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American Crime Story: Versace Is A Much-Needed Lesson In Empathy

On Wednesday night (March 21), the Season 2 finale of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story placed the final puzzle piece in the jigsaw of Andrew Cunanan’s story.

The twisted narrative that spanned his 27 years and pushed further back in time with each new episode ultimately led us right back to where we started in the premiere: to the days after Gianni Versace’s murder. But the feelings toward Cunanan (Darren Criss) that we were left with as he took the life of his final victim — himself — are markedly different than those we felt as we watched him approach the gates of Versace’s (Édgar Ramírez) mansion and murder the celebrated fashion designer in cold blood.

But contrary to our usual feelings toward a central character, it’s not sympathy that we’re feeling. It’s empathy.

“When people say, ‘How can you humanize somebody like this?’ I say because he’s a human being. Everyone is human. Although, unfortunately, he’s famous for horrible things that I am not exonerating him for – they are deplorable and a tragedy and unforgivable,” Darren Criss told MTV News. “I’m not playing a killer; I’m playing a person.”

Starting with the one point of familiarity in Cunanan’s story — Versace’s murder — it felt like the only way forward was to go backwards, building a visual of the spree killer’s history with each episode and introducing us to him as a gay man in the throes of unrequited love, and before that as an escort for older men, and before that as the prized son of an immigrant who tangos with federal law and ultimately flees the country, leaving his family behind.

All the while, we have a constant reminder of who he ultimately becomes as we watch him pick off his five known victims: Jeff Trail, David Madson, Lee Miglin, William Reese, and Gianni Versace.

“We start with him as this absolute monster who is doing the worst crimes, and so up front we’re saying, ‘This is who he is.’ And then we’re saying, ‘How’d he become like that?’” writer and executive producer Tom Rob Smith said. “One of the advantages of the backwards narrative is you’re very clearly telling the audience, ‘This is someone who’s done these absolutely terrible things,’ so when you get into that stuff, you’re not trying to say that forgives him. That’s just to say where he comes from.”

Executive producer Brad Simpson agreed, “It doesn’t excuse what Andrew has done, but it explains it.”

This ability to understand a person, regardless of whether they were right or wrong, is empathy in its most pure, unaffected form, and being able to empathize with someone who confidently and consistently makes bad decisions helps us identify those turning points in which they begin to lose their sense of morality. In watching Cunanan’s early missteps, one can’t help but feel that this spiral was “preventable,” said Simpson.

“When you go back to his childhood, you see that this is a kid who wasn’t born to be a murderer. He’s somebody who might’ve been a little unstable, but he was talented. He was somebody you and I might’ve been friends with in high school because he was extroverted and interesting, and something went wrong,” Simpson added. “Here’s a kid who was the product of some sort of bad childhood situation and at some point, somebody could’ve helped him and they didn’t.”

Interwoven in that dialogue is an exploration of LGBTQ culture in the ’90s, a time when Don’t Ask Don’t Tell seemed more like a blanket rule than a military creed and the AIDS epidemic incited fear and prejudice toward the gay community. Versace navigated that feeling of shame that often comes with rampant homophobia and the lingering effects of it, as told through the dual narratives of Versace and Cunanan, two charismatic men who took drastically different paths.

“It was such a lonely period of time,” described Max Greenfield, who played Ronnie, a struggling HIV positive gay man in Miami and the closest Cunanan had to a friend in the two months before he murdered Versace.

In the finale, Ronnie poignantly stands up for his marginalized sect of society while being questioned by the FBI, asserting that the authorities failed to locate Cunanan because they “were disgusted by him long before he became disgusting.” He evokes the empathy that was built upon throughout the season, adding that Cunanan was never hiding; “he was trying to be seen.”

“One of the things that we’ve talked about is how dangerous it is … when you tell people that their voices don’t matter,” Greenfield said.

“When you do it from such an early age, when you’re sending that message to a young person who then thinks without even being told that their voice doesn’t matter or that they should be ashamed of who they are and ashamed of what they think and what they believe and their voice – it’s heartbreaking, and, really, the result of it can go in any different kind of way. That’s what the story is. It can result in beauty in Gianni Versace’s case, and it can result in real chaos and terror in Cunanan’s case.”

American Crime Story: Versace Is A Much-Needed Lesson In Empathy

‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’ writer on interpreting the real Andrew Cunanan for the finale

Serial killer Andrew Cunanan met his grizzly end in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story finale Wednesday night, but it was more of a fizzle than a bang for star Darren Criss’s final scene.

Eight days after Cunanan murdered famed fashion designer Gianni Versace—and two months after Cunanan murdered his fourth victim— police finally cornered the killer on a Miami houseboat. Rather than face capture, Cunanan puts the gun that killed Versace in his mouth and pulls the trigger.

The episode imagines Cunanan’s final days hiding out on that houseboat, while also bringing back many of the series’ guest stars: Judith Light as widow Marilyn Miglin, Annaleigh Ashford as Cunanan’s childhood friend Elizabeth, Max Greenfield as Cunanan’s HIV-positive friend Ronnie, and Jon Jon Briones and Joanna P. Adler as Cunanan’s father and mother.

Series writer Tom Rob Smith (who also created the British drama London Spy) adapted this real-life event, and the rest of the series, from journalist Maureen Orth’s 1999 book, Vulgar Favors. He spoke to Newsweek about working on the series and what liberties he took in interpreting Cunanan.

What do hope fans take away from the finale of The Assassination of Gianni Versace?

It works as a retrospective on loss. That’s one of the things I’m most proud of about this series. Marilyn Miglin, brilliantly played by Judith Light, says in the finale, “I’m so proud of Lee.” There’s that sense that all of these victims—not just Versace—were great. A crime story is about a sense of loss, about people being ripped from the world, about that hole they leave behind. That line, and this finale, crystalized that sense of sadness and loss beautifully.

It was almost moving to have Andrew reface so many of these people he hurt before his suicide. But it was hard to tell if he was feeling regret or just fear for his own life.

It’s been presented that Andrew is relishing in his notoriety thus far. But for someone who had all his potential, intelligence and impressive education, isn’t it also possible that he felt a deep sense of disgust at what he had done? This is not someone who spent his life being horrible to people, he was always trying to charm and impress them—he paid for dinners and tried to win people over. In those final days on that houseboat, there was a sense of great shame, I think. That’s our interpretation.

When you say that, is that what you imagine the actual, real Cunanan felt at that moment? Or do you see the show’s Cunanan as just a character, inspired but separate from the real killler?

In the end, I think you have to accept that it’s an interpretation. But you’re drawing on what there is. People have said, “Oh no, he committed suicide because he was trying to outwit the police.” I’m like, “He shot himself in his boxer shorts on a bed.” I don’t know how anyone would think that was a grand ending. The houseboat was in a state of horrendous decay—that space was a manifestation of what his life had become. He did die the day after Versace’s funeral, so he almost certainly watched Versace’s funeral on TV. I think he would have looked at that and seen a man who is adored, who has the most extraordinary funerals in Milan, while Andrew is in this hellish, sweaty physical decay, despised by the world.

Lots of killers go to trial—they quite enjoy it, in their own way, they enjoy putting the victim’s families through the trial, as part of their sickness. Very few of them commit suicide. So I think, whatever Andrew might have told himself, there must have been some deep sense of shame that he didn’t want to face in a courtroom. He didn’t want to have his crimes read out to him.

What details did you add to his final hours for the show, to help support that interpretation of Andrew?

Obviously, we don’t know what he watched. We just know what was on and we know that there was a TV [in the houseboat]. We do know that the Versace magazines were there, and we know that there was nothing left to eat in that houseboat. We know that he had absolutely no money. He had no way of getting any food and he was trapped. There’s that sense of the world bearing down on him. His dad claimed that he called him.

Really?

Yes, his dad claimed to Maureen Orth in Vulgar Favors that he called him—the exact claim is that Andrew called him to talk about the film rights. Of course, his dad could be lying. We certainly don’t know that Andrew asked his dad to come get him. But I didn’t make up the name of the movie title, A Name to Remembered By. The dad really did say that. But [Andrew] shooting the TV set isn’t true. We put that in because we wanted to get across that the sixth person that Andrew would have gone for next [to kill] would have been his dad.

Modesto Cunanan is a fascinating character, both in the show and real life. Did you guys ever find out what happened to the real person?

We don’t know, and actually we really tried to find that out. We don’t think he’s in America; we think he might not be alive anymore. It’s very hard to find someone. But I know that Fox did do research on that and didn’t come back with anything.

What we know about the real man is that that he gave Andrew the master bedroom, and that he then came in to use the closet. So he set up an excuse to go into there. To my mind, that was immediately a red flag. We also know from Maureen’s research that Andrew’s lie in Episode 1—“Oh my dad used to drive around with a chauffeur, and he was having an affair with the chauffeur”—that’s a real lie from Andrew. I always think that lies are very revealing. I remember first reading that and thinking, “That’s a strange lie.” That’s one of those interesting things about going backwards— you get that lie in Episode 1, and you think it’s just Andrew being crazy. When you get to Episode 8, you’re like, “Wait a minute. What was behind that lie?”

The show makes very explicit—especially in the finale—that one of the reasons the FBI took so long to catch Cunanan was a lack of connections in the gay community and a disregard for gay lives. That felt like a statement on the homophobia of the authorities in the ‘90s.

There’s a couple of things I’d say. This is not a story where it’s about the homophobic cop that doesn’t catch anyone. I think the most homophobic person in this story is Andrew Cunanan himself. He is just this horrific homophobic bully to Lee Miglin. He’s using everything he understands about shame and disgrace against his victims. And with David, he’s trying to trap him into to staying with him by saying, “The police will never believe you, they hate you.”

Many things he says have truth in them, and in Miami it was a fiasco. I don’t know why they didn’t put the flyers up, I don’t what was going on there. Other cities they were better—I think they were better in New York and San Francisco, and I think the various gay communities there were better connected to the police. But catching people is tricky, and people make mistakes without have a racist, sexist or homophobic agenda behind it. People just screw up.

But when an officer refuses to go into a gay club to put a flyer up, that is a real issue. And when Andrew was just walking around Miami—the diner where he ate was just directly opposite the police station. I do think you can say that Versace should not have died.

Given the title of the series, I think some fans were surprised that the show ended up being more Andrew Cunanan’s story than Versace’s.

I was sent Maureen’s book two years ago, and I was always adapting this book. The Versace story is not a crime story—his life story is a success story. And in Maureen’s book, [Versace’s] only really in the story at the end. One of the things we talked about is that we really want to bring him to the fore, because he’s such an interesting counterpoint to Andrew. I don’t think you can just say Andrew was a product of society. Andrew was his own creation. He was beaten by things other people overcame. Andrew was lazy, vain and entitled. Yes, he did encounter enormous prejudice, but so did Versace, and Versace overcame those things. So when you look at it that way, it became a very interesting counterpoint. That was the genesis of the story. But I can understand why people thought it was going to be a biopic.

The real Versace family publicly condemned the show and the book as “a work of fiction.” Have you heard anything else from them since it’s been airing?

No, only the initial statement, which is the same statement they brought out at the publication of the book. One of the advantages of not doing a Versace-intensive biopic is that you can concentrate on what was amazing about that family. You don’t really need to get into the other gossipy stuff about relationships or drugs. None of that is relevant to this story. It’s just about saying what was amazing about Donatella and her relationship with Gianni because that’s what we’re counterpointing against Andrew.

In the end, it’s just a story about two families. You’re comparing them. That’s what I really love about Episode 8. I don’t know anything about how [the real Versace family] feels, but the show is really a celebration of Gianni Versace as an artist.

‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’ writer on interpreting the real Andrew Cunanan for the finale

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’: Writer Tom Rob Smith, on Making Meaning From Pain

“This is what crime is,” said Tom Rob Smith, the writer behind “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” the second season of FX’s anthology true-crime drama “American Crime Story.” “Crime is people being ripped from the world.” He was talking just hours ahead of the mournful finale of a challenging season that told the story of Andrew Cunanan, a serial killer who in 1997 murdered the fashion designer Gianni Versace in Miami Beach. By the end of his nightmare journey, Mr. Cunanan had ripped away six men’s lives, including his own.

Across nine episodes, that journey took viewers along a counterintuitive path, beginning with Versace’s death and working mostly backward in time, through the murders of four other men and deep into the killer’s troubled childhood in San Diego. It was exceedingly painful to watch at times, but to Mr. Smith, the pain was the point. “I know there are gaps in the story where we’ve had to imagine what happened,” he said in a phone conversation on Wednesday. “But I think we’re actually very close to the fundamental truth: Andrew destroyed a great many lives.”

Following are edited and spoiler-filled excerpts from that conversation, in which Mr. Smith talked about his work on the difficult and disturbing series, as well as the opportunity it gave him to explore what made those lives worth living and their loss so tragic.

I’ve seen critics talk about how hard it is to tune into a story this painful, week in and week out. Since this was your first true-crime project, was that obstacle to audience identification and enjoyment something you wrestled with?

One of the reasons we take the story backward is because we want to make the victims the heart of the piece, and they’re amazing people. Andrew was targeting people who had things that he did not, whether that be love, financial success, or moral success. I feel very privileged to have read about Versace. I think he’s underwritten about, underexplored, a remarkable figure.

The same with Donatella [Donatella Versace, Gianni’s sister and business partner]. They were an incredible couple. Lee Miglin is an extraordinary figure. The greatness that he achieves is from tenacity: As the youngest kid of seven or eight, he arrived in Chicago knowing no one, and he worked his way up. He was the American dream. David [David Madson, a Minneapolis-based architect] was this incredible young man, full of love and looking for love. And Jeff [Jeff Trail, a gay former naval officer] struggling with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell … I felt very lucky to tell their stories. I found them very moving and very celebratory.

Andrew, on the other hand, who is the central character …

It’s true that when you get to their deaths, Andrew is this despicable figure. But if you go further back, it’s hard not to find things about young Andrew that are impressive. He was out to people when he was — how old was he, 17? He was this Oscar Wilde-like wit who would, when confronted by homophobic bullies in school, look at them and bounce it straight back at them. I mean, I could never have done that in school. I just didn’t have it. There was an act of bravery in that. And he was a good friend to many people. He would pay for things. He would be there when they needed him.

There’s that loss of potential. You feel that on the victims’ side — these people were ripped from the world and they were achieving so much — and you feel it also with Andrew. Why couldn’t he have converted his intellect and his consideration for other people into something great? What happened there?

You don’t want to reduce an actual human being to an avatar of impersonal forces at work in the world, but Andrew is in one sense the weaponization of all the obstacles that have been placed in all those people’s way by homophobia. Even at Versace’s funeral, the priest performing the ceremony refuses to take his partner’s hand in comfort.

Yeah. All of that is real. We’ve got the footage of the priest pulling his hand away from Antonio. That’s not an inference — we can see it. That priest knew he was on camera, knew he was in front of thousands of people, knew he was at the funeral for this man, and still couldn’t control his hatred. He still felt no needto control it. Versace was so successful he managed to overcome that, which was what was so extraordinary about him. But the whole point of Andrew’s personality was that he wanted to impress people, and he’s born into one of the most marginalized groups in society. That paradox — How can you impress someone when they find you disgusting intrinsically before you even open your mouth? — that’s the conundrum of Andrew.

I think it’s tricky. The most homophobic person in this story is Andrew, by far. When he becomes this killer, he becomes a horrific homophobic bully. It’s like he’s soaked up everything and unleashes it on Lee and Versace. He’s like, “I’m going to shame you. You’ve achieved success and I’m going to rip it down, both through physical destruction, but also through the act of scrutiny and having the world look down upon you.”

Even when he was younger and acting as a welcoming figure in the gay community, he was pushing his racial identity as an Asian American to the side. That’s a stark contrast.

You know, he kind of did both. He wanted to change his name from Cunanan to DeSilva so he could say he’s Portuguese rather than from the Philippines. Then he was saying he was Israeli. So yeah, he would push the racial thing to one side. But the sexual thing is interesting, if you look at the way his life tracks. He can’t deal with anyone who might be critical. If he met someone who was homophobic and he wanted to be friends, he would say that he was straight, or that he had a wife and a daughter. He would play the audience. Eventually he went into an audience of these older men that he didn’t have to play to, because he was instantly impressive. He was younger and witty and clever and appreciated. Once he lost that audience, he hit rock bottom.

There’s this moment we never managed to get into the show which I’ve always thought captured something about Andrew. He was at a party when his descent was really accelerating, and no one was paying attention to him; in fact, someone had already reprimanded him for being really annoying. He just went over to this table and set fire to a napkin. He needed people to run over and notice him.

To get to the core of a person as protean as Andrew, I suppose you have to identify the desire that makes him shape-shift in the first place.

On his own, he was very sad and very alone. There were often moments when he said that. If you caught him when he wasn’t high and he wasn’t pretending, he said: “I’m alone and I’m depressed. I haven’t achieved anything and I’m miserable.” He wasn’t stupid. He could see himself in those moments.

But he could, for example, pretend to be a millionaire while going to a restaurant and pay $500 for a meal. Even if he only had $500 left, for those three hours, everyone at that table would think he was wealthy and successful. Those restaurants became a kind of theater where he could pretend to be a person that he wasn’t. He lived for those moments. When he stopped having those moments, that’s when he killed people.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’: Writer Tom Rob Smith, on Making Meaning From Pain