FX’s “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” was a long and grueling shoot that stretched from May to January, hopscotched the country from Miami to Minnesota to Chicago to San Francisco, and was lensed virtually all on location. The houseboat where Versace killer Andrew Cunanan was trapped as he met his end was rebuilt from scratch on Miami’s Collins Avenue by the production team, based on crime scene photographs and other footage from the era of the 1997 slaying of the famed fashion designer.
But all of the time, energy and money devoted to “Versace” paid off for uber-executive producer Ryan Murphy, once he saw how star Darren Criss, writer/exec producer Tom Rob Smith, and director/exec producer Dan Minahan pulled off the final hour of the nine-episode series.
“It was that moment when you’re shooting the series that you’re waiting for. We knew the stuff Darren was going to have to do would be very, very emotional and upsetting, when he was finally caged and trapped,” Murphy told Variety. “It was hard for him. Darren had nobody to react to other than himself for most of the episode. He really arced the character so well and stripped it down to the bare essence at the end. It was very emotional and difficult material. Darren gave the performance of the year.”
Murphy said he’s gratified to see Criss receive generally strong reviews for the extremely demanding role that he hopes will open more more doors for the former “Glee” player.
“When you get stereotyped as a writer or an actor it’s hard to break out of that lane and show people you’re capable of so much more,” said Murphy. “I’m excited for him about what opens up for him.”
Murphy also hailed Minahan and Smith for taking the extra step of intense rehearsals for the climactic scenes of Cunanan alone as a squatter in a houseboat as the FBI’s manhunt closed in on him. “Versace’s” narrative unfolded as a backward chronology from the moment of Cunanan’s July 1997 murder of Versace on the steps of his Miami mansion. Smith immersed himself in research to write all episodes of the series in that challenging format — an accomplishment that drew a thumbs up via Twitter earlier this week from none other than Stephen King.
The final hour of the series, “Alone,” depicted the moment of reckoning for the deranged protagonist as well as some closure for other characters, including Donatella Versace (Penelope Cruz), Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light), Cunanan’s hustler friend Donnie (Max Greenfield), and Versace’s lover Antonio (Ricky Martin). Murphy said those sequences were designed as “arias” to give the supporting characters a final bow in the spotlight.
“Max Greenfield came back with this thesis statement about homophobia, Judith Light gave us this insane operatic monologue,” Murphy said. “We spent time with the victims, the people who lost things because of Cunanan’s murders.”
“Versace” did not land with the same pop culture punch as the inaugural “American Crime Story” series, 2016’s “The People V. O.J. Simpson.” To date the series has averaged about 3 million total viewers in Nielsen’s live-plus-7 ratings, compared to about 7.7 million for “People V. O.J. Simpson.”
Murphy said he knew that the “Versace” would draw a more modest crowd given the subject matter and the fact that the Simpson saga was so much more well known by the general public. But the larger message of “Versace’s” effort to demonstrate the homophobia and discrimination that hampered the police investigation of Cunanan’s killings has touched a nerve, based on the reactions Murphy has received.
“I can always tell if something is working or landing by how many people stop me on the street to tell me they’re binge-watching it and loving it,” he said. “I’m so proud about the message of the show. It meant a lot to people.”
The conclusion of “Versace” comes on the same night that another new Murphy production wraps its freshman year. Fox’s “9-1-1,” a fast-paced procedural about first-responders and dispatchers, couldn’t be more different than “Versace.” Murphy admits he was reluctant to do a traditional network TV procedural, but prodding from Fox Television Group chairman Dana Walden made Murphy’s team pull together a strong cast — anchored by Angela Bassett, Connie Britton, and Peter Krause — and deliver “9-1-1” for debut sooner than they expected in January.
“Dana was really adamant in saying ‘You have another procedural in you’ and that Jan. 3 was the time to premiere it,” Murphy said. “And she was right. Dana is the reason why this has all worked.”
“9-1-1” has inched up steadily in viewership, winning its Wednesday 9 p.m. time slot for most of its run with an average of 10 million viewers. Murphy said there’s already discussions of potential spinoffs — every major city has a first-responder hub, after all — but nothing formally set in stone. In the near term, the focus is on expanding the show in season two with “more people in the call center and more stars,” he said.
With “9-1-1,” Murphy has launched a hit for Fox in his waning months as a producer on the lot before he segues to a mammoth Netflix overall deal on July 1. Murphy hasn’t had time to hatch any brand-new ideas for his new network home — he’ll have his hands full during the next year delivering the four new shows — two for Netflix — that he already has in the pipeline in his soon-to-expire 20th Century Fox TV deal.
At present Murphy is in New York shooting the 1980s-set drama “Pose” for FX. In July he’s slated to begin work on the political satire “The Politician” and the eighth season of FX’s “American Horror Story.” When those shows wind down in January, he’ll reunite with Sarah Paulson on Netflix’s “Ratched,” the origin story of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’s” Nurse Ratched.
So while he won’t be actively developing new projects for at least a few months, Murphy won’t exactly be idle.
“There’s going to be a lot of extensive legwork and a lot of traveling for these shows. They all shoot in different cities,” Murphy said. “For the first time in a long time, I can tell you I feel pretty content. For now, I’m good.”
Unlike many actors who decide to add directing to their resumes, Matt Bomer did not start with an episode of a television show on which he was already starring.
“I had the opportunity to direct in the past — projects I had been working as an actor in. But I really wanted my first [one] to be the real thing where I was doing all of the prep, doing all of the location scouting, doing all of the casting — having the full experience, not just trying to fit it in,” Bomer tells Variety.
Instead, his first foray behind-the-scenes was with “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.” And not just any episode but the penultimate one (entitled “Creator/Destroyer”), in which the show finally goes far back enough in the timeline to see both Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) and Andrew Cunanan’s (Darren Criss) childhoods to show how similar they were at the start of their lives — but how, when, and why their paths so greatly diverged.
“I had forgotten, really, just how difficult it was to be gay in the ’90s,” Bomer says. “That’s something this series does a great job exploring. Someone who’s at the height of success with Gianni and the courage it took at that time to come out — that was incredibly brave and incredibly forward-thinking. And then Andrew, who’s at the bottom of the heap, and wants fame and success and fortune but wasn’t going to get it living in a day and age as who he was.”
Ahead of his directorial debut, Bomer talks with Variety about developing his process, the unique challenges with which this “origin story” episode came, and what scene he was most sad to leave on the cutting room floor.
What made “Versace” the right first project for you to direct?
I had worked with Ryan [Murphy] many times in the past, and he knew I was very fastidious about my preparation and research and would often come in with reams and binders of homework. He mentioned to me that I should direct, and I was grateful that he said it, but I didn’t really think much of it. But then I got a call in December, and he said, “So I want you to direct.” He knew I needed a way to engage with my creativity, and like the generous soul that he has been to so many in the past, he offered me a job on “Versace” and I said yes.
How did you get attached to the eighth episode, specifically?
Ryan knew what was going to be the best opportunity for me. There was a time when it was almost [episode 7] but then it became this one, and I just rolled with it. I was there on set, shadowing other directors, and I knew when my time comes Ryan would choose the right one for me to do.
What were the most important aspects of your prep work?
I read books, I worked with the DGA, I had friends in film and TV give me advice and walk me through some things. I shadowed two of the great directors on “Versace.” I saw the level of talent there, and I wanted to be of that level when I stepped up to the plate.
How did you balance setting a visual tone and working with the actors on performances?
It was a lot about performance. We had some fancy shots in the show, for sure, but it didn’t require a ton of that. It wasn’t a shooter episode. It was for somebody to be there in the trenches with the actors, hashing these relationships out. And that was what I was most excited to do.
The story thus far has focused more on Andrew than Gianni. Was it a challenge to find new layers to peel back this far into the season?
The real challenge of this episode is can we get a more holistic vision of who Andrew is and what he endured as a kid and why he became what he became — so that when we are with him in those moments in Miami, post-everything, can we get a more three-dimensional idea of who he is? This episode also had a huge challenge of, how do we have sympathy for a monster? You really boil it down to the central question of the episode, and that is what makes one person a creator and one person a killer? The answer is hard work. One person believed the world owed him success, that he was special, that he was the chosen one, that fame and fortune should just come to him. The other had a mother who taught him that he had to work hard for it, that fashion is a craft. So you have this central theme of ambition, but Andrew’s ambition and Gianni’s ambition had different results. The shots you choose and the frame that you choose and the setting you choose, they all have to relate to that theme.
I think we all have to be held accountable for the choices we make. We’re all dealt specific circumstances in our life. Some people could be dealt a circumstance and grow up to be fine, functioning adults. For Andrew it didn’t work out that way. He was somebody who was lured to a great deal of violence at a very young age. He was espoused by both of his parents, he was given the master bedroom, he was taught that it isn’t enough to be smart but you also can’t let them see you’re an outsider for even a minute — that’s what [his father] Modesto says to him. And he’s caught up in something bigger than himself, ultimately, with his father that he doesn’t have the freedom to react or to respond to. And we see his father’s influence on him over the course of the episode. What I wanted to create with that last scene — their confrontation, that sort of “Heart of Darkness” scene with all of the sweat and the shadows and the heat — I wanted that to give you the sense that if Andrew could’ve just killed his dad, he wouldn’t have killed anybody else. That was a big part of the dynamic I was trying to create in the story.
What was the biggest thing you learned about directing by working on “Versace”?
I think I learned my process — or at least the beginnings of my process, which is a huge thing. Now I know I can do it. The first cut was 90 minutes, which we shot in 12 days, which is a lot — a lot! We had to cut it down to 60 minutes. But I think a huge part of it is just getting it done that first time, and I’m so lucky that I was able to rely on the DGA, to rely on professionals in the industry who were generous enough to say, “Here’s how to do it.” I read all of these books, and I kind of created my own way to approach a scene. A lot of it is the script you’re given, and you have to develop a technique, and this was a safe environment in which to do [that] because I had worked with so many of these people before, and I knew the talent they had.
With a 90-minute director’s cut of the episode, was there anything you wish you could have left in?
There was a scene with older Gianni and his mother, and it was really beautiful, but it kind of came in toward the end after we hadn’t seen him for two or three acts. All of a sudden he was there, and it sort of took us out of the story we were so invested in with Andrew getting to Manila and getting to his father. And at a certain point you have to whittle down to what serves the theme the most.
Twice in the last month, the 1982 Laura Branigan hit “Gloria” has been used as a key plot device: to soundtrack the maniacal trance of a person about to commit a major act of violence. In “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” Darren Criss, who plays serial killer Andrew Cunanan, sings along to the tune at top-volume while driving to his next crime scene in Miami. And in “I Tonya,” Sebastian Stan, in the role of Tonya Harding’s ex-husband Jeff Gillooly, listens to the song intently as he ponders how to handicap competing figure skater Nancy Kerrigan. Coincidence that both the Ryan Murphy series on FX and the Craig Gillespie-directed film feature men in their cars finding meaning in the post-disco pop song?
“I had no idea ‘Gloria’ was going to be in ‘I Tonya,‘” says “Versace” music supervisor Amanda Krieg Thomas. “I watched the movie as a complete bystander. It was very funny to see that.” (Jen Moss and Susan Jacobs handled music supervision for “I Tonya.”) But Thomas has since heard from others who took notice of the duplicate cue. Indeed it would be hard not to as both scenes illuminate the psychotic turn that the two men make. “It’s totally sugary 80s pop and that’s among the reasons why it works,” she adds. “But there are so many more levels to it, and why people have really responded to it.”
One of those reasons is that the song’s familiar synth-led Euro-dance melody both contrasts and accentuates the moment. “The recognition [factor] is part of why you want to use it — it’s not something that’s going to be buried in the background,” says Thomas, who notes that Murphy, “has an eye and an ear for what he wants … and we’re all in service to it. The recognizability of a song can be the creative brushstroke. And that’s something Ryan is great at.”
“Gloria” was, in fact, a quantifiable hit at the time of its release in 1982, eventually peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. It would end up spending 36 weeks on the chart. Curiously, the track was actually a cover of an Italian pop hit with new lyrics added in English. “That song was much bigger in the Italian language than it it was in English,” “Gloria” co-producer Greg Mathieson tells Variety. Originally asked to give the song a new arrangement, Mathieson decided to stay faithful to the original. “The engineer asked me, “Why are you doing this exactly the same?’ And I said, ‘It was a hit, I’m not going to mess with it!’”
Mathieson, whose credits include Donna Summer’s “Enough Is Enough” and Toni Basil’s “Mickey” (the latter a No. 1 song in Nov. 1982, the same week “Gloria” hit No. 2, a rare feat for a producer in an era long before Max Martin), has also gotten word of “Gloria” synchs. Asked why the song serves so well as an accompaniment to insanity, the now-retired producer posits: “I think they used it because of the juxtaposition of evil intent and the feeling that the song gives you, which is to get up and dance and have a good time. They’re trying to set up this dichotomy of pumping yourself up.”
Thomas concurs that Branigan’s “Gloria” provides “a great contrast when it’s surrounded by darkness” but there’s also the lyrical content about a person, like Cunanan, who is hiding in plain sight. “‘Gloria, You’re always on the run now.’ … Andrew is literally on the run,” she says. “Ryan wanted to think about music as what would Andrew’s taste be? What would he be listening to? What is his soundtrack? And this completely fits into that world [of] the young kid growing up in the 80s who was homosexual and going out to clubs.”
It’s worth noting that both “I Tonya” and “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” are based on true stories that took place in the ’90s, a good decade after “Gloria” stormed the charts with a priority push by then Atlantic Records head Doug Morris. “Gloria” the synch had also been somewhat dormant for a time, but in 2013, the Italian version popped up in “The Wolf of Wall Street” and the Branigan recording has since been placed in such shows as “The Last Man on Earth,” “Scorpion” and “South Park,” all in 2017.
There’s a reason for that, says Atlas Music Publishing CEO Richard Stumpf. “The spike is entirely due to Atlas taking over the Sugar Music catalog in 2016,” he explains, referencing the song’s Italian publisher. “We have doubled the annual sync. Kristen Bushnell Perez, our head of sync, and her team do an incredible job of promoting our songs.” (Warner Music Group owns the master of the Branigan version of “Gloria” while publishing for the song’s writers — Giancarlo Bigazzi, Umberto Tozzi and Trevor Veitch — is with Atlas.) “We selectively populate our musical pallet so that we have the top songs, from top eras available to pitch,” Stumpf adds. “By doing this, each song has a better shot at increased value. It also allows us to be lightening fast with license clearance. These are big factors in raising sync levels for catalogs.”
Stumpf estimates that a song like “Gloria” can earn “millions” over the life span of its second act. “All evergreens, if managed properly, should be able to produce a high level of steady revenue,” he says. “But even the greatest garden, if not watered, will wither. Same with music. If songs are stuck at bloated publishers who can’t focus, they lose value. Our favorite thing to do is pick up catalogs from super-sized publishers and add value. A song like ‘Gloria’ can pull in six figures for film use and high six to seven figures for commercials. And that’s just the publishing side!”
Why does “Gloria” rise above the rest for major cues? The publishing executive also points to the song’s “sonic intensity” along with the imagery in the lyrics. “This is where music supervisors do a great job.”
Having dispatched the O.J. Simpson saga, Ryan Murphy’s “American Crime Story” anthology series now turns its second-season attention to a controversial fashion titan with “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” which debuted Jan. 17 on FX.
While working on this installment of the series, costume designers Lou Eyrich and Allison Leach developed a deeper appreciation of the late designer’s artistry as they researched his garments and accessories at the FIDM Museum & Galleries in downtown Los Angeles — home to the Versace Menswear Archive.
“We were able to look at actual garments you couldn’t touch without white gloves,” says Leach. “We were able to see the seam work and the detail and …re-create the garments with integrity.”
The costume designers didn’t have to remake every piece worn by Édgar Ramírez, who plays Gianni Versace, and Penélope Cruz, who was cast as his sister, Donatella. They sourced vintage Versace from vendors at L.A. clothing marketplace A Current Affair as well as L.A.’s The Way We Wore and Miami’s C Madeleine’s. They also shopped online, scoring finds on eBay and Etsy.
But they refashioned an impressive amount of clothing, including nearly 20 looks for a Versace fashion show seen early in the series as well as signature garments worn by Donatella, not least her famous bondage dress, and a studded leather shirt Gianni wears to a nightclub. And they did this while working with just one full-time tailor — Joanne Mills — assigned to the project. (“You give her a hint of what you want, show her some pictures and she’s instantly got it draped on a form,” praises Eyrich. The costume designers also relied on the skill of leather expert and tailor Jonathan A. Logan, who made several pieces for the series, including the aforementioned leather shirt.
In the pilot, Eyrich and Leach use fashion to play up the stark contrast between Gianni’s opulent and happy world and the seedy existence of hustler Andrew Cunanan, played by Darren Criss, the serial killer who murdered the fashion designer in 1997. Ramírez as Gianni wears a chic wardrobe full of gorgeous silk pajamas and robes, printed shirts and studded belts from his own line. Criss as Cunanan sports a mix of ’90s aspirational preppy items, often stolen, and unremarkable everyday wear.
“Part of our goal was to create that distinction so that you could see Andrew lusting after everything Versace had,” Leach says.
The actors were all devoted to wearing the looks correctly, Eyrich explains. “It was very important for them to respect and celebrate Gianni and Donatella, which was our intention as well.”
(0:00-22:27) Darren Criss discusses transitioning from “Glee” into the role of serial killer Andrew Cunanan on “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace. | Source
Welcome to “Remote Controlled,” a podcast from Variety featuring the best and brightest in television, both in front of and behind the camera.
In this week’s episode, Variety’s executive editor of TV Debra Birnbaum talks with Darren Criss, who stars in the new installment of FX’s “American Crime Story” franchise, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace.”
Criss says that he’d been discussing playing serial killer Andrew Cunanan with series creator Ryan Murphy for several years. “My reaction was, I’d be thrilled to do this,” he says. “I thought it was something he forgot about and was just spitballing. But he stuck to his word, and I’m so glad he finally decided to do this.”
But he knew the part would always be his, he admits. “I almost defy you, Ryan, to find someone else in your camp who somehow looks like this guy, is actually half-Filipino, is in the same age range,” he says. “Good luck!”
Criss wasn’t intimidated, though, by the thought of playing a serial killer. “People always think that’s some sort of departure, and while I understand that curiosity, I can’t help but feel that same curiosity would be present if I had started with something like this, and this is what you knew me for,” he says. “People forget that actors are actors, and we depart for a living.”
And he says he found ways to relate to Cunanan, and hopes other people will, too. “We all have more in common not only with each other, but the worst person you can think of than we like to admit,” he says. “The differences are small in number but huge in content.”
Criss did his own research and talked to people who knew him. “The show explores the best parts of him and the worst parts of him,” he says. “It’s really a healthy mix of a lot of unhealthy things.”
The more he learned, the more he sympathized with Cunanan. “My heart just broke constantly for this guy,” he said. “The wasted potential is the most heartbreaking tragedy of all of it.”
Ryan Murphy is poised to give audiences another jolt of innovative storytelling starting Wednesday with the premiere of FX’s “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.”
The producer took time out from “Versace’s” Jan. 8 premiere party at the Hollywood Palladium to speak with Variety about the development of the series and the revelatory performance by series star Darren Criss as killer Andrew Cunanan.
How did you come up with the idea of having the story unfold in a backward-chronological fashion?
The idea of telling the story backwards was [FX CEO John] Landgraf’s. We had written the first two (episodes) and then you go in and talk to John and say, “OK, here’s the story.” We just started talking about the “onion peel” of shame — because really it’s all about shame — and we just started talking narratively about that. The more we talked about it in the room, the more we liked it. We knew that we were following ‘The People V. O.J. Simpson” which is a really difficult thing to do so we have to do everything we can to make it special.
What did that require of you on the production end?
It’s a very hard thing to construct because you have to be uber-prepared. The actors have to be very informed. I liked to work by giving (actors) concentrated information but not giving them much more than that. It was hardest on (writer) Tom Rob Smith and the actors. But it was the question of how do we keep being ambitious, how do we keep challenging ourselves? When you go backward in someone’s trajectory it’s more surprising for the audience and I think the experience is deeper. We tried to make it so that if you watched the show backwards it would be an interesting and oddly symbiotic thing. It’s a narrative device that takes a lot of extra planning, but when it works it’s great.
Darren Criss has drawn mostly rave reviews for his performance, which is very against type for the former “Glee” trouper. What was it that gave you confidence he could handle this role?
It was important to me that we were true to Cunanan’s ethnicity (Filipino and Italian). I had only directed him once (on “Glee”) but we stayed friends. I remember thinking he was a really good dramatic actor. He did something weird once in a “Glee” scene. I told him please don’t lose that excitement, and he never did. He always checked in and checked in with me. I called him when we were ready to greenlight (“Versace”). I wanted Cunanan like Darren to be a discovery for the audience. The interesting thing about Cunanan is you don’t know what he’s capable of and to have the actor in it be on the same powerful journey and I think it is.
Did he have any pause about taking on the role of a spree murderer?
(Darren) really went for it. He studied it, he pushed himself hard. His performance got quieter and more concentrated and studious and I like that. It was powerful to watch. I was not interested in just doing a serial killer story but to track the idea of how does someone become a monster?
How do you think the audience will react?
Darren is reminding me a lot of Sarah Paulson’s trajectory. It was powerful to watch somebody step into adulthood in a way. It’s very rewarding.
With “Versace” you are continuing your commitment to hiring women for at least half of the directing assignments on your show. Your Half Foundation has also been proactive in opening doors for female directors. These initiatives could not be more timely as the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements take root.
Everybody’s talking about it. it’s important. I changed the dynamic of my company. The most important thing is that the culture has changed to be more about ideas and the exchange of ideas than ego. It’s interesting when women direct. The work is better. They ask more people to participate. I’ve been doing this a year and a half. It’s been a really good change in my life. That foundation may be the most important thing I’ve ever done in my career. I’m delighted to just keep going.
Quite fittingly, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” begins with a sequence that feels timeless. The opening scenes of the first episode, “The Man Who Would Be Vogue,” are nearly devoid of dialogue, scored instead with a lush, operatic adagio that is reminiscent of an opulent, bygone age. The characters are introduced in ways that feel particularly timeless too: Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramírez), lord of his domain, wakes up in his sumptuous Miami Beach mansion — an Italian, baroque confection of luxury, staffed by dozens of uniformed servants and tanned, handsome men. Versace is the type of guy who takes his morning OJ on a silver tray, before reclining by the pool for a pre-lunch constitutional. His life is an incarnation of Italianate decadence, in a way that transcends his own time — the ’90s — to borrow, effortlessly, from luxury of yore.
Outside his haven, though, another story is unfolding. Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), a skinny, bespectacled kid with a nervous, wiry energy, is pacing on the beach, opening up his backpack to look at the weapon nestled inside. He wades into the ocean and screams into the waves — his struggle pitched at a level of drama that only strings in a minor key can deliver. In between the elements of sand and sea he is reduced to his most essential state: a man on the edge of the world. And then the inevitable happens, in a scene that is shot by director Ryan Murphy like a fateful collision: Cunanan shoots Versace right outside the gates of the mansion.
The piece is the Adagio in G Minor, as arranged by show composer Mac Quayle. That the work is a well-known piece of musical chicanery seems especially fitting — a work passed off as an early-18th-century fragment that mimics baroque composition but was instead written in the middle of the 20th. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” tells the story of homophobia in the late ’90s through a modern-day lens, but like so much of creator Murphy’s work, it is also interested in erasing the boundaries between the present and the past, often by heightening the drama of both.
From the moment of Versace’s murder, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” spools not forward but backward. In a brilliant device imperfectly rendered, every new episode of the show happens chronologically before the previous, in a “Memento”-style telling that is chasing some essential truth about its shapeshifting, mysterious killer. And for a show that has Gianni Versace’s name in the title, Ramírez’s (excellent) performance takes up much less real estate than the story of Andrew Cunanan — pathological liar, spree killer and terrifyingly effective con man, who killed himself before ever fully explaining his motives to the police. The FX series is based on Maureen Orth’s book “Vulgar Favors” — which emphasizes not just Cunanan’s path to the steps of Versace’s mansion but also how his manhunt was botched by the authorities, partly because of the simple fact that Cunanan was gay. But despite the law-and-order mechanics of the first season of “American Crime Story,” “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” opts for a story that emphasizes a titanic struggle of gay identity, ranging between the creative warmth of Versace, the corrosive shame of Cunanan’s earlier closeted victims and Cunanan’s own desperate striving. This isn’t a narrative about the mechanics of a trial, or even much about Versace himself, despite “American Crime Story’s” successful pedigree and this season’s subtitle. Rather, it takes the absence of details about Cunanan’s motivations and interprets a character from Orth’s framework.
The bulk of interpreting that character falls to writer Tom Rob Smith and actor Darren Criss, with mixed results. It’s hard to fault Criss for what is the most committed and impressive performance of his career, or Smith for assembling the facts about Cunanan into a narrative about the particular anxieties of gay identity in the ’90s. (Criss is practically born for this role: The actor, like Cunanan, is half Filipino.) It’s more that a murderer — particularly a murderer devoid of suspense, because we see him kill his most famous victim in the first scene — is a hard subject to extract eight hours of material from. That a creepy man will continue to be creepy — or that a scary man will continue to be scary — has a chilling effect for an audience investing in story. By the second time that Cunanan kills — which is, chronologically, the fourth time he kills — his presence in the home of Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell) has the heightened-strings suspense of a horror flick, complete with some of that genre’s fear-inducing editing. Criss may be doing the very best job he is capable of, but it’s hard to take the narrative of a budding murderer as anything more than suspense played for shock value when his sudden presence in a doorway, accompanied by sliding chords, has all the nuance of a jump scare.
More saliently, the heavy-handedness slows down the story — or belies the fact that compared to “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” has much less story to tell. Where “The People v. O.J. Simpson” was a dense, fast-paced story unpacking several characters, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is fully Cunanan’s character drama, with meaningful but limited forays into the lives of his victims. And though this second installment is pursuing different goals, the difference between the two seasons is stark. Even their relationship to the truth is different: In the first, meticulous reporting still left the interpretation of the evidence to the audience, as the consumption of the murder trial became entertainment. In the second, the crime’s nature and perpetrator are known almost immediately, and though space is given to the investigation and the sensationalism around Versace’s death, it’s all secondary to the story’s interest in Cunanan’s development. Even the Versace family — including an impeccable Penélope Cruz as Donatella Versace and a strong performance from singer Ricky Martin as Versace’s boyfriend Antonio D’Amico — are sidelined to follow Cunanan’s journey. It’s difficult to swallow the bait-and-switch of the premise, if you’re not ready for it. Ramírez, Cruz and Martin are so compelling together that when the narrative veers steadily away from them — and their lush, high-fashion lives — it’s hard not to feel disappointed.
That being said, the inverted narrative presents a fascinating opportunity to examine Cunanan’s life as one that progresses into the closet, instead of emerging from it — and at its sharpest moments, the show is able to demonstrate how the spectrum of Criss, like other muses of creator Murphy, is coaxed to a career-defining performance in this role: Slippery, fabulating and mercurial, he’s a ’90s-era “Talented Mr. Ripley.” As we move backward through his life, we discover where his stories came from and how he built his worldview of resentment and entitlement. By the end of the season, our journey accelerates; we meet his broken mother, Mary Ann (Joanna Adler), and his unstable father, Modesto (Jon Jon Briones), which goes a long way toward explaining what Cunanan became. It’s worth noting that practically every performer in “American Crime Story” is stunning — whether that is Briones, Cruz, Judith Light (who plays Miglin’s widow, Marilyn) or Max Greenfield (who plays a Miami addict named Ronnie). Victims David Madson (Cody Fern) and Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock) have some of the most tragic material to work with, and both in very different ways express a deeply rooted ambivalence toward their own homosexuality.
In the show’s interpretation, Cunanan and Versace are each other’s doppelgängers; the eighth (and penultimate) episode, “Creator/Destroyer,” presents the show’s implications in the title. In the duality between the two characters, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” finds an externalization of the struggle of the gay identity: fabulous creation versus destructive shame. But the exploration of themes is hampered a bit by how little time Cunanan and Versace ever spend in the same space; one of their few scenes together in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” takes place during a heroin dream. And because of the need to relate information comprehensively, several scenes in this season are not, actually, in reverse chronological order — which is a little unmooring, if you’re not paying close attention, and unravels some of the significance of the structure.
On the whole, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is not quite one for the history books like the first season of “American Crime Story” — if only because, perplexingly, all of its Italian characters are played by Latinx actors. The second installment of this anthology series hopes to do for homophobia what the first season did for racism — a lofty goal that is left unrealized, in the eight episodes sent to critics. But with an array of fantastic performances and an eye to exploring the complexity of contemporary queerness, “American Crime Story” has produced another interesting history play to chew on — one with a lingering, intriguing aftertaste.
ACS news 