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American Crime Story Season 2 Writer Talks Versace

American Crime Story returns tonight. Ryan Murphy’s anthology series, which captivated audiences with The People Vs. O.J. Simpson, now tackles The Assassination of Gianni Versace. This murder is a little different than Simpson’s, though. Andrew Cunanan murdered Versace at the end of a spree totaling five murders. The series is about the crimes, not the trial.

Executive producer and writer Tom Rob Smith spoke with /Film after a Television Critics Association panel for the second season. Based on Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History, The Assassination of Gianni Versace begins with the killing and moves backwards. Smith explained some of the details we’ll see in the show’s opening scenes and later episodes.

If The People Vs. O.J. Simpsons was a circus, like the trial was, what is the tone of The Assassination of Gianni Versace?

Of course, the media circus didn’t happen until Versace was killed. Part of that is one of the stories, which is when you go back with these murders, you’re de-escalating the scale of the police investigation. In Miami, it was the biggest failed manhunt of all time, but the murders in Minneapolis got almost no press coverage. They got a tiny bit in the Minneapolis local paper. No national coverage and the police investigation was as small as you could imagine. So you’re watching the evolution of a cultural phenomenon rather than going straight into the cultural phenomenon.

So we’ve seen the very last scene of the story right up top?

No, we will jump at the end and show how he was caught. Episode nine jumps forward.

But Versace remains a main character even though it opens with his death?

He’s a presence all the way through, yeah. We’re taking his story backwards and Cunanan’s story backwards.

With Edgar Ramirez and Penelope Cruz, did you try looks that maybe were too much and scaled it back?

They have a real sense of “what is the sense of this person?” It’s almost like they embody a sensibility rather than a series of physical characteristics. They both have this extraordinary kind of empathy for the character, this person would say this but not this, this person would sit like this. The detail is really precise and thorough. There’s a real love actually. When we’re looking at these characters, one of the tragedies is all of this love, family love, relationship love, love for the work was destroyed. That’s the real loss so we’re trying to really get into that.

Of the four other murders, were some more well known, if not as well known as Versace?

Some were really well known like the Versaces. Lee Miglin in Chicago was well known in the city but not well known nationally. And in Minneapolis, those murders are not known at all, so it’s really interesting to give everyone that equality, to say everyone’s story is worth exploring.

Is the series compassionate towards Andrew Cunanan?

I think what Darren was trying to say is if you go back far enough, you find a human and not a monster. I mean, he becomes someone who is terrifying, someone who is very disturbed, someone who caused a huge amount of misery. So there are parts when this man is despicable. In some ways that was one of the reasons why we decided to tell it backwards because then you’re taking him and saying he is secondary, less than the victims and their life because they’re the heart of these episodes. The killer becomes pushed back, almost this force that drives a destructive force through them, but they were the center. Then when you go back before the murders, you can say this person is a human then. You’re looking at what went wrong.

There’s a lesion on his leg in the pre-title scene. Did he have AIDS himself?

He didn’t have HIV/AIDS. That was known. One of the early things was they were like, “Oh, he must’ve had HIV/AIDS because he’s this killer.” That’s just not true. It was one of the stigmas of HIV/AIDS. The autopsy said he didn’t have it.

So is it a misdirect?

No, it’s one of those clues about story. He had this horrific abscess on his leg. It’s from drug use. It’s trying to signal physical decay. You’re looking at this man who was once beautiful, coveted and wanted, and his disintegration physically.

It made me nostalgic seeing Cunanan swig a Jolt cola. Are there other signs of the ‘90s you include?

There were all kinds of things. You have to get into the way the police work, the way in which cell phones were used to track things, all these details that are really important period details that aren’t just random. They’re part of the story.

Does Jolt cola still exist or did they have to dress that up?

I don’t know. I actually scripted it as an energy drink. The props department are amazing. The thing about that is where it’s important, like in the book it will tell you, and you can Google it and find pictures. The gun is the exact same gun, all that kind of stuff. Then I just said energy drink and they found that. I can ask the props department. All I put in the script was he’s drinking an energy drink and I guess Red Bull must’ve been later or something.

I tried Jolt once and I couldn’t finish a can. It was awful.

That I will have to hand onto them. I’ll tell the props department you were impressed with that. I’ll ask them, I’m interested. Jolt Cola. It’s funny because I was looking at it, like, “What is that can?” I didn’t know it.

Did you give the entire layout of the Versace estate in the opening sequence?

That’s pretty much it. It’s that courtyard and then he knocked down the hotel that was next to it and built a pool. So it’s those two rectangles. He worked on those. So yeah, we got a really good sense, flowing through all the corridors. My favorite part of it is the Spanish villa courtyard with the planetarium on the top. That’s beautiful. It has a real magic about it. Everyone loves the pool. It was the most expensive pool of all time when they built it. Whatever was shipped in from Italy.

What might viewers learn about the fashion business in this series?

I think it’s less a story about the particulars of the fashion business, more about what it is to go from someone who has nothing to someone who builds a really successful business and the key points in that journey. Hard work, love, an amazing team. Then you’re contrasting that with someone who was of a similar position, who has actually many of the privileges, he was sent to a great school, and what goes wrong. You’re kind of building out these two stories like that. The fashion industry, we’re interested in it because it has lots of interesting elements, details, period details, but you’re kind of digging deeper and saying this is a story about someone who achieved so much. He’s a Steve Jobs-like figure.

American Crime Story Season 2 Writer Talks Versace

Darren Criss Is the Male Sarah Paulson and 6 More Things To Know About American Crime Story Season 2

American Crime Story made The People Vs. O.J. Simpson a phenomenon all over again, over 20 years after the actual verdict. The Gianni Versace murder was not as sensationalized a case, so the FX anthology series took a different approach on The Assassination of Gianni Versace.

Based on Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History, the show opens with Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) pulling the trigger on Versace (Edgar Ramirez) and flashes back to events that explained how Cunanan and Versace collided in tragedy.

Cunanan killed four men before Versace, and Criss portrays the serial killer’s growing homophobia and escalating delusions. The show unfolds in reverse, with Cunanan and Versace crossing paths, but mostly existing separately.

Criss spoke with Rotten Tomatoes about American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, after the Television Critics Association winter press tour panel, during which creator Ryan Murphy revealed details about the series and its stars. Producers Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson also weighed in. Here are seven things they shared about the second season of the series.

1. RYAN MURPHY HAS CALLED HIM THE MALE SARAH PAULSON

“Darren was, to me, the male version of Sarah Paulson,” American Crime Story creator Murphy said to reporters after a panel, invoking his muse who played Marcia Clark in The People Vs. O.J. Simpson. Murphy saw her as a lead actor and gave her that role to show the world. He sees that for Criss in the role of Andrew Cunanan.

“Well, I think that’s an insult to Sarah Paulson,” Criss modestly joked. “Poor Sarah, who’s had an amazing career, done amazing work, spanning all kinds of places.”

Ultimately Criss accepts the challenge to live up to Murphy’s go-to star.

“Hey, I’ll take it,” Criss said. “I realize what he means. The person in the roster that is doing a project with a lot of eyes on it. If my name is uttered in the same sentence as her at any point, that’s a thrill.”

If anything, Criss has some catching up to do to live up to Paulson’s ongoing legacy.

“It always blew my mind that after O.J., people said that was a real turning point for her,” Criss said. “I think it has less to do with her ability and more about the visibility of the shows that Ryan touches.”

2. CRISS UNDERSTANDS CUNANAN’S LIES

We all know people who embellish their stories to make themselves sound more important. That behavior may be annoying, but most of them won’t kill us over it. Cunanan’s lies, unfortunately, turned deadly. Criss saw a parallel to some of the more harmless white lies we all commit.

“I think his lies, his stories, his delusions of grandeur were an effort for him to be in control of the way he was viewed, just the way any of us curate our lives with filters on Instagram, with selfies from a certain angle,” Criss said. “These are obviously on a smaller scale and much more socially acceptable. But if you took that to an extreme, that’s what he was doing.”

According to the show, Cunanan lied to Versace to try to make himself a closer acquaintance. Then he lied to others about how close he was to Versace.

“He needed to be in control of all the things that he didn’t have, which is to pretend they were a reality and tell other people they were,” Criss said. “Because he was such a narcissist, by telling people and telling himself, he could ipso facto make them true to himself. And if he couldn’t have it and it couldn’t be true, then he’d have to destroy it.”

Orth’s book suggested that lying was Cunanan’s way of crafting new personas, and Simpson elaborated on the killer’s pathology.

“In some ways, I think it was trying on identities and trying on personalities,” Simpson said. “I think he was taught though. His dad was a scam artist who abandoned the family when Cunanan was 18 and made them all go bankrupt. I think that idea that the truth is elastic was something he was taught by his family.”

3. CUNANAN WANTED TO BE SOMEBODY ELSE

Simpson believed Cunanan lied to craft a new identity.

“I also felt like he wanted to be somebody else,” Simpson said. “He wanted to be different. He didn’t want to be that half Filipino kid from a working-class background. He wanted to be the guy in Vanity Fair.”

If Cunanan wanted to be someone else, it was important to cast someone who could embody who he was. Criss’s heritage was a factor; the actor is actually half Filipino on his mother’s side, like Cunanan was.

“The idea of not whitewashing the half Filipino side and casting a white dude was important,” Jacobson said. “Darren had Ryan’s endorsement and understanding of him as an actor, great look for the part, and then was authentically half Filipino like Andrew was.”

4. CUNANAN’S OBSESSION EVOLVES VICTIM BY VICTIM

Three of Cunanan’s four prior victims get their own episode to explore their relationships with Cunanan. The fourth, William Reese, was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, as Cunanan stole his truck. Criss explained how each killing builds off the prior one.

“It escalates,” Criss said. “This was somebody whose crimes were a crime of passion in the beginning. He crossed a certain threshold, and there was a change of his pathology.”

His third victim, Lee Miglin, was a Chicago real estate mogul who’d hired Cunanan as an escort. Miglin was married at the time. His wife Marlyn discovered his body, staged by Cunanan.

“It became less something personal to people around him, more about proving a point on a larger scale to hurting someone like Lee and hurting someone like Versace,” Criss said. “Yeah, there’s a differentiation between each of the murders for sure.”

Each victim was also a step towards Cunanan’s ultimate target, the title of the show.

“The throughline of Andrew’s obsession with Versace, once he snapped, he’s on this mission,” Jacobson added. “Really, the shock of killing people who are dear to you, I still get very disturbed by. The idea that he’s not somebody who has one moment; it’s these sequential moments of calculated choices from a guy that was not a murderer born. I think there are people who are born missing the empathy gene, missing the fear gene. That wasn’t him.”

5. THE SHOW IS GRAPHIC. CUNANAN MADE SURE OF THAT

The show portrays murders like Lee Miglin’s as they must have happened to end up where they did. Miglin’s body was bound with wounds from a screwdriver and saw, ribs broken, throat slashed, and stabbed.

“We’re always trying to strike a balance of you know what the crime scenes look like so you can glean what the murder was,” Jacobson said. “You don’t want to be exploitive and at the same time, you don’t want to shy away from the horror of it.”

The show spends time on Cunanan’s psychological torture of his victims leading up to the murders.

“The Lee Miglin murder was staged to shame and embarrass him,” Jacobson said. “The way he manipulates David by saying, ‘This is what they’ll find. You’ll be assumed to be guilty.’ Those things all seem very important to cover.

6. IT GOES ALL THE WAY BACK TO CHILDHOOD

Episode 8 ultimately shows Cunanan as a child and in high school, exploring motivations and warning signs that early. It was important to Criss that the show try to explain this tragedy.

“It all has to add up,” Criss said. “It all has to connect together, otherwise there’s no point in showing the horrible stuff, because then it’s just exposing something horrible that we already know is horrible. We have to keep having every moment beforehand connected to it in some way so it’s not just gratuitous.”

Learning of his father’s scam was certainly a turning point for Andrew.

“I think finding anybody when they’re younger tells a bit of an origin story as it were,” Criss continued, “of not only where this guy came from, a better sense of how and why it went wrong, how it went astray.”

Criss still plays Cunanan at 18, by the way.

“For the first half we have a great young actor, Edouard Holdener who plays young Cunanan,” Simpson said. “For the rest of it, it’s Darren because Darren is very youthful looking and can still play an 18-year-old luckily.”

7. CRISS WILL BE BACK FOR MORE RYAN MURPHY SHOWS

If he is going to be the male Sarah Paulson, that means Criss will have to come back for every show Murphy does. Criss is on board, but isn’t aware of any future roles just yet.

“Who knows what the future holds,” Criss said. “Ryan is a dear friend, a true collaborator, and he’s been a champion for me. So f— yeah, if I can keep doing what we’ve been doing, I should be so lucky.”

Criss’s dream was to be part of a theater company where the same troupe performed different shows. Murphy’s managed to keep most of the same cast together across American Crime Story, American Horror Story, Feud, and Glee.

“I always grew up with this notion, I idolized repertory theater companies,” Criss said. “I had no idea that in my life I would be able to do that in the television world with someone like Ryan Murphy. [Sarah and I] are both lucky enough to have stumbled somehow into Ryan’s repertory player situation.”

Darren Criss Is the Male Sarah Paulson and 6 More Things To Know About American Crime Story Season 2

Andrew Cunanan’s Minnesota victims aren’t forgotten in ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

LOS ANGELES – “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” references one of the most notorious murders of the past 25 years, but even crime buffs may be thrown by the miniseries’ twist.

It’s not really about Versace.

The focus is squarely on the famed designer’s killer, Andrew Cunanan. Which means executive producer Ryan Murphy and writer Tom Rob Smith spend more time on the jealous rages that led to the deaths of Minnesotans Jeffrey Trail and David Madson than they do on the fifth and final target of Cunanan’s 1997 killing spree.

“There’s a distinction between the victims,” Smith said. “When Andrew’s life was falling apart, he murdered his closest friend and lover. Once he crossed that line, he then started to kill to pursue ideas. Versace is the culmination of that.”

Two episodes are set in the Twin Cities — the fourth and fifth of the nine-part drama ­that begins Wednesday — but were filmed in and around Los Angeles.

They include visits to a rural Minnesota dive bar (where singer Aimee Mann tackles an acoustic version of the Cars’ “Drive”) and the late lamented Nye’s Polonaise Room, where friends dragged Cunanan one night. Fans of Nye’s will be disappointed to see the Minneapolis restaurant and bar portrayed as a second-story nightclub with a dance floor the size of an airport hangar.

The decision to explore the mind of a murderer gave the storytellers a chance to make a statement about homophobia in the 1990s. Because Cunanan’s first victims were gay, the show suggests that law enforcement responded initially with a shrug rather than shock until the killer gunned down a big name.

One episode is dedicated to Trail’s decision to leave the Navy after a suicide attempt, spurred by the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward gay troops. The Minneapolis Police Department comes across as particularly flat-footed and disinterested in diving deep. The series essentially argues that Versace’s murder outside his Miami Beach mansion could have been averted if investigators had pursued the Cunanan case more aggressively.

“Versace’s death is political,” said producer Nina Jacobson. “It was the neglect, the isolation, the sort of otherness in how the police handled the murder of gay men. This was ultimately a death that didn’t have to happen. Some of our anger informed us.”

The reverse-chronological approach of the series is bound to throw viewers, especially after a nearly wordless, expertly choreographed opening, directed by Murphy, that features Versace’s final moments following a morning stroll to retrieve fashion magazines from a Miami Beach newsstand.

There’s also a red herring in the casting of Penélope Cruz as Donatella Versace. Other than showing off a gruff Italian accent, the Oscar winner isn’t given much to do. The production team clearly spent megabucks re-creating Versace’s studios in Italy, but so little time is spent on the lavish set that it’s like stopping at a fancy restaurant for an appetizer.

“The obsession with Gianni Versace and the dance between the creator and the destroyer is the spine, the fabric, of what held this together,” said producer Brad Simpson, who also worked on the previous “Crime” installment, “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” which won the Emmy for best miniseries. “But we felt it was really important along this journey to not only tell this story of Versace and what he meant, but use that to tell the story of David Madson and Jeff Trail and the other victims.”

They considered putting Cunanan’s name in the title of the series, as Maureen Orth did in her book “Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History,” the primary source for the screenplay. “We decided that, ultimately, it was elevating him to a place we didn’t want to put him in,” Simpson said.

The emphasis on Cunanan over Versace (played by Edgar Ramírez, best known for portraying a terrorist leader in 2010’s “Carlos”) and his longtime lover Antonio D’Amico (pop star Ricky Martin) puts the pressure on actor Darren Criss, who made his name as a happy-go-lucky teen singer on the 2009-15 Murphy series “Glee.” His Broadway credentials are utilized in “Versace” only when Cunanan dances shirtless while torturing sexual partners during S&M sessions or sings along to “Pump Up the Jam” on the car radio while a deathly nervous Madson sweats in the passenger seat.

Criss didn’t take the role home with him. “I know a lot of people who jump into these things, and it really consumes their whole lives,” he said. “I think what saved me is that Andrew compartmentalized so many things in his life: emotions, people, experiences. He was able to dissociate and, likewise, I was able to dissociate. As an actor, it’s your job to find as many common denominators between you and the person you are playing, however good or bad. The differences are few in number, but high in content. Those differences made it OK for me to step away from it because I was doing things on set so far away from myself at home.”

While this “American Crime Story” decidedly emphasizes the criminal side, Murphy cautions viewers about reading too much into how future franchise installments might play out. The next show in the anthology will look at the effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. The fourth season will deal with the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal.

“One of the joys for me about this show is that every season will have a different tonality,” Murphy said. “The first season was very much a courtroom potboiler. The second season is a manhunt thriller. The third season really looks at the medical conditions in our country, and global warming, and who decides who gets to live and die. So every season will be different from anything we’ve done before.”

Andrew Cunanan’s Minnesota victims aren’t forgotten in ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

Orth brings Versace murder to TV, recalls night Tim Russert might have talked to his killer

PASADENA, Calif. – When Maureen Orth was approached by a producer to option her book, “Vulgar Favors,” for a television series, her lawyer wasn’t exactly encouraging.

“He said ‘you know, Maureen, this isn’t worth the paperwork,’ ” Orth recalled in an interview here. “ ‘These things never happen.’ ”

So she hired an agent to do the paperwork.

The result is the nine-episode FX miniseries, “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” which premieres at 10 p.m. Wednesday and stars Darren Criss (“Glee”) as serial killer Andrew Cunanan, Edgar Ramirez as the fashion icon, Penelope Cruz as his sister and Ricky Martin as his partner.

A consultant on the series, Orth has no complaints about the stylish FX production, led by producer-director Ryan Murphy (“Glee,” “American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson.”)

“These people are just top notch,” said Orth. “I am in the Class A League here.”

Orth, who dedicated her 1999 book to her late husband, South Buffalo legend Tim Russert, their son Luke and her mother, addressed how it became a series almost 20 years later.

The book, whose title was taken from a Richard Strauss opera, began as a Vanity Fair article that Orth was writing about Cunanan before Versace became his fifth victim in the middle of 1997.

“I saw a picture in the Sunday New York Daily News of a good looking kid in a tuxedo and it said ‘serial killer suspect,’ ” recalled Orth. “And I said, woo, that doesn’t sound like the usual serial killer. I had never done a murder story or a crime story before so I thought I would try my hand in that.”

She spent two months in San Diego, Minneapolis and Chicago researching the four murders Cunanan committed before murdering Versace.

“At the time I was doing the article he had not yet killed Versace,” said Orth. “He was on the lam.”

She believes Cunanan, who knew she was doing the story for his favorite magazine, once called her Washington, D.C. home.

“The very first thing in the book is a phone call that Tim picked up unfortunately and not me,” recalled Orth. “It might have been Cunanan. It was some guy asking, ‘Is Maureen Orth there? Is Maureen Orth there?’ And it was 1 o’clock in the morning and Tim of course, said, ‘I think it is that guy,’ and instead of handing me the phone, asked him ‘Who are you?’ And click.”

While Vanity Fair was fact-checking Orth’s article, Versace was killed in Miami.

“I think Tim was the first person to call and say somebody shot Versace,” said Orth. “Somebody said, ‘Do you think this might be your guy?”

Orth said the police wouldn’t release the shooter’s name because they were trying to put together a lineup.

“That was the beginning of all these miscalculations that gave him time to escape,” said Orth.

Her editor determined Orth would do the story if it was Cunanan and another reporter would do it if it wasn’t. She got confirmation that it was Cunanan at a movie premiere.

“I had to crawl past John F. Kennedy Jr and his wife and make a pay phone call and ask ‘Is it Cunanan?’ ” she remembered. “I was the only one in the world that knew he actually met Versace because one of his roommates told me. I said to Tim, ‘Ohmygod he knows Versace.’ They met at the San Francisco Opera.”

“At the time it happened, I probably knew more about Cunanan than anybody else in the world,” she said.

Cunanan’s background makes the story more compelling. His IQ was 147 and he graduated from a good school.

“His first victim was his best friend, the second victim was the guy he was in love with and the third victim was the older man in Chicago and supposedly married and very Catholic,” she said. “I believe he came to represent all the older men he had had in his life – he was an escort and companion for. The fourth murder was a murder of convenience because he needed the car.”

Orth said his stolen getaway car was in a public Miami garage for four of the five weeks he was on the lam and he was living in a flea bag hotel, hustling at night and going to gay discos.

“He always had this obsession about Versace,” said Orth. “Because like Versace, Andrew was always gay and out his whole life.”

“He was a narcissist, a con artist and liar and he felt extremely entitled. He didn’t want to work for a living. And Versace seemed to have everything that he himself felt he deserved. Fame, recognition … I think Versace embodied everything Cunanan wanted to be. However, he wasn’t willing to work for it.”

Orth understands critics’ question whether this series will prove as popular viewing as the first “American Crime” story about the O.J. Simpson murder case, which she wrote in her book hurt future law enforcement investigations.

“They are completely different,” Orth said. “O.J. was far more known to American people than Versace was. It is really comparing apples and oranges. There are equally compelling characters in this tale with very complex lives. This one has a lot of glitz and glamor in it.”

She said hopes American viewers get a few things out of the series.

“It shows the pain of being in the closest that was so often prevalent 20 years ago,” said Orth. “That is no longer the case as much. The lying and the sadness that was pervasive. Cunanan was able to exploit that and get away with things.”

“It teaches you the lessons of doing things for fame and money and material things are not what counts in life obviously.”

She dismissed some criticism here that the series makes Cunanan likable because she feels being erudite, well-read and having good taste made him that way.

“I found that specious,” she said. “He was an incredibly charming personality. He wasn’t just simply a calculating evil personality, and that’s why he was able to gain the confidence of really lovely, sort of salt-of-the-earth, Midwestern guys and the people that he hung out with… So he had quite an interesting personality that was apart from the deep evil that lurked underneath.”

She praised Criss’ performance.

“I think Darren did a beautiful job of being both creepy and charismatic at the same time,” said Orth. “That’s the tragedy. Cunanan had all these gifts that if he chose to employ them for the good he could have been a big success. But he wasn’t willing to.”

In other words, Criss’ performance is worth the paperwork all by itself.

Orth brings Versace murder to TV, recalls night Tim Russert might have talked to his killer

‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’ star Edgar Ramirez sought man, and meaning, behind the label

PASADENA, Calif. — Édgar Ramírez didn’t leap at the chance to play Gianni Versace in a TV show about the fashion designer’s 1997 murder, and American Crime Story executive producer Ryan Murphy was fine with that.

“I loved being in a room with an actor who says, ‘That’s interesting. Come back to me with another script,’ ” Murphy said of Ramírez’s initial response to The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, a nine-episode edition of the anthology series that premieres at 10 p.m. Wednesday on FX.

“And I said, ‘What?’ ” said Murphy, whose credits include Glee, American Horror Story, and The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story. He’s used to hearing his first choices say yes on the spot.

But, like Murphy, the Venezuelan actor (Hands of Stone, Bright) is a former journalist, and questions come naturally. “I guess I can’t really escape” from that, Ramírez said after an FX session on the show during the Television Critics Association’s winter meetings.

Recalled Murphy: “I think the moment that I got Édgar to say yes was when he said, ‘Why do you want to tell the story?’ Which people very rarely ask me. And I said, ‘I really understand these characters and, like Versace, I really understand what it’s like to be hunted.’ And I think that unlocked something for Édgar, and he knew that as a director that I understood the pain that he was going to have to go through.”

“I do a lot of research. I think that in the end I’m also attracted to characters that are biographical because I’m just obsessed with history,” Ramírez said. “It’s like a meta-inspiration of history, to become the subject.”

Before he could play Versace — a role that required him to gain weight and don prosthetics to make him look older and more like his subject — Ramírez said he wanted to understand the times the designer lived in.

“So that’s why the first thing that I did was try to understand, to create a process, through what was going on in the ’70s, the ’80s, and the ’90s. So basically Versace, he captured the sexuality and the run-down element of the ’70s. He combined and married it to the opulence and exuberance of the ’80s. And then everyone went crazy in the ’90s,” he said.

And in asking to see more of Tom Rob Smith’s scripts, inspired by Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors, “I wanted to understand what the trajectory of the character was going to be,” Ramírez said.

“It’s very dangerous when you approach biographical characters that have a huge impact in history, in real-life history. Because we tend to think that based on the impact that those characters had in real life, that it would immediately translate into an interesting character. And that’s not always the case. A character needs to be … dimensional, needs to be complex, and not only based on the present. So for me it was important to understand that Gianni, in the story, was going to be a force, a force that would affect people,” he said.

That’s certainly the way Murphy saw Versace, the fifth, final, and undeniably most famous victim of spree killer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss, Glee). This is a true-crime story, told mostly in flashbacks, one in which Cunanan gets considerably more airtime than Versace.

But it was the designer whose death earned the appellation “assassination,” Murphy said, after I questioned its use in a story about a man who’d killed others, including two once-close friends. (Among his victims was South Jersey cemetery caretaker William Reese, who was killed in Pennsville, where Cunanan stole his truck.)

“It was a political murder. It absolutely was,” Murphy said. “This was a person who targeted people specifically to shame them and to out them [like Cunanan himself, all but one of his victims — Reese — is depicted as gay] and to have a form of payback for a life that he felt he could not live. … There were obviously five victims, but I feel like this case is famous, the most famous, because of the Versace case.”

Ramírez was already friends with Ricky Martin when Martin was cast to play Versace’s longtime lover, Antonio D’Amico. Penelope Cruz portrays Versace’s sister Donatella.

(The Versace family has denounced the project, and Murphy has denied its claims that the show is a “work of fiction,” citing Orth’s extensive reporting on the case and telling Entertainment Weekly it is it “a work of non-fiction….with docudrama elements.”)

Versace may have been Cunanan’s most famous victim, but Orth had been on the case for two months before the designer was killed.

“It was a Vanity Fair article. We were through the final fact-checking stages, we were ready to go to the printers, and all of a sudden the announcement comes” that Versace had been killed and that “this kid” was a suspect, Orth said.

“So that’s when the whole story blew up again. It was two stages for me. And so then I had to fly down to Miami and try to stay ahead of the story once Versace was killed,” she said.

For Ramírez, Versace’s importance lies not in his death, but his life.

“We live in a culture that was partially created and shaped by Versace. He was the first one to combine fashion and celebrity. I wouldn’t be invited to the front row of a runway [show] if it wasn’t for the culture that Versace created,” said the actor, who’s attended shows for Moncler, Armani, and others.

“I like fashion. I’m not ignorant of fashion. My grandmother was a tailor,” he said. “And Versace was not only a designer. He created the things.”

Craftsmanship interests Ramírez, who likened the physical transformation the role required to making broth: “Is this too salty? Is this too dull?”

His accent, too, involved calibration.

“We decided not to speak Italian in the film because then it would force all the family conversations to be in Italian. So Penelope [Cruz] and I, we speak Italian — but … still, she’s Spanish, I’m Venezuelan,” he said. “We wanted to give the sense of the Italian into it. And basically what we tried to do was speak with each other and speak how they [Gianni and Donatella] spoke English,” while at the same time being understood.

“It’s English with an Italian accent, that’s what I tried. And I have enough Italian friends to be coached and inspired by.”

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. 10 p.m. Wednesday, FX.

‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’ star Edgar Ramirez sought man, and meaning, behind the label

FX’s Versace murder drama visceral and terrifying

FX’s widely celebrated O.J. Simpson “American Crime Story” focused on the theatrics and hijinks of the celebrity athlete’s televised murder trial and the colorful characters involved.

Don’t expect any such amusement from “Crime Story’s” second season, which details the murder of fashion icon Gianni Versace in the summer of 1997 and the events leading up to him being gunned down.

While viewing the first four episodes, I didn’t smile once. What I did feel was stunned, sad, chilled, mortified and thoroughly sickened, as if someone had delivered a hard punch to my gut.

The drama is breathtakingly beautiful at times, inviting us into the opulent, glamorous and often decadent world of Versace (Emmy-nominated Edgar Ramirez, “Carlos”), his handsome longtime partner Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin) and his fiercely devoted sister Donatella (Oscar-winner Penelope Cruz), a realm made even more dreamy by pastel-washed Miami.

But that’s only the backdrop. This new nine-part “American Crime Story” is primarily a no-holds-barred depiction of the horrific crimes of sociopath Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss, “Glee”), his calculated killing of Versace, the gruesome slayings that preceded it and the effect on the various victims’ friends and families.

“Every season of this show will have a different tonality,” co-executive producer Ryan Murphy told TV critics at a recent FX press session in Pasadena, California. “The first season was very much a courtroom pot boiler. The second season that you’ve seen is a manhunt thriller.

“I loved that this was not glamorizing the Cunanan story, and we never want to do that on this show,” Murphy added. “I really loved how we laid into everybody who was affected, not just the people who were killed, but also the relatives, the siblings. I think what (Cunanan) did was very, very destructive, and the reasons why he did it — the homophobia of the day, which still persists — is something really topical.”

What both series have in common is they’re topical and reflective of the day.

“With ‘O.J.’ we looked at sexism and racism, and we are doing the same with this season,” Murphy said.

As for the drama’s honesty, the Versace family recently decried it as “fiction.” However, journalist and author Maureen Orth, whose book “Vulgar Favors” served as the basis for the drama, stands by its authenticity.

“I would say my sourcing in the book is 95 percent or more on the record, and I talked to over 400 people, and so, so many things that you might think were made up aren’t made up,” Orth said.

As indicated before, it’s not an easily digested story: Each of the murders is terrifying, as is Cunanan’s manipulation and shaming of his victims.

However, it’s portrayed with such realism and emotional commitment by its magnetic and meticulous cast that you are hooked instantly and will want to see it through to its conclusion.

The stars met with us to share their feelings about the characters they play and how being part of such a sad, brutal and disturbing series affected their lives.

Murphy said Ramirez was the only central cast member who didn’t instantly say yes when approached.

The actor eventually was convinced, however, and said he came away surprised by what he learned about Versace the man: “How family oriented he was and how strong those family ties were and how important they were in his life. And how rather subtle and intimate and private he was in comparison to the public perception of the House of Versace.”

“He was rather a quiet person that would go kind of shy, you know, extroverted, but shy at the same time,” Ramirez said. “And he would go to bed rather early and wake up rather early and had more the demeanor and the life of a craftsman than like a larger-than-life celebrity. So that’s something that even to me was very surprising.”

Martin, known best as the Latin pop star who gave us hits such as “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” said he had a conversation with his character, D’Amico, to assure him that his relationship with Versace would be “treated with utmost respect.”

“I told him, ‘I will make sure that people fall in love with your relationship with Gianni. That is what I’m here for. I really want them to see the beauty and the connection that you guys had.’”

He also got the biggest laugh during the FX press session. “I peed a little bit,” he said when he learned Donatella would be played by Penelope Cruz.

As for Criss, people who’ve seen him in lighter roles, such as the singing-dancing Blaine in “Glee,” no doubt will be astonished by the intensity of the actor’s performance here, particularly when the sadistic side of Cunanan comes out.

However, Criss made sure he also found something likable about Cunanan, such as his charm, to turn in a fleshed-out portrayal.

To preserve his sanity through filming, he said, the role “didn’t come home with me. I know a lot of people who jump into these kinds of things, and it really consumes their whole lives. And maybe that’s just the kind of person I am, but my alibi of how that, sort of, works is I think what saved me is that Andrew compartmentalized so many things in his life: emotions, people, experiences. He could disassociate, and likewise, I could sort of disassociate.”

FX’s Versace murder drama visceral and terrifying

Why ‘American Crime Story’ took on murder and manhunt in ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

The latest iteration of FX and Ryan Murphy’s anthology drama “American Crime Story” differs in a dramatic way from its predecessor, “The People v. O.J. Simpson.”

This time, we see the murder.

Murphy calls “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” a “manhunt thriller.”

The iconic fashion designer was gunned down in front of his mansion in Miami’s South Beach neighborhood in 1997 by 27-year-old Andrew Cunanan. Described at the time as a “gigolo” by Martha Orth, whose book the series is based on, Cunanan had already been on a killing spree that landed him on the FBI’s most-wanted list.

Since Cunanan would take his own life before authorities were able to arrest him, “ACS” tries to examine why Versace became a target. Murphy insists the term “assassination” is accurate, although some would label Cunanan a psychopath and serial killer.

“’Assassination’ has a political overtone, and I think it denotes somebody who is taking the life of somebody else to make a point,” Murphy says. “And I think that’s exactly what Andrew Cunanan did.”

The series begins with the crime. To the strains of Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor, we see Cunanan – played by Darren Criss – as he makes his way up the beach toward the designer’s compound. Almost by happenstance, Cunahan encounters Versace (Edgar Ramirez) returning from a local trip to buy magazines, and he shoots him.

The story then goes back in time, following their lives before their fateful encounter, subsequent manhunt and the fallout for the designer’s empire. Most immediately affected are Antonio D’Amico, Versace’s longtime partner played Ricky Martin, and the designer’s sister Donatella Versace (Penelope Cruz).

As Orth wrote, Versace’s “flamboyant clothes virtually defined ‘hot,’” that he “tarted up the likes of Princess Diana and Elizabeth Hurley” and whose gowns also made “Madonna and Courtney Love more elegant.”

Ramirez observes that Versace’s influence is still evident today. “He could see the sexiness of the ’70s, and then all the opulence of the ’80s,” said the actor, adding that the designer combined those elements “and everybody went crazy.”

Seven years before the killing, Cunanan met or imposed himself upon Versace at a party when the Italian-born designer was creating costumes for the San Francisco Opera.

“Versace looms over the series as a symbol of success. He is not just a person. This is the reason for the assassination,” says Tom Rob Smith, who wrote the script for the nine-episode series, “He is, in a weird way, in every moment of Andrew’s life.”

As producer Nina Jacobson points out, the series contrasts the two. “One character is an authentic, honest creator drawing on his heritage, his background, his family,” she says, “and the other goes on a path of destruction because he wants the fame without the work or the talent.”

No one really knows what went on between Cunanan and Versace or the killer and his other victims. So the series tries to fill in the details.

“You have these tiny points of truth, and you then try to connect the tissue between it,” says Smith, novelist of books including “Child 44” and screenwriter of “London Spy.” “But I would never use the word ‘embellishing’ or ‘making up.’ It’s trying to join those pinpoints.”

Orth says a lot of people knew Cunanan “was an inveterate liar, but they didn’t care because he was very witty about it, or he was able to charm people.”

“We’re not just following what we would assume to be a murderous, horrible person all the time,” adds Criss. “We see him at his best; we see him at his worst; we see him at his most charming; we see him at his most hurt. And it’s all over the place. We really do get to know him as a person.”

Cunanan spent two months in Miami before killing Versace. Before that, he killed both his closest friend and his lover.

“Once he crossed a line and became a killer, he then started to kill to pursue ideas,” says Smith. “Once he realizes he lost everything, either you build something that impresses someone, which takes a lot of work, or if you don’t want anonymity, you can try to rip something down.”

The FBI was already pursuing Cunanan in Miami, but thinking he preyed upon older men they didn’t look in the youthful South Beach area.

Orth’s 1999 book is called “Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in US History,” and Murphy feels that Cunanan was able to make his way across the country and pick off his victims because many of them were gay.

There was “homophobia, particularly within the various police organizations that refused in Miami to put up wanted posters,” he says.

Not surprisingly, the Versace family is not behind the project and issued a statement this week: “Since Versace did not authorize the book on which it is partly based nor has it taken part in the writing of the screenplay, this TV series should only be considered as a work of fiction,” it said.

Criss says that the most difficult part of playing a killer was thinking “about the people who are still alive and are affected. And wanting to do right by them is my hope.”

Brad Simpson, one of the other producers of “Versace,” says that is the basic quandary for anybody who is making true crime story.

“By recreating these murders, are you giving the murderer what they want? Are you hurting the victims again?” he asks. “In ‘O.J.,’ we didn’t show O.J. committing the murder. We never come out and say that O.J. killed Nicole and Ron even though you can really take that inference from the show. In this case, we are showing the real devastation of what Andrew did.”

Why ‘American Crime Story’ took on murder and manhunt in ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’