You have to be some talent to play renowned fashion designer Gianni Versace. Actor Edgar Ramirez recently opened up on The Tonight Show about his role in FX’s American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace. 

“Ryan [Murphy, the creator of the series] has an amazing talent to identify stories that are both dramatically gripping and at the same time they’re socially and culturally relevant,” he told host Jimmy Fallon. “It’s that combination that makes the anthology of American Crime Story so interesting.”

“The underlying theme of our show is homophobia,” the Venezuelan actor said. “We tend to think that in the Nineties that our world was just like the world today and actually it was very different. When you look into this investigation, the element that comes back into the surface constantly is the don’t ask, don’t tell element. This kind of invisibility and this denial of sexuality, denial of existence of a gay world out there.”

“This guy, Andrew Cunanan, he was on national TV for several weeks, he was on the FBI’s most wanted list and for whatever reason it was very hard for the authorities to catch him,” he continued. “Basically, he was killing gay men and didn’t represent a public threat to the authorities at the time. To think that it was only 20 years ago is shocking and frightening because history tends to repeat itself. It’s important to revisit.”