Igby Rigney as Bret with Hayes Warner as Debbie Schaffer in 'The Shards.' Ray Mickshaw/FX Logo text The Shards seems like the perfect Ryan Murphy show: A coming-of-age story set in early 1980s Los Angeles where beautiful, affluent teens are being hunted by a serial killer. But this story is personal.
Murphy, now a father of three, says he first read Bret Easton Ellis‘ 2023 autofiction horror novel of the same name, of which the FX show is based, right when it came out. HBO was first to develop the book, but that adaptation fell through. That’s when Murphy swooped in.
“I always wanted to do something adapting Bret’s work,” the prolific creator behind American Horror Story, Love Story, Glee and many more series tells The Hollywood Reporter.
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For Murphy, 1981 was a seminal year. Like the characters in his TV adaptation, it was a year of firsts. Every reference in the book felt familiar, from the clothes to the music to the code-switching from the protagonist based on Ellis. “I came from that place of telling Bret: ‘I get it. I lived it.’ I guess it worked, because he let me have the rights,” Murphy recalls with a laugh.
The Shards, starring a knockout cast of Igby Rigney (as Ellis), Hollywood offspring Kaia Gerber and Homer Gere, along with Evan Rachel Wood and Wes Bentley, premiered Wednesday night with its first two of nine episodes. Below, Murphy talks to THR about how his passion won over Ellis as he goes inside the casting process — “We saw 500 actors for these parts” — of an “emotional” production, talks about how they approached the eroticism in the adaptation, and reveals that he and Ellis have been plotting a three-season series from the start: “It certainly will launch discussions.”
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What was your familiarity with Bret Easton Ellis and his 2023 autofiction/horror novel, The Shards, before you got involved in adapting it for TV?
I read all of Bret’s books the moment they come out. I always have, ever since his first book. So I read the book and loved it and was a fan. And when it became available, I kind of swooped in and begged and pleaded and I was thrilled that I could get it. I was thrilled that I was at the time able to, after many, many years.
What was your pitch to Bret?
My pitch was that I’m going to get it made. And I’m going to make it something that I think that you would like. He and I are similar age. It was so long ago now, but when I talked to him, all you can do in those situations is come from a place of passion.
I have been asked for many, many years, “Why don’t you do something about your life? Why don’t you do something about your childhood?” I never really wanted to, or figured out what that was. But my pitch to him was that 1981, the year the book is set, was the most important year of my life in many ways. That was the year I turned 16. That was my first date. My first driving lesson. I lost my virginity. On and on and on. I really understood those kids, and particularly, the Brett character.
I understood what it was like to pretend you’re one thing by day and be a different thing by night, talking about my gay life. I really understood that character, who is autofiction but kind of based on Bret, who code-switched between identities. I knew what the clothes looked like; I wore them. I knew what the music sounded like. All of the references in the book, I knew what they were.
The Shards was first in development at HBO, but that version came apart over creative differences, THR reported at the time. Do you know what happened with the project there and why it came available?
I don’t, and I never asked. I’ve worked at HBO. I have a high regard for HBO; for Casey [Bloys, Chairman and CEO of HBO and Max] and the group. Sometimes a network only has so many slots. Who knows.
But I did have a run-in with Casey at the Golden Globes right after it was announced that I was doing it. And he was so cool. He was like, “I’m so thrilled that you are doing this and that you get to tell this story. We love Bret and we love you.” It was just very kind. It felt like everybody was rooting for each other.
So I have no idea, and Bret never talked about it other than that he had his own experience with it. I was trying to just come from a place of passion to get the rights, so it wasn’t really brought up.
It was February 2025 when you came in; does that sound right?
That may have been when the rights closed. Bret and I had met and got it nailed down a little earlier than that.
Ryan Murphy (center) with the cast of The Shards (from left): Kaia Gerber, Homer Gere, Hayes Warner, Igby Rigney and Graham Campbell at the show’s New York premiere. Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images Brad Simpson recently told THR at The Shards premiere that, because of what happened at HBO, Bret wanted a more hands-off approach with this adaptation. Did he take convincing, or did you land on something that worked for you both, in terms of his involvement?
Bret was really cool. I just spoke about it and he was like, “Okay, go with God.” I think Bret has had an amazing career, and he has been involved or not involved with the adaptations of his work. Authors are like that. So that’s all that our conversation was: “Do your thing.”
The other thing that Bret said that I loved was that, in success, “I think that this story could be multiple seasons.” The book is very dense. People will love these characters. So we had always talked, even in the beginning, briefly, that, in success, this is a three- or four-year series where it takes place over the course of one school year. And I loved that.
Bret co-wrote these first two episodes with you. He then took a “godfather-y hands-off approach,” and your actors said you were a conduit to Bret for any questions. What was your working relationship with Bret after the first two?
My working relationship with him was great. He made it very clear: “I’m here if you have any questions.” I had a great template with the book. It’s not like I didn’t have anything from him to go off of. Everyone in the cast had the book, so if we had a question, we flipped to the page in the book. Or we asked our writers assistants, “Can you review this scene?” Many of the scenes, the dialogue is verbatim from the book, so that was incredibly helpful.
Also, when you’re creating a show that hopefully goes three or four years, you have to add new characters that are in the tone of the book, and we added a couple of those.
All I know is that he was wonderful and always available, particularly with our producers who were on the ground, Brad [Simpson] and Nina [Jacobson]. We got to show Bret the first two episodes when they were complete with his team. From what I hear, he really, really loved them. Bret has his own way of talking about his work and his adaptations in the media, which I’ve always respected. So it was kind of a: “I’m here if you need me, but also, do your thing.”
This story has all the makings of a Ryan Murphy show: Beautiful people hunted by a serial killer in ‘80s L.A. The show is also a metaphor for AIDS. Can you talk about that?
Well, yeah. Bret and I never spoke about that. We never talked about the identity of the killer. Obviously, the killer is a person; that’s very clear. But the subtext of that year, for me, was ingrained in the writing because, like I told you, I had my first sexual experience in February of 1981, and then three or four months later was the New York Times story about how there’s a new, mysterious disease killing gay men. My adolescence, as it was for millions of people, was always that intimacy was intertwined with death and trauma.
So that idea that everybody is being hunted and taken out at the prime of their lives by this mysterious killer, I was like, “Well, that’s very interesting to explore.” And I spoke to the cast about that. All of that trauma and yearning and longing and pain and wanting to be accepted — all that stuff — was baked in, particularly in the pilot.
I just felt it very deeply. Obviously, throughout my entire career I’ve done a lot of pieces about the AIDS epidemic. It was my experience. The Shards is a whodunnit. But I really understood, “Wait, why are people I love dying?” Because I lost so many friends in a personal way.
Igby Rigney as Bret with Homer Gere as Robert Mallory in The Shards. How would you compare The Shards to your other recent shows? There is a ton of buzz, but hearing how personal it is for you, do you feel extra passion for this one?
Yes. It was the first time I’ve ever really done anything about my childhood. I had it a little bit in some works, but not recently. Not to the level of which it moves me and I really understood it. I got very emotional making this, because you’d be directing and playing a song from Mood or something, and it would take you back to this period, either joyful or upsetting. I found it to be very cathartic, and I spent a lot of time with that young cast. We had many, many dinners. I talked to them about what it was like to be this age in that year, pro and con. There was a lot of beautiful, wonderful things — the clothes, the music, the excitement of being on the cusp of a new decade. You feel like the world is your oyster at that age, and you’re not prepared— nor should you be — for any trauma or death. We spent a lot of time; we all got very close.
I’ve written about my youthful experience in other things, but I’ve never done a period piece that reflects my time as a young person like that.
How did you approach the casting process? What was your criteria and was there a role that was more challenging to cast, like Bret’s role?
That was my favorite thing. When I met with Bret, I said, “Do you have any casting ideas?” He said, “Not really. But I think Kaia Gerber would be great as Susan.” I said, “Well that’s interesting, because I cast Kaia when she was 18 in her first thing ever [American Horror Story].” So I knew Kaia. Once I got the rights, I called her. She had met with Bret on another project and he had mentioned The Shards, but Kaia kept it secret. She really wanted to do it and Susan was her favorite character in the book, so that was a piece of cake.
Evan Rachel Wood, I had worked with in Running With Scissors, and always wanted to work with again. She just got the offer and said yes. Wes Bentley, I did a pilot for at HBO called Open that did not go. I always wanted to work with him. He got the offer and said yes. Then the rest of the cast was months and months and months of auditioning. Many of them came in and read for three or four different parts and we would mix and match them. It. It was a very long process, but it was really fun.
When Igby [Rigney, who plays Bret] walked through the door, I was like, “He looks like a young Bret.” He has that mysterious aura about him where he’s an observer. He very quickly in my mind was the one to beat. But Igby also read for other parts. I hadn’t done anything like that in a really long time. My casts are very star-studded where people just get offers; I talk to them and they do it or they don’t. But this one, I really wanted to spend a lot of time auditioning people. We saw like 500 actors for these parts. I think that February date was the date we started the casting process, pre-production and all of that stuff.
I saw an anecdote about Homer Gere and Kaia Gerber first meeting each other, and joking “should we address it?” about their famous parents [Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford, respectively].
I think that was a private meeting with Kaia and Homer. I’m friends with Richard Gere and I’m really good friends with Cindy Crawford. Homer was someone who auditioned and walked in the room, and everyone was kind of blown away by his presence and what he could do as an actor. So when we got time to make offers, I talked to Kaia and Homer about: “Are you all cool with this? Because the media is certainly going to write about it.” That’s not why Homer got the part. It was because he was always the best actor for that role. He auditioned many times. If at any point along the way Homer or Kaia or their parents said, “I’m not cool with that,” then I would not have done it. I tried to be respectful and they were all very gracious about it. Everybody was wonderfully adult and open and responsible.
I’ve seen the show described as deeply erotic but deeply beautiful, and not as sexually graphic as the book. How did you approach the eroticism and intimacy of the story for the TV series?
I’ve done a couple of shows with high school characters, and I love doing them. I think that arena is really interesting. It’s an arena of first times: First kiss. First make-out. First sexual experience. First break up. I always thought it was a story of longing and romance more than sexuality. Also, I’m a parent. I have three young boys. I’ve done erotic shows; sexual shows. I wanted it to be tasteful and palatable.
The interesting thing about The Shards is that it’s made for everybody. Specifically, it’s made for you if you grew up in the ‘80s, and it’s made for young people who are that age. In the back of my mind, I was always like, “Being too graphic and too sensational is not the way to go.” However, there is longing and eroticism in it, and we tried to that very responsibly. We had intimacy coordinators. But I would say that the older I get, the more I become an old Victorian prude. Maybe because I’m a father, I’m like, “We don’t need to show that.”
The sexual content is certainly there, but it’s tasteful. I would watch the show with my teenager. It certainly will launch discussions. We were all conscious of that. A lot of this cast is new, and I didn’t want to put anybody in any situations in any of the scenes. The thing I always lead with with actors is, “What do you feel comfortable doing?” I always empower actors in those situations.
Kaia Gerber as Susan Reynolds with Gere as Robert Mallory. You co-wrote but also directed the first episode, which establishes the tone for the entire series. When would you say the show really reveals itself?
Always in success for me was the three-year plan, so it was like: “How much do you reveal?” The great thing was that we had a book, so there really are no spoilers when you’re adapting a book. In the book, the character of Bret is kind of an unreliable narrator. There’s that great Nora Ephron quote: “If you’re a writer, everything is copy.” So I felt that, if the show progresses, people start to call Bret out on the idea that he himself might be involved or culpable. Why? That’s all baked into the cake. That’s in the book.
Also, I was very influenced by the tone of the things when I was that age that I absolutely loved. My favorite movie in that period, and I told Richard Gere this, was American Gigolo. I’d never seen a movie like that. That was a male sexuality that was so bravely dealt with. I love Lauren Hutton in that movie. I also loved Body Heat. Back in the late ‘70s and all through the ‘80s, those erotic thrillers or thrillers that have to do with emotional relationships — Fatal Attraction, Jagged Edge — are also influences on me.
When we were in preproduction, we looked at those movies, at the color scheme and outfits. I found 1981 to be a very interesting year because in my mind, the ‘80s didn’t become the ‘80s really until the end of ’82 and ‘83. That’s when it became the neon colors with Cindy Lauper and Madonna and Prince. They were all working in ‘81, but ‘81 was still very heavily influenced by the Studio 54 era with the clothes, and you could still get a disco song on the radio. It was two different time periods. The ‘70s were really based on the ‘40s, the post-World War II “these are the good times now, the war is over.” That was all in our minds as we were making this.
Did you have a bigger budget for this show than usual, were you able to take big swings?
No, actually. It was somewhere in the middle. It was not a high budget. Usually, my things are very high budgets because I have a lot of stars in them and stars are expensive. But this was, for the most part, an unknown cast. The hard thing about it was: “How do you get the clothes right?” It’s period, so you have to spend the money on the clothes. You had to find locations in L.A., or in the L.A. area that were, for the most part, gone. The great thrill that I got was that we got to build the Sunset Hamburger Hamlet. I spent many, many days there as a younger person in the ‘80s. It was modeled on the Sunset Hamburger Hamlet, and also the Westwood location. Those things cost money. But it’s firmly in the middle. I thought it was a responsible budget.
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The Shards released its first two episodes on FX and Hulu on Wednesday night. Two episodes will be released on Aug. 12, followed by one on Aug. 19, two on Aug. 26, and one per week through the finale on Sept. 9.
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