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acsversace-news · 6 years ago

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Finn Wittrock received his second Emmy nomination this year for playing Jeff Trail, victim of serial killer Andrew Cunanan in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace.” Wittrock was previously nominated in this same category of Best Movie/Limited Series Supporting Actor category for his twisted role as Dandy in “American Horror Story: Freak Show” in 2015.

Wittrock recently spoke with Gold Derby contributing writer Charles Brightabout playing Jeff and all of his “contradictions,” what it’s like to work with Ryan Murphy and the funny way he learned about his Emmy nomination. Watch the exclusive web chat above and read the complete interview transcript below.

Gold Derby: Finn Wittrock, you just received an Emmy nomination for your work in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.” What was your reaction to that when you read the episode script that you submitted, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”? What was your reaction to that?

Finn Wittrock: I continued to be surprised by the writing of that show. Really though, Tom Rob Smith, who wrote all of the episodes, continued to surprise me in the direction that it went. I knew a little bit about where they were gonna go with it but I didn’t quite expect the entire episode would follow Jeff’s own little arc, sort of mini arc. I really admired the way that he crafted these episodes in terms of having the basic through line of Cunanan and [Gianni] Versace and these offshoots based on sometimes the victims, at the end you follow the father figure, so each character gets their own self-contained episode and then that works its way back into the thing. I was very impressed by that. I was very surprised and happy how much time they took addressing Jeff’s own coming to terms with his identity and his sexuality and how complicated and contradictory it was for him to come out as a gay man and come out against a policy, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” which he disagreed with, but he was a fundamentally very patriotic, very loving of the military kind of upright, responsible young man. All those contradictions. I think often I’m looking for how many contradictions can we fit into one person. That just excites me and so, all those elements were there.

GD: I like that you mentioned how it was structured, because we first saw your character in the previous episode but we only saw you for like two minutes and then you’re bludgeoned to death.

FW: Yeah, my friends called me and they were like, “Man, you were filming that for so many months. That’s it? Just for those two scenes and then you were dead? What were you doing all that time?” I’m like, “Guys, it works backwards. Figure it out.”

GD: What was also brilliant about that was in watching the next episode, the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” episode, it just made everything in that episode all the more tragic, ‘cause in a way, Cunanan was this life preserver for Jeff but it was also his undoing, unfortunately. It just encapsulated the tragedy of it so much.

FW: Yeah, that is what tragedy is, knowing that the ending is gonna be terrible and yet being along for the ride and still hoping illogically that things will turn out differently. You can watch “Romeo and Juliet” as much as you want and if it’s well done… I mean they tell you at the very beginning, “Star-crossed lovers who die at the end.” The prologue says that, and still, if it’s well done production, you’re watching on pins and needles, like hopefully this time they’ll wake up and find each other. So I think that playing with that element of knowing what the end is, knowing it’s gonna end in tragedy, it does something specific to us as an audience, I think. It kind of engages us, hopefully, in a different kind of way.

GD: So in the lead-up to shooting your scenes for this series, did you speak with anyone who had lived through “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” in the military?

FW: I talked to some people who had been in the Navy at that time. We had a really good Navy advisor. It’s a sensitive subject. People don’t open up that easily. But the fodder that I really got was there’s that interview in the episode, my face is in shadow and then talking about the policy. That’s a very, very accurate reenactment of a real interview that I got to see that I had on-hand on my phone all the time to reference continuously throughout the shoot, which is really him trying to be anonymous, having this very, very honest, in-depth conversation with this reporter for the show “48 Hours,” I believe. So that was my biggest go-to in terms of character reference research.

GD: What was also really magnificent about it was the dynamic between you and Darren Criss as Cunanan, especially when it all just comes to a head, I don’t know if it’s the final scene but right towards the end with you just accosting him in your apartment. What was it like to film that? What was that dynamic like between you two?

FW: That was a long day. After that day was done it was like, “Clocked.” I feel like we put in a good day’s work. We played with it a lot. We did a lot of different variations in terms of how heightened and how confrontational it was versus some versions being more wanting to avoid it, wanting to be a little more self-torture, and ultimately the thing that was working was restraining, restraining, restraining and then finding a moment to just explode and go at each other. Yeah, no holds barred, take off the boxing gloves. Like all of working with Darren and Daniel Minahan, who directed the episode, it was a lot of great experimentation. A lot of finding as we went. There wasn’t really a pre-planned way that they wanted it to go. We were exploring new territory, really, finding it.

GD: Did it ever get you that when you realize you’re acting in something, showing how shitty things were for gay people, that was only 20 years ago? Is that a very startling thing to realize?

FW: Yeah, definitely it is, and how recent it was and yet how alien it seems to my own way I live my life. I have so many openly gay friends, but I also know lots of older gay people who really responded to that, people who lived through that period and maybe now are out but at the time weren’t. That really affected people. I had real heart to hearts with some people who saw that later and were like, “That was my life.” But yeah, it is crazy. It’s crazy how far we’ve come and how not far also.

GD: One of the other things that I thought was so interesting about this is that for a lot of the Cunanan story, there’s just a lot of stuff that we just don’t know for sure. A lot of stuff, even in the Maureen Orth book that the series is based on, some of it is kind of just filling in blanks and I was wondering, was that weird to try to portray something of which there’s a lot we don’t know about?

FW: We know where things ended and we know whether things began but a lot of the stuff behind closed doors, no one knows what really happened, ‘cause most of the people who were there are dead now. I think like anything, it’s historical fiction. These events really happened but we have to use artistic liberty to fill in all the blanks and that’s really where the emotional arc comes through. History has given us the exoskeleton, and so it’s your job as an actor and the writer and the creative team to fill in the blanks to bring that to life. It’s like that old saying about never let truth get in the way of a good story.

GD: It’s very true. So this is actually the third time that you’ve worked on a Ryan Murphy project. You were of course on “American Horror Story: Freak Show,” Season 4. Actually, I think it’s the fourth time you’ve worked with Murphy.

FW: Technically it’s the fifth ‘cause I did his movie “The Normal Heart” before that on HBO.

GD: I was counting that. I have “Freak Show,” “Hotel,” “Normal Heart” because oh god, I’ll never forget watching your scene with my roommate. We were a wreck at the end of that. And this one. What was the other one?

FW: Oh, well it’s almost unfair to say ‘cause I’m unrecognizable in my one episode of “Roanoke,” “American Horror Story.” Jether was my name. I died pretty quickly but I was one of the inbred hillbilly monsters and it’s all shot in grainy, like it’s shot on cellphone, so even if you could see my face, you probably couldn’t tell ‘cause I also had this crazy prosthetic stuff. But yeah, technically I was in “Roanoke.”

GD: You’ve worked on so many projects that have been associated with Ryan Murphy. What does he bring to a project that makes him so desirable to work with?

FW: A lot of things. The first thing is you know that you’re gonna work with great people, on-camera, off-camera. He has such an amazing repertory of actors that you’re gonna get to do some really juicy stuff with. That’s already fulfilling. Also, he’s gonna challenge you. You know he’s gonna challenge you in a way that is specific to you. He knows what you’ve done before and he’s gonna find something that sort of goes in the polar opposite direction of that, to stretch your actor muscles. And also there’s the fact that I feel like whatever he does generally is talking about in some way some kind of zeitgeist, some kind of cultural conversation that we’re having. Even “Freak Show” is really about, the freaks are any ostracized group of people. Be that for race or sexual orientation or what have you. Even the stuff that seems totally off the wall and bonkers, somehow there’s always some element of something that you find very current and alive and on the pulse of right now. It just always seems to affect people. That’s why these shows are so freakin’ popular (laughs).

GD: You brought up all these amazing people through the Ryan Murphy projects that you’ve gotten to work with. Is there any one person that you were most excited or most intimated to do scenes with?

FW: I’ve gotten pretty lucky. I had a lot of fun stuff to do with Sarah Paulsonthat first year, both of her heads. And it was like, I really like Bette but Dot was such a bitch (laughs). Oh god, not Dot again! No, she was really astounding in that. I obviously had fun working with Lady Gaga. That was sort of a pinch me, is this real life situation. She was really just such a brave, impressive force and it’s been cool to get into her sphere a little bit. I only had one scene with Jessica Lange but I want more. That was fun. Kathy Bateshas been an amazing person to work with and is also an incredible philanthropist in her own life. I’ve just been lucky.

GD: It’s one of those things where you look back and you’re like, “Wow, I’ve been a part of all of this.”

FW: “This really happened? Is this real life?”

GD: As I said before, you got nominated for your second Emmy this year, this one for “Crime Story.” You were nominated for “Freak Show” four years ago, I believe. What was nomination morning like for you, finding out that you had gotten nominated again?

FW: This was disbelief. Sarah, my wife, read me the list and I was like, “You must be looking at the cast list.” And she’s like, “No, this is the list!” It was truly an out of the blue, random Wednesday morning, like, “Oh, my life has changed now than it was five seconds ago.”

GD: So it wasn’t your agent or anyone calling you? It was your wife who was looking at the nominations and she said, “Hey look at this”?

FW: Yeah. I was making coffee, it was kind of early. It’s 8 a.m. and that happens, it was like, “What are you talking about?” Then suddenly yeah, my phone starts to vibrate for the rest of the day. It’s funny the way they do it, ‘cause they announce some of them live but then they put the rest up online. Television Academy, I love you, obviously, but the website could use a little guiding help. You have to click to a whole lot of things to find out what the nominees are. It really takes a second. They don’t make it easy for you.

GD: This year was weird because usually right after the nominations come out, you can go and find the link of the PDF of the whole 7,000 pages of all the different categories that they have, but this year it took a while. For some reason there was something going on.

FW: (knocks on computer) “Give me my trophy!”

GD: I almost threw a computer out a window but then I remembered that I was at a place of work and then I was like, “Yeah, that’s probably not good.”

FW: You need some young, tech-savvy people to come in.

GD: One other question. What else do you have coming up down the road? We were talking before we started this about some of your theater work. Do you have any theater work that’s coming up on the horizon?

FW: No plays on the new horizon. Last year I spent about seven months in New York. I did two plays back to back. I did “Othello” with Daniel Craig and David Oyelowo, which was amazing, and then I did “The Glass Menagerie” on Broadway with Sally Field. I really got the theater bug well exercised, if that makes sense. No plays that I know of, although I’m always hungry to do a play. There’s a movie called “Judy” which will be out next year, about Judy Garland that I’m in. Renée Zellweger’s playing her and I think it’s gonna be really cool.

GD: Oh, I know a lot of people are gonna be waiting for that one.

FW: I know. For better or for worse, right?

GD: Exactly.

FW: There’s a movie coming out soon called “If Beale Street Could Talk,” which is Barry Jenkins’ next film, which I have a part in, which is beautiful. That’s gonna be really cool. There’s also this movie called “Semper Fi,” this military film that I did. I think that’ll come out sometime soon. So a lot of things in the pipeline. There’s a couple smaller movies, some interesting Indies that I did that are making the festival circuit right now, too. We’ll see if they come to a theater near you, or a screen near you.

GD: We’re definitely hoping. Finn, I can’t thank you enough for this. We wish you all the best on Emmy night. Thanks so much for joining us.

FW: Thank you so much.

#acs versace #finn wittrock #gold derby #interview #article #september 2018

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