Hayes Warner first read The Shards — Bret Easton Ellis’ fictionalized memoir about a serial killer targeting his high school classmates in Los Angeles — when it was just a glimmer in superproducer Ryan Murphy‘s eye, and she couldn’t stop imagining it on the screen. When she found out it was getting made into a series, she called her agent immediately: She was ready to drop everything for a chance to play the poor-little-rich-girl lead, Debbie Schaffer. Never mind that the pop singer had never booked a professional role before.
“I describe it as my seven-month battle because I wanted it so bad,” the 27-year-old tells The Hollywood Reporter. She briefly turns on her Zoom camera to apologize for her current state — in a salon chair with foils in her bright blond hair — but it’s days before the FX show is set to premiere, so the multitasking is forgivable.
No matter how badly she wanted the role, she would have to convince casting directors she could handle it. She’d been working as a pop singer for her entire adult life and performed on stages as prominent as Lollapalooza, but despite studying musical theater in college, Warner had no body of acting work to point to.
Before getting the chance to audition, she needed to send in a tape. Thankfully, she had a trusted collaborator. “I did the self-tape with my dad in my living room,” she says. “It was one of my first self-tapes. I mean, I’d acted my whole life, but it was the first time that I was really targeting [a project]. I heard that Ryan wanted to meet me in New York, which was a crazy, out-of-body experience.”
