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‘The Shards’ Star Igby Rigney on Wooing Ryan Murphy, Never Meeting Bret Easton Ellis and Not Worrying About Sex Scenes: ‘It’s Like Doing a Dance Under a Microscope’

Igby Rigney is exhausted. It’s a day before “The Shards” launches, and he’s just gotten back from Berlin, the final stop of a global press tour that also took him to New York and London. When the series debuts on FX on Aug. 5, he’ll be celebrating at the official launch party at a roller […]

‘The Shards’ Star Igby Rigney on Wooing Ryan Murphy, Never Meeting Bret Easton Ellis and Not Worrying About Sex Scenes: ‘It’s Like Doing a Dance Under a Microscope’

In 1981, Bret Easton Ellis (Igby Rigney) finds his carefree lifestyle disrupted by the arrival of Robert Mallory (Homer Gere) at Buckley prep school. Both are seemingly charming and handsome, but Bret cannot shake the feeling that Robert is not as he seems. Ryan Murphy, known for his provocative storytelling, adapted Ellis's novel "The Shards" into a TV series.

However, the adaptation fails to capture the essence of the book, diluting its paranoia and tedium. The show's portrayal of luxury, drugs, and sex is cliché and lacks the unsettling atmosphere present in the source material. Despite a few standout performances by Wes Bentley, Evan Rachel Wood, and Richard Gere's son, the series struggles to maintain its focus and fails to deliver the same emotional heft as HBO's "Euphoria."

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