{"id":113852,"date":"2026-07-22T12:41:59","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T12:41:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=113852"},"modified":"2026-07-22T10:44:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T10:44:32","slug":"the-shards-series-kaia-gerber","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/the-shards-series-kaia-gerber\/","title":{"rendered":"Disney+ Is About to Drop the Dark Teen Thriller Everyone Will Be Talking About Starring Kaia Gerber"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Mark August 5 in whatever chaotic app you use for a calendar. That is the day The Shards<\/strong><\/em> arrives on FX and streams internationally on Disney+, and it might be the most deliciously unhinged thing on television this summer. The setup goes like this. Los Angeles, 1981. A pack of impossibly rich seventeen-year-olds drift through their final year at an elite prep school between house parties, roller skates and convertibles on the Pacific Coast Highway. Meanwhile a serial killer known as the Trawler is picking off teenagers across the city, and a magnetic new boy has just joined their circle carrying a secret the size of the Hollywood sign. Kaia Gerber<\/strong> plays Susan Reynolds, queen bee of the group, in a project she helped bring to FX herself. Igby Rigney<\/strong> stars as Bret, with Hayes Warner<\/strong>, Graham Campbell<\/strong>, Wes Bentley<\/strong> and Evan Rachel Wood<\/strong> filling out the cast.<\/p>\n

The Book Behind It, and Why Ryan Murphy Was Born for This<\/h1>\n
<\/blockquote>\n

The source material is Bret Easton Ellis<\/strong>‘s 2023 novel, which he first released as a serialised audiobook on his podcast before it hit shelves and became a bestseller. The book is semi-autobiographical, starring a seventeen-year-old version of Ellis himself at Buckley, the real school he attended, which gives the whole thing a queasy thrill. He returns to the exact territory of Less Than Zero<\/em>, his 1985 debut about beautiful Los Angeles teenagers with too much money and too little supervision. Enter Ryan Murphy<\/strong>, who co-created the series with Ellis. Honestly, casting him as showrunner feels like handing a pyromaniac a box of matches, in the best way. Murphy has spent his career finding the rot underneath glossy American surfaces, from Feud<\/em> to American Crime Story<\/em>, and Ellis writes the literary equivalent. Both men adore beautiful people behaving appallingly. Both understand that a swimming pool at midnight can look sinister with the right lighting.<\/p>\n

The Casting Twist Everyone Is Talking About<\/h1>\n
<\/blockquote>\n

Here comes the detail that sent group chats into meltdown. Susan’s love interest, the mysterious Robert Mallory, is played by Homer Gere<\/strong>, son of Richard Gere<\/strong>. Kaia, of course, is the daughter of Cindy Crawford<\/strong>. Which means the two leads of a 1980s teen thriller are the children of a couple who were married to each other in the nineties, back when Crawford and Gere ruled every magazine cover on earth. Their parents split in 1995. Thirty-one years later, their kids are sharing scenes in a show about secrets and obsession. The nepo baby discourse writes itself. So does the season one finale, probably.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42787,"featured_media":0,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[38],"yoast_head":"\nThe Shards: Everything We Know About Kaia Gerber's New Series<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Shards hits FX and Disney+ on August 5. 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