Gerbil: Inside Hollywood’s Most Unkillable Rumor

When the White House was looking for a way to attack Richard Gere this summer, they went low. Very low — even for this administration.

Gere, the politically active 77-year-old actor and philanthropist, had criticized President Trump’s “ignorance” for cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development. At an event promoting an educational partnership on migration, Gere remarked, “He has idiots around him.”

Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, fired back in a July 21 post on X, “Not going to listen to a guy who may have put a gerbil up his ass.” Related Stories Opinion Maybe Paramount-Warner SHOULD Leave L.A. Lifestyle Could the Galliano Met Gala Fiasco Mark the End of Anna Wintour's Reign?

That those in Trump’s orbit would traffic in the tawdry is hardly news. But the choice of this particular angle of attack reveals the almost supernatural staying power of a rumor, or urban legend, that started roughly four decades ago.

I was not surprised to see the White House post. Nothing about the gerbil rumor, not its longevity nor its continued impact, surprises me. You see, I have been investigating everything about it for six years. The Hollywood Reporter is releasing the first two episodes of my podcast series, Gerbil , on Sept. 17, and installments will be released weekly on Thursdays after that.

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.

Or, as Stanford communications professor Fred Turner told me, “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.”