Ryan Murphy on His Three-Season ‘Shards’ Plan, What Past Seasons Will Pop Up in ‘AHS13’ and His Powerful Connection to Norman Lear

Ryan Murphy knows one thing for certain: 1981 was the year that made him.

He was 16, growing up in a Catholic family but getting his first taste of freedom. That included television. It was only a few years earlier that his mother had even let him watch it for the first time, an experience marked by the memory of his visceral reaction to the infamous episode of “All in the Family” when Edith (Jean Stapleton) is attacked on her 50th birthday. “I was wailing and crying,”  Murphy says.

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But by 1981, things had changed for him.

“[It] is probably the most seminal, important year of my entire life,” Murphy tells Variety ahead of receiving the Norman Lear Award at Variety’s Showrunners Breakfast Aug. 14. “I turned 16. I drove a car for the first time. I had my first date. I had my first sexual experience in February of 1981. I came out of the closet in February of 1981, not that I was ever in. And then [a few] months later, the New York Times ran an article about a new disease called AIDS. I, like so many people, had a very truncated adolescence, where I instantly linked all forms of intimacy with death and dying.”

Murphy has long been asked to write about his life, particularly those early years that he is still trying to unpack himself. “I don’t want to write about my life in that way though,” he says.

But he found an alternative means of doing so with Bret Easton Ellis’ novel “The Shards,” a faux-autobiography about a version of Ellis living in Los Angeles in 1981, working on his first novel, “Less Than Zero” and trying to make it out of his posh high school alive — all while a serial killer known as the Trawler stalks the city and his friend group. While not reflective of Murphy’s teenage years, the atmosphere and specific sense memory of ’81 that the book basks in has long been imprinted on Murphy.

“I knew all the music, and I knew all the clothes, and I was the first in my school to know what hair gel was,” he says. “All those things are baked into the book.”

He also can’t help but recognize the parallels of his life to that of Ellis’ own. “I very much see the timeline of my career also in his timeline, going from sort of wunderkind to a controversial figure to an institutionalized thing, whether you like it or not.”

Having lost his bid to adapt “The Shards” originally, Murphy again met with Ellis, who was not convinced even Murphy could make the series happen after it failed to materialize from his first adaptation deal with HBO and director Luca Guadagnino.

“Bret was kind of heartbroken about it, and he kept saying, ‘I know this is never going to get made,’” Murphy says. “I was like, ‘You don’t understand! I have greenlight power. I’m telling you, I want to make it.’”

Easton’s response, according to Murphy: “If you have any questions, call me, and otherwise, go with God.”

Murphy trusted that he could do the impossible. It’s a lesson he learned from Norman Lear, a friend and industry legend who had been teaching him about television since that episode of “All in the Family” in 1977. “The thing that was very consistent about Norman was that he always said to never listen to anybody but your inner voice,” Murphy says.

The Norman Lear Award is an honor that holds a great deal of meaning to Murphy because of its first recipient and namesake. Now an undisputed heavyweight in Hollywood, whose shows “Monster” and “Love Story” both snagged Emmy noms this season, Murphy still remembers his first interaction with Lear in 2009.

“When I first started out and had a couple of successes, specifically with ‘Glee,’ he was one of the first people to call me,” he says. “You’re understandably shocked when somebody says, ‘I have Norman Lear calling,’ and of course I took the call. He was important in my life in that he would call at times, good and bad, and give me incredible pep talks and let me ask him questions.”

The image of Lear watching — and enjoying — an episode of “Glee” is something Murphy holds onto.

“He loved it,” he says. “When it first came on, it was something that nobody thought would work, and then it became this sensation. So he had a lot of ideas, and wanted to know, ‘How did you come up with this? And was it hard to make? And I hope it was hard to make because the things that are the hardest are always the most rewarding when people love them.’”

Nearly 20 years later, Murphy is experiencing something similar with “The Shards,” while also taking a personal victory lap with the impending all-stars season of “American Horror Story,” known simply as “AHS13.” 

For “The Shards,” although they are credited as co-creators and co-writers on the first two episodes, Murphy didn’t work arm in arm with Ellis to adapt the book. Rather, he accepted the author’s insistence to make it his own. Murphy says it was an “interesting collaboration,” and one he hopes Ellis looks fondly on.

“It ended up being a very good experience, and I hope he’s proud,” Murphy says. 

He notes that executive producer Brad Simpson arranged for the first two episodes to be shown to Ellis and his team, and Murphy understands it was a “successful” screening.

But Ellis did have one directive, which Murphy hopes to fulfill. 

“When I first met with him, he didn’t really want to do it as a limited series,” he says. “He always thought this could be a three-year dramatic series, if not longer. I like that idea. You have the space and time and energy. You’re not doing nine or 10 episodes. You’re going to try and do 30. That’s how I could add some of my own personal things in there.”

Not since “Glee” has Murphy worked with young actors like the core cast of “The Shards.” Almost every weekend, he says he would go out on the town and regale them with stories of his own early years in Los Angeles. 

“I got the experience of mentoring them in a way that I wished I had been mentored when I first started out,” he says.

Again, there were far fewer serial killers in Murphy’s own tales, but the message was the same. This was his chance to take them for a drive through his version of L.A. via “The Shards.” 

While Ellis’ book plays with the ambiguity of who the Trawler is, Murphy knows who is behind the killings in the show. And no, he’s not telling anyone yet — not even the cast. But he did use the mystery of it to coax out unexpected shades of their ’80s-tinged performances.

“They’re all suspicious of each other when they’re acting in those scenes,” he says. “What you’re seeing on screen is real. ‘I don’t trust you. Are you the one doing this?’ That was a very interesting thing to write and play to.”

As he hands “The Shards” to audiences and to fans of Ellis’ book, Murphy now looks to “AHS13,” which he says feels like a tribute to he and co-creator Brad Falchuk’s wild idea to make anthologized TV back in 2011.

That season, which consists of 13 shorter episodes, will see the return of his murderer’s row of talent — from Jessica Lange and Evan Peters to Sarah Paulson, Emma Roberts and Angela Bassett — and will feature characters from some of the fans’ favorite seasons.

“I know which ones the fans liked the most. They love ‘Murder House’, ‘Asylum,’ ‘Coven,’ ‘Freak Show,’ and they loved ‘Cult,’” says Murphy. And the actors will be playing multiple characters from the past. “Some of them will be playing two characters from two different seasons in the same scene. Evan was, at one point, playing two different characters and talking to himself. So it was really fun and tricky to make, and I loved that. I’ve edited almost all of them, and I think they’re really good.”

Above all, this fall’s triple dose of “The Shards,” his return to “AHS” and the latest installment of “Monster” has reinvigorated Murphy for what’s ahead.

“It’s all a shot in the arm, for sure,” he says.