The most important word in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story isn’t “Versace.” It’s “assassination.” That’s going to throw some people, but I think it’s key to why the new FX miniseries works at all.
Assassination is the follow-up to 2016’s massively acclaimed, heavily viewed The People v. O.J. Simpson, which won nine Emmys and was nominated for even more. It was a smartly conceived look at an event in American history that had been written off as tawdry tabloid fodder, but one that nevertheless spoke to conversations we’re still having in America about race, class, gender, and power. And yet it was also a lot of fun, if you didn’t want to dive any deeper than wondering what the hell John Travolta’s performance was supposed to be about.
Assassination is … not that. It’s a grim tragedy whose structure moves backward in time and forces you to keep thinking about the dark ends that many of its characters will meet at the hand of spree killer Andrew Cunanan, who killed five people in 1997, culminating in the death of famed fashion designer Versace.
There’s not as much Versace as you might expect, and it barely delves into his fashion empire. The designer is, instead, a kind of ghost haunting the proceedings, an out gay man who lives openly with the love of his life, insulated by the money that has given him the security to be open about himself.
Assassination may not be as enjoyable to watch as O.J., but it’s striking to see how thoughtfully all involved approach a very different story in a way that gives it its own tone, its own themes, and its own grandeur. This is a more difficult but more ambitious work, and it stands as a worthy companion.
Assassination is a metaphorical examination of the psychological weight of a society that would push gay men into the closet
Assassination’s most notable structural element is the way that writer Tom Rob Smith (who wrote all nine episodes — of which I’ve seen all but the finale) begins the story with Versace’s death and then mostly slides backward in time. The first two episodes deal, somewhat, with the bungled manhunt for Cunanan, but from episode three onward, the series traces the killer’s tracks backward through the country, turning three of his other victims into characters in their own right.
Thus, Cunanan kills David Madson, the man with whom he shared the most vivid romantic connection, in one episode, and then Smith fills in the details of their relationship and its splintering over the next several episodes. It’s vaguely similar to the structure of the Christopher Nolan film Memento, which uses its backward structure to mimic the way its protagonist suffers from short-term memory loss. But Smith has something more on his mind.
As with O.J., the central idea of Assassination is that this crime allows viewers to examine certain dynamics of American life that allowed for this to happen. This idea can express itself in something as straightforward as authorities not picking up Cunanan because there was an unexpressed disinterest and distaste for a killer who targeted gay men, or as complex as a military man trying to cut off his own distinctive tattoo so he won’t be outed by a fling who spotted said tattoo and, thus, kicked out of the armed forces. American society in the ’90s didn’t force Versace or Cunanan into the closet — both were out, Versace very publicly so — but it was all too happy to build the closet, leave the door open, and gently coax them toward it.
Some of this allows the miniseries to play around with the idea of just how much things have changed in terms of LGBTQ rights since the 1990s. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” no longer exists as policy, for instance, and the idea of two men having a long-lasting relationship with each other is no longer seen as a curiosity in the public eye. But the series is also about how the inability to live your life and sexuality openly becomes a kind of buried trauma for an individual, for their family, for their nation.
The series is never as simplistic as “Society is the real monster!” It’s very clear-eyed about the idea that Cunanan might very well have been a sociopath. (We still know strikingly little about him.) But the existence of a killer like Cunanan requires a society that’s all too comfortable with burying secrets as deeply as it possibly can. Thus, the backward-tracking structure becomes central to the series’ larger themes: Here, secrets are thrust out into the open, with blood and fury, and then Smith’s scripts push them back down beneath the surface.
A closeted businessman is murdered, and even as the details are covered up by his family — who to this day insist the murder was completely random, despite the fact that the man had clearly let Cunanan into his house — the scripts move backward in time, both resurrecting him and restoring whatever secrets he kept. Truth is glimpsed, and then you look away.
Assassination is maybe more compelling to think about than it actually is to watch
This structure means that Assassination ends up in an intriguing but potentially frustrating place for many viewers. It’s perhaps the most somber piece of work producer Ryan Murphy (who directs the premiere) has ever been associated with, and watching eight episodes over two days put me in a bit of a sour mood (in a good way, I think). A lot of people won’t want to take this particular wallow, and I don’t know that I’d blame them.
But the deeper I got into Assassination, the more I became convinced it’s somewhat brilliant in how its structure mirrors the story it’s telling. And as with any given Murphy production, the show’s cast is electrifying. Édgar Ramírez and Ricky Martin craft a deeply believable love for a lifetime in the handful of scenes they share together as Versace and his partner Antonio D’Amico, while Penélope Cruz might seem over the top as Donatella Versace, until you check out actual footage of the woman and realize Cruz has absolutely nailed her performance.
The actors playing the less famous characters have even more room to win over viewers. As Madson, Australian actor Cody Fern plays the closest thing the series has to a conscience, and both he and Finn Wittrock (as Cunanan victim Jeff Trail) are mesmerizing as young men who have to live with the compromises of being openly (or not so openly) gay in the 1990s. Judith Light pops up in a one-episode role that stays on just the right side of camp (and the great TV director Gwyneth Horder-Payton, who directs three of the nine episodes, gives her a terrific final shot).
But it’s Darren Criss as Cunanan who leaves the biggest impression. Criss is best known as a dreamy song-and-dance man from Glee, and his take on Cunanan is the very best kind of take on a dark character. He doesn’t want to create empathy for Cunanan so much as a kind of understanding. You are invited to think about him less as a person and more as an aberration, like some dark part of America’s worst self-made flesh. This is going to redefine Criss’s career, and it deserves to.
If all of this sounds like the series is more interesting to think about than it is to watch, well, sometimes that’s true. But it’s still fascinating to observe Smith and his collaborators navigate a story filled with pitfalls (not least of which is how many stories in our culture have depicted gay men as vicious, vacuous killers — a description that could maybe fit Cunanan) and make it about more than just itself.
The characters in Assassination of Gianni Versace come so close to glimpsing a better life for themselves, only to find it was a mirage all along. Things have changed since the 1990s, sure, but not as much as we might hope they have. The closet is less visible, but its shadow remains.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story debuts Wednesday, January 17, at 10 pm Eastern on FX.