What’s the first thing you think when you hear the word “gerbil”? Hollywood has long been a petri dish of nasty rumors, and throughout its history, several unproven, or unprovable, salacious stories about movie stars have taken on lives of their own. (For example, what’s the first thing you think about when you hear the term “hermaphrodite”?) But none has been more tenacious than the infamous urban legend born in the early ’80s about a supposed mishap involving Richard Gere and a rodent of the above-mentioned species — a tale for which no evidence has ever surfaced.
In Gerbil, a new 12-episode podcast series presented by The Hollywood Reporter, journalist Allen Salkin investigates the rumor, diving deep into its origins and its evolution to explain its resilience and explore the spread of misinformation well before the internet age. (The gerbil story, as Salkin has put it, is one of the first modern memes.)
As Salkin wrote in a recent column for The Hollywood Reporter, “The gerbil legend may be the most essential rumor in Hollywood history because it perfectly reveals how the products of the entertainment industry, deliberately and, more importantly, accidentally, express fears, yearnings, nightmares and dreams that worm themselves eternally into our brains.”
Stanford communications professor Fred Turner puts it more bluntly in the podcast, “This is Richard Gere, an American icon. And so in some sense, the gerbil is not just up Richard Gere’s ass, it’s up America’s ass.”
A veteran journalist and regular THR contributor whose work has spanned topics both grave and offbeat, Salkin deployed the full range of his reportorial skills in pursuit of what truth there may be to the legend. Among the experts he interviewed are sex columnist Dan Savage, film director Mike Figgis, political and social commentator Andrew Sullivan, podcasters Karina Longworth and Connor Ratliff, journalists Mark Rozzo and Michael Gross, as well as a number of surprise guests.
The podcast is co-executive produced by Aliza Rosen, president and founder of AYR Media, whose credits include Audible’s Bitter Blood, Funny My Way and Queen of the Con; television and film projects like CBS’ The Case of JonBenet Ramsey and Amazon Prime’s Spy High; and directing and producing the widely acclaimed film Latter Day Jew.
Gerbil premieres with its first two episodes dropping on all podcast platforms on Sept. 17 and follows with one new episode weekly on Thursdays.
The series is available on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music and iHeart and all other major platforms. Watch the trailer below.
