One of the primary issues Ryan Murphy’s TV adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s The Shards will make you ask is: the place the hell are these children’ mother and father? The reply is easy. That is Los Angeles in 1981, and these fabulously benumbed children aren’t being helicopter-parented. They’re going to events, consuming whiskey, listening to Ultravox’s Vienna on repeat and doing copious quantities of cocaine. It’s an entire imaginative and prescient of Ellis’s dully hedonistic America.
The FX sequence follows a personality named Bret Ellis – a thinly-coded model of the creator – in senior yr at an unique Los Angeles prep faculty whose managed, Joan Didion-coded world begins to unravel with the arrival of enigmatic switch pupil Robert Mallory. On the similar time, within the post-Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer period, a serial killer referred to as The Trawler attracts ever nearer to Ellis and his more and more paranoid circle of mates. Ellis (the actual one) first launched his autofictional story The Shards as a serialized podcast between 2020 and 2021 earlier than increasing it right into a novel in 2023.
Initially, the novel appeared destined to be tailored by Luca Guadagnino. As an alternative, in a accident ({and professional} battle), Guadagnino’s extra measured fashion gave method to Murphy’s unashamed extravagance, as he got here onboard in February 2025. On paper, Murphy and Ellis may look like opposites, however in The Shards, they discover all the pieces they’ve in widespread. Each are “obsessive about moments of their youth of hidden identities”, stated Brad Simpson, The Shards’ government producer, and each got here of age within the time of Aids. “That’s affected homosexual artists greater than most individuals assume.”
“This story is a couple of group of younger, stunning people who find themselves about to embark on the world, and there’s a killer that hunts them. There’s an apparent metaphor to Aids within the Eighties for that,” says Simpson, talking on Zoom together with the forged every week earlier than the present’s launch.
For Murphy’s interpretation of The Shards, he assembled a mixture of seasoned actors and the subsequent wave of younger Hollywood. The forged contains Kaia Gerber, returning to Murphy’s world after appearances within the American Horror Story franchise, because the reluctantly excellent Susan Reynolds. Igby Rigney, tv’s future Evan Peters, performs Ellis. In the meantime, the seven-time Tony award-winning producer Jordan Roth performs private assistant Steven Reinhardt, a sort of Lynchian model of Andy Warhol who Murphy says he modeled round Roth. “He despatched me a DM saying, ‘I’ve an element for you. Name me,’” says Roth.
Homer Gere steps into what appears like a job poised to launch a profession in a single day as Robert Mallory, the irritatingly confident object of Ellis’ obsession. “Gen Z desires to have new stars, they need recent faces,” explains Simpson.
The forged hadn’t met earlier than, however Gere and Gerber had definitely heard of each other. There was some air that Gere (son of Richard) and Gerber (daughter of Cindy Crawford) felt they needed to clear. Their mother and father have been one of many defining star {couples} of the 90s, so after they first met two weeks earlier than filming: “I believe one of many first issues we stated was, ‘Ought to we handle it?’” says Gere. They ended up laughing about it, and acquired the inevitable dialog out of the way in which earlier than they went to set. “So it’s not like we ended up speaking about it day-after-day.”
Considered one of Murphy’s predominant casting standards for choosing this forged was their aspirationalism: specifically, would you need to go to a celebration, drink whiskey and do mounds of coke with them? In all probability. But additionally, please don’t do this. Whereas Love Story, Simpson and Murphy’s earlier sequence, helped make smoking cool once more. “We regretted that,” Simpson says, laughing. He hopes this one received’t encourage children to “have drug-fueled events and drive rapidly on the PCH”.
Proper now, every week out from the season premiere, life is far the identical for the appearing newcomers. “I’m simply hanging out, seeing mates, studying books,” says Gere. Upon launch, that may all be turned on its head. Coming into Hollywood by means of one in all its greatest doorways, the forged are out of the blue staring down the potential of in a single day fame. The closest glimpse of what’s to come back is seeing themselves plastered throughout billboards throughout Los Angeles. How do you put together for one thing like this? “You’ll be able to’t,” says Campbell, who’s saved the blond perm that he sports activities as character Thom Wright, whose jock archetype devolves all through the season.
In The Shards, every of the characters is determined to be seen, no extra explicitly than Debbie Schaffer, a seethingly insecure teen performed by Hayes Warner, primarily referred to as a musician someplace within the vein of Avril Lavigne. These emotions have been straightforward to entry, she says. “I used to be within the music business, and it’s so oversaturated, and there’s a lot desperation to get your music on the market, like, how do you get individuals to hear and care and listen to about it?”
The Shards clearly calls for consideration with its basic cocktail of intercourse, medicine and rock’n’roll, although it leans heaviest in the direction of the medicine. All through filming, the forged consumed a staggering quantity of “horrible cigarettes and iced tea [standing in] for whiskey”, says Campbell, who solely landed his first skilled position three years in the past on Broadway. Then there have been the cocaine re-creation experiments, because the actors went by means of a sequence of milk and coconut powders. Out of everybody, Warner’s character had by far essentially the most coke per capita. That first trial with coconut powder “was too sticky”, she says. Ultimately, they traded it for milk powder, which Warner snorted in giant portions whereas reshooting her many coke-sniffing scenes. “The powder would start to liquefy in my nostril,” she says, grimacing.
The Shards is billed as an erotic thriller, although it’s a surprisingly chaste entry within the style. Within the period of Heated Rivalry, expectations have been heightened for graphic man-on-man intercourse, however The Shards as a substitute thrives on rigidity and suspense. There’s nary a dick shot to be seen. No blowjobs and never even a measly handjob. There’s some aggressive making out, however that’s so far as it goes.
“I believe it’s deeply erotic, and I believe it’s deeply stunning. I believe there may be a number of intercourse, medicine and rock’n’roll, however it’s achieved in a manner that’s rather more elevated than persons are accustomed to as of late,” says Campbell.
For the horny scenes there are, Rigney says: “The intimacy coordinator gave us an ungodly quantity of Listerine strips, and you need to watch what you eat for lunch,” though he was tempted to learn the way good his fellow actors actually have been by “going the pickle, onion, tuna route”, he says. “However ultimately, I simply love them an excessive amount of to do this.”
Rigney performs the main position with keenly noticed bodily code-switching, veering between his actual (homosexual) and pretend (straight) selves. In Ellis’ straight romances, Rigney performs the rigidity of a straight teenage boy. In his gay encounters, his complete physique shifts. He’s out of the blue sylph-like and coy, eyebrow arched, smarmy, crotch ahead. Rigney stated it’s not one thing he needed to be directed to do. “That was all pure, child.”
As the subsequent technology of actors, they’re desperately hoping for a second season. “Is the money coming in?” Rigney pauses. “Properly, what I’ll say is it’s wonderful to have a secure job as an actor, no matter what the revenue is.” He faucets the picket desk subsequent to him. “If we get a second season,” teases Simpson, “we promise there’ll be extra intercourse.”
