The Shards' Igby Rigney Has Never Met the Real Bret Easton Ellis, Explains the Distance | Just Jared - Celebrity News and Gossip

Rising star Igby Rigney stars in the new series The Shards, portraying a fictionalized version of author Bret Easton Ellis.

Ellis wrote the autofiction novel The Shards, which Ryan Murphy just turned into an FX on Hulu series. While he was involved with the show, Ellis was not available to help the actor get into character.

Igby told Variety that Bret has “been involved with the crafting of the character, but he’s been working with Ryan primarily. I’ve never gotten to meet him.”

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When asked if it would have been helpful to meet Bret, he added, “I don’t know, just because I haven’t had that interaction.”

“Just being able to focus on the scripts and lean on Ryan and what he was hoping to bring to life has maybe led to more clarity and was less overwhelming for me. I didn’t have access to Bret and I don’t have access to whatever information I could have potentially learned from that, so I could just let that piece go and really focus on what Ryan was giving us on the day,” Igby said.

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Igby noted how an interesting part of this project is that he’s playing both a real person and a fictional character, noting how in the book, Bret tells the story with the phrase “I remember.”

“It’s almost like a motif in the text. I remember this, and I remember that. It’s all in retrospect, which is interesting to play. There’s a potential unreliable narrator element to it. Naturally, he is remembering a time that was very long ago, and we’re bringing that time period to life in the present,” Igby said.

Check out spoilers for what happens at the end of the book, if you want to know what’s going to happen in the series.

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Posted To:Bret Easton Ellis Igby Rigney The Shards