In the ’80s, the stories were horrific. It’s very hard to go into the ’80s and find stories that weren’t heartbreaking. And so, if you were telling that story, I don’t see how you could put a demand that somehow people be upbeat about it.

The responsibility just comes from looking at the truth of it and not landing on what appears to be an easy explanation. I think that’s both wrong and offensive.

Simpson: Ryan, you know, obviously did The Normal Heart. We had a lot of conversation in terms of how to portray the AIDS-related illnesses. We’re adapting Maureen’s book, and this is her position that, you know, [Versace] was positive. We felt that to not portray that would be to play into the stigma that still surrounds HIV to this day.

Sanchez: Speaking of stigma, I wanted to ask you about that. You and Nina Jacobson [Simpson’s producing partner] were on NPR at the end of January, and you both stated [while talking about the series] that HIV stigma was no longer prevalent. Then, two prominent HIV bloggers [Josh Robbins and Mark S. King] called you out on it on social media. I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you about it.

Simpson: Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, I feel horrible about it. On radio, unlike an interview like this, you’re like racing through it and trying to be compact in your answers. I did not say want I meant to say. That’s not an excuse; it’s just an explanation.

We talked about this a lot in terms of how to talk about Versace’s HIV status. One of the conversations we had, we felt that were we to ignore our belief in that status and Maureen’s beliefs on that status, then we would be playing into the very stigma that we’re all trying to get rid of, that we would be reifying the stigma and shame of living with HIV by denying that part of a character. What I meant to say was that we didn’t want to play into the stigma of having HIV. What I ended up saying was that there is no stigma to having HIV today. I don’t believe that at all!

I’m not going to pretend that I know what it’s like to live with HIV or how complicated it is to decide how public to be about your status with partners, with friends, with family, or how to navigate the health care system. That’s something that I can’t know, that I can only hear about. But obviously, or maybe not obviously, I’m sorry that I misspoke, and I regret it. Of course, I know that there’s a large and unfortunate stigma to having HIV, still, in so many ways.

Smith: One of the reasons we wanted to do this [show] is to attack the stigma. This stigma is so wrong, and it’s so corrosive. It still exists today; we’re not just talking about something that is historic. We talk [on the show] about the idea that you could build a company that’s worth billions of dollars, be a fashion icon, and that it could be reduced to having no value simply by the factor of an HIV diagnosis. That isn’t an exaggeration. It seems to me to be a real injustice.

Yet, when you look at Gianni Versace’s words, you know, to me it was code. I can’t declare for sure what he was saying, but when he says in the ’90s after he recovers from the most severe symptoms, “I’m not going to live my life filled with regret and shame anymore,” to me, that’s him saying: “I’ve recovered, and I’m not just recovered physically. I’m not going to walk around feeling terrible anymore. I’m going to live; I’m going to love.” And I found that very powerful, and I really wanted to capture that.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Inside ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’s’ Story of High Fashion, Homicide and HIV

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The Assassination of Gianni Versace, All Too Human exhibition, Debut novelist Mick Kitson

We hear about the second series of the American Crime Story television franchise which began in 2016 with The People Versus OJ Simpson. John Wilson is joined in the studio by novelist turned screenwriter TomRob Smith. He has written the next instalment – The Assassination of Gianni Versace – which dramatises the events surrounding the murder of the Italian fashion designer outside his Miami home in 1997. | 26 February 2018

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20 years on, why are there so many unanswered questions about Gianni Versace’s murder?

On the morning of July 15 1997, Gianni Versace was shot on the steps of his Miami mansion. The 50-year-old fashion designer was returning home with a selection of magazines bought from his local news café on Ocean Drive when he was twice hit in the head. Rushed to hospital with a faint pulse, his injuries proved too severe. At 9.20am, he was declared dead.

It sparked an international media sensation, a nationwide search for a killer – and one of the largest failed FBI manhunts of all time.

Two decades on, the shooting is the starting point for the latest outing of American Crime Story, the critically acclaimed television series that launched in 2016 with the ten-parter, The People vs OJ Simpson.

Like most people, that brief summary of Versace’s murder was more or less all that I knew when I was approached by Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson, producers of American Crime Story, to write a mini-series about the events leading up to it.

They had responded to my novel Child 44, loosely based on the Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, and my scripts for the BBC drama, London Spy. But the original idea for The Assassination of Gianni Versace had come from Ryan Murphy, the king of American television and creator of hit shows including Nip/Tuck and Glee.

I was sent a copy of Vulgar Favors, Vanity Fair journalist Maureen Orth’s book chronicling the months and years preceding the Versace murder. It was remarkable not least because it showed how little I knew about the complexity and heartbreak of the story. I was a crime writer, a reader of true crime, and this was one of America’s biggest murder investigations of all time – so why had it passed me by?

My first impulse as a scriptwriter when starting on a new project is to try and read everything written on the subject. In some cases, that is impossible; there’s simply too much. In this instance, it was with surprise and some dismay that I discovered how little material there was, both about the crime itself, but also about Versace as a man.

In terms of public profile, it was the very opposite to the OJ Simpson case. With that trial, most people knew its various twists and turns, the names of the lawyers, even actual lines of courtroom dialogue. With Versace, I didn’t even know there had been four other murders leading up to his. I didn’t know the names of these victims, nor their stories. What, if anything, connected them to Versace?

Far from being asked to dramatise a famous moment of history, the challenge felt closer to being asked to solve an untold mystery.

And so it was that, three years ago, I heard the name Andrew Cunanan for the first time, the young man with an IQ of 147, once full of promise and potential, who was ultimately responsible for five savage murders. ​Did he know Versace? It seems that they’d met in San Francisco four years before the murder. But what had happened between them?

When I asked Orth what had drawn her to the case in the first place, she answered that she’d seen a photograph of Cunanan, a handsome young man, wearing black tie, and it struck her that he seemed such an unlikely killer. This is the question at the centre of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: not who did it – there’s no doubt about that – but why he did.

Many killers display disturbing patterns of behaviour that go back many years. They’re violent, abusive, cruel to animals. Arson is a repeating indicator for a troubled psychology. If you had told Cunanan or his friends that, at the age of 18, he was going to be a notorious and despised killer, they would have found the idea impossible to believe.

Cunanan was a gentle boy with a high-pitch voice, mocked for being gay, an effete Oscar Wilde-like figure at his school, who used his wit to deflect the homophobic taunts he regularly received. His father, Modesto, had been born in the Philippines, joined the US Navy, earned US citizenship, came to America to live the immigrant dream of success, joining Merrill Lynch and using his handsome salary to send Andrew to one of the finest schools in the country: Bishop’s in La Jolla, San Diego.

Cunanan read widely, delighted in art and literature. He liked to laugh; even more, he liked to make other people laugh. He recited Robin William’s monologues to his friends and family. He wanted to impress people. He wanted to be happy. He wanted to be loved.

The series we set out to make was never going to be simply the life story of Versace, though we contrast his success with Cunanan’s failures.

But Versace’s was a vibrant success story, about the particular nature of an individual’s brilliance, not a crime story; those are about the nature of society – in this case, the destruction wrought on so many by homophobia. How do you survive in a society where many consider your existence to be a crime?

The Assassination of Gianni Versace was my first experience of dramatising real events. Yet there wasn’t an inordinate amount of detail to go on. There had been no murder trial, there were gaps in understanding the timeline of the killer, and the police investigations were never held up to much scrutiny.

We were trying to build a picture of events from a series of fragments, all that remained from the wreckage of lives destroyed by Cunanan.

So what was the connection between his five victims, who were killed during a three-month period in 1997: an aspiring young architect in Minneapolis, a former US Navy sailor, a Chicago real estate tycoon, a devoted national parks employee and a globally renowned fashion icon?

Cunanan had been on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for more than a month before the designer’s death, and was believed to be on the loose in the Miami Beach area. Why was the local community not warned? Why did it take his suicide, eight days after he shot Versace, to put an end to the killings?  

By dramatising the Versace story, my hope was that while I might make mistakes in the detail – for example, conflating characters for clarity, or giving characters lines of dialogue when we have no transcripts to guide us – such inventions would service the central themes and a larger truth. I raise this because The Assassination of Gianni Versace has come in for criticism from several quarters, in particular our decision to portray Versace (played by Venezuelan actor Édgar Ramírez) as having been HIV-positive.

Though his status was never made public in his lifetime, nor confirmed after his death, the suggestion that he was positive is prominent in Orth’s book, the primary resource for the show; to erase mention of it felt like removing part of the period’s history.

In many ways, the Aids crisis offers a parallel to Cunanan’s killings: gay men had been left to die while the world looked the other way, and it was only once a celebrity died that the world took action.

Part of what inspired me about Versace, in contrast to what appalled me about Cunanan (played by Glee star Darren Criss), was how one man overcame the obstacles in his life, while the other was consumed by hatred; how one man created while the other man destroyed. Andrew Cunanan was not a serial killer – he was a terrorist, a man filled with loathing for other people’s success. He saw himself as a victim of this world.

To that end, his journey is a road movie through American society.

20 years on, why are there so many unanswered questions about Gianni Versace’s murder?

American Crime Story writer: People only know part of Versace’s story

In summer 1997, Gianni Versace was on top of the world. His fashion empire was worth $807 million, encompassing 130 boutiques worldwide. After a period of ill health the Italian designer was fit and happy. And, after coming out in the early Nineties, he was content in a long-term relationship with Antonio D’Amico, a model. Life in his mansion on Miami Beach was good.

Then, on July 15, Versace, aged 50, was shot dead in a seemingly random attack on a morning walk along Ocean Drive. His killer, Andrew Cunanan, committed suicide with the same gun eight days later — it transpired that Versace was his fifth murder victim. The fashion world was in mourning.

But the wider world, while shocked by this senseless killing, soon moved on — in one sense, the loss was eclipsed by the death, six weeks later, of Diana, Princess of Wales.

That might have been that, had it not been, 20 years later, for the current TV vogue for true-crime dramas, and for the efforts of London novelist-turned-screenwriter Tom Rob Smith.

Smith, author of the thrillers Child 44 and The Farm, and creator of 2015’s BBC2 thriller London Spy (starring Ben Whishaw), wrote the scripts for The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. It’s the second volume in the US television anthology series overseen by the hugely prolific and successful Ryan Murphy (Glee).

The eight-part dramatisation, coming to BBC2 on Wednesday, stars Édgar Ramírez (Zero Dark Thirty) as Versace, singer-turned-actor Ricky Martin as his boyfriend, Glee alumnus Darren Criss as the disturbed and damaged Cunanan, and Penélope Cruz as the designer’s sister, Donatella. It’s the follow-up to The People vs O.J. Simpson, the 2016 mini-series which was a ratings and critical smash, winning nine Emmys and two Golden Globes.

“With O.J., everyone knew all the minutiae,” says Smith. “They had to unpick that to tell a story people didn’t know. This is a story where people only know a fragment.”

Hence, he says, beginning his drama at the end: the murder, told via an eight-minute opening scene in the first episode. Beyond hooking viewers with that graphic, curtains-up incident, Smith wanted to “get to the heart of Versace”. His primary resource was Vulgar Favours, a book about the assassination by journalist Maureen Orth.

“There isn’t that 500-page, warts-and-all biography on Versace. You feel that gap because he’s such an extraordinary figure. The things he overcame, how he changed fashion — it’s so monumental. You can’t imagine Alexander McQueen without Versace.”

Filming took place in Miami, much of it in Versace’s home, which is now a hotel. Veracity was key to the production, meaning they wouldn’t shoot in Los Angeles.

“The sea is different in Florida, the beaches are different,” notes Smith, 39, gesturing to the view: we’re talking in a hotel by the Pacific in Santa Monica, where Smith lives with his partner, Ben Stephenson. Formerly Controller of BBC Drama Commissioning, he now heads the television division at J.J. Abrams’s nearby Bad Robot production company. The couple have been here together for two years, and Smith — dressed in pricey-looking, beach-ready shorts and shirt — jokes that the kale juice he’s ordered “is very California”.

“The palm trees are different too,” he continues. “But it turned out that Versace preferred LA palm trees — they’re thinner and straighter. Miami ones are rugged. So he had LA ones driven across the country and planted at his home. I guess they’re easier to organise in a line around a pool.”

By coincidence, cast and crew were filming in the house on the 20th anniversary of the murder. “It was a strange time. One of the things I’m proud of is we celebrate Versace — we try and reclaim this sense of his legacy.”

“I wanted to contrast Cunanan — someone who is full of potential but has these missteps, and ends up this destructive suicidal, terrorist-like force, ripping down other people’s success — and someone who has just as many obstacles in life, yet builds this vast empire and has this loving relationship.”

It’s surely, then, a frustration that the Versace family have denounced the drama as a “fiction”. But Smith expected as much — they made similar comments when Orth’s book was published. Their stance put Cruz — a personal friend of Donatella — in a tricky position.

“Penélope had a real sense of the language of Donatella. She was involved in changing some of the line structure in the script, and the syntax.”

“We’re giving Penélope a heroic role. Donatella understands in this story that Cunanan is not just trying to take her brother’s life — it’s an attack on his legacy. And he’s trying to destroy the company. If this information comes out about her brother, then the company is in danger.”

“We’re not telling that as a piece of gossip. We’re doing it as this interesting narrative that this one man overcame that [illness]. But then he was struggling with the fact that if he told the world he had HIV/Aids, the company would have been worth nothing. This devaluation of all his life’s work — and what an injustice that is.”

Does the story have resonance for Smith? “This is a story of how you survive if you’re gay. Homophobia makes you think: how will I navigate the world? Growing up I never had a moral shame about being gay, I just thought I couldn’t be a success — all these avenues would be closed down to me.”

Smith, who was educated at Dulwich College and Cambridge, didn’t come out until he was 22, working as a storyliner on Family Affairs. An actress asked if he was gay. He said no. “I thought, ‘I can’t have other people know me better than I know myself’.”

He has, then, empathy for the Versaces and how the assassination of Gianni — and the secrets it revealed — impacted on the family. And he’s hopeful that Donatella might still come round.

“If they’re not going to watch it — which is completely understandable — hopefully they’ll understand that there is real love for them and their brother who achieved so much. I’d hope at least they’d hear that from someone — maybe even Penélope.”

American Crime Story writer: People only know part of Versace’s story