Lady Gaga To Play Donatella Versace in New American Crime Story Season

It’s been reported by Us Weekly that the pop singer will be playing the designer on the third series of American Crime Story.

Last month, it was reported that the series will relate the murder of Donatella’s elder brother Gianni Versace, who founded the eponymous fashion house.

American Crime Story is executive produced by Ryan Murphy, for whom Gaga’s given a Golden Globe-winning performance on American Horror Story: Hotel. She’s also featured on the current series of that programme, which is subtitled Roanoke.

As Us Weekly have pointed out, he may have teased her latest potential casting whilst speaking onstage at the Entertainment Weekly PopFest last Sunday. When an audience member floated the Bad Romance singer as ‘the perfect Donatella,’ the 50-year-old offered a smile and a: ‘Ya think?’, prompting applause.

Gianni Versace, who launched his company in 1978, was shot dead outside his mansion in Miami Beach in 1997. Eight days later, the culprit, serial killer Andrew Cunanan, committed suicide by gunshot on a houseboat.

The American Crime Story version will be based on the 1999 book, Vulgar Favours: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in US History by Maureen Orth. The Versace brand have insisted that they’ve ‘neither authorised nor had any involvement whatsoever in the forthcoming series about Versace. The series should only be seen as a work of fiction.’

American Crime Story’s first go was entitled The People v OJ Simpson and seized nine Emmy Awards this year, including for Outstanding Limited Series and for performances by Sarah Paulson, Courtney B Vance and Sterling K Brown. Its second series will centre on the 2005 Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.