Inside Ryan Murphy’s The Shards: Adapting Bret Easton Ellis’ Book, Casting Breakout Stars, and Recreating The ‘80s

“Bret is one of my idols.” Prolific writer and producer Ryan Murphy is no stranger to the works of Bret Easton Ellis as he adapts his auto fiction novel The Shards for the small screen. “I grew up loving his books. We were kind of the same age. I'd always wanted to adapt something,” he said. “I met with him. He said, ‘Yes.’ I was thrilled. I believe I ran out of that restaurant with a ‘yes’ so he couldn't take it away. I just wanted to pay homage to him and his body of work, which was first and foremost.”

Set in 1981 Los Angeles, The Shards is told from the perspective of a fictionalized 17-year-old Bret Ellis as he and his prep school friends’ lives are shaken up when a serial killer targets their community. Murphy told Pop Culture Planet at the New York City premiere of his new FX series just how formative that time was for him. “I was 16 in 1981, the year this show was set, so I know what that is. I smelt it. I lived it. I wore those clothes. I played those songs. I smoked those cigarettes. I had not done a high school show in a long time,” he said with a subtle nod to his hits Popular, Glee, and The Politician. “And I was like, ‘Oh, I want to revisit that.’ It was like revisiting my youth. I wanted to do that and it was fun to do and emotional to do.”

Murphy is known for reusing a core group of actors across his projects, but The Shards is the television debut for a fair amount of the young cast. “We really saw the world. Everybody who received these parts auditioned and got them for the most part, except for Kaia Gerber,” he explained. “[She] was Bret's only casting idea, who I love and I've worked with. I gave Kaia, one of her first jobs, if not her first job on American Horror Story.”

He continued: “There were like 500 kids and sometimes [with] casting [it’s like] falling in love. You're like, ‘Oh, you.’ And they all earned them. Then we would mix and match and sometimes they would come in for one character and then I'd say, ‘Can you stay and read another part?’ It went on for months and months. It was a thrill and an honor and I just felt that they earned those parts. They instantly had chemistry because they had been through a war. They were like, ‘You made it, so did I.’ Then I could not pry them apart. They were always together. They would come to the set even when they weren't shooting to hang out. It was a great experience.”

For Graham Campbell, who plays Thom Wright, working under Murphy was a dream gig. “It's sort of the best thing you could hope to be a part of,” he told me on the teal carpet. “It's an embarrassment of riches as a first TV acting job. I found myself pinching myself pretty much every other day.”

“He's so thoughtful. I felt like I was in good hands,” said Owen Painter, playing stoner Matt Kellner. He explained that Murphy would walk the cast through the references and creative that inspired specific shots. “He gave us access to the thought process in a way that a lot of directors don't. […] You got to feel like you were a part of the storytelling too. You know you were achieving that goal together.”

“Truly one of the most influential filmmakers ever to work in television,” emphasized Daniel Dale, portraying jock Ryan Vaughn. “In that regard, he did not disappoint. He knew exactly what he wanted every day. It was our job to find our way to it and it was very satisfying when Ryan was happy with something we did. I'm always going to remember that experience.”

Campbell echoed Murphy’s sentiments about the cast. “My standout memories from set were when we all were finally in one place at one time because it's, in my opinion, one of the best ensembles ever assembled,” he affirmed.

The biggest tool the actors had when it came to bringing The Shards to life was the book. “How did I prepare? I lifted weights. I drank creatine in liquid form and I read the book. The book’s a fantastic resource that we’re lucky to have,” said Dale. “What we were lucky to have was a direct line from Bret to Ryan and Ryan to us. Ryan would tell us what he thought would help us. There was some definitely some things that came through that I didn't expect. I didn't realize the different layers of metaphor of The Shards of the book that he illuminated, by telling Ryan, who told us.”

“It was a lot of just thinking about […] what the book meant to me, the ideas of it. I felt like, a lot of times making this, we were more adapting how the book made us feel than literally adapting the text,” continued Painter. “I just got to think about the art project of the book for a really long time, so that was really nourishing for me.”

Composer David Klotz, a longtime Murphy collaborator, was also at The Shards premiere. He’s created Emmy winning scores for Glee, American Horror Story, Game of Thrones, and another ‘80s hit Stranger Things. “The great thing about Ryan is that right out of the gate, he has specific ideas. Getting that right away is just amazing because we knew what he wanted,” he shared. “This is the third show that Morgan Kibby and I co-composed together for Ryan and, for me, it's been the most creatively rewarding.”

Like the actors, the book was a big resource when it came to the musical direction too. “[The] first thing we did was we read the book,” said Klotz. “We each read the book separately, called each other up after, and were like, ‘This could be a cool idea for this character, this character.’ Then when we got together, we started jamming out a bunch of ideas. I have a bunch of early '80s keyboards, so we kept the sound pallet authentic to the time period of the show, which was fun. The cool thing about working with some of those analog keyboards is that there's a lot of programming possibilities. You're messing around with the sounds and sometimes we'd stumble on something that would be so weird and freaky and creepy. We just have to stop what we're doing and be like, ‘We should just record that now.’ Some of those weird sounds became what we did for the show's more horrific elements, the scary stuff.”

“It was really great to see all the songs that Bret had mentioned that were in the book. Many of which end up in the show as well. That informed our sound palette very much so because the songs were put into the cuts early,” said Klotz. “So when we were working on the score, there was already a song at the end of the scene that we had to transition our musical score queue into. It was fun to have those decisions made early on. Normally doesn't happen. Usually they're dropping a song at the very last minute and it's in a completely different key and it doesn't work.”

It was almost “spooky” how perfectly every piece of the puzzle fit together to bring audiences The Shards. “I wanted everything to make it into the screen, but we only had one season,” said Dale. “There was often days on set where I was looking at the location or the cars and I was like, ‘This is exactly what I pictured in my mind.’ That was always a little spooky. It was like déja vu.”

Watch the first two episodes The Shards when they premiere August 5 on FX and streaming the next day on Hulu.