Every so often, a pending project appears in Hollywood and immediately becomes the talk of the town—or at least among industry insiders. Such was the case when it was announced that an adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel The Shards—an erotic psychological thriller set in 1981 Los Angeles—would begin filming with co-creator and executive producer Ryan Murphy at the helm. Homer Gere landed one of the coveted roles in the series, premiering this August. He plays Robert Mallory, a mysterious new student whose arrival coincides with a string of murders across Los Angeles. This comes after his role in the third (and last) season of Euphoria earlier this year, in which he played a young actor and social media influencer alongside Sydney Sweeney. The 26-year-old is on the fast track to becoming one of Gen Z’s princes of the screen, showcasing his talents on two of the year’s most visible projects. If that wasn’t enough, he’ll also be starring beside Josh Hartnett in American filmmaker Oliver Stone’s White Lies, a movie about multigenerational grief and love. VMAN brought the two together to discuss the winding road that eventually led Gere to an acting career.

JOSH HARTNETT: There’s something I always like to ask. I’ve done a few of these interviews, and I asked Hugh Grant the same thing. When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you got older? 

HOMER GERE: There were a couple of phases. When I was really young, I wanted to be an archaeologist. I was obsessed with dinosaurs. At a certain point, that turned into wanting to be an astrophysicist. That persisted from the time I was about 11 until I was about 17. I was well through high school still wanting to be one. I applied to college actually half political science, but I was an astrophysics person. I did not act at all when I was a kid. I very much wanted to be in the science world. I wanted to be a scientist, an astronaut. I had this dream of being maybe a psychologist on a Mars mission or something, keeping the whole group together, mentally sound. But no, it was anything but this.

JH: You were like the Ian Holm character in Alien, who ends up being a robot. But when you were growing up, your relationship with acting was obviously multifold. But what did you think of it? 

HG: I didn’t fully understand it. I was never on set growing up. I was kept very separate from everything. We moved out of Manhattan when I was young. From second grade on, I was up in Westchester, so I had a pretty normal childhood, as much as you could in that situation, having my dad as my dad. I didn’t really get it, but every once in a while, [agent] Ed Limato would pull up in a limo to the house and get out. So I was like, I don’t know what my dad does, but he’s involved with this guy, so it can’t be that bad. Ed Limato was the sweetest guy in the world. My only real exposure to acting in my actual life was my dad. The only movie of his I’ve really watched, even still, was Chicago. I had such bad separation anxiety when I was a kid. I had a little iPod Nano, and I had his songs from that soundtrack lined up. So when I was on the bus, I could listen to him sing, and it would soothe my fear of abandonment. I still love those songs. But there was no sense of, “this is going to be what I do when I grow up.” There’s a lot of that from parents’ friends or people you meet: “following Dad’s footsteps?” And I’m like, “I could do anything else. I’m a smart enough kid. I have the opportunity to do something else. Why would I do the same thing?”

JH: Do you feel that some of what you studied in school, and what you wanted to be when you were younger, informs how you look at acting now? 

HG: You bring all of your life experience into whatever acting is. But the psychology part, I don’t think it came out in a conscious way. Learning more about the human condition, you’re able to bring that in. This is coming from someone who didn’t go to acting school, but doing something else other than being in this recursive acting class cycle can be just as helpful to draw experience from. 

JH: Okay let me ask you a very on-the-nose question because I think it’s important for this. What was it like getting cast on Euphoria? 

HG: I hadn’t seen it before. I have this weird thing where if anything’s too popular, I avoid it. It’s a really bad habit, because you’re missing some amazing stuff. Like there is a reason that some things are very popular. 

JH: There is, but you know what? Taste is such an important thing to maintain as an artist, I guess, if you want to say that. If you have different taste, you’re allowed to see things differently and therefore create things differently.

HG: I wouldn’t say I feel shame about it, but it’s just a thing I could work on. But I hadn’t seen it before. I got an email in my inbox for Euphoria, and I really liked the sides. I went home and auditioned. I booked time with my acting coach to do the self-tape, so I watched a couple of episodes to get the tone, and then I did it. Rarely do I feel like I nailed something, but I thought it went really well. I was like, okay, great. I’m going to hear back about this soon. That was in March of 2025, and I didn’t hear back until August. I was like, I didn’t get it, and then I got the call: We need you to fly out tomorrow morning to shoot the next day. Which was actually kind of perfect because I was so nervous that I did not have that much time to stew. As a first real acting job, to be on that set with those kinds of creative actors, and [Euphoria creator, director, writer] Sam Levinson, is an insane first thing to do. Then you are just in it. And then that led straight into The Shards. Luckily, they were back to back, so I was just in L.A. the whole time. My first day on the Euphoria set, I was not supposed to have any lines. Then Sam was like, “You know, I think there’s a little more here. What do you think you would say?” So my first day on a set, I’m coming up with my own lines, and that’s cool. That’s the way he works. It’s all being made right now. Obviously, travel plans are a negative of that, and knowing what you’re doing, but there’s a certain creative freedom and present-moment creativity you get with that, which I think is sometimes lost.

JH: Yeah, that’s awesome. And The Shards just followed right up afterward. Had you been cast before you finished on Euphoria?

HG: No, I had actually been cast in The Shards first. Again, email in the inbox. Read for it. They came back with a different character. I was with a friend in Ireland on a little backpacking trip when I got the second audition for The Shards. We were in a hostel room, reading with this friend, recording on a shitty iPhone, and they liked it. I flew out to L.A., read with everyone, and that was that. I only read with one person there, which I thought meant I had completely screwed it. They were like, “You can leave.” I went out onto the street and called my agent. I was like, “I completely fucked this up. I do not know what I was thinking.” Then, like an hour later, I got a call from Ryan Murphy, which I did not pick up because it was an unknown number. I had the little voicemail preview: “Hey Homer, it’s Ryan. Call me.” Then he was like, “you got it,” and that was that. That was maybe two weeks before Euphoria came through, so that was a really crazy two- or three-week period in my life of, okay, wow, it’s all happening all of a sudden.

This cover story appears in the pages of VMAN 57: now available for purchase!

Photography Luigi & Iango

Fashion Hunter Clem

Creative Director / Editor-in-Chief Stephen Gan

Interview Josh Hartnett

Grooming Amy Komorowski (The Wall Group) using CIRCA 1970

Casting Greg Krelenstein (GK-LD)

Tailor Abel Martirosyan

Editor Kev Ponce

Art Direction Clément Condat

Fashion Market Editor Gabby Buchan

Production Louis Guillemain (2b Management)

Luigi & Iango Studio Manager Francisco Betancourt

Styling Assistant Arut Arustamyan

Production Assistant Juliet Lloyd

Cinematographer Santiago Montes