Does The Assassination Of Gianni Versace humanise the designer's murderer?
Yes, and that is part of the point, says actor Darren Criss, who plays serial killer Andrew Cunanan on the new series, airing on Thursdays at 10pm on FX (Singtel TV Channel 310, StarHub TV Channel 507).
The second season of the American Crime Story anthology from director-producer Ryan Murphy looks at the events leading up to Cunanan's cold-blooded shooting of Italian fashion designer Versace (Edgar Ramirez) at the gates of Versace's Miami home in 1997, where his partner Antonio (Ricky Martin) found him bleeding to death.
In an interview with The Straits Times and other press in Los Angeles this month, Criss, 30, says: "I can't (just) think Cunanan's a monster - and obviously I do, because he's done monstrous things.
"But if you make it that simple, you're sabotaging a narrative. This isn't a Bond movie, I'm not just playing a bad guy, it's not as simple as, 'Oh, he's bad - end of story.' If it's just clear-cut evil, we can check out of that because it's not interesting, it's not relatable," says the former star of the musical comedy series Glee (2009 to 2015).
"It's important to have feelings for these people and see some side of yourself in them. So that's my goal with him. It's not that I'm trying to humanise or glamorise somebody who was a monster. It's because I'm trying to tell a story and ask greater questions."
Yet the actor admits having wrestled with "this bizarre guilt over the fact I'm trying to find the best in this person".
"Trying to find the good in somebody that it's so difficult to find the good in was hard for me, and I knew I'd find myself in positions where I'd maybe even be defending Andrew. But ultimately that's the name of the game for an actor - I'm in the business of empathy, even for the worst of people. So I have to believe he's not as bad as the worst things he did to people."
Criss - who is Filipino American like Cunanan was - says he "found a lot of similarities" between himself and the killer, but that "the differences were few in number but high in content, and those are the differences that made it okay for me to step away from it, because it was so far away from myself".
The role "didn't come home with me".
"I think what saved me is that Andrew compartmentalised so many things in his life, emotionally, and he could disassociate (from them). And, likewise, I could disassociate," adds Criss, who is engaged to Mia Swier, a 32-year-old writer and producer.
Murphy, the show's executive producer and director, took pains to point out that the story is "not glamorising the Cunanan story - we never want to do that on this show".
Instead, the series looks "at everybody who was affected - not just the (other gay men) who were killed (by Cunanan), but also their relatives".
"What he did was very destructive and the reasons he did it - the homophobia of the day, which still persists - are really topical. And that's what our (anthology series American Crime Story) does: with The People V O.J. Simpson (the first season), we looked at sexism and racism, two topical topics, and we're doing the same with this season."
Fellow producer Brad Simpson says the risk of humanising a killer in a show like this is also "the basic quandary for anybody making true crime as a genre - (it's) that question of whether, by re-creating these murders, are you giving the murderer what he wants? Are you hurting the victims again?"
But, he concludes, "I think true crime is important to have out there because it's about a bigger rift in American culture, it's about something that's affecting us all". And "we're showing the real devastation of what Andrew did".
For writer and producer Tom Rob Smith, the deep dive into Cunanan's psychology is crucial to the story.
"This is someone who had a great education, who was brilliant, who was handsome, successful, witty, had the world at his feet and could have been very successful. So why did he end up killing five people? That is the central question.
"So you have to explore the intellect and what went wrong."
Smith also argues that "Andrew is much closer in pathology to a terrorist than a serial killer" because he targeted gay men and was trying to "rip down the success of Versace" and his other victims to make a statement and leave a mark.
"And so that pathology means you have to go back into the complexity of Andrew and you have to go back into the story and see what went wrong. You're not just dealing with someone who is a broken monster and who deserves no scrutiny. And that is at the heart of this journey we're exploring."
