Tag: acs: versace

Darren Criss on Getting Inside a Murderer’s Mind for ‘Versace’: “I Embrace Darkness”

d-criss-news:

At first glance, the FX series The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story appears to be a narration of the tragic murder of an acclaimed fashion visionary — but beneath the surface, the series dives into the manipulative world of murderer Andrew Cunanan, who is notoriously remembered for killing not only Versace but four others in the spring and summer of 1997.

Helmed by executive producer Ryan Murphy, the nine-part series journeys through the trials and tribulations of Cunanan, portrayed as a once-promising young man whose conflicted feelings about his sexuality and infatuation with the unattainable wealth he saw all around him drove him over the edge. Though taking on the dark role was no easy feat, Darren Criss embraced its complexities and earned an Emmy in September for his efforts.

Criss, 31, spoke to THR about exploring the downward spiral of his character, what it’s like joining the elite class of Emmy winners and how social media might have changed the trajectory of a man like Cunanan.

You’re not only coming off of a successful run with American Crime Storybut you are now an Emmy winner. How does it feel?

Gosh, there’s too many adjectives! It’s exciting. It’s humbling. I think like most things in my life, I’m constantly aware of the fact that this stuff is very fleeting, which is kind of a twisted way to look at it. It helps you enjoy it more, but it also makes you dread it more. It’s this constant battle of always being so appreciative of what you have as a result of you knowing that it’s not always like this. But maybe my posture is a little taller. If anything less favorable happened to me in the last couple of weeks, I just have to sit there and say, “It’s OK! I have an Emmy!” It’s a nice reminder. I’m very pleased it happened for something I’m really proud of and had such a wonderful experience doing. It would be difficult if it were a negative experience or felt something like a false accomplishment. It doesn’t. I think all the boxes are ticked to make it a very positive thing. I just have to remember that that particular acknowledgment is for one particular thing in an isolated world. It’s not to do with everything else in your life. It doesn’t mean that you excel in any other field or any other job for that matter. It was an extraordinary feeling. It’s much bigger than myself and I feel so incredibly honored.

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Darren Criss on Getting Inside a Murderer’s Mind for ‘Versace’: “I Embrace Darkness”

Oh my god. Seriously, I was so scared of Cumberbatch and after those supporting losses, I thought it was going to be The Normal Heart’s scenario all over again. Thank God it wasn’t. Yay Darren and Ryan!!! So so happy for both.


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acsversace-news:

Previewing the 2018 Limited Series Emmy Races – Awards Daily TV’s Water Cooler Podcast

The Cooler Gang wraps their preview of this year’s Emmy race with a look at the series in contention for the 2018 Limited Series Emmy categories. | 9 April 2018

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Has The Assassination of Gianni Versace been a disappointment?

acsversace-news:

Judged on chatter alone, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is an immense disappointment. Ratings have been down. Reviews have been mixed. It hasn’t reached the mainstream crossover event-TV status of its predecessor The People Vs OJ Simpson. People have been infuriated that – spoiler alert – in an entire series of television called The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Gianni Versace gets assassinated in the very first scene of the very first episode. Things are looking bad. Not quite True Detective 2 bad, but the consensus is that this did not go the way it should have.

In short, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story needs a defender. Reader, I am that defender. Because the chatter is nonsense. This is an astonishing, bold piece of television. By some distance, it’s the best of the year so far.

Of course it suffers by comparison. The People Vs OJ Simpson was a shameless crowd-pleaser. It was a retelling of The Trial of The Century, a murder case dripping with fame and sex and violence. Every character was a celebrity – many were Kardashians – and every role seemed to be filled by a down-on-their-luck megastar determined to chew every last piece of scenery available as aggressively as possible. Travolta, Schwimmer, Gooding Jr; all going goon-eyed hell-for-leather bananas in every single scene. It was precision-designed to draw eyeballs.

But that’s not what The Assassination of Gianni Versace is. This is a vastly different beast, and its weakest moments come when it overtly tries to ape the Simpson series. The scenes that actually feature the Versace family – played by Édgar Ramírez, Penélope Cruz and Ricky Martin – are ever so slightly too broad, even without the cognitive dissonance that comes from hearing a Venezuelan, a Spaniard and a Puerto Rican all loosely attempting to hit a convincing Italian accent.

Their scenes are rendered even flabbier by the fact that they butt up against a bone-tight horrorshow. Because The Assassination of Gianni Versace isn’t really about Gianni Versace. It’s about his killer, Andrew Cunanan, and the gut-churning tilt-a-whirl of his mid-90s murder spree.

The show’s entire mid-section barely features Versace at all, and it counts among some of the most gripping television in recent memory. Tracking back through Cunanan’s murders, episodes blast through genres with a breathtakingly confident swagger. The murder of Lee Miglin is shot and paced like a horror movie, full of lurching unease and escalating dread. David Madson’s death is a claustrophobic thriller that feels tragically inevitable right from the very first frame. And the episode about Jeff Trail’s murder is just a thing of towering majesty. It manages to simultaneously move the story along, draw a graceful one-off character arc and dish out the most stingingly furious rebuke to the US military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy I have ever seen. It was stunning and heartbreaking, and if there’s a better episode of television broadcast this year, I will be genuinely staggered.

Holding all these disparate tones together is a mesmerising central performance by Darren Criss. A former Glee star in danger of being lost to the world of cartoon voiceovers, Criss is horrifyingly convincing as Cunanan. He’s needy and manipulative and utterly empty; a blank that slowly draws you in to your doom. I’m watching the series at BBC pace, so I don’t know whether or not the wheels will fall off in the weeks to come, but for now it has the look of a star-making performance. Criss deserves to be huge because of this role. He cannot win enough awards for it.

American Crime Story’s producers Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson have previously said that their show exists to tell stories that say something “bigger and deeper and more disturbing about America”. So far, that’s exactly what The Assassination of Gianni Versace has been. It’s dark and complex and tragic, and it deserves a much better reception than the one it received. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out on something special.

Has The Assassination of Gianni Versace been a disappointment?

I really liked the ACS finale. There were some moments that were off (Ronnie being the show’s mouthpiece and hitting us over the head with the season-long theme was cringy, though I appreciated getting to see Det. Lori’s reactions) but I think it’s a solid finale overall. Judith Light and Penelope Cruz delivered some stunning work, and I quite like the symbolism of Donatella’s reflected on the Medusa logo, both for how that can be constructed as a nod to Gianni saying that Versace without him is her, and for how it distorts her face as a reference to how ghastly Donatella was in her treatment of Antonio so that her mourning has an appalling side. I LOVED the last shot showing Andrew’s anonymity in a sea of nondescript graves, contrasted with the shrine to Versace and the memorization of Lee Miglin by those whose lives he touched. I’d have loved a moment for Jeff and David too tbh.