Inside the real inspirations behind The Shards characters and how they compare to the cast

As Bret Easton Ellis himself said on his podcast, The Shards is “basically 99 percent pure autobiography. Everyone is real. Everything happened. All of the scenes actually played out.” 

But let’s not get it twisted – his 2023 novel is part memoir, part fiction. For starters, there was never a serial killer named The Trawler who stalked the author and his friends in high school. But the Los Angeles setting, the early 1980s timeline and the characters are based on Bret and his peers. 

Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of The Shards debuted this week with a two-episode premiere and a buzzy cast taking on the key roles. 

Although Bret has remained elusive about who inspired who and names have been changed throughout the novel, Buckley School yearbooks and clues from the novel itself have sparked plenty of theories. 

Here’s who the main characters are believed to have been inspired by, as well as the cast members playing them.

Bret Easton Ellis

This one is a definite: the main character Bret is based on the author himself, with the novel drawing heavily from his final year at the prestigious Buckley School in Los Angeles in 1981.

Ellis grew up in an affluent part of LA, surrounded by many of the wealthy teenagers who would later inspire the privileged, disaffected characters found throughout his work. While The Shards blends real memories with fiction, it also offers a glimpse into the world that shaped much of his writing.

After leaving school, Ellis attended Bennington College in Vermont, where he began writing Less Than Zero, which he discusses in the opening episode of the TV show. The novel, centred on a group of privileged LA teenagers drifting through drugs, sex and excess, was published in 1985 when he was just 21 years old.

In the show, he’s played by Igby Rigney, the 23-year-old actor best known for starring in Mike Flanagan’s Netflix series Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club and The Fall of the House of Usher.

Susan Reynolds

Now we get into pure speculative territory, but one Redditor went through a copy of the 1982 Buckley yearbook to find photos of Bret and his classmates and match up the character descriptions with the students. 

Although Bret has never confirmed her identity, it’s speculated that the girl pictured above inspired Susan Reynolds as she has similar features as Bret describes and she also appears to be dating someone similar to Susan’s boyfriend in The Shards. 

Speaking of which, Bret describes Susan as one of his closest friends and the most popular girl at Buckley. Bret harbours a long-standing love for her and a crush on her boyfriend Thom Wright, the school’s golden boy.

Susan is played by 24-year-old model and actress Kaia Gerber in the TV adaptation. Her acting accolades include Bottoms and Saturday Night, and she’s the daughter of Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber.

Thom Wright

Much like the rest of the character list, this one isn’t confirmed. But based on the yearbook, some have theorised that the student in the image above is the popular guy Thom Wright, being held by the girl mentioned above.

As said, in The Shards, Thom is the handsome, athletic and popular boyfriend of Susan. He sits at the centre of the school’s social hierarchy before the arrival of Robert Mallory begins to unravel the group. 

He’s played by Graham Campbell in the series, an up-and-coming actor who’s appeared in Late Fame and a series of short films. 

Matt Kellner

Multiple readers have speculated that the person in the photo above is the real-life Matt Kellner. “I’m 99% sure that this is the person Matt Kellner is based on,” wrote the Redditor. “Could Kellner be based on more than one person? Absolutely. But this is at least part of him.”

Other threads have shared the same photo, but it’s just speculation at this point. 

In both the novel and the TV series, Matt is one of Bret’s close friends. The pair share a secret romantic and sexual relationship, while Matt’s laid-back personality and weed-smoking make him one of the more carefree members of the Buckley friendship group.

The cast member playing him in FX’s The Shards is Owen Painter, 28, who you’ll no doubt recognise as Isaac Night from Netflix’s Wednesday. 

Terry Schaffer

This one’s a little easier to suss out, as Bret previously said in a podcast that he dated the daughter of Hollywood producer John Foreman. As such, it’s widely reported that John inspired the character Terry Schaffer – the father of Brett’s girlfriend Debbie Schaffer in The Shards.

As said by The Drift, “In this telling, the producer is called Terry Schaffer; in reality, it was John Foreman, who produced Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” John had a daughter whose name and photo appears in the Buckley yearbook. 

Putting faces to names: The Shards
byu/Real-Base466 inBEEPodcast

In the TV show, he’s played by major actor Wes Bentley, 47, whose acting credits include Interstellar, American Beauty, Yellowstone, and The Hunger Games, to name a few. 

Debbie Schaffer

Based on these various clues, it’s widely believed that Debbie Shaffer is inspired by Julie Foreman, John’s daughter in real life who Bret dated in high school. 

Alongside the yearbook photo, one newspaper clipping shows her name on the list of attendants at one of Bret’s parties in 1990. 

Debbie as a character is one of Buckley’s rebellious “it girls” and Bret’s on-again, off-again girlfriend. She’s played in The Shards by Hayes Warner, a 27-year-old pop singer who’s making her acting debut in the show. 

Robert Mallory…

Bonus round: unlike several of the other characters, there’s no convincing evidence that Robert Mallory was inspired by one specific classmate of Bret’s.

A leading theory is that he’s a vessel for the author’s paranoia and unresolved desires during his final year at Buckley. As the mysterious new student whose arrival coincides with the Trawler murders, Robert becomes the focus of Bret’s obsession.

In the show, he’s played by Homer Gere, the 26-year-old son of actors Richard Gere and Carey Lowell. Euphoria fans will no doubt remember him as the star who gets into a few explicit scenarios with Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie in season three. 

For all the latest film and TV updates and hot takes, like our Facebook page.

Featured image credit: FX/Bret Easton Ellis Podcast