5 Things You Need to Know About The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story
Photo: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images
In 2016, American Crime Story showed us the O.J. Simpson trial as we’d never seen it before. The Ryan Murphy anthology series returns in January 2018 to explore the cultural impact of another infamous crime: The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story will tell the story of the events leading up to the July 1997 murder of the iconic designer.
Here are the five things you need to know about the upcoming series:
The story will begin at the end.
Critics gathered at the Television Critics Association Press Tour were treated to the opening scene of the 10-episode series. The harrowing clip features limited dialogue, stunning music and moves between Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) and Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) on the morning Cunanan shot and killed Versace on the steps of his house. “We shot exactly on the exact step where he died,” Murphy says. “The first episode obviously deals with the literal murder, assassination itself. And then we tell the story in reverse. So we really get into how [Cunanan ] had that motive, and why he wanted to do what he wanted to do.”
The series will explore a seminal moment in our culture.
Much as The People v. O.J. Simpson looked at race relations and the dawn of the relentless celebrity news cycle, The Assassination of Gianni Versace will reflect on a time when the designer was one of the few openly gay celebrities. Ellen DeGeneres had just come out, with the famous “Puppy” episode of her sitcom, three months before. “Nobody was out. There were no out celebrities. There was Elton John. There were no out fashion designers,” executive producer Brad Simpson says. “Versace had given an interview with his lover, and chosen to live openly as a gay man, and that was part of the reason why he was targeted and killed. Andrew Cunanan was a serial killer who killed other gay men.”
Versace was Cunanan’s last victim. “He really did not have to die. Part of the thing that we talk about in the show is one of the reasons Andrew Cunanan was able to make his way across the country and pick off these victims, many of whom were gay, was because of homophobia at the time,” Murphy says.
It’s a docudrama—not a documentary.