Fans of the “American Crime Story” awaiting the upcoming season of the show, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” should know that the Versace family says the show is “a work of fiction.”
The second season of the FX true crime anthology television series concerns the death of fashion designer Gianni Versace in 1997 at the hands of serial killer Andrew Cunanan. Versace was one of the world’s leading fashion designers and his siblings, Santo and Donatella, kept the Versace design house afloat after his murder.
The Versace family said it has “neither authorized nor had any involvement whatsoever in the forthcoming TV series about the death of Mr. Gianni Versace.”
“Since Versace did not authorize the book on which it is partly based nor has it taken part in the writing of the screenplay, this TV series should only be considered as a work of fiction,” the family said in a statement.
The book refers to Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History, written by Maureen Orth and published in 1999.
Tom Rob Smith, the executive producer of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” said during a press tour last week that he and his collaborators “pieced together the facts from Orth’s book and imagined what might have happened in between the gaps.”
“We have these tiny points of truth, and you try to connect the tissue between them, but I would never use the term ’embellish,’” Smith said.
The show, featuring nine episodes, premieres on Jan. 17.
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