Brace yourself, “Glee” fans: You’re about to see a radically different side of Darren Criss.
In “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” the actor who gained fame as the cute, preppy singer Blaine Anderson, transforms himself into a cold-blooded serial leader.
Criss, a Bay Area native, plays Andrew Cunanan, the man who murdered five people over a three-month span in 1997. One of his victims was Versace, the iconic fashion designer who was gunned down on the steps outside his mansion in Miami Beach.
“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” (10 p.m. Wednesday, FX) is producer Ryan Murphy’s nine-episode follow-up to “The People v. O.J. Simpson” and Criss’ unnerving performance is at the center of it. If “Versace” manages to draw anything close to the amount of attention “O.J.” generated, expect to hear the actor’s name being bandied about during awards season.
Playing Cunanan might seem like a bold, wholesome image-busting kind of move, but Criss doesn’t see it that way.
“I think people have a fascination with the dichotomy between something like ‘Glee’ and this (series), but people sometimes forget that actors are actors. We are acting,” he says. “I’m always looking for interesting material. I’m looking for things with clay that I can get my hands on and really do something different and big.”
Murphy, who also produced “Glee,” says he always knew Criss had the ability to go dark. That — along with the actor’s physical resemblance to Cunanan — made Criss his “first and only choice” to play the pivotal role in “Versace,” which is based on Maureen Orth’s book, “Vulgar Favors.” The cast also includes Edgar Ramirez as the title character, as well as Penelope Cruz as Versace’s sister, Donatella, and Ricky Martin as his longtime (partner) Antonio D’Amico.
Cunanan was a fame-seeking gay man, who after dropping out of college, settled in the Castro District of San Francisco. Over his final years, he often befriended wealthy older men. He had a tendency to lie his way into high society, telling fantastic tales about his personal life and false accomplishments. Eight days after shooting Versace, and with the FBI hunting for him, he killed himself with a gunshot to the head in a Miami houseboat. He was 27 years old.
While doing his research for the role, Criss said he was surprised to learn that Cunanan was not “your typical spree killer.”
“This is not somebody who had a history of killing small animals and burying them in his backyard,” he says. “He defied all those textbook analogies. He was a charming, affable person, despite everything we know about him now. For the most part, people loved Andrew. He was always the life of the party. There were so many positive things about him.
“I’m less disturbed and creeped out than I am just utterly heartbroken by the loss of such potential and the wrong avenues he took in life.”
Criss, who grew up in San Francisco and spent much of his youth performing in American Conservatory Theater productions, says he avoided simplistically thinking of Cunanan as just a violent psychopath. Instead, he tried to detect “common denominators.”
“You find the primary colors — basic things that aren’t so complicated,” he says. “For example, everyone knows what it feels like to want something that you’re not allowed to have, the desire to rise higher than your station. Then you add in the other layers — what’s happening in his home life, his socio-economic situation and what’s happening with his own sexuality and that kind of added the other colors. You find things that you can relate to and then you let the script and the world around you — with Ryan’s curating — do the rest of the work. It’s not as hard as what it would seem.”
“Versace” differs from “O.J.” in tone and approach. As Murphy says, the first was a “courtroom pot boiler” and the followup in a “manhunt thriller.” It is predominantly seen from Cunanan’s point of view and is laced with flashbacks that take viewers through the killer’s past.
“I really loved how we laid into everybody who was affected,” Murphy says. “Not just the people who were killed, but also the relatives, the siblings.”
Even though Criss was forced to dwell in the dark side during much of the production on “Versace,” he insists he didn’t bring the role home with him at the end of the day.
“I know a lot of people who jump into these kinds of things, and it really consumes their whole lives,” he says. “… 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.”
