Is ‘The Shards’ based on a true story? Real inspiration behind Ryan Murphy’s new thriller
The highly anticipated ‘The Shards’ recently premiered on FX with its first two episodes. Ryan Murphy and novelist Bret Easton Ellis' unexpected collaboration has added to the excitement surrounding the project. The storyline revolves around a group of high school seniors and is set in Los Angeles in 1981. Shockingly, the community faces a series of disturbing events involving a serial killer known as ‘The Trawler,’ based on Ellis’ 2023 novel of the same name. Although the book is classified as a “work of fiction,” several discussions suggest it seems to draw inspiration from real-life incidents. This speculation stems from various Reddit discussions.
Igby Rigney plays a fictionalized version of Bret Easton Ellis, a young aspiring novelist. Surprisingly, the author also graduated in 1982 from LA’s Buckley School, the same institute that Bret attended in the show. Notably, Bret’s close friends seem to be based on Ellis’ former classmates. This includes Thom Wright (played by Graham Campbell), class president Susan Reynolds (played by Kaia Gerber), horse girl Debbie Schaffer (played by Hayes Warner), and mysterious newcomer Robert Mallory (played by Homer Gere). For those who might not already know, the author went to the same school as several renowned personalities including Laura Dern, Paris Hilton, Paul Thomas Anderson, Kim Kardashian, Matthew Perry, Alyssa Milano, Nicole Richie, and more.
Interestingly, Ellis has not shared anything about his Buckley classmates or Bret’s fictionalized friends from ‘The Shards.’ However, a few Reddit discussion threads have drawn parallels between the characters in the novel and their possible real-life personalities. BEEPodcast's thread titled 'Putting faces to names: The Shards' includes several pictures with names and detailed descriptions. The user shared glimpses seemingly from the 1982 Buckley yearbook and claimed they knew who Matt Kellner, Terry, and Liz Schafer's characters were based on.
During his interview with i-D, Bret reflected on how the story came into being, teasing that the title was inspired by his own memories and experiences. “I was going online and I started looking for classmates that I had started to think about and I couldn’t find them,” he said. He added, “I wanted so badly to find out what was going on in their lives, what was happening to them, and then I started thinking about the last year of high school. Then I started listening to all the music from that year. I started looking for all the places where we hung out (they’re all gone). I had a profound wave of nostalgia for that time. I started writing the book that night, and the next day I had 14 pages. It happened very quickly.”
