Last spring, it was nearly impossible to open TikTok without getting swept away by a flood of Kangol hats, black turtlenecks, and selfies taken at the Odeon. This is to say that Ryan Murphy’s Love Story, a limited series depicting the tragic relationship between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, had an inescapable knockdown effect.
Murphy is looking to strike pop culture gold for a second time this year with The Shards, a TV adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s cult-favorite 2023 novel of the same name. The series, which debuted on FX and Hulu earlier this month, centers on five beautiful, rich, and enigmatic Los Angeles high schoolers in 1981.
Ellis’s 608-page tome marries two of America’s ongoing cultural obsessions: serial killer stories and hot young people. The gang grapples with the typical senior-year concerns (sex, drugs, and homecoming) while a serial killer (dubbed “The Trawler”) prowls the Hollywood Hills, snuffing students out one by one in gruesome fashion.
In our IP-frenzied age, it feels inevitable that a book so popular would be adapted. That Murphy is the one to do so feels like something of a television prophecy foretold. The 60-year-old creator of American Horror Story and Glee has built an empire by placing mostly unknown yet irresistibly charismatic young actors at the center of dark, soapy stories, often ripped from late-20th-century tabloids.
“People who were in high school in the ’80s are going to be really nostalgic. I’m nostalgic, and I wasn’t even alive yet.” —Kaia Gerber
What is it about Murphy’s mix of nostalgia and tragedy that audiences can’t look away from? According to the cast of The Shards, part of the allure is the analog setting: a world before Instagram, before Ozempic, before cell phones. Things used to be so sexy and fun. We could smoke indoors! Your only chance to tell your crush how you felt about them was IRL! (The era’s vibes are easier to replicate sartorially; don’t be surprised if you start seeing pastel polos, aviators, and shoulder pads on your social feeds very soon.)
It may sound counterintuitive to describe a show about a serial killer as aspirational. But for an increasingly lonely generation, there’s something viscerally appealing about observing the lives of people without any of our modern distractions at their disposal—the brutal murders just raise the stakes. “Regardless of what’s unfolding, you still want to be at the lunch table with that gang,” says Graham Campbell, 24, who plays the hunky blank slate, Thom.
“There’s a presentness to all of the interactions—it’s like there’s no other place this interaction could be happening,” says Homer Gere, 26, who plays the mysterious outsider Robert. “Something about that is really appealing and aspirational, almost intoxicating.”
Kaia Gerber, 24, who plays Susan, the type-A class president, puts it this way: “People who were in high school in the ’80s are going to be really nostalgic. I’m nostalgic, and I wasn’t even alive yet.” The nostalgia factor extends to the actors’ appearances: Gerber is the spitting image of her mother, Cindy Crawford, while Gere has the eyes and winsome grin of his father, Richard. (Crawford and Gere were married from 1991 to 1995, but Kaia and Homer had never met before filming.)
“The easiest part about seeing my face everywhere is that it’s surrounded by four other really beautiful faces.” —Graham Campbell
“It was apparent that they had taken great pains to ensure that we were very similar to our characters,” Gere says of the core group of five. And, like the friend group on the show, they clicked immediately. “When we were done shooting on Friday, we’d go to a restaurant. On Saturday, it was ‘Let’s walk our dogs,’” Gere says. Most Sundays, the cast would congregate at Gerber’s house to read lines and hang out. The easy chemistry comes through: In scenes where the crew is crammed into a booth at Hamburger Hamlet or lounging by the pool, they seem to meld, limbs draped over one another.
The singer Hayes Warner, 27, who plays the insecure and wealthy “horse girl” Debbie, notes that, even months after they wrapped filming, the group sees each other at least once a week. “We all showed up and immediately we were like, ‘Oh, shit. This works,’” she says. The cast is rounded out by 23-year-old Igby Rigney, the show’s narrator, as a young Bret Easton Ellis.
“There’s a presentness to all of the interactions in the show. Something about that is really appealing and aspirational, almost intoxicating.” —Homer Gere
Ultimately, what separates The Shards from other popular teen-centric shows with dynamic ensembles—your Gossip Girls, your Dawson’s Creeks—is that the interpersonal dynamics and high-school machinations are fused with extreme horror. (Murphy told The New York Times that while AIDS is not mentioned in Ellis’s book, it was that subtext in part that drew him to the material. “I had my first date in February of 1981, and in July of 1981 came the story that there was a new disease,” Murphy said. “I grew up with that specter of all this intimacy with death.”)
For the actors, it was necessary to hold both strains of the series—the opulence and the violence—at once. “There’s almost two entirely separate shows,” Gere says. In some scenes, “we’re doing a horror show. And the rest of it is, basically, a fun ’80s high school movie. Ryan does those two genres, in particular, really well.”
The experience of navigating day-to-day life in the face of unimaginable horror is, of course, very apropos in 2026, when all the world’s atrocities sit tidily alongside party photos and get-ready-with-me videos. So, too, is the show’s interest in the gap between the person we present to the world and who we are when nobody’s watching: “The show is really about identity,” Warner notes. “What do you hide, and what do you showcase? That’s something everyone struggles with.”
The show promises to make stars out of its cast, who are getting used to seeing their faces plastered across billboards and in TikTok compilations. While the experience is surreal, being in it together certainly helps. “The easiest part about seeing my face everywhere,” Campbell says, “is that it’s surrounded by four other really beautiful faces.”
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