Blonde Ambition: Hayes Warner Is an '80s Teen Dream in The Shards

It has arguably been the summer of high school dramas, but none is more stylish, erotic, and deadly than Ryan Murphy's latest offering, The Shards. The steamy thriller based on Bret Easton Ellis's best-selling novel of the same name promises all the makings of a great summer watch: an attractive cast of newcomers (the official calling card of a promising YA show), a murdery mystery, and fashion and beauty excess.

Set against the vibey backdrop of early-'80s Los Angeles, The Shards follows a stylish social circle at an elite prep school. At the center of the group is the show's narrator Bret Ellis (Igby Rigney), an astute senior and aspiring writer tracking a menacing serial killer targeting affluent teens. His cohorts are a glamorous trio consisting of his girlfriend Debbie Schaffer (Hayes Warner), who descends from Hollywood royalty; class queen bee Susan Reynolds (Kaia Gerber); and her boyfriend and school quarterback Thom Wright (Graham Campbell). Navigating a life of parties, drugs, and sex, the group's seemingly alluring lives are interrupted when smoldering new student Robert Mallory (Homer Gere) arrives.

Maybe it's her Debbie Harry–esque platinum-blonde locks or her sharp-tongued insults or her seriously enviable wardrobe, but we're kind of partial to Debbie. Hers is a complicated story worth digging into. Hayes Warner, the actress who plays her, completely agrees. Debbie, too, was her favorite when reading Ellis's novel for the first time. "She's spicy," the 27-year-old tells us over Zoom. The New York native was in the midst of a burgeoning pop music career—releasing breakout singles such as "Predator" and playing Lollapalooza—when the audition for Debbie came her way. While quietly auditioning in the background, Hayes hadn't felt this passionate about an acting role in a long time.

Now, with a hit summer series under her belt and all-new original music for the show's soundtrack, Hayes is right where she wants to be as a rising multi-hyphenate in Hollywood.

Did you want to be a performer from a young age?

I grew up acting and singing and doing musical theater and dancing. I ended up going to Northwestern for musical theater, so I was acting all through college, taking acting classes and taking it really seriously. My love of songwriting took me on this journey, and I ran with it. It is my first love. The past few years, I've been able to tour, and I signed a publishing deal, and I've been doing sessions and performing at things like Lollapalooza. I was still auditioning, looking for the right roles, but music was really my main focus because it felt so authentic to me and right for me. That's the way I felt when I saw this audition for The Shards.

I grew up on Ryan Murphy. I had read The Shards. I loved Bret Easton Ellis's work. And this character, when I read the book, I was like, "Oh, I love Debbie. She's spicy, and also, there's a lot more going on. She has depth." So the way that music felt so authentic to me, this part felt perfect for me, and I was just as feral about getting it as I have been about getting touring slots or releasing a single at the time that I want to release it. That same passion I had for music I really had for this particular part.

So you loved Debbie from the jump. What excited you about Ryan Murphy's interpretation of the character, and in what ways could you relate to her?

Even when I read the book, it's so clear Bret's perspective is not really reliable. Everything is from his perspective. And not to be biased, but when I read it, [Debbie] was my favorite character because I was like, "What does she know? She's got to know more than what she's giving off or what Bret thinks she knows." And I think she just gets pushed to the side by him. There's a lot that she's dealing with with her family, and he observes it, but he's so in his own mind about what's going on with Robert.

What I was so excited about [when] getting the script is that there was a scene with Liz, with [Debbie's] mom—who's played by Evan Rachel Wood, who is so iconic—in episode 2, and it was clear. Oh, Ryan is gonna bring you through Debbie's backstory, and you're gonna understand more what Debbie's going through and why she's the way she is and what she knows in a way that the book doesn't allow you to, but while staying really authentic to the book. And that's what hooked me immediately.

It sounds sad, but I am someone that likes to push things down and really just put on a façade that everything's fine and not deal with it and let things build up. Everyone's like, "That's really sad." And I'm like, "I'm just being authentic." Another thing is I like to store things in a mental cabinet. Whether it's behavior from someone or someone's lying to me, I don't have to start an argument or fight. It just informs my behavior, and I file it away. I think Debbie does that a lot. I had a lot of fun playing her.

You grew up on the Ryan Murphy universe. What was it like to actually meet and work with him?

I keep saying this, but it was a dream come true. It was like me working with one of my creative idols growing up. No one in my family is in entertainment. It always was seen as a part-time hobby until I started to show my family, "Hey look, you can make money." At the premiere, my mom met Ryan, and he was so sweet about me. I fought so hard for this role, and he talked about that with her, and she knows because she was there with me and sees how much this changed my life, having to move to L.A. on a whim. It was like this dream of Hollywood really happened to me, and my family all saw it. My mom was so emotional meeting Ryan and getting to talk about it.

So on one hand, I am so grateful to him for giving me that opportunity and believing me and trusting me with this part. And then, on the other end, he really was involved in The Shards. He was on set all the time. He directed multiple episodes. We'd go to dinner with him after we were done with scenes. I went to dinner with him two days ago. We are very close, which is crazy. It's given us a chance to see inside his mind and how detail-oriented he is. He has such an eye for everything.

Is there a Murphy project that stands out as being quite influential for you?

I think it's the obvious one for a theater kid. Glee changed my life. I believe it was the first TV show I ever was down bad for. Every Tuesday, I would watch with my parents. I thought it was just incredible.

Talk to me about being transported to 1981 to this world that Murphy and Ellis created.

What's so insane about these productions is there's no stone left unturned. When we're filming episode 1 and [the Pacific Coast Highway] is rented out for us to film driving in these old Mercedes, it's like, "What the hell?!" Or when they're doing the car-chase scene and every storefront looks like an '80s storefront… It's such a gift as an actor because there's a lot of scene work you have to do in prep and character work, but getting these clothes put on you that are from the '80s, the hair, and everything is completely transformed to be like the '80s. Even little things, like lunch boxes or Ruffles packages, everything is '80s. It just takes you to that time. So much of the work is done for you.

You are a late-'90s baby. Is there anything from the early '80s you appreciate or wish was still around?

I'd say it was really interesting how much communication face-to-face had to happen with no cell phones. There were landlines, and we used phones in the show, but a lot of the interactions that happened, even characters showing up at people's houses, wouldn't happen now. It would just be a text. I think so much of that helps inform people's relationships. Doing more face-to-face, awkward, clunky interactions and less texting was really fun for the story. And then the big-volume hair, the side parts, it's so much work, but if I don't have to do the work, I appreciate how it looks a lot. The boys really took the short shorts a little too far.

That's where you draw the line.

I was like, "No, none of that."

You became quite close with your on-screen BFF, Kaia Gerber. Tell me about first meeting her and how your friendship evolved while working together.

We all met as a group, and I could tell I liked everyone, which is actually crazy. I was bracing myself because everyone has different personalities, and you never know with actors. Same with me. And immediately, we're all like, "Okay, Ryan is really good at seeing chemistry and feeling out people's personalities." We clicked immediately. Me and Kaia went to Lolo Wine Bar two days later in L.A., and it was like, "Okay, we're good." One thing I immediately appreciated about her is that… When I moved to L.A., I didn't know anyone. I was a little frazzled. I felt really lost, and she really grounded me and became like a second family to me. Anything I needed in L.A., if I needed a doctor or somewhere to go, she was so supportive and helpful.

People, especially when there are just two girls, want to pit them against one another, and both of us came in with [the attitude that] that is not happening with us. If we had not meshed, who knows what would have happened. I will always be so appreciative of how she and her family took me in. I would have had such a different experience without that. And the same with her—I just want her to win. When she's doing a scene and she needs something from me, I want to make sure that I'm there for her and doing anything that I can. We became best friends, and I'm really grateful that she was Susan.

Thinking back to filming, was there a scene or a day that stands out to you as being very memorable?

We were early in shooting. It was like January, and Ryan, out of the blue, put us all in a group chat and was like, "The pilot is incredible. I'm so proud of all of you. Let's get dinner." None of us had really hung out with him socially, so we're all nervous. We went to Chateau [Marmont], and it's so iconic. All the writer's rooms are there, and he has a bunch of rooms there for different purposes. We all got drinks and sat around the table and laughed. He's so funny, and just seeing him as a person made us all so much more comfortable on set, knowing we could go to him with questions. And then we went up to the writer's room, and he's like, "I'm showing you guys the pilot." We all had our martinis and were sitting around his old laptop to watch the pilot in the middle of shooting, and it was really exciting.

Is it true that no wigs were allowed on set?

Oh my gosh. There were wigs, but we didn't have wigs.

Talk me through the process of becoming Debbie.

My hair, if there's backlighting, it's not the cutest thing. So thank God Ryan knows how to light. But I will say they all took great care of my hair. Being full platinum—like "it's never blonde enough" type platinum—was really hard to get. Every three weeks, I would go get my roots touched up in Pasadena by my incredible hairstylist.

In the morning, me and Kaia would be there three hours before everyone else, and we would have our rollers in and then go to makeup, and then after makeup, we take the rollers out and do the teasing. And then the boys would show up, and we're like, "Hey, sleep well?" We'd get there at 4 a.m., and you just completely transform into this character. The hair is something I can't re-create. What they did was just so incredible and so perfect—and the different styles of it. The fittings were actually really big. In preproduction, I had probably 15 fittings just trying to find Debbie. They did a super-preppy Debbie, a kind of rock 'n' roll Debbie, and we landed on a really edgy, rock star–inspired [Debbie] that I really relate to and love. It was a lot of finding it and a lot of trial and error and a lot of hair.

It gives you an appreciation for what women did back then to do their hair.

Me and Kaia always laugh. The one question both of us asked our moms was, Is this how much effort you guys did every day before school? My mom was like, "Yep, every day."

Who would be some of the women on Debbie's mood board?

Michelle Pfeiffer, especially in Scarface, would definitely be on there. She has this beautiful, slightly dangerous, cool-girl femininity that feels very Debbie (glamorous and feminine) but with an edge. Patti Smith for her attitude and refusal to conform and Jodie Foster, who has this intelligence and intensity that I think would really resonate with Debbie.

I also think the mood board would have a lot of women who weren't necessarily fashion icons but who embodied a certain independence and confidence. Debbie is constantly trying to figure out who she is and prove that she's more than what other people expect her to be, so I wanted the women she looked to [to] feel aspirational—not just aesthetically but in the way they carried themselves.

Do you have a favorite look of Debbie's?

It's really funny because some of my favorite ones on-screen were … the hardest to wear. They were very tight.

I heard about some zipper panic attacks.

When Kaia and I were interviewing each other, the truth came out—like, let me talk about the zipper panic attacks. The pink [look] in episode 4, I love. The dance-off [episode], I love that blue [look]. It was so easy and also moved so well. Those are my two favorites, I'd say.

You contributed a couple of songs to the soundtrack. Was that something that was discussed with you early on, or how did that come to be?

That was really natural, and that's part of how supportive Ryan is of his actors and how invested in their lives he is. He knows how important music is to me, so he was like, "I would love to have you in the soundtrack." And it was a huge deal for me. He gave me some direction, and I was listening to '80s music all the time on set. I knew the different scenes, so I could write it with different things in mind. I sent him a bunch of stuff, and I think the two that made the show are really the ones I wrote from the perspective of Debbie, which is really fun. One of them is called "No One Takes Me Seriously," which is all the things that I relate to her with. There's a lot of Debbie in there. Also, Troye Sivan did a lot of original music, and I work closely with his collaborator, Leland. So while I was shooting, I got to hear what he was doing, and I got to talk to Troye and hang out with him. He would watch the episodes and give me what he liked about them. It was very collaborative.

Now that you have The Shards under your belt, what does the future of acting look like for you?

I am completely in love with acting and have different projects in the works and am in the early stages of talking to people. So I'm gonna 1000% continue acting and working on projects that feel really passionate to me. I'm getting a lot of the question of "If you had to choose," and what's funny is so many of the artists I look up to and aspire to be like are doing both and have come from one and still are involved in acting and singing and dancing and producing. I want to be a multi-hyphenate. I want to take on projects that feel passionate to me, and I think they'll inform each other.

The Shards is now streaming on FX on Hulu.