Gianni Versace gets title billing in the current season of Ryan Murphy’s anthology series American Crime Story, but the story belongs to his murderer, Andrew Cunanan. A serial killer who targeted gay men, Cunanan was already being pursued by the FBI in connection to four murders before he shot Versace in the head outside his beachfront villa in South Beach in July 1997, and while the season opens with the famed designer’s death, it quickly spins back in time to track Cunanan’s bloody path to Miami. In last week’s episode, Cunanan, played by Darren Criss, killed Lee Miglin, a closeted married man who was a longtime client of Cunanan’s escort services, and tonight introduces David Madson, Cunanan’s ex-boyfriend and second victim, who is portrayed by the Australian newcomer Cody Fern in his television début. “If you know Ryan’s work, you know that Ryan is not going to just give you the assassination of Gianni Versace,” Fern says. “That doesn’t interest him so much as the context around it and how it got to this point. He finds ways into stories that nobody else does. I don’t know where it comes from, but he understands human nature in a way that most people don’t.”
Coming off the success of The People v. O.J. Simpson, the first season of American Crime Story, which aired in 2016 and took home a batch of Emmys and Golden Globes for its incisive investigation of racism, sexism, and the media circus of the Nineties, The Assassination of Gianni Versace dives into the era’s homophobia and what Fern describes as “how men treat men and especially how gay men treat gay men.” One of the through lines of the season is the police’s repeated bungling of the case—in the very first episode, a car trunk is shown stuffed full of Wanted flyers with Cunanan’s face that no one took the initiative to distribute—and the prevailing attitude that, until Versace’s death and the media attention that followed, dismissed Cunanan’s killing spree as a “gay” problem. “People might not say it as crassly as that, but essentially what it came down to was like, ‘Let’s just let them have at it and we’ll go about our normal, straight police cases,’” Fern explains. "මෙම තරගාවලිය ඇත්තටම සමලිංගික ලැජ්ජාවට හා එය ඒඩ්ස් අර්බුදය එළියට එන හොවා තුළ සමලිංගික මිනිසා අදහස් ගවේෂණය. මගේ චරිතය සමලිංගික ලැජ්ජාවට ක ප්රබල ප්රමාණය සමඟ කටයුතු කරන අතර, එය ඇත්තටම සියුම් වේ, නමුත් කනගාටුදායක, ඔහුගේ මනස තුළට බලන්න. "
බැලූ බැල්මට කිසි තැනක එළියට වසරේ buzziest සංදර්ශන එකක් බවට 'ඉල්ලා අස්වීම ගැන පසුතැවෙනවා' විශාල පරදුවට වැනි දෙයක් වන, නමුත් පර්ණාංග දැනටමත් විශාල අවදානම් කිරීමට භාවිතා වේ. Raised in the town of Southern Cross (population: three hundred) in Western Australia, the twenty-nine-year-old actor studied management and marketing at university and was working a corporate job at Ernst & Young when he decided he needed a change. “I hit twenty-two and I just realized that I hated my life,” he recalls. “I hated everything about. I hated the music I was listening to, I hated the city that I was in, I hated the people that I associated with. It was one of those moments where you have either a breakthrough or a breakdown and I had to ask myself some really serious questions about who I was going to be.” He quit his job and joined an experimental theater group, performing in front of a handful of people a night. “I’m sure I was terrible in it, but I got great reviews and I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m going to be an actor,’” he laughs, “but I’d secretly wanted to be an actor since I was five or six.”
තුළ 2014, Fern received the Heath Ledger Scholarship for rising Australian actors, which offered mentorship and ten thousand dollars in prize money and allowed him to move to Los Angeles, where he now lives. “I knew I needed to get to America because Americans are so big in their ambitions and they’re so unabashed about it,"ඔහු පවසයි. “There’s something great about the American Dream. පැහැදිලිවම, it can be debilitating, but there’s also something really great about this philosophy that you can do anything that you want to do if you just work hard enough. That was intoxicating to me.”
With American Crime Story now airing and a number of other projects in the months to come, Fern’s acting career is clearly on the upswing, නමුත් ඔහුගේ අභිලාෂයන් මෙන්ම ලිවීම හා අධ්යාක්ෂණය සඳහා දීර්ඝ. ඔහු Madson සෙල්ලම් කිරීමට දින අත්සන් කරන විට මේ වන විටත් කල් බව විශේෂාංග වැඩ කරන දැනට වන අතර ඔහු ඔහුගේ ම ව්යාපෘති පෙරමුණ ගෙන කටයුතු කිරීමට අවශ්ය බව ටික ප්රසිද්ධ ඇති බව පවසයි හා නව ක්රම තමා තල්ලු. "මම යාත්රා ගැන සැලකිලිමත් මට ඇත්තටම කාටහරි මට කැමති නැහැ මගේ පෞද්ගලිකත්වය ගැන නොවේ යන්න මත රඳා බව නැති දෙයක් ඉදිකිරීම මත වැඩ ගැන සැලකිලිමත්,” he explains. "මම වගේ ක්රියා කිරීමට ඇති තැන මම වැඩ කරන්නේ වෛර. I don’t know how to act like myself on camera.”
ජියානි වර්සකේ ඝාතනය: American Crime Story continues on Wednesdays on FX.
