If you love Ryan Murphy’s work and are looking for a new TV show to take over your life for the foreseeable future, then you’re in luck. Murphy’s new series, The Shards, airs Aug. 5 on FX and Hulu. What’s even more gripping? The entire series is basically based on a true story.

The Shards, based on Bret Easton Ellis’s 2023 novel of the same name, follows a teenage writer named Bret (played in the series by Igby Rigney) and his close-knit group of friends at an elite Los Angeles prep school in 1981. Their seemingly glamorous lives begin to unravel when a mysterious new student, Robert Mallory (Homer Gere), transfers to the school just as a string of brutal serial murders begin terrorizing Southern California. Convinced Robert is hiding something sinister, Bret becomes increasingly suspicious, sending him down a dangerous path where paranoia, obsession, and reality become difficult to separate. The series also stars Kaia Gerber as Susan Reynolds, singer Hayes Warner as Debbie Shaffer, and Wes Bentley as Terry.

As if a thrilling crime story isn’t interesting enough, the entire plot is actually based on true events experienced by the book’s author, Bret Easton Ellis. The book is “basically 99 percent pure autobiography. Everyone is real. Everything happened. All of the scenes actually played out,” Ellis said on an episode of his podcast, The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast. “I can’t call this a novel, or fiction, though the lawyers at my publishing house will probably force me to.” But don’t get it twisted — the book is classified as a work of autofiction, or a “fictionalized memoir,” meaning not everything is exactly pulled from Ellis’s own history.

Ellis attended the same L.A. high school in 1981 that the book is set around. He even named the main character after himself. But in reality, there was no serial killer terrorizing his school at the time — people online generally agree that the plot line was based on another criminal in the area named Brandon Thomler.

Best known for writing the best-selling thriller American Psycho, Ellis is a co-creator on FX’s The Shards. He wrote the first two episodes and served as a creative consultant to ensure the show evoked the same feelings as the book. However, Ellis reportedly wasn’t always on set, and allowed Murphy to take on the day-to-day showrunning responsibility. “He took a very godfather-y, hands-off approach,” executive producer Brad Simpson told The Hollywood Reporter at the show’s premiere. “He gave us some guiding light from the beginning and sort of said, ‘Go with God. Go make your show.’”

With Murphy’s staple eccentricity, Ellis’s magnetic storytelling, and a cast of exciting fresh faces, The Shards is sure to be captivating. Plus, nothing quite hits like a true crime story does.

Is ‘The Shards’ A True Story? It’s Based On A Book

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