Cindy Crawford and Richard Gere, once the power couple of the early '90s, have largely avoided each other since their divorce, but their children are now bringing them back together. Kaia Gerber, 24, and Homer Gere, 26, have become co-stars in Ryan Murphy's upcoming mini-series The Shards, more than three decades after their parents split.
A source told Globe that the exes are dropping their defenses and playing nice, and that they are doing it for the kids.
Crawford, 60, and Gere, 76, have mostly stayed quiet about their past relationship. In her memoir Becoming, Crawford said it was not something she wanted to share and that she wanted to be respectful.
How Crawford and Gere met
Crawford was 22 when she started dating Gere in the late 1980s. The pair met at a barbecue hosted by photographer Herb Ritts and immediately hit it off. Crawford, who launched her full-time modelling career in New York in 1986, was reportedly starstruck by Gere, who was 39 at the time and had already starred in Breathless, The Cotton Club, American Gigolo and An Officer and a Gentleman.
In the Apple TV documentary The Super Models, Crawford said that in the beginning of a relationship, when you are a young woman, you go along with whatever your partner is into, whether it is baseball or Tibetan Buddhism.
The couple made headlines with red carpet appearances, including the 1991 Academy Awards, where Crawford wore a plunging red Versace gown. That December, they married in Las Vegas, exchanging rings made of aluminium foil at the altar.
A last-minute Las Vegas wedding
Speaking in 2015 while promoting her book Becoming, Crawford recalled that after dating for several years, she asked Gere if they were actually going to get married, and he suggested going to Vegas that night. She said the wedding was so last minute that she wore a navy blue Armani suit rather than the dress she had dreamed of, and her ring was made of tinfoil. Herb Ritts served as her bridesmaid and took the photographs.
Why the marriage ended
Crawford and Gere's four-year marriage ended in 1995, when Crawford was 29 and Gere turned 46. Crawford has attributed the breakup to their 17-year age gap and their busy schedules, telling People that they did not spend enough time together and were equally responsible for that. She said that when a woman is young, she is willing to mold herself around whoever she is in love with.
Crawford also pointed to a power imbalance in the marriage. Speaking on the WTF podcast in 2016, she said part of the problem was that they were never really friends or peers, because she was young and he was Richard Gere.
On Oprah's Masterclass in 2013, Crawford said her evolving mindset in her late 20s also played a role. She said a woman's 20s is a time of coming into her own power, and that it is hard to change within a relationship because what a person signed up for early on may no longer fit who she has become. She said she was willing at 22 to simply follow, but eventually wanted to lead and walk side by side instead.
Crawford said she also learned from Gere how to handle fame, recalling that she watched how he created boundaries with fans when the moment was not right to sign an autograph or shake a hand. She called Gere a smart, interesting man and said the marriage was a great chapter in her life.
Life after the divorce
Crawford went on to marry business leader Rande Gerber, with whom she shares two children, Kaia and Presley, 27. Gere remarried twice and is now father to three boys, including two young sons with Alejandra Silva.
Kaia and Homer on set together
At the world premiere of The Shards in New York earlier this week, Homer Gere told USA Today that he and Kaia Gerber had never met before shooting. He said they first got together two weeks before filming at a bar with the whole cast, calling it their first chance to meet each other, and said Kaia was lovely. He said he thinks one of them soon suggested addressing the elephant in the room. He described Kaia as a lovely actress and said they have gotten really close.
What The Shards is about
The Shards is based on the best-selling novel by American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis and is described as an incredibly violent and sexually charged story about a serial killer stalking a group of privileged high schoolers in 1980s Los Angeles. The novel is a fictionalized version of Ellis's own adolescence, with many characters based on real people.
According to the show's official logline, Igby Rigney stars as Bret, an aspiring writer whose reality begins to unravel with the arrival of a mysterious new student, Robert Mallory, played by Homer Gere. Robert transfers in just before senior year as the city faces growing terror from a serial killer known as The Trawler.
Bret's social circle includes Susan Reynolds, played by Kaia Gerber, along with Debbie Schaffer, played by Hayes Warner, and Thom Wright, played by Graham Campbell. The adult characters surrounding them include Terry Schaffer, played by Wes Bentley, Liz Schaffer, played by Evan Rachel Wood, and Steven Reinhardt, played by Jordan Roth.
The Shards was originally being developed by Oscar-winning director Luca Guadagnino for HBO, but that project fell through before it was revived by Murphy and FX.
Kaia Gerber's rising profile
Kaia Gerber is already a well-known name in modelling, having won Model of the Year at the British Fashion Awards in 2018. She has appeared on the cover of Vogue multiple times. As an actress, she is best known for her recurring role in Palm Royale and for appearing in the Anne Hathaway film Mother Mary.
