Don’t miss it!
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story airs in the UAE on Thursdays on OSN First HBO HD at 11pm.
The series makes use of several real locations in Miami Beach, most notably the Versace mansion, the site of the murder, now a boutique hotel.
As the car turned into a parking lot full of trailers, Criss was all smiles, doling out greetings of “Hey, man!” and “Happy last day!”
Even pre-caffeine, he was relentlessly chipper, which seems antithetical to playing a murderer. Or maybe not.
Charm was Cunanan’s calling card, masking a desperate need for acceptance that curdled into pathology.
And Criss’ exuberance on set, he said later, was a way of putting the crew at ease.
“This is the first time I’ve been No 1 on the call sheet, so you’re kind of the quarterback,” he said. “You set a tone. I take my work very seriously, but I don’t take myself seriously at all.”
The new series features Edgar Ramirez as Versace, Ricky Martin as his lover Antonio D’Amico and Penelope Cruz as his sister Donatella.
But Criss was the linchpin. “He was my first and only choice,” Murphy said. “I truly wouldn’t have made it without him. I don’t know any other actor who would have been correct.”
Given Criss’ squeaky-clean image, the casting seems wildly against type. But Criss and Cunanan had some unlikely similarities, beginning with an uncanny physical resemblance.
Both are half-Filipino California natives, and “we both revel in being different,” Criss said.
As a teenager, he wore vintage bellbottoms to high school, while the young Cunanan put dimes in his penny loafers for “that extra bit of flair.”
But while Criss channelled his charisma into singing and dancing, Cunanan faked his way into high society, lashing out when he didn’t get his way.
Growing up in San Diego, Cunanan was a social butterfly in the Hillcrest neighbourhood.
“The evidence is strong that he was a drug dealer and involved in crystal meth, so he would get a lot of money in cash and treat people to elaborate dinners,”
said writer Criss in TV show ‘Glee’.
Maureen Orth, whose article about Cunanan grew into the book
the basis of the FX series.
“At the same time, he was extremely In ‘The Assassination Gianni Versace: of American Crime Story’.
aspirational. Even when he was hiding out in South Beach, he had the biography of William Paley. He had
And then he’d go out at night and hustle.”
Killing Versace was a crime “very much of anger,” Orth said. “Andrew had been rejected, and things hadn’t turned out for him the way he wanted. And he also was desperate to be famous, and he was willing to kill.”
By contrast, fame came easily to Criss. Even before he had garnered a following from his role in a satirical musical, which he put on with his postcollegiate theatre company in Michigan. A YouTube version, with Criss as the boy wizard, went viral.
He’s a rare breed: theatre geek filtered through California bro, which made an ideal combination for the pop dorkiness of In the show’s early days, he auditioned unsuccessfully for a few bit parts, including a football player, until Murphy finally took notice of him and cast him as Blaine in season two.
“I knew he could sing, I knew he could act, and I knew before we shot a frame of it, this kid’s going to blow up,” Murphy said. Murphy first floated the idea of the project three years ago, when Criss was in New Orleans while Murphy was there shooting the pilot for
Later that summer, he was backstage at
in full makeup and heels when Murphy called: “‘Do you still want to do the Cunanan thing?’”
In the make-up trailer, a stylist painted a meth scab on Criss’ leg and everyone got in a van. The morning’s agenda: a fictionalised scene in which the increasingly desperate Cunanan tries to swim his way to safety but quickly turns back.
“This is going to be rad!” Criss said, barely containing his enthusiasm.
Sitting down for lunch after the shoot, Criss described the series as a parable about “the ultimate creator and the ultimate destroyer,” in which resentment turned Cunanan from aspirant to assassin.
“I approached Andrew from a pretty big place of hurt and pain and sorrow and sadness,” he said. “The story doesn’t horrify me as much as it breaks my heart.”
“People casually ask me, ‘How’s the show going?’ And I will say with no ounce of irony or hyperbole, ‘I’ve worked and waited my entire life for this moment, and I couldn’t be happier.’”
Moments later, something close to an irony did cross his mind: “It’s the life Andrew Cunanan would have dreamed of, frankly.” —New York Times
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