Reactions were mixed when FX announced the second season of their series American Crime Story would focus on the 1997 murder of Gianni Versace. Fans applauded the casting — Penelope Cruz as Donatella, and Ricky Martin as Gianni’s partner Antonio D’Amico — but the Versace family themselves have stayed tight-lipped.
Now, in an interview with the Guardian, Antonio D’Amico has opened up about what the series has gotten wrong. “There has been so much written and said about the murder, and thousands of suppositions, but not a trace of reality,” D’Amico said. He and the designer were together for 15 years, up until his tragic passing.
D’Amico took particular issue with a scene Ricky Martin detailed earlier this year to the press, in which he reaches out to touch the hand of Edgar Ramirez, who plays Gianni Versace. Ramirez pulls away, responding “Don’t touch me! The paparazzi!” The exchange, D’Amico insists, would have simply never occurred given how open the pair were with their relationship. “We lived like a natural couple, there was never a problem.” He continued, “It was the right moment for him to come out in public, but everyone involved in our world knew. He never tried to hide who he was.”
Nevertheless, D’Amico remains open to Matin, and would like the actor to reach out and learn more about the pair’s relationship. “It’s getting to know the small things about a relationship,” he said. “For example, Gianni was so ordered and focused at work but in his private life everything was disorganised. He’d leave the bathroom in a mess. At a certain point I said, ‘Enough!’ And when it came to cooking, he didn’t even know how to [boil] an egg.”
The Versace family are yet to offer an extensive comment on the series, but historically, they aren’t fans of unauthorised biopics. When US cable network Lifetime aired their 2013 film House of Versace, the family said they had “neither authorised nor had any involvement whatsoever in the forthcoming TV movie about Mrs. Versace,” calling the movie “a work of fiction.”
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Text Isabelle Hellyer