Here’s Your First Look at Ryan Murphy’s Adaptation of The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis

Bret Easton Ellis fans needn’t wait for that American Psycho reboot: A starry television adaptation of The Shards, Ellis’s transfixing 2023 horror novel, premieres on FX on August 5.

The Shards rewinds to the neon-lit, smoke-tinged Los Angeles of yore. It’s 1981, and the privileged, unsupervised kids of Hollywood big shots swap their regulation uniforms for Gucci and Armani, do lines in the Hamburger Hamlet bathroom, and hang backstage at the Bowl.

But cracks are forming in the veneer. Ahead of his final year at the prestigious Buckley School, Bret (Igby Rigney) is shaken up by a mysterious new student, Robert Mallory (Homer Gere), who arrives just as a serial killer called the Trawler is terrorizing LA. While his friends—rounded out by Kaia Gerber as Susan Reynolds, Hayes Warner as Deborah Schaffer, and Graham Campbell as Thom Wright—seem unconcerned, Bret begins to unravel.

The stylish, pulpy slasher is a hard pivot from Murphy’s recent Love Story, which offered a fictionalized account of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette’s doomed romance. But executive producer Brad Simpson notes that Murphy’s interests are well aligned with Ellis’s key themes.

“[The Shards] brings together a lot of the things that Bret does incredibly well but also what Ryan is known for,” he says. “When you look at the combination of American Psycho and Less Than Zero, you also look at the combination of Glee and American Horror Story.”

Murphy agrees. “I’ve always loved, borderline worshipped, Bret’s work,” he tells Vogue. “We’re pretty much the same age, and I grew up with [his books]. He’s interested in the things I’m interested in.”

Like Love Story—which placed relative unknowns Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Anthony Kelly at the heart of the cultural conversation—The Shards also allowed for a good old-fashioned star search. The brief? “We wanted to cast kids that were aspirational,” Simpson says. The goal, he adds, was that “you look at that poster and you think, I want to hang out with those kids.”

Murphy and casting director Tiffany Little Canfield brought actors in for sessions in New York and Los Angeles, often pairing them up and having them read for multiple roles. “We read thousands of people for these parts—every young person working in that magic age range auditioned for these parts,” Murphy says of the six-month search. The painstaking work paid off. “[Ryan] was able to mix and match and design not just one role but how people fit together,” Simpson says.

Male actors auditioned with a scene from the first episode: a tense confrontation at the mall between Bret and Robert. “I remember specifically when Homer walked into the room,” Murphy says. “I had him read for Matt, Thom, Bret. As soon as he read Robert, I thought, That’s the guy.”

Simpson found Gere’s audition just as memorable. “When Homer came in, he had this intensity and intelligence but also a mystery about him that you really wanted in Robert Mallory,” he says. “And Igby—who read for us several times—had this sort of sardonic voice and this air of distance. He was both present but also seemed to be floating above the other actors.”

Gerber, on the other hand, was almost predestined for the role of Susan Reynolds, the popular yet aloof student body president and Bret’s longtime best friend. When Murphy asked Ellis himself if he had any thoughts on the casting, he said, “No, but I think Kaia Gerber would be the best Susan.” Murphy replied, “That’s funny, I had the same idea.” When the producer called Gerber up, “it turns out that she had been tracking that book and that part specifically,” Murphy notes.

Gerber isn’t the only familiar name in the cast. Wes Bentley—a regular Murphy collaborator—plays Terry Schaffer, the sleazy movie-producer father of Bret’s girlfriend, Debbie. Evan Rachel Wood, meanwhile, is Debbie’s alcoholic mother, Liz, and Broadway producer Jordan Roth takes on the role of Terry’s assistant, Steven Reinhardt.

Simpson hopes that the show will launch the greener members of the cast into mainstream fame, as many of Murphy’s prior projects have. “Part of the joy of some of these shows is the idea of breaking new talent,” he says. “But also Gen Z wants their own stars. It’s good to be doing something where we can combine some great actors generationally above them but really focus on this next generation of talent.”

Though the show is geared toward anyone whose high school days are barely in the rearview, Simpson hopes that The Shards will carry an intergenerational appeal. “If you’re Gen X or above, you’re looking at a sort of nostalgia piece,” he says. “And if you’re a millennial or below, you’re looking at it with a false nostalgia for a time you didn’t experience.”

Murphy knows that, whether or not viewers personally experienced the ’80s, the story will get their hearts racing: “Shows about first times are exciting—first kiss, first heartbreak, in this case first murder,” he says. “Everything is so in color, so vivid.”

This article was originally published on Vogue.com.