Hayes Warner was busy building a music career when she auditioned for The Shards, Ryan Murphy’s latest teen drama based on the book of the same name by Bret Easton Ellis. To that point, she had toured the country, played Lollapalooza, and released several singles, in addition to writing songs for Disney, Netflix, and Paramount, among others. Despite studying musical theatre at Northwestern, the native New Yorker didn’t have any acting credits outside of her own music videos. But in April 2025, she auditioned for the role of Debbie Schaffer, one of the show’s leads, and…she didn’t get it. But this was not a result she was interested in. Rather, she wrote Murphy a letter discussing the character, the text, and the show, unwilling to be defeated. Murphy called her back in, and not only did she get the part, she’s on the show’s billboards and she’s writing music for the show’s soundtrack—her song “Seriously,” arrived this past October. Beyond The Shards, Warner is also fronting the new Roberto Cavalli campaign, sitting in the front row at Balenciaga and Khaite, traveling the world, and continues working on her own music. Here, the starlet speaks to The Shards co-star Jordan Roth about crafting the character of Debbie, making music, and finding herself offscreen.

JORDAN ROTH: We are starting with my favorite Hayes story ever: ripping the IV from your arm because you got the call that you were cast on The Shards. Please explain to the people. 

HAYES WARNER: Just that sentence describes this past year of my life in the best way possible: the audition process, how badly I wanted this role, how excited I was for this project from the second I heard about it. Coming from someone with no acting experience, not living in LA, not knowing much about the acting world. I was focusing on music at the time, and doing a lot of exciting, fun things in that world. And I saw this audition, and it said The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis and Ryan Murphy. I was immediately addicted to the project and the role of Debbie because I had read The Shards a year earlier. So I do the self-tape in my kitchen with my dad reading as Liz Schaffer. 

JR: Okay, that I need to see.

HW: Of course, never forget! He knows that he could mouth the whole scene, every Liz Schaffer line,  “You are me.” I was like, “Say it with more gusto, Dad. Please.” So we did that a million times in the kitchen. I wanted to perfect it. Didn’t think anything of it. I just was excited to get an audition. Heard back a week later that Ryan wanted to meet me in New York. I was such a Ryan fan, so that was just crazy.

JR: And this is when, what month are we in? 

HW: This is April of last year. I walk in the room. Graham [Campbell] and Igby [Rigney] are also there, in full Igby and Graham, in the best way possible. Igby was meditating, and Graham was barefoot on the ground. Like, where are we right now? It’s an office space. [I’m] saying everything that was in my head, but wasn’t going to say out loud. 

JR: Which is why we love Graham.

HW: Which is why we love Graham. I go in the room, and I made a stupid joke to Ryan about the weather. I don’t know what I said, but I was like, I shouldn’t have said that. That wasn’t funny. I regret that. And then I said to him that I was a professional horseback rider, which I’m not. 

JR: And you said this because you were just having an out-of-body experience because you knew that the Debbie horse scene was happening. 

HW: He asked me, “Do you ride horses? And I came out strong. 

JR: And you were like, “Olympic dressage!”

HW: Dressage! I said I can do circles and loops and [I was] using all the incorrect language. But I just wanted the role. Don’t hear back again for another month, and then we get called out for a screen test in LA. I walk into the screen test at Sunset Las Palmas, and there’s all these other Bretts, all these other Debbies–and beautiful Debbies that have seen another project before. And I’m like, oh, they want a professional working actor that has done this a million times, and this is just a cool story [for me]. Like, what a cool story! I’m in LA, and I go into the room, and Ryan gave me a note. I think, just between the overwhelm of the whole experience, I don’t think that I nailed the note. 

JR: Do you remember what the note was?

HW: Yes, it was to be a bit darker. I was just so excited to be there and overwhelmed, I didn’t give myself a second. I would have done it a lot differently now. He also referenced Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface, which I had not seen, but I was too embarrassed to say I hadn’t seen Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface. So there was a lot going on. 

JR: Michelle Pfeiffer relative to Liz or relative to Debbie?

HW: To Debbie, referencing the darkness. And I just didn’t nail it. I leave the room. I go get drinks with all these other girls, all the other Debbies, and they have told us none of the Debbies nailed it–all of you, go. 

JR: So they told you in the room, you’re released? 

HW: Each of our agents called us one at a time. 

JR: As you’re all sitting there together.

HW: Yes.

JR: Wild.

HW: At Sunset Las Palmas, and we’re all dropping like flies. And then it’s me, and I’m just waiting there. I’m staring at my phone like, it’s coming, and it, of course, came. We find out no one got it, so we all get drinks at Casa Maderna in West Hollywood. 

JR: That’s so cute. 

HW: It was so cute, and they were so nice, and they had so many other projects and exciting things.  I was like, I want to be Debbie in The Shards—that’s all I want. I just want that so bad. And I went to the bathroom at Casa Maderna, and I wrote my first rough draft of my letter to Ryan, which was soon to be edited down. And it was just, ‘I am such a fan of yours. I’m such a fan of the book. I understand this character for X, Y, and Z reasons’. It was just a long, kind of tipsy thought process that I was having. I sent it to my agents, and they were like, ‘You’ll start to see this as we do more auditions, but you have to accept rejection as an actor and move forward, and no, it’s not for you, and the universe will work’. And I was like, ‘The universe?’

JR: And you were like, ‘No, I will not!’ 

HW: Yeah, a little bit! And then I edited it to make it a bit more concise, and I sent it over again. And they said, “Okay, we’ll send this.” Didn’t hear back for a month. I was on tour for music in Midland, Texas, and I got an email from casting that he would see me again [on tape], and they want it as soon as possible. There’s no ring lights in Midland, Texas, so I taped up a black bed sheet to a [wall at] Best Western. I did the reading again with my dad, and I had now watched Scarface five times. The next morning I was getting an IV—I had driven the night to Nashville. I was going to have a show that night, and I was so overwhelmed about The Shards and everything, and so I was like, “What do I do? I need something medical.” So I went to an IV station, and there were all these bachelorette parties happening around me. They were hungover [and] they had the tiaras, and I get a FaceTime from my manager first, and I start hysterically crying.

JR: That’s how you got the part.

HW: Yes.

JR: Surrounded by bachelorettes hooked up to IVs. 

HW: No one was around to help me get the IV out because it had just started dripping, and they were focusing on other clients. I just wanted to get out of there. I was going to Hollywood, and I just unleashed the IV. I got pressure on it, and I ran through the hills of Nashville. And the bachelorettes were horrified. They were like, “Who has died? What’s wrong?” I left without a word, and I moved to LA the next day. 

JR: Yeah, I mean that is the “star is born” Ryan Murphy story that I want.

HW: But you have such a good story, too. To get a DM straight from Ryan, and have the part. The part was made for you in a way–every line only could have been done in your way by you. That’s my dream scenario. That’s the dream Stephen setup. So I like your story. 

JR: Thank you. Well, I like your story, so we can enjoy each other’s stories. And so this was moments before we started shooting, hence the rip the IV from your arm, [and you] but literally run to LA, and you then met the rest of the gang. 

HW: I just remember we all went to drinks, and I knew it was perfect casting. I just felt glimmers of each person’s character in them, and I hate to say, I mean I love Debbie, but they would say the same for me, for sure.

JR: Well, that’s so interesting. Where’s the Debbie in you? 

HW: I’m sure they would have long sentences as to why I am similar to Debbie in the good and the bad, for a lot of reasons. I think straight from a first impression, energetically. I think I brought so much of myself energetically into Debbie, so I think that the two intersected, a lot of the improv or my own humor. On the other hand,  I find myself acting sometimes like a little bit of an airhead just to get through. I like to know what’s going on and know the information and be smart about scenarios, but sometimes I don’t act as such. I think like the song [I wrote for the show], sometimes I feel like no one takes me seriously. 

JR: It’s so interesting, that impulse no one takes me seriously manifests in a song that you wrote for the show. Tell me how that all came to be, because it turns out, after clawing your way to this part, you’re not just an actor in The Shards, you’re also creating music for it.

HW: I think as Ryan [and I] got to know each other, he knew how important music was to me. I think it was so incredible going to those dinners with him and with you. You guys are great friends. But I would have not have been surprised had I never met him, just based on how much he does, but how involved [he is] and how much we all got to know each other, and [we got to] feel comfortable on set. In that way I think he learned and knew in casting me that music is a huge passion of mine. Simultaneously, I was working on music with one of Troye Sivan’s close collaborators, who also was working on music for The Shards. Ryan said to me and to this collaborator, “Oh, it would be fun to have Hayes do some music.” And on wrap day, I was like, I’m gonna take that suggestion and I’m gonna send you music. So right on wrap day, I started in the studio and I wrote 10 songs that could work, that were from the perspective of Debbie. It was creatively liberating to get to still live in The Shards world when it was over. When it was over, it felt like we were together 24/7 to just this emptiness. 

JR: It was sad. 

HW: When you left for New York, I cried. It was a whole year and a half of my life, the audition process and the shooting process. So it was exciting to keep working.

JR: Tell me about your music writing process. How do you begin?

HW: I started writing songs when I was 14 on the piano, and it was just me. I knew nothing about the music industry, how to make a song, how to work with the producer. So I still have parts of that in my process. I sometimes go into a session with a fully formed idea. But as I’ve learned about the music industry–I had a publishing deal, got to the ins and outs of how it all works–a lot of times, I go into a session that’s planned, sometimes with strangers, sometimes it’s just me as a writer and the artist and a producer. Sometimes we’ve met, sometimes we haven’t, and we talk about inspiration and what song I want to make for my artist project or for other artists in the room we’re writing for, and they work on a beat and I work on a song. We record the song and you leave the session with a full recorded song demo, at least, that you can flesh out if you like it. When I was living in New York before The Shards, it was like every time I did an LA writing trip, it felt like speed dating. And now I feel like I’m getting to work with people I love and respect, to lock in with them and know each other. 

JR: So you’re experiencing these two creative, generative processes of acting and music, building a character, a body of musical work over time. How do those two creative practices inform each other? 

HW: I think there was a lot of overlap and a lot of differences in learning on the spot. One huge difference is when I’m in the studio, I’m trying–everyone throws around this word authenticity, and it almost gets annoying sometimes because I’m still trying to figure out what’s authentic to me. You’re constantly trying to do this psychological digging about who am I, what do I want to say, what does my presence mean in this world, and what do I want to say? Versus when you’re acting, you can just throw yourself into somebody else completely and get to dig and understand them. That felt liberating because at the time I was run down by music. I had done so many sessions, written so many songs, and was getting confused about who am I? So many people constantly are asking you and giving you their opinion about who you are. So in that lens, [acting] was different and freeing. But something from music that helped me on set was being able to change and shift on my feet. I think going into a lot of different writing sessions, whether it’s writing for different artists or for myself, you have to sense the energy in the room and be able to shift based on what the song needs, what the other artists you’re working with need, what the producer’s energy is, just to make the best song. On set, it was useful based on what the scene requires. If you get a note from a director that’s not something you prepped, suddenly all this prep work is out the window. Remember that day that we got those new lines? I think that’s the first day we worked together.

JR: We needed a whole section, and Ryan was like, “I’ll be right back,” and he went to his trailer. He literally wrote new lines, came out of the trailer, and was like, “You’re all gonna do this, and read them to us,” and then we did them. 

HW: And then we did them. I remember we all had our scribbly little pens, writing top of our lines, as he said them. So things like that. On stage, when I’m performing live, sometimes audiences call out crazy things, or sometimes I’m performing for an audience that has no idea about my music and doesn’t even  want me there because I’m an opener. You have to always change based on the energy. That’s something I think overlaps. 

JR: The music industry is constantly drilling down on who are you. That then presumably becomes the core of the music, but also the core of the persona. Where are you now in the who are you answer? 

HW: I’m in a much healthier place because I have far more self-worth and self-confidence. A year ago–honestly, this is an overlap I had with Debbie–[I was] constantly trying to prove to people that I am enough and I am talented enough for people to take a chance on me, but not feeling that for sure within myself. I remember I performed at Lollapalooza two years ago, and that was a dream. But the whole time I was there, I was like, I think people are gonna judge me for doing this because I’m not in the place in my career I wanted to be when I was performing at Lollapalooza. Nothing ever felt fully satisfying, and I never  felt like I was so confident in what song I wanted to make or what clothes I wanted to wear. Just this past year, getting to delve into something else, I did find myself and a lot of self-confidence, just getting to watch The Shards and do it and be around other confident creatives. When I’m talking to people about my music now and I’m making a new project, I go into the studio with an idea and I know what I want to say, what I want to wear, and who I want to be. This year has been transformative for me. 

JR: You had talked about when you first saw yourself. We had this epic night at the Chateau Marmont where we all got together and had dinner right after wrap with Ryan, and he surprised us by bringing us up to his office to show us a first draft of the pilot. We’re all sitting together, watching this show. What did that feel like for you?

HW: I remember the second it went to the drone shot of the PCH and “Vienna” was playing, it made me so emotional. Not because I was looking at my performance as an actor, and it was just so nice to step away from that and not be so critical. I had had a drink before, which had loosened me up. But getting to be so proud of the work everyone did, even the gaffers and the DPs, and seeing Kaia and Graham and Igby in the car, and seeing your moment that comes up when you walk into the pool. It’s just full chills. I felt so proud about what I was involved in, and that I had gotten to be involved in it. I feel like a year ago, if I didn’t know everyone involved, how invested everyone was, and how much work everyone put in, I probably would have looked at it and hyperfixated on every line I said, and then criticized how I said it. But I was more taken by how beautiful [it was] and proud I was to be involved, how proud I was of everyone. I  knew how much prep everyone did, and I remember prepping each scene with everyone, and wanting everyone to win. I just wanted it to be an amazing product, and I thought it was.

This cover story appears in the pages of V163: now available for purchase!

Photography Matthew Brookes (2BManagement)

Fashion Anna Trevelyan 

Interview Jordan Roth

Creative Director/Editor-In-Chief Stephen Gan

Models Trip Wilson (Soul Artist Management), Dylan James Anderson (IMG), Darrell Jones (Pretty Management)

Hair Owen Gould (A-Frame Agency) using Moroccanoil

Makeup Holly Silius (R3-MGMT) using Victoria Beckham Beauty

Manicure Kleopatra Tsompani (Home Agency) using GELCARE

Digital Director Mathias Rosenzweig

Editor Kev Ponce

Fashion Market Editor Gabby Buchan

Text Elyssa Goodman

Casting Director (Models) Adam Browne

Executive Producer Kevin Warner (WAK Creative)

Associate Producer Nick Lambrakis (WAK Creative) 

Production Assistant Aleks Patergin

Photo Assistants Kurt Mangum & Andrew Arboleda

Digital Technician Stowe Richards

Fashion Assistant Damien Lloyd 

Makeup Assistant Danielle Gerkens

Cinematographer Lukas Chmiel