- Hi, welcome to Meet Your Nominee,
I'm Marya Gullo from the Hollywood Reporter
and I have with me today Finn Wittrock.
Hi, Finn, how are you? - Hi.
Great, how are you? - Good.
You are nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor
in a Limited Series for The Assassination of Gianni Versace:
American Crime Story.
Congratulations. - Thank you so much.
- How does it feel to be nominated?
- It's a real honor and a wonderful surprise.
- Yes.
- Yeah, I really wasn't
expecting it and it came my way,
and it was dropped from the heavens.
American Crime Story has 18 nominations,
- I know.
- Amazing
- It's amazing.
So many of your other actors are nominated,
- I know, I feel like...
- Are you excited for the nominees?
- Half of my competition is from the show, it's like
- Absolutely (laughs)
- I'll be so happy, whoever wins.
- Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- Yeah.
- Are you excited for any
of the other nominees for Emmy night?
- Oh, yeah.
I mean everyone, I think, I mean, obviously
for Darren and Chris.
I mean, I think kind of seeing him
kind of up close and personal,
digging into that character was
really a cool experience, you know.
Really a great, he was so great to work with
and play with and he kept things very light
off camera, so that I think he could sort of
go to the darkness on camera, you know.
- Yeah, he had a technique.
- It's cool to be in that process.
- He had a technique where he had to go
kind of switch out of that.
I actually have heard from a lot of people
that when they are doing
the more darker dramatic performances,
they need to keep it light on set.
- Yeah, yeah.
'Cause otherwise, you kind of lose yourself
and also you don't want it to ever be morose
and you don't want it to, you don't want
to fall into playing the darkness, you know.
- Um hum.
- Like as a habit.
- Right.
- Because people don't naturally want
to be sad or depressed or angry.
They try to not be.
- Yeah.
- And ah, keep getting sucked down the vortex.
- You can get, if you're getting into your character,
you can get sucked down the vortex.
- Yeah, yeah, easily.
Especially with material like this,
which was, you know, heavy and real.
- Um hum.
- And intense.
- Yeah.
Tell me a little bit about working with Darren
when you had your scenes together.
Your scenes were, you had some more intense scenes
than that, which we will get to,
(laughs) - Yeah.
but the scenes with Darren,
like how was it to, like how was that exchange with him?
Every take was sort of different.
It was very playful, in a way of like,
we don't quite know what it is.
We're gonna figure it out together.
I think, you know, he's a very, comes from music
and theater and I come from the theater,
and I think that kind of loving the process
of like finding it together is sort of
mutually beneficial for us.
Many days where I was covered
in this crazy prosthetic makeup of him,
having bashed my head in with a hammer.
- Oh.
- I mean that's a spoiler, but.
(laughs)
But that happens.
- Yeah.
And so I was like my whole, I could only see
out of one eye.
- Oh, wow.
And there's like this big rig
that they put over me to be like, you know,
mangled, tortured flesh.
- Um hum.
- And when they rolled me up in a rug,
that was really me, I really...
- You did it right.
- They had a dummy, but they rarely used the dummy.
They were like, Finn don't worry,
we're gonna use the dummy.
(laughs)
And then I was so good at being dead, I mean,
that they just kept the cameras rolling.
- Keep it going.
- Yeah.
They really rolled me up in that thing and dragged me
behind the couch.
So, yeah, you know, he's, he also did that.
- Let's talk a little bit
about your character, Jeff Trail.
When did you know that he was more than just a victim
of a killing spree?
That you were getting a role that was pretty interesting
and complicated?
- Yeah, well, I mean,
I think I read the first four scripts first.
And I basically die at the very end of the fourth one.
- Um hum.
- And I assume that that wasn't going to be the very,
like the last thing I did.
Since it's aired, friends have called me,
and been like, that's it?
I mean you were filling that thing for so long.
And you just like had a scene and then you died.
I was like, non I promise there's more.
That's what Ryan Murphy does very well,
is he kind of hooks you in and then he's like,
don't worry, I promise there's more.
And then you're kind of like waiting
on pins and needles for the next script.
And then the next script like really did not disappoint.
It really fleshed him out and opened him up
and I think the show just kind of worked
in an interesting trajectory,
where it you know, kind of worked backwards following
Andrew and Versace as sort of the parallel lines
but then kind of went off into
these different tree branches of different story lines.
And Jeff's storyline I think was, I think
for Ryan Murphy, like was a bit personal
'cause it is sort of about a guy
who is very patriotic.
- Yeah.
- Like he believed in the American dream.
He wanted to be in the military and like,
serve his country.
I think he was actually like
kind of leaned a bit right in his belief system, you know?
- Um hum.
- He just had this secret that he kind of couldn't tell
anyone, and it kept eating him up.
And he finally had to come out and reveal it.
And he did.
Like in the show, that reenactment
of the CBS interview that he gives like
where he's in the blackness, you know.
You can't see him face.
That's almost verbatim what really happened,
and he really did that.
And it was a huge risk that he took,
coming out like that.
Well, not coming out, but coming out
and saying that Don't Ask, Don't Tell was wrong.
- Right.
- It was like always a lot of good stuff
to chew on as an actor.
And an interesting history to learn about, you know?
I mean we didn't know, sort of knew the bare bones
of the Versace thing.
Like a guy killed him.
If you're like, what's the Mafia, you know?
- Um hum.
- And then Marie Orth has this great novel about it.
And that was sort of what the scripts were about,
and we just learned a lot, yeah.
- Yeah.
Why is it important that we, that we see Jeff
go through what he does in the military?
Like why is it important to see
how gay men are mistreated in this series.
It happens a lot.
- Yeah.
- You see a lot of the different aspects
of how gay men are mistreated.
- His story line's specifically interesting
because I think there was a sort of underlying thing,
as the police were investigating, like,
oh, this is a gay murder, you know.
Not that they didn't work hard,
or like, but it was sort of like,
you know, that was their excuse.
It was like, well it's a gay thing.
They got like they, whips and chains,
and someone died.
- Um hum.
Like, but when you have a guy who was in the Navy
and was an upstanding citizen, and could have been a cop.
You know, couldn't have been one of those guys,
and he's gay, and he's saying this is wrong,
what's happening?
He breaks the mold, I think,
of what they thought homosexuality was in the nineties.
- Um, yeah.
- And it also shows that Andrew was in,
he had his hands in a lots of different pies.
Like he was like such a social pariah.
He was like into so many different worlds.
Like Lee Miglin, this famous architect in Chicago,
that was the second, third victim.
And then he, there's also a random truck driver
who's dead.
Like it's this crazy web of following his path
that continues to kind of go in kind of unexpected ways.
- Yeah.
- Do you see any hopeful dialog that can come
out of American Crime Story?
Have you gotten any positive feedback from people?
Are people coming to you with their own stories?
- What's funny, I was, when I first read the script,
I will say this was like probably a year ago,
it was like last summer.
And I remember reading it and being like,
ah, Don't Ask Don't Tell thing.
Isn't that a little bit dated.
I mean, we're kind of past that.
That was like a thought that went through my head.
And then it was like a few weeks later
we found out about the transgender military ban,
and it was like, whoa!
This is not over, you know?
- Yeah.
- Like this is gonna be really relevant
because this is a story that's like inches away
from what's happening right now.
So that made it very current for me.
I have been approached by lots of like successful,
very successful gay men who lived through
like this period, and were closeted
for a time in their life.
And were, I think, really really moved
by that storyline.
That it painted it in a fair way, I think.
- Um hum
- Like this sort of society not letting you be
who you are, but also this sort of self-disgust
and self-hate that went along with that.
You know, at one point I'm like trying to end it all,
you know...
- Yeah.
- And the give that up and like,
I think that that was, there was a kernel
of truth in that people were seeing about their own lives,
which has been very validating for sure.
- Yeah.
- Um, so being part of the Ryan Murphy creative crew,
what is that like?
Are you enjoying your time in sort of an ensemble cast?
- Oh man, it's the best family.
- Yeah?
- Yeah.
Ryan, I think, is incredibly good at continuing
to challenge you, you know.
Well the first thing I did with him,
I was like dying of Aids and on a plane.
And then he threw me this part
of this crazy psychopath rich kid.
(laughs)
And then he threw me this part of coke-shorting model
who is in love with the actress played by Lady Gaga.
(laughs)
You know like, it's like ah, as soon as you kind of think
you've nailed one thing he throws you something
that stretches you in a whole different crazy way.
And that's what, I think also it keeps
great actors coming to him, you know?
- Um hum.
- 'Cause he knows how to like work your muscles.
- Yeah.
- As it were.
Your acting muscles.
And it's also a great, I mean, you find
yourself on set with lots of people that you know,
even lots of crew that you know
and have worked with,
'cause he's kept such a tight, cool family together.
- Um hum.
- So yeah, I'm very thankful.
Thanks, thanks Ryan.
(laughs)
- Ah, one last question before I let you go.
Is there anybody you'd like to dance with
at the after parties at the Emmys?
- Oh, man, Penelope, is that all good?
- Oh, yeah.
- I really didn't get to do much with you, you know?
- Um hum.
- Ah, I think maybe Elizabeth Moss, too.
We could like get down, maybe, she's cool.
- That would be great.
That would be great.
I think you'll all have something
to celebrate soon enough.
- Knock on wood.
- Alright, thank you for being here, Finn.
- Thank you.
- The Assassination of Gianni Versace:
American Crime Story on FX.