Versace: How Andrew Cunanan’s Father Figured Into the Murderer’s “Breaking Point”

Was Andrew Cunanan born or made a serial killer? This is the question that American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace poses with Wednesday’s episode, “Creator/Destroyer,” when it flashes back to Cunanan’s childhood and his relationship with father Modesto “Pete” Cunanan—a stockbroker who abandoned the family after allegedly “misappropriating” $106,000 when Andrew was a college freshman. (The episode contrasts Cunanan’s youth with Gianni Versace’s childhood, showing how the fashion designer was raised by a dressmaker mother in Reggio Calabria, Italy, who—because her parents had quashed her own childhood ambition of becoming a doctor—was determined to nurture her son’s professional dreams.)

Up until this episode, Cunanan has been a confounding character study—equally proud and lazy, a pathological liar who was capable of occasional generosity before his descent into drug use and murder. According to series writer and executive producer Tom Rob Smith, though, the key to understanding Cunanan’s trajectory is his father, who provided the template.

“I don’t think you can understand Andrew without understanding his dad,” Smith told Vanity Fair earlier this year. “His mom is a key figure, too, but his dad really offers the template for Andrew’s life. His dad had this spectacular rise—he came to America from the Philippines and served in the U.S. Navy. I think he worked through night college to get his trader’s license and got this extraordinary job working at Merrill Lynch in San Diego. It was this amazing ascent, and then he burnt out.”

According to Vanity Fair contributor Maureen Orth, whose book Vulgar Favors: the Assassination of Gianni Versace is the basis for American Crime Story, Pete had a special relationship with the youngest of his four children.

“Of all the children Pete has, he put so much attention toward Andrew, maybe because he thought Andrew was so good-looking,” Andrew’s godfather Delfin Labao told Orth. “It was not healthy. His father spoiled Andrew, made him feel he’s got to be somebody and, maybe that rang a bell in his uncertain mind, that that was what life was about.”

In addition to instilling that expectation, Pete embedded his son with bravado, materialism, and, even if Andrew didn’t realize it at the time, the compulsion of a pathological liar.

“By seventh grade, Andrew had developed a line of patter and a penchant for telling stories based on what he had read, and embellished for effect,” reported Orth. “The disturbing grandiosity that would mark his personality had already begun to take hold.”

Andrew was a precocious child and his parents spoiled him—even giving him the family’s master bedroom in high school. (Pete, who had a fraught relationship with his wife, MaryAnn, slept on the couch.) When Andrew was a freshman in high school, Pete even bought Andrew a brand-new sports car after his son was forced to miss an anticipated field trip—to the opera—because he was sick. Andrew was only 14 years old and did not have a driver’s license.

“Andrew, always the con man at school, was himself being conned at home,” wrote Orth. Ronald Johnston, who worked with Pete at four different firms, explained, “Pete always wore expensive suits, would buy expensive cars and expensive homes, and I think Andrew believed that was all for real. Andrew was led to believe by his father that he would attain anything he wanted to attain. And I know his father spoiled him rotten and gave him everything that he could possibly want.”

By the time that Cunanan graduated high school, though, Pete was cycling through a series of jobs and reportedly shady deals to combat his growing debt.

Explained American Crime Story writer Tom Rob Smith: “[Pete] committed what looked to be fraudulent trading activity. He moved down through various trading houses—smaller and smaller ones until he was finally caught. He had all of this fraud that was just circling him, and finally he runs to Manila.”

In 1988, when Cunanan was a freshman in college, Modesto took his cut of a deal that he was putting together, sold his cars and the family’s two “heavily mortgaged homes, and disappeared.” Per Orth, “Their family had literally had their home sold out from under them. MaryAnn was reportedly left with $700… . The experience was clearly shattering for Andrew, whose image of his dad as a powerful and reliable protector was smashed.”

Afterward, Andrew flew to the Philippines and tracked down his father—where he found the person he once believed to be a mythic figure living in squalor.

“When Andrew saw the crude poverty in which his father was living, a driving madness took over his mind,” one of Andrew’s teachers told Orth. Smith also believes that Andrew’s trip to the Philippines was a critical turning point.

“I think at that point, if Andrew had accepted that his dad was a fraud, embraced it on some level, and said, ‘This is what life is … complicated,’ he’d come back to the States having learned from the experience,” said Smith. “He could’ve done something interesting with his life. Instead, he comes back and continues his lies, telling people, ‘My dad is rich,’ and keeping up that pretense. To me, though, that was the break[ing] point in his brain. At that point there’s no going back.”

“Andrew goes through the exact same trajectory as his dad,” explained Smith. “He had his own rise—finding these wealthy affluent-older men that he’s living with. He ended up in a multi-million-dollar condo in La Jolla, this beautiful paradise, [living with Norman Blachford, a man who loved him.] He’s given an allowance. Traveling to the South of France. And he throws it all away because he can’t tolerate the notion that he is a kept man … he leaves and moves into a small place in Hillcrest, and descends through crystal-meth until he’s lost everything.”

Pointing out the similarity of father and son’s arcs, Smith explained, “His dad flees to Manila and restarts his life, but Andrew has nowhere left to go. So he goes to Minneapolis and has a breakdown. When you look at the shapes of their lives, that was absolutely the key of Andrew.”

So how, then, did Cunanan’s father Pete process the news that his son had not only mirrored his descent—he had done so in deadly fashion?

By shopping a documentary that would serve as a star vehicle for himself. Two months after the murders and his son’s suicide, the Los Angeles Times reported that Cunanan’s father Pete had already recruited a Philippines filmmaker, relocated to Los Angeles, and apparently alerted press of the project. Director Amable “Tikoy” Aguiluz VI made it clear that, in spite of Andrew being the focus of the media interest because of the murders, Pete still narcissistically saw himself as the star of the story. “I’m telling [the film] from the father’s point of view—a father who knew Andrew until he was 19—and his discovery of his son all over again,” Aguiluz told the L.A. Times.

As for whether Pete thought his son was guilty of the murders, he told papers, “This was a deep cover-up.” Rather than share sympathy for the victims and their families, he teased a potential F.B.I. conspiracy—“Hopefully, we’ll come up with some plausible explanations when we run the movie.” When speaking to Orth, Pete further revealed that he was asking for $500,000 for the rights to a film and book deal; thought it could make over $100 million at the box office; and even had an actor in mind to play his son.

John F. Kennedy, Jr.

“Their mannerisms are very, very close, almost the same,” Pete explained. “I watch John Junior very carefully. The guy has a lot of moxie in him—that dignity.”

In comparison and retrospect, Cunanan’s oft-told delusion of knowing Gianni Versace suddenly doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

Darren Criss on the Vulnerable Moments, Lesbian Subplot, and Skeet Ulrich Role Cut from American Crime Story

Fans watching American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace will have noticed that the episode running times tend to fluctuate in length. This week’s episode, “Ascent,” clocked in at around 77 minutes with commercial breaks. Next week’s installment will be even longer. But in a wide-ranging interview with Richard Lawson on Vanity Fair’s weekly podcast Still Watching: Versace, series star Darren Criss reveals that, as is often the case, the first cut of each episode was initially much, much longer and entire subplots and characters wound up on the cutting-room floor. “I’d be curious to see the director’s cut because a lot of episodes ended up at 90, 100 minutes,” Criss explained. Whether or not viewers will ever see a director’s cut of the series, Criss shared a few of the gems audiences might be missing.

For one thing, there was an entire sequence involving Riverdale and Scream star Skeet Ulrich as a porn czar who rejected Andrew Cunanan’s attempts to find work in the industry. (According to Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History, Cunanan was obsessed with pornography.) Criss explains:

There was this really interesting scene in the second episode where [Andrew’s] already on the lam. He hasn’t killed Gianni yet, but Andrew goes into—this happened, apparently—a small boutique porn studio … looking for work. Shout out to Skeet Ulrich, who got cut out of it. I really, really enjoyed his performance. He played this … porn Ziegfeld guy, producer dude, with his cigarette, sort of skeezy dude.

For more of what that Ulrich plot entailed—including Andrew going into a “berserk” rage that caused Criss to injure himself on set—you can listen to the complete interview. Though Ulrich mentioned having a part in American Crime Story, in interviews last year, the actor was snipped out of the marketing material for the show entirely. But Criss points out that you can see vestigial remains of some of the other cut storylines in trailers and promotional photos. Take, for example, this character portrait of Orange is the New Black star Dascha Polanco who played a Miami investigator in the first two episodes of the series and will likely return for the finale.

Though she’s captured here in a club scene, American Crime Story never reveals any information about Detective Lori Wieder outside of work. But according to Criss, there were lengthy scenes of Polanco’s character “going to the gay clubs and she was really kind of connecting the dots” in pursuit of Cunanan. “There’s huge sequences that we shot, huge parties and a lot of people, that took a long time that are just gone.” In the lengthier versions of the episodes, Polanco’s character’s familiarity with the gay scene in Miami came first hand: this more “prominent” version of her character was openly gay.

Critics and fans alike have noted the way The Assassination of Gianni Versace has broadened its scope far beyond the lives of slain designer Gianni Versace and his murderer Andrew Cunanan, to engage in a number of other themes and issues concerning the homosexual community in 90s America, including gays in the military, midwestern conservatism, the drug scene, H.I.V. survival guilt, and more. But for all the various male-gay-experiences represented in the series, American Crime Story is awfully light on any engagement with the lesbian community, despite the fact that several gay women orbited Cunanan’s social circle, and gave interviews to Maureen Orth.

As Criss laments, the dynamic between Polanco’s Detective Wieder and Will Chase’s Detective Paul Scrimshaw added a few more layers to those earlier episodes. Chase plays the “hardened straight-bro who is not necessarily homophobic, but just doesn’t really get it” while Polanco “had this whole thing of being this lesbian investigator that understood what was going on a little more.” Detectives Wieder and Scrimshaw are both characters named for real people who spoke to Orth, for her book, but in the context of the show act as composite characters.

Most of all, though, Criss says he misses a certain vulnerable scene between his character and Cody Fern’s David Madson. “You see [Andrew] with the phone in his hand and he’s saying, ‘David, I’m not the person that I said I was,‘ and there’s this real brutal, vulnerable moment of honesty, of unadulterated honesty that, as a viewer, you‘re like, ‘Oh. Oh, thank God. Oh, great,’ ” Criss recalls. “Then, it’s not real. Then, he finally calls David and he just says, like, ‘Hi. I had a great time. Bye,‘ and that’s it. It’s all those moments where you go, ‘Goddammit, no, man, you’re really … You were so close.‘”

These little missing scenes and characters are really just the tip of the iceberg of what Criss covered in nearly an hour of discussion with Still Watching: Versace. To find out more about the true story of Versace, Cunanan, and more, you can listen to the full interview with Criss—as well as past guests Maureen Orth, Ricky Martin, Max Greenfield, Judith Light, Cody Fern, Finn Wittrock, and more—by subscribing to Still Watching: Versace on Apple Podcasts or your podcast app of choice. New episodes of the podcast air every Wednesday night.

Darren Criss on the Vulnerable Moments, Lesbian Subplot, and Skeet Ulrich Role Cut from American Crime Story

How Donatella Versace Overcame Her Demons and Stepped Out From Her Brother’s Shadow

Those who tuned into American Crime Story’s current season, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, expecting episodes centered on the late fashion designer may have been disappointed to realize the drama does not hinge on Versace as much as on his murderer, Andrew Cunanan. But Wednesday’s episode, “Ascent,” takes audiences inside Versace’s empire, finally showcasing the fiery relationship between Gianni and sister Donatellathat preceded his 1997 death, and Donatella’s insecurity as a designer in the years when her brother was ill.

Deborah Ball’s 2010 book House of Versace: The Untold Story of Genius, Murder, and Survival shed additional light on the complicated power dynamic between Gianni and his 10-years-younger sister Donatella. Gianni had known as a child that fashion was his first love, studying from his dressmaker mother and treating Donatella as his doll—creating clothes for her, encouraging her to bleach her hair, and shaping her as the mascot of his brand. Donatella’s professional trajectory was less clear, so she allowed her brother to steer her in adulthood as he had in childhood. As Ball put it, “Donatella filled an indefinable role of muse, sounding board, and first assistant… . Donatella became Gianni’s shadow in the atelier [and] had a great knack for sizing up a dress or a pair of pants or a color palette and deciding whether it had that mysterious quality that would make it trendy.”

Donatella considered Gianni to be the creative genius and Gianni considered Donatella to be his gut. Their relationship was so enmeshed that Gianni had said, “I think if I were to marry I would look for a girl like Donatella. Our friendship was from when we were children. We were always together.” Meanwhile, Italian fashion journalist Giusi Ferre explained the sibling dynamic to Ball in another way: “She was his passport into the world of women. She was his female alter ego.”

Though she has always projected a larger-than-life aura given her exaggerated look—bleach-blonde hair, bronzed skin, heavy makeup, and audacious clothing—Ball wrote that Donatella “was a serial self-belittler, homing in on every last physical imperfection. She charmed people by betraying a bit of her vulnerability, but her insecurities unbalanced her.” Even by 2007, once she had righted her family’s fashion empire, the New Yorker’s Laura Collins noted that she critiqued herself often, peppering the conversation with statements like, “I am petrified,” “I get very anxious,” and “I have a major talent to lose things.”

During the years when Gianni was sick—whether with a form of ear cancer, as the family maintains, or with H.I.V., as Vanity Fair contributor Maureen Orth claimed—Donatella found herself reluctantly taking the reins of the company. She explained her role as intermediary in a 2006 interview with New York magazine: “I was going up into his apartment, showing him the work, getting the approval from him, but I ran the company because he wasn’t showing himself. It was like a year and a half I did everything … [That way of running the company was more] convenient for me, when I was next to Gianni, because Gianni was the one with all the responsibility, taking all the criticism. It was a more comfortable position.”

In spite of her experience shadow-directing the company when Gianni was alive, Donatella found herself ill-equipped to fully take over after her brother was murdered in 1997. And her self-critical nature spiraled to the point that she paralyzed herself with fear and anxiety.

“I realize[d] that all the eyes of the world were on top of me, and really, people didn’t believe I was going to pull through,” Donatella told New York in 2006. “All these people depending on me, their jobs on my shoulders, to live up to Gianni’s dream. I’m going to fuck up everything Gianni did?”

“Gianni’s death left Donatella, who was essentially an unprepared understudy, with awesome responsibility,” wrote the New Yorker. “She is charged with designing not only men’s and women’s clothing for four apparel brands (Versace, Versace Atelier, Versace Collection, and Versace Jeans Couture) but a host of lucrative ‘life-style products’ (among them perfume, watches, belts, couches, dishes, eyeglasses, shoes, bags, and scarves). For the Versace line alone, Donatella produces twelve collections a year.”

Before Versace’s first fashion show after Gianni’s death, Donatella warned press to lower their expectations, telling them,“I would like to be judged for what I am doing, not compared to him. If you compare me to him, I can only fall short.’”

“The thing that killed me the most was to show this strong façade in front of everybody because I wasn’t strong at all,” Donatella told New York. “I was going home and crying tears.” The designer confessed to The Guardian, “For the first five years [after Gianni’s death] I was lost. I made a lot of mistakes.” One of which was numbing her tremendous pain with drugs.

“When you use cocaine every day, your brain doesn’t work anymore,” Donatella told Vogue in 2005. “I was crying, laughing, crying, sleeping—I couldn’t understand when I was talking; people couldn’t understand me…I was aggressive; my voice was always high. I was scaring [my family] to death; my children were petrified of me.” Her professional decisions were as erratic as her personal ones—and the Versace brand identity wavered. The company posted losses of $7.1 million in 2002.

In 2004—seven years after her brother’s death—Donatella’s good friend Elton John, daughter Allegra, and son Daniel staged an intervention, and persuaded the designer to get treatment for her addiction. After she was sober, Donatella turned around her company by installing a new C.E.O., Giancarlo Di Risio, who returned the brand to profitability, and finally trusting her voice.

“I had been listening to everyone else, and then I realized, who was the person my brother listened to? Me,” Donatella told The Guardian in 2017, looking back on her professional turning point. “I worked with him every day. I was much more than a muse. It was a dialogue between us. We discussed everything.”

She told the same outlet that if she were to give her younger self any advice in those year’s following her brother’s murder, it would be simple: “Be strong, and stay true to yourself…But most of all, follow your own instincts, and don’t try to be Gianni.”

How Donatella Versace Overcame Her Demons and Stepped Out From Her Brother’s Shadow

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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

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“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” with Finn Wittrock

Joanna Robinson and Richard Lawson discuss “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” the fifth episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, and find time to mention representation at the Winter Olympics. This week’s featured interview is stage actor and frequent Ryan Murphy collaborator Finn Wittrock who talks about playing Jeff Trail and tracking his performance over multiple episodes.

iTunes

Versace: Watch Jeff Trail’s Real-Life Interview About Being Gay in the Military

Wednesday night’s episode of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace features two very different coming-out scenes. In one, set in 1995, Gianni Versace openly discusses his sexuality with a reporter from The Advocate, even introducing his longtime boyfriend Antonio D’Amico during the interview. This refreshing, meaningful moment is intercut with a scene during which Jeff Trail—an ensign and a Gulf War veteran who was later murdered by Andrew Cunanan—risks his career to participate in a segment for CBS news magazine 48 Hours called “Gays in the Military.”

Reporter Richard Schlesinger, who interviewed the real Trail in 1993, later recalled that the U.S. Naval Academy graduate “chose to speak to us because he thought it was the right thing to do.”

The segment coincided with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and a change in the policy on gay people serving in the military.

“He did the interview in silhouette but he was still taking a tremendous risk with his career,” said Schlesinger. “He had absolutely nothing to gain by doing the interview. Yet he took the risk and spoke out.”

Trail warned Schlesinger, “You’re going to weaken our national defense if you remove gays from the military. And you’ll never be able to do it 100 percent, it’s just whether or not you’ll continue to hunt us and force us to fear.”

Asked whether he felt comfortable speaking from the literal shadows to protect his identity, Trail said, “There is nothing I would like more than to be lit up [here] and tell you who I am and show you who I am. But I am not allowed to do that… It’s [only] comfortable for me because I know I will be able to continue to serve my country and do my job and do it right. That’s what I care about most.”

To prepare to play Trail on American Crime Story, actor Finn Wittrock told Vanity Fair’s Still Watching podcast that he watched footage from the 48 Hoursspecial on repeat: “That was my bible. I would watch that and listen to that every day.”

Wittrock said that when he first read the scripts for the series in the summer of 2017, he thought that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was such a “dated” concept.

“‘I don’t know if people are going to be able to relate to that,’’’ Wittrock remembered thinking. “Then a week later there was the transgender military Trump ban…Suddenly I thought, ‘Oh wow. How many steps we take forward and how many we take back.’ So suddenly I was examining the whole story in that way. How relevant is this still? Sadly, so much of it is still relevant.”

Wittrock, who is not gay himself, said that he prepared for the role by speaking to gay men who were “in their 40s or 50s and lived through this period when they weren’t [out].” Ultimately though, Wittrock was struck by how much he had in common with Trail: “Besides my sexuality, I could be Jeff Trail. There’s very little, I found, that separates us in that way.”

Versace: Watch Jeff Trail’s Real-Life Interview About Being Gay in the Military

American Crime Story: Versace: How Penelope Cruz Became Donatella

One of the biggest joys of watching a Ryan Murphy series—at least, the ones based on real life—is seeing exactly how it physically transforms stars into the characters they play. On The People vs. O.J. Simpson, impeccably dowdy wigs morphed Sarah Paulson into Marcia Clark. On Feud, perfectly defined brows and a careful swipe of eyeliner turned Jessica Lange into a dead ringer for Joan Crawford. And on The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Penelope Cruz has pulled off one of the most drastic transformations yet, taking on the role of her friend Donatella Versace.

How much hair and make-up did that take—and what, exactly, is going on with her plump upper lip? We spoke with the show’s costume designers and hair and make-up team to find out.

THE CLOTHES

The costume team for Versace consistently worked at breakneck speed due to production constraints, yet their work perfectly captures the Versace era—both the world of high fashion and the grungier elements of the 90s, through the parallel story of Versace murderer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss). This was no small feat, considering the team had no help from the Versace family.

When it came to capturing Donatella’s iconic look, costume designers Lou Eyrichand Allison Leach started with the basics—specifically, that tiny waist.

“I feel that a big part of the silhouette for Donatella was the corset, to get that really structured waist,” Eyrich said. “That tiny-waist look was a big part of it, and then the bodycon… And Penelope has a rocking figure as well, so as far as getting that same silhouette, that was easy. And then once Ana and Massimo added the wig and the makeup, Penelope would just magically transform.”

One of the signature Versace looks the two were most excited—and nervous—to recreate was that notorious bondage dress, which Donatella famously wore to the Met Gala in 1996. Leach said recreating that memorable look was both “very exciting and harrowing.”

“It is such an iconic dress, and it it was scripted that it definitely needed to be that dress to tell the story of her coming into her of her own stardom,” Leach continued, describing a scene the series depicts in episode 7. “Just from a construction standpoint and materials, it was such beautiful leather dress that had to fit perfectly—and all these different angles that the neck and the you know skirt had to swath just, just right.” That dress, Leach said, was one of the most challenging items on the show’s list—but also the most rewarding.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Donatella on Versace is how her appearance changes after her brother’s death. Each department made its own contribution to that effort. For costumes, it meant keeping things somber. Though Leach and her team kept the character’s clothes fitted–and of course designer—they also avoided low-cut necklines, and kept Cruz a little more covered up in scenes set after the murder. “I would think that she would feel, you know, maybe safer in those layers,” Leach explained. “And, you know, there’s always elements of jewelry and stuff, but sometimes we downplayed it a little bit to make it more appropriate for the tone of the scene.”

THE FACE

Perhaps the biggest challenge in turning Cruz into Donatella was morphing her face—an effort spearheaded by Cruz’s make-up artist, Ana Lozano.

Lozano said thatshe and Cruz did a lot of their make-up tests back in Spain, before they even got on the plane to film. Together, they sifted through photos of Donatella’s looks, calibrating smokey eyes and contouring to get just the right balance. And if you’ve been wondering what, exactly, is making Cruz’s upper lip so plump on the series, the answer is more obvious than you’d think: it’s an instrument literally called “Plumper.”

“It’s a kind of dental prosthetic to make her lips bigger,” Lozano said. The effect also gives Cruz a slightly different-looking face. “Penelope has enough lips in reality,” Lozano clarified, but in real life, they are a different shape than those of the woman she plays. Lozano also used contouring to finish the look and further define Cruz’s lips—as well as to lightly massage the rest of her features into a more Donatella-like illusion.

Lozano tried using prosthetics for Cruz’s eyebrows, but in the end, it was simpler and more natural-looking to simply bleach them and give them a thinner shape. Then came the eyes—those smoky, smoky eyes. As Lozano notes, smokey eyes have changed over time; in the 90s, they had a rounder look, rather than the more cat-like approach that’s become popular now.

Like the costume team, Lozano worked to make sure Cruz’s “Donatella” physically changed after her brother’s death. She made her skin a little paler, and made her eye make-up just slightly less perfect—“just to make the impression that she was crying and she was not sleeping.” (Lozano adds that she particularly likes Cruz in slightly destroyed make-up, as it “gives more importance to the look.”) For the scenes set after Gianni’s death, Lozano also contoured Cruz a little more aggressively, making her features just a little sunken.

Cruz, Lozano said, was constantly practicing, working to get her portrayal just right; sometimes, Lozano even recorded the actress so she could review her facial expressions, or the way she gestured. “At the end,” Lozano said, “it’s like you press a button; it’s like, Wow. She is Donatella.”

THAT HAIR

Like Lozano, Cruz’s hair stylist Massimo Gattabrussi started working with Cruz in Madrid before making the final wigs for the series. When Cruz called Gattabrussi about the project, the stylist recalls he “remained silent for a few seconds.” Once his excitement for the challenge took over, he said, “I understood that it would be brilliant.” He used a photo book Donatella produced in 2016—Versace—to become more acquainted with the icon’s past.

Gattabrussi and Cruz tested color, hair quality, and style with about nine prototypes to ensure they got the right balance of characteristics. The stylist has long collaborated with the historical Italian studio Rocchetti-Rome, which allows him to participate in the construction and finalization of the wigs—which, he said, “is very important for me because of my close knowledge of Penelope and its physical and gestural characteristics.” In the end, they narrowed down their choice to three pieces, all of which made it on the series—two with bangs, one golden and the other platinum, and the third without bangs, with longer hair to give the illusion of extensions. As Gattabrussi put it, he’s “always looking in a line between real and fiction.”

How did Gattabrussi help the show’s Donatella express her grief after losing her brother? That’s what the third, bangs-less wig was for. 1997, he said, “was a sad year to represent.” In addition to tailoring the wig to fit the time’s fashion trends—longer, heavier hair without bangs—Gattabrussi said he “paid attention to detail like having increased the regrowth of dark hair to the root.” That, he said, helped the wig offer a more realistic image, and slightly lowered “the flash of platinum” that’s always been associated with Donatella’s powerful and iconic image.

American Crime Story: Versace: How Penelope Cruz Became Donatella

Versace: Why David Madson Didn’t Try to Escape Cunanan

Wednesday’s episode of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace flashes back to the disturbing start of Andrew Cunanan’s multi-city murder spree—when Cunanan killed two friends, Jeff Trail and David Madson, in Minnesota. Because there were no witnesses to the crimes—and everyone involved is dead— there is no way to know exactly what transpired in April 1997 inside Madson’s apartment, where Trail was found murdered, or on the drive approximately 60 miles north to Rush City in May, where Madson was found dead.

“Tom Rob Smith, the writer, had to invent a lot of what had happened based on what we knew from the crime scene and we knew about Andrew and David,” American Crime Story executive producer Brad Simpson explained on Vanity Fair’s Still Watching podcast this week. “We know there was this murder and then we know they were in a car together, and we know that David begged for his life at the end, but we had to fill in what might have happened during that time.”

The puzzling sequence of events has always left one burning question—why didn’t David Madson escape in the days after Trail’s murder? In June 1997, Newsweek plainly stated that “Madson’s role remains hard to figure out. He apparently made no effort to leave.” Even more confounding, “neighbors saw the two men walking Madson’s dog the day after Trail’s murder.”

Vanity Fair contributor Maureen Orth addressed this mystery in her 1997 reportfor this magazine. Gregg McCrary, senior consultant of the Threat Assessment Group and former supervisory special agent of the F.B.I.’s Behavioral Sciences Unit, said that Cunanan’s influence over Madson was “to a degree Stockholm syndrome,” explaining, “these sexually sadistic offenders have that ability to control people—not necessarily physical control. Many times it’s just out of fear.”

“They have a sixth sense of who they can manipulate and control,” McCrary said. “Their interpersonal skills are so strong, and their ability to target these victims, to understand their needs, to meet these needs and fulfill them, are so developed that in return these victims always feel obligated.”

Even before Trail’s murder, Cunanan had given Madson reason to fear him—claiming to have connections to the mob and “bragg[ing] about getting someone killed the day the person left prison, because he had ratted on a friend of Andrew’s.” Cunanan and Madson had met in a San Francisco bar in 1995, when Cunanan spotted the handsome architect and sent him a drink. Orth reported that the relationship escalated over the next year, but cooled off in the fall of 1996 when Madson suspected Cunanan of what Newsweek called “shady dealings.”

When Cunanan flew to Minneapolis, friends of Madson’s said the architect seemedunhappy about picking Cunanan up at the airport. Another friend told People that Cunanan was still besotted with Madson. Madson, on the other hand, “thought Andrew was a little shady, secretive…David didn’t want to be alone with him.” According to Orth, however, Madson was “a peacemaker who avoided confrontation” and “wanted to save people”—personality traits that also help explain why Madson acted the way he did.

“Those six days where David was with Andrew was the most fascinating part of this story to me because, I mean, what do you do as a human essentially being kidnapped after seeing something like that?” Cody Fern, who played Madson, told Still Watching. “How do you get through six days?”

Smith said that one eyewitness offered context about the duo’s relationship in the days after Trail’s murder: “An eyewitness saw the two of them walking together and David had been crying and Andrew was chatting at him really quickly. So that really gave the sense of one person who’s distraught and one person who is trying to cajole them into going on the run together.”

Fern said that, to prepare for the role, he read over 50 postcards and letters that Cunanan sent Madson—illustrating Cunanan’s eery detachment from reality. “Andrew would write to David when he was traveling or pretending to travel. He was in France or he was in Prague. The way he communicated through the letters it was very clear they had a special relationship. Not knowing everything that comes later it was the beginning of a beautiful love story.”

In “House By the Lake,” Smith scripts a scene where Madson actually gets the opportunity to escape. After Cunanan and Madson leave Minneapolis in Madson’s Jeep, they stop at a roadside bar and restaurant to get sustenance. Captor and hostage sit, listening to Aimee Mann perform live, and Madson eventually makes his way to the bathroom—where he finally gets a moment alone.

“The key image for me in the entire piece is when David Madson almost escapes,” said Smith. “He’s in the restroom of a bar and he looks out the window at the world and he sees the world passing him by. You’d think when you’ve been kidnapped by a killer that freedom is going to be a thing that’s incredibly exciting—you’re desperate to get to.”

But to Madson, the greatest tragedy of these final hours was that, as a gay man in the 1990s, the outside world does not offer a much better alternative. Smith explains:

“He looks out the window and thinks, ‘What am I escaping to? Disgrace? Hatred? There is no freedom.’ The world that is beyond this window that in every other thriller he would have climbed out of and run screaming for help—there is no help. The people coming to arrest Andrew Cunanan would also arrest him because there’s no way they would believe he had nothing to do with Jeffrey Trail’s death. ‘They’ll hate me like they hate him because they hated me before.’”

Months later, Jean Rosen, the owner of the Full Moon Bar & Restaurant where the real Cunanan and Madson ate lunch the afternoon of May 2, remembered seeing the men.

“Madson seemed jumpy. He looked over his shoulder every time the front door opened,” reported the L.A. Times. “But whatever he feared, it didn’t seem to be his companion.”

Versace: Why David Madson Didn’t Try to Escape Cunanan

https://ia601503.us.archive.org/33/items/PPY5589729880/PPY5589729880.mp3?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio
https://acsversace-news.tumblr.com/post/170636907024/audio_player_iframe/acsversace-news/tumblr_p3teyprQ1s1wcyxsb?audio_file=https%3A%2F%2Fia601503.us.archive.org%2F33%2Fitems%2FPPY5589729880%2FPPY5589729880.mp3

“House by the Lake” with Tom Rob Smith and Cody Fern

Joanna Robinson and Richard Lawson discuss the fourth episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, which focuses on a very personal murder. This week’s featured interviews are episode writer Tom Rob Smith and Australian stage and screen actor Cody Fern who portrays David Madson on the series. | 7 February 2018

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