Black-and-white portrait of a young Bret Easton Ellis in a dark blazer and white t-shirt, looking pensively off-camera, 1985.
WWD / Penske Media via Getty Images
TV + Movies

Igby Rigney Plays the Actual 17-Year-Old Bret Easton Ellis in ‘The Shards,’ Secret Boyfriends and All

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To play the narrator of “The Shards,” Igby Rigney had to become Bret Easton Ellis at 17 — the author’s real name, real high school, real senior year, secret boyfriends and all.

The 17-year-old narrator of Ryan Murphy’s new series is literally named Bret Easton Ellis, going to Ellis’s real high school in Ellis’s real senior year. Igby Rigney had to become the actual teenage author, secret boyfriends and all.

Graham Campbell, Kaia Gerber, Igby Rigney, Hayes Warner, and Homer James Jigme Gere posing together at "The Shards" Berlin premiere photocall
Igby Rigney joins co-stars Graham Campbell, Kaia Gerber, Hayes Warner, and Homer James Jigme Gere at the Berlin photocall for “The Shards” at AchtBerlin on August 3, 2026. Photo by Gerald Matzka / Getty Images.

Rigney deliberately skipped reading the novel before his audition, wanting to respect the pilot scene as written. Ryan Murphy appreciated the instinct but told him to come back once he’d done his homework.

So Rigney turned to the audiobook, where Ellis reads the story himself. He never spoke to Ellis directly, but studied that recording until he’d pinned down the heavy, deliberate way Bret speaks.

The reason that cadence matters: the character isn’t loosely inspired by Ellis. He is Ellis. “The Shards” is autofiction, narrated by a 17-year-old named Bret Easton Ellis recounting his senior year at The Buckley School in Sherman Oaks in 1981, the year the real Ellis was 17 and a senior there. Ellis has said the social world, the people, and the emotional weather are drawn from his own life; the Trawler and the murders are invented.

Black-and-white portrait of a young man in a dark blazer and white t-shirt, looking directly at the camera.
In 1985 — his senior year at Buckley School and the year he wrote ‘Less Than Zero’ — a then-young Bret Easton Ellis sits for a portrait. Photo by Tony Palmieri / WWD / Penske Media via Getty Images.

The real teenage Bret was already writing early material that would become “Less Than Zero,” published in 1985 when he was 21. He was publicly dating a girlfriend the book calls Debbie while, as he has said, having secret relationships with male classmates and hiding that he was gay. His father was a wealthy real-estate developer and an alcoholic; his parents were largely absent. Friends like Thom, Susan, and Debbie are based on real classmates with the names changed.

Rigney plays that 17-year-old in Murphy’s adaptation of Ellis’s 2023 novel, set among privileged teens in 1981 Los Angeles as the Trawler picks off their classmates. He narrates the series and grounds an ensemble that includes Homer Gere, Kaia Gerber, and Evan Rachel Wood.

Young man with slicked-back brown hair wearing an all-black suit and tie, posing against a blue and red backdrop.
Igby Rigney, who plays the teenage Bret Easton Ellis in Ryan Murphy’s ‘The Shards,’ at the series’ London screening held at 180 House on July 30, 2026. Photo by Ian West / PA Images via Getty Images.

Now 23 and born in Westchester in 2003, Rigney says the distance of the era helped. “Looking like a different person in the mirror was super helpful,” he says of the cars, costumes, and hair that pulled him out of his own life and into Bret’s.

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