Updated

Updated · Vogue · Aug 11

Kaia Gerber, Homer Gere Preview FX's 1981 'The Shards' as 2 Nepo Babies Face Scrutiny

Updated

Updated · Vogue · Aug 11

Kaia Gerber, Homer Gere Preview FX's 1981 'The Shards' as 2 Nepo Babies Face Scrutiny

Q: How does Ryan Murphy's addition of a mysterious cult change the ambiguous ending of Bret Easton Ellis's original novel?

Murphy’s addition of the Riders of the Afterlife makes *The Shards* less ambiguous by giving Bret’s paranoia a more concrete external target and by turning the mystery into a broader, more conventional conspiracy. In Ellis’s novel, much of the power comes from uncertainty. Robert Mallory may be dangerous, or he may be a projection of Bret’s desire, fear, and unreliable memory. The Trawler plot is deeply tied to Bret’s subjective experience, so the ending retains ambiguity about what is real, what Bret has misread, and how much his obsession has distorted events. The FX adaptation changes that balance. Coverage of the series says Murphy expands the cult element much earlier and more explicitly, linking the Riders more closely to the violence surrounding the Trawler. What functioned in the book more as ominous background noise feeding Bret’s anxiety becomes on screen a visible suspense mechanism with rituals, suspects, and possible organized involvement. That shift changes the ending’s meaning. Instead of leaving viewers mainly with the novel’s unresolved psychological uncertainty — whether Bret’s perceptions have created part of the horror — the series pushes the story toward an answerable thriller structure. The cult gives the violence a potentially shared, organized explanation, which reduces the original novel’s haunting uncertainty and makes the finale feel more like a conspiracy mystery than a meditation on obsession, memory, and unreliable narration.

3 articles · Updated · Vogue · Aug 11

FX’s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s 2023 novel “The Shards” arrives this month, with Kaia Gerber and 26-year-old Homer Gere cast as Susan Reynolds and mysterious newcomer Robert Mallory.
Ryan Murphy framed the 1981 Los Angeles thriller as both a pre-digital teen drama and a pre-AIDS parable, saying the era’s freedom and menace shaped his emotional approach to directing.
Homer Gere said the series marks his breakout after little industry exposure, landing “The Shards” and “Euphoria” in 2025 after first acting in student films at Brown.
Gerber, 24, said growing up famous made her more practiced under scrutiny, while both actors acknowledged “nepo baby” perceptions and said the label pushes them to prove themselves through the work.
Their pairing also revives early-1990s celebrity history: Gerber is Cindy Crawford’s daughter, and Gere is Richard Gere’s son, whose parents were once one of Hollywood’s iconic couples.