Set in early-1980s Los Angeles, FX’s The Shards is Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel. It follows a circle of privileged students at an elite private school as questions of identity, sexuality, jealousy, and obsession collide with a danger lurking just beneath the surface of ordinary American adolescence.

Roth plays Steven Reinhard, a Hollywood fixer, whom Vanity Fair’s Marisa Meltzer described as “a leering but strangely centered presence in leather outfits and a two-tone wig.” Speaking of his character and working with Ryan Murphy in an interview for The Hollywood Reporter, Roth notes, “On the surface, Steven is a real ‘other’ — you really get to see that he speaks for all of us, which I think is one of the real genius talents of Ryan. He is able to create these characters who seem so singular and one-of-one, but then he gives them this foundational existential core that speaks for all of us and speaks to all of us — to our pain and our yearning.”