Tag: winter tca18

Ricky Martin and Edgar Ramirez on Challenging Homophobia With ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

According to Edgar Ramirez and Ricky Martin, the fact that they’re playing partners Gianni Versace and Antonio D’Amico in the FX limited series “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” was “destiny.”

At the Television Critics Association Winter press tour, the pair told IndieWire that before “American Crime Story” executive producer Ryan Murphy invited Ramirez to star as the titular designer, the two were already acquainted. In fact, the day that Ramirez got the role officially, he and Martin had plans to do a gallery tour together in Los Angeles. “I entered the first gallery and said ‘Ricky, I’m sorry I’m late, I was just finalizing this call, I’m doing Gianni Versace.’ He was the first person I told,” he said.

“I was very happy for him,” Martin added. “Weeks later, Ryan called me and he tells me ‘I want to talk to you,’ he said. ‘Let’s have dinner.’ So I hang up the phone and I call Edgar, ‘Guess who I’m having dinner with tonight?‘”

Ramirez jumped in: “And I immediately said ‘Ryan Murphy, right? You’re going to be Antonio.’”

“He said it immediately,” Martin confirmed.

Ramirez continued: “You see all these elements of fate, of destiny?”

Martin wasn’t actively looking for a part like that of Versace’s longtime lover — or any part, really. “I was completely caught by surprise,” he said. “I had no idea. I was just moving to LA, of course always in my mind I was like, ‘If I’m going to do some acting, I would love to be surrounded by the right cast and great directors and great producers’ — and I gotta be careful with what I wish for, because everything happened. Yes, I’ve had the opportunity to do television series in the past in America and theater. But this is very significant and very important.”

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” tracks (backward) the events leading up to the murder of the famous designer by the unbalanced Andrew Cunanan (played by Darren Criss). The reverse approach reflects a unique elegance and growing horror that’s quite different from the previous installment of “American Crime Story,” the Emmy-winning “The People vs. O.J. Simpson,” reflecting the change in writers. While “The People v. O.J. Simpson” was overseen by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, “Versace’s” scripts were driven by British writer Tom Rob Smith, whose 2015 BBC miniseries “London Spy” was a critical favorite.

Ramirez noted that Smith’s approach to “Versace,” ultimately, “really resonates with the Greek tragedies. So it really feels like you’re reading and watching a big Greek tragedy.”

Beginning the film with the death scene was an intense choice for Ramirez and Martin — especially given that they shot it right where it happened, on the front steps of Gianni Versace’s Miami home.

“My favorite days were shooting in the villa in Miami — there were very significant scenes of course, when I find his body and when the FBI is drilling Antonio to take information from him,” Martin said. “It was very powerful, very intense, draining. And I would go back to a hotel every night…Coming back to L.A. and being able to get in your car and go to the set was easier.”

“It was easier,” Ramirez agreed, “but it was great that we were lucky enough to start off in Miami so we could bring all their energy and all that mood with us to Los Angeles. It was great for everyone, not only the cast but everyone, to experience that and feel the colors and textures of the house, because that house represents everything that Gianni wanted in his life. That house was somehow the apotheosis of what he wanted his legacy to be. It’s a physical manifestation of what he had in his brain.”

The full scope of Versace’s brain is something that, having reached the midpoint of the season, we’ve now come to understand far better than before. After five episodes, we’ve witnessed not just Versace’s death, but more and more of his life. For viewers who weren’t familiar with Versace, it’s a fascinating exposure to his personal journey. Meanwhile, for those who did know the name, it’s a fascinating challenge to their understanding of who he was as a persona.

In Ramirez’s words, “The thing is, life and work for Gianni was the same. In terms of the relationship Gianni and Antonio had, they were love partners but they were also work partners…They were workaholics.”

This goes against the perceptions many associate with the House of Versace. “What comes to your mind first, also part of the legend and also part of the misrepresentation, is the parties and the sexuality and the alleged orgies and all these things that are part of the legend, and not the work,” Ramirez said. “[He was] a guy that would actually go to bed rather early and wake up very early as well, because he was more of a craftsman than this big celebrity that lived this larger-than-life existence.”

And that aspect, plus the way in which “Versace” delves into showcasing his abilities as a designer, only heightens the tragedy of the story — a great talent whose life was ended, in part, due to the fact the authorities didn’t take the manhunt for Andrew Cunanan seriously.

Said Martin, “One of the reasons I definitely said yes is because behind the story, there’s so much injustice in so many aspects. for example the fact that it’s not how he was killed, it’s why he was killed and why did we allow it happen. This guy was not hiding, he went on a killing spree, he was living in Miami Beach. He was on the list of the most wanted by the FBI, but he wasn’t caught. So they were looking the other way. They were looking the other way because it was a gay man killing gay people.”

“It didn’t represent a public threat at the time,” Ramirez said.

“So what I’m saying about this is,” Martin continued, “it’s important to bring some light to anything my community is going through.”

“I think [homophobia] is the underlying theme of the whole series, of the whole show,” Ramirez said. “Homophobia and how this death could’ve been prevented…I think that Ryan and his team, we’re so lucky to be part of them now. They’ve been so clever and keen to identify stories that are both dramatically gripping and at the same time they speak about the zeitgeist. They speak about greater subjects of humanity that are going on in society.”

Ricky Martin and Edgar Ramirez on Challenging Homophobia With ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

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Punch Drunk TV

In Episode 83, we’re talking the delightful aroma of American Crime Story star Darren Criss and the awful scent of bad dates. 

*Story of meeting Darren Criss at the Winter TCA

American Crime Story Takes Donatella Versace From Caricature to Character

The Versace brand, which represents the Versace family, has said it disapproves of FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. “Lurid”, the family called it in one of two statements, “distorted” and “bogus.” This is not because they hated the silks, or because Donatella’s Jack Russell terrier Audrey found the color palettes unsuitable for her Instagram. No one from the uber-private Versace family has said this explicitly, but accusations that Ryan Murphy’s crime story is “reprehensible” are likely because the series reflects the reporting in Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U. S. History. The book, which is the basis for the series, asserts that Versace routinely had sex with escorts (with and without his partner Antonio (played by Ricky Martin) and that he was HIV positive when Andrew Cunanan murdered him in 1997. Although today, twenty years after the designer’s death, stigmas and taboos around HIV and even sex work have loosened, the family’s denials are understandable.

Gianni, Donatella and their brother Santo were a tight-knit unit that meticulously curated an image of luxurious, carefree glamour. They grew up in Southern Italy, with old-world Catholic values practically running through their veins. Although Orth’s book, which FX’s Versace uses as gospel, is exhaustively researched (and presumably lawsuit-proof), the Versaces contend that it’s gossip and lies. And while Donatella has said she hasn’t seen the series and has no plans to, she might be throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater because of all the ways Donatella has been portrayed in pop culture, FX’s is the most flattering, and the most important.

Penelope Cruz’s real-life friendship with Donatella certainly informs the grace and seriousness she gives the woman she’s portraying; Cruz has said she asked for Donatella’s permission in an hour long call before accepting the role. She told Vogue, “I didn’t want to do an imitation of Donatella, or a caricature. I wanted to try to capture the essence of who she is.” Cruz grounds her with the most sensible, and perhaps even gracious accent ever afforded her. That accent is hard to get right as proven by Gina Gershon, who sounded like a giddy Zsa Zza Gabor in Lifetime’s absurd House of Versace. (In fairness, she pushed for subtitles, she told Popsugar so maybe it would’ve been better?) Everyone who’s heard Donatella’s enchanting English knows it’s a husky, at times congested and slushy soup of sounds harsh (strength becomes “strenf”) and sweet; sometimes producers actually do provide subtitles so listeners can understand. Cruz told Vogue she worked with a dialogue coach to perfect Donatella’s speech — different now than it was in the 90s. The end result is an elegant purr that blends Cruz’s native Spanish, Italian and English; most importantly, she nails Donatella’s staccato speaking rhythm. But Cruz’s careful consideration of Donatella isn’t the only thing changing perceptions of the fashion mogul; FX’s story reveals about Donatella challenges everything America thought they knew.

Most people know Donatella Versace as a caricature, a shorthand for the ludicrous, Zoolander-like excesses associated with the fashion industry. After her brother’s death in 1997, Donatella became something of a pop star. In the 00s, as cable TV, Internet culture, red-carpet culture and celebrity culture congealed into the always-on loop that exists today, Donatella rose to the level of iconography. Her extreme Euro tan, platinum tresses, skin-tight dresses as well as paparazzi shots next to mega stars like J. Lo made it so that even people who don’t follow fashion could recognize her. And then there were Maya Rudolph’s SNL parodies — which depicted Donatella perennially holding a champagne flute, smoking a cigarette and screaming “Get out!” at lesser-thans — that made Donatella a household name.

It didn’t matter that Donatella Versace was actually the brains and muscle behind a global empire that employed thousands of people: Donatella herself loved the attention. (Self-deprecating and astute to the currency conversation creates, she went on HLN, of all places, to express her admiration for the lampooning and did the bit with Maya on Vh1’s Fashion Awards.) It’s true that the exaggerations weren’t entirely off base — Donatella used to have her Marlboro Reds wrapped in packets bearing her initials, because she didn’t like the warning label, and keep them in a bejeweled Versace case — but as is the case with parody, complexities got lost. The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story presents her with real depth, the way people who really know her say she is is: a strong-willed woman who thrived after being thrust into steering a $800 million ship in the midst of impossible grief. The depiction may not be entirely flattering (she’s never denied giving Gianni’s partner the cold shoulder, as she does in the series) but in Versace, Donatella earns overdue public respect, not laughs.

“We wanted to show Donatella I think in a serious light,” Ryan Murphy told TV Guide at the Television Critics Association winter press tour in January. “Like what Sarah [Paulson] did with Marcia [Clark in The People vs. O.J. Simpson] I think what we did with Penelope was show her with heart. In many ways it’s a tribute to Donatella.”

Of course, no Donatella works without glamour, and the first glimpses of her in the first episode practically drip with allure. Donatella descends from a private jet, jaw-droppingly chic in all black, before getting into a black limo and doing all the stereotypical things post-Maya Rudolph audiences expect: put on black sunglasses, make note of her hair, and scurry away from photographers blinding her with flash bulbs. (One critique of these first scenes from Cathy Horn, a legendary fashion critic who spent time with Gianni and Donatella, notes that Donatella would’ve been more likely to use a back door but, whatever.) Though Penelope’s Donatella captures her exterior fabulousness, it eschews Donatella’s famed trivial pursuits — her love of celebrity, big jewelry and yes, cocaine — in favor of showing someone grounded and tough. Nobody would know from her public perception that Donatella had been running the company for as much as a year and a half before Gianni’s death, so Versace’s scenes of her making executive decisions on behalf of the company swing a new set of empathies in her favor.

Donatella’s achievements are astonishingly rare; despite being fashion’s primary consumers, women made up only 14 percent of the leadership teams for 50 major fashion brands — and that was in 2016, Business of Fashion says. Two decades before that, Donatella had the vision to shape the direction of her family’s brand and the resolve to make men follow her lead. “I had to show strength. I had to show, ‘We’re going to do it,’” she told the New York Times in 2015. Seeing Donatella, calmly and strategically charting a steady course for their empire minutes after her brother had been murdered changes the narrative about her significantly. She wasn’t just a muse, a glorified freeloader, a party girl with a budget and nothing to do — nor was she too emotional to function at a time of unimaginable sadness. She rose to the moment, becoming chief designer and creative director right after Gianni died. While the brand later hit some turbulence (it was rescued from the brink of bankruptcy through investments and structural changes) she remains its head — and was responsible for guiding it through some of its best years. As it turned out, the image of the Versace woman she’d been selling — bold, confident and assured — was a reflection, not fanciful fashion fantasy.

“What she went through was insane,” Murphy said. He said he loved the scene in which she tells her brother Santo she won’t take the company public, surrounded by male bankers. “She did not give in to patriarchal pressure. That’s rough now. In 1997 — can you imagine? She had no time to grieve. She had no experience running something that big and she still kept it together.”

“Tell Morgan Stanley we will not list on the exchange. We will remain a private family company,” Cruz’s Donatella says in the first episode. The savvy she displays under pressure cuts closer to the keen and sometimes combustible real life Donatella than any other pop culture reimagining, and leaves a lasting impression as the series progresses. The real Donatella has no plans to see it, but if she ever does, she might be pleasantly surprised. “It’s important to me when she sees what I’ve done,” Cruz told Ellen Degeneres, “she can feel the love and respect that I have put there [and] how I feel for her.” It’s an image makeover sure to last all seasons.

American Crime Story Takes Donatella Versace From Caricature to Character

AMERICAN CRIME STORY: Writer Tom Rob Smith on THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE – Exclusive Interview

FX’s Wednesday-night second installment of the anthology drama series, THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE, deals not only with the well-known event of the title, but of the murder spree that led up to it. Andrew Cunanan, played in the miniseries by Darren Criss, killed at least four other men – Jeffrey Trail, David Madson, Lee Miglin and William Reese – before attacking Versace, who is portrayed by Edgar Ramirez. Based in part on Maureen Orth’s nonfiction book VULGAR FAVORS, argues that law enforcement was slow to track Cunanan due to the homophobia of the times.

AMERICAN CRIME STORY comes from executive producers Ryan Murphy (who also directed a number of episodes), Brad Falchuk, Alexis Martin Woodall, Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson. Rather than have a writers’ room for THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE, the executive producers opted to have a single writer for all ten episodes, Tom Rob Smith.

Smith, an Englishman who is also an executive producer on this season of AMERICAN CRIME STORY, created and wrote LONDON SPY and CHILD 44. He talks about his research for the project, and what struck him most in what he found.

ASSIGNMENT X: When the producers came to you, did they say, “We’d like you to write all ten episodes?”

TOM ROB SMITH: No. It just evolved from the fact that we were in a room, and it was Brad, Ryan, Nina and myself, and the book just needed a very particular approach. It wasn’t that we sat down and said we were going to tell the story backwards [as the series does, to an extent]. We didn’t have that concept. It was, we were trying to figure out how to do it organically. The thing with a [writers’] room is, if you have a big room, you have to make those decisions and then send everyone off to write their episodes. And we would move forward a fragment, and then decide to change direction. You’re much more nimble if you’re on your own. I think it just happened like that.

AX: How was it decided that this season of AMERICAN CRIME STORY would be ten episodes, as opposed to twelve or eight or whatever?

SMITH: That was again all decided by the story. We look at them and think, “What is the right number?” They’re like books in a weird way. You’re like, “What are the parts that we have?” No one says, “We want ten episodes,” or “We want twelve episodes.” They say, “What is your story?” And you look at it, and think, “This is how much we have. These are the great episodes.” The quality control on this is so high, they would never stretch it to fill a quota. It was always about, each episode has to feel really satisfying in its own right, almost like a story in its own right. So that’s where it comes from.

AX: How aware were you of the murders at the time they occurred in 1997?

SMITH: I was very aware of the Miami murder, but I knew nothing about the build-up. And I think that’s one of the things, that we take that thing that everyone knows, which is the perception of Miami, and we’re unpacking it, so we’re literally pulling those pieces apart. And that to me was a discovery, too. I went on a journey in a sense that viewers kind of go on, which is, I knew the thing on Miami, and now let’s see what was behind it all.

AX: Cunanan’s murder spree stretched across the U.S. What kind of research did you do in the different cities and states?

SMITH: The Minneapolis murders, we got all the police files. One of the big gaps was that, [author Orth] must have read the police files, but obviously, you’re getting her fragments. It’s always interesting to get your own, and the Minneapolis police files, they released them without any problem. I think they were like four hundred pages. I think we got a thousand pages on the FBI, I think we had four hundred from the Chicago [police]. So you have these volumes of information. We’ve got a great researcher on the project. We got all of that. In San Diego, these weren’t released by the San Diego police force, we had to the court records. So we got everything that was possible to get. Minneapolis is where the murders start, and they’re a key part of our story. When we say AMERICAN CRIME STORY, this is an American crime story in a geographic sense. We have L.A., we have San Francisco, we have San Diego, we have Minneapolis, we have Chicago, we have New York, we have New Jersey – all of these towns were part of this enormous story.

AX: How is it for you setting a story in the U.S.? You’re British and your other projects have been set in England and Europe. Was there anything you sort of had to absorb about Americans?

SMITH: I don’t know. I just think, we were telling an American crime story for sure, but I think one of the reasons [the first season of AMERICAN CRIME STORY, THE PEOPLE V. O.J. SIMPSON] was so successful is, it spoke to everyone around the world. You go for those universal truths. I do think, pushing all of the universal truths to the side, the minutiae is very important, like going to San Diego and going to Andrew Cunanan’s house, seeing where he grew up. Sometimes those things can be overstated, because they didn’t give you an episode, for example. You don’t get an episode from it. But Andrew Cunanan was very sensitive to class and status. And I was like, well, I get that as an idea. And I went to his house, which was in La Bonita, and it’s a nice house. His parents did well to pull him up out of relative poverty in National City. But even on the street he’s on, which has a slight incline, he was on the bottom of that street, and it went on to kind of a wasteland. And as the houses went up the hill, they got steadily more expensive. And I was like, “Even in this one street, there’s this microcosm of the haves and the have-nots.” He went to La Bonita High briefly, and I went there, and it’s a regular high school, and then he was sent to Bishop’s in La Jolla, and I was like, “This is a world apart.” You turn up and it’s this beautiful courtyard with these whitewashed walls. He was taken from this household that was modest, and given everything. And just when you go into the detail and you see it for real, those things really start to speak to you about the character.

AX: Obviously, there’s a lot of visual oomph in Gianni Versace’s world. Was it easier or harder for you to write with knowing that, “Okay, people are going to be taking in the surroundings,” so you need to give them a moment to look at that before you start the drama?

SMITH: Oh, no. I see it all as one. I see the locations and the clothes, all that detail is storytelling. That opening is the contrasting of these two worlds, this world that someone had created that was down to the ashtray, down to the silk robe, down to the slippers. [Versace] built all of that. He built his own homeware, and so that sense of, look at what he’s created, [and then at Cunanan, who is] someone who was literally down to nothing on a beach, who had this terrible abscess on his leg, he had physically broken apart, and who was in shorts he’d probably been wearing for weeks and weeks, and was in this sweaty t-shirt, and this sense of, look at the contrast between these two men. So I always saw the visuals as being a real storytelling engine and not some kind of secondary thing.

The Versace home is – it’s weird going there, because now it’s a hotel, and I felt this energy of, he’s missing from this space. You really feel it. You feel like, this isn’t just a nice house, this was his. This needs him on some level. I could really feel an absence.

AX: What is it like writing someone like Versace who, in a sense, creates his own world?

SMITH: What I found so inspirational about him, and one of the things was, he’d turn up to Milan, this guy from the south of Italy who was looked down on by the [design establishment], and now he’s such a grand figure that we forget that he was this person who was told “no” by everyone. And even different fabrics – he would refuse to accept “no,” he would say, “I’m going to [use] this fabric.” And I found that refusal to accept the constraints and confines that were presented to him very inspirational. That was a key part. I found that he inspired me as I wrote, if that makes sense. I was like, “This man is amazing.”

AX: Do you have any other projects we should know about?

SMITH: I’m doing a show for BBC2, MOTHER, FATHER, SON.

AX: And what would you most like people to know about THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE: AMERICAN CRIME STORY?

SMITH: I’m fascinated by crime stories, because I think they’re about society. I feel like they soak up something about society, tell a bigger story. And this really does. It tells a story about America at that time and about identities, aspirations, it’s emotional. But I also think this was the largest failed FBI manhunt of all time in Miami. This has enormous scale. And how this kid in La Bonita ends up causing the pandemonium to tip over Miami to me is a very interesting story to tell.

This interview was conducted during FX’s portion of the Television Critics Association (TCA) press tour.

AMERICAN CRIME STORY: Writer Tom Rob Smith on THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE – Exclusive Interview

American Crime Story Producers Talk Versace, Hurricane Katrina and More

Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson are executive producers on American Crime Story. After the captivating and award winning first season, The People Vs. O.J. Simpson, there were some hold-ups. The next season was supposed to be about Hurricane Katrina, followed by the Gianni Versace murder. The Assassination of Gianni Versace became the second season, but Hurricane Katrina is still up next. Then they are developing a season about the Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky sex scandals of President Bill Clinton.

/Film spoke with Jacobson and Simpson at an FX party for the Television Critics Association. They described how each season has a different tone and therefore needs a different writer, and what we can expect from future seasons.

Since Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski weren’t available, how did you find new writers to tackle Versace?

Simpson: Ryan [Murphy] had Maureen [Orth]’s book and Nina and I had to think about who would be the perfect writer for this. It was tonally going to be different. O.J. was a drama. It had a sort of Sidney Lumet/Paddy Chayefsky inserted into it. This needed to be something out of the vein of Silence of the Lambs or David Fincher with a political bent. Tom Rob Smith is a writer we love. I tried to option his book, Child 44. When it came out, I lost the option battle for that. I think he’s one of the premier thriller writers as a novelist. We loved his series London Spy. He writes about all these things: Ripley-like characters, mysteries, people who are liars and also sexuality. It felt like his voice was the right voice for this. We knew we needed somebody who had as strong a reputation as Scott and Larry. He got the book and loved it and signed on instantly. Except for cowriting one episode, he’s written every episode of the season.

Do you think you’ll have a different writer for each season?

Simpson: I would love to stumble upon a writer who’d do a couple seasons with us. It’s tough because I love Scott and Larry. This wouldn’t have been a show that would’ve been right for them to write. Tom’s voice was perfect for this. It’d be easier for me if we could find somebody who would stay on, but somebody said earlier today, “We’re doing genres within genre.” True crime can mean many different things. If we did a kidnapping story, I guess we won’t because FX has their kidnapping story [Trust], but if we did a bank robbery story, we would probably find a very different type of writer.

Jacobson: The truth is that Tom wrote some amazing scripts early on. So we had a lot of very strong scripts while we were still struggling with Katrina, so we had plenty to get started because he was on a tear. He knew exactly what he wanted. We had the usual dramaturgical process of the back and forth, but he was writing great material and had a lot of them. At a point we were like, “Very clearly, we should be doing this first. It’s ready and we’re not ready on Katrina.” Better to get it right and do justice to your stories than to try to hit a deadline. Even though you wish you could hit a deadline, you’d rather not screw it up.

If Scott and Larry wouldn’t be right for Versace, how is the tone different from People Vs. O.J. Simpson?

Jacobson: It’s a different kind of story because of the fact that so many of the episodes cover different people. So you have all of the victims to explore. I don’t think people knew these people to begin with so they don’t have a lot of predetermined ideas because they didn’t know who these figures were. For me, I was impressed and surprised by what a cutting edge figure Versace was. I don’t think I realized that. You think of Versace clothes, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous kind of signifier of wealth. I didn’t realize what a visionary he was, how courageous his coming out was, the fact that he was really one of the first designers to come out. The others who had been forced out by having AIDS, all of that stuff really surprised me and the degree to which his work came from the inside, from his background and his history, his family, childhood. I really feel like I didn’t understand who he was until we dove into the research.

…

Did you think you could at first?

Simpson: O.J. took us a year and a half to write that. What we learned is with a new writer and new subject, you really have to put the time in and O.J. set a high bar. We didn’t expect to ever achieve what O.J. achieved which was this amazing universal acclaim, awards, ratings and everyone talking about it. We want each show to have integrity and exist and work on its own merits and bring something different to people. We’re never going to try to repeat O.J. That’s the reason this season is very different. If you’re showing up thinking it’s going to be O.J., you’re getting something very different this season. I hope it’s pleasurable. It’s scarier. It’s more intense but it’s also I think an important story.

American Crime Story Producers Talk Versace, Hurricane Katrina and More

Remote Controlled: ‘Versace’ Star Darren Criss on Playing Andrew Cunanan, Plus ‘The Four’ Experts

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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.”

Remote Controlled: ‘Versace’ Star Darren Criss on Playing Andrew Cunanan, Plus ‘The Four’ Experts