5 - Without a Base, Without a Trace

Pretty Woman turns Gere into America's boyfriend right as the rumor detonates. A full-page denial ad. A chicken joke gone wrong in US Weekly. A San Francisco performance artist with a habitrail we cannot fully describe here. Trump, Liz Taylor and Michael Jackson all somehow wander into this one.

Gere has a story he tells friends about where this all started but does it hold up? We chase an espionage angle, consider Chinese disinformation as retaliation for his Tibet activism, file CIA FOIA requests and find surprising extra motivation for Gere's '93 Oscars speech.

The Toronto Film Festival, a Hollywood sitcom writers room, and a Manhattan humor magazine provide clues through the murkiest origins of the rumor. Testimony from writers and reporters, and a key archival discovery, give unsettling clarity about when and how it might have started.

Gerbils have been illegal in California since 1924. So how does the rumor even work? Allen road-trips to Arizona to meet real gerbils, becomes a casualty of a nasty hamster, consults Sigmund Freud, and calls up New York's "Rat Czar" to sort out smuggling logistics.

Is "gerbiling” actually a real thing? Between a bestiality investigator's case file, a 2024 FBI report, and doctors who've seen things, we go looking for the line between urban legend and actual medical phenomenon.

In the 1980’s after Rock Hudson's death, Hollywood's homophobia is in full panic mode, and American culture is whispering about – and mocking – the sexuality of leading men. Plus: another newsman, another gerbil rumor, real damage, and the case for "Gerbil Rumor Infection Syndrome."

Playing pimps and hustlers, attacking the press, projecting an unreadable sexuality — welcome to early Richard Gere. Bret Easton Ellis, Karina Longworth, and journalist Michael Gross help explain how the star became the perfect vessel for a rumor this sticky, and Howard Stern asks Sylvester Stallone if he started it. 

Say "gerbil" to someone and watch their face. Everyone's heard the rumor. Nobody knows where it came from. Reporter Allen Salkin isn't sure he should be the one to dig into it, but a tip from the daughter of an '80s ER doctor changes his mind.

Could Jerry Penacoli — Philly's golden-boy newsman, be the Gerbil rumor's actual patient zero? Eyewitnesses and archival tape tell a wilder, sadder story than anyone remembers. Did the rumor jump cities before it infected Gere?

The Richard Gere gerbil rumor won’t die. Why? Did a movie star really show up at a hospital in the 1980s with a rodent in his rectum he’d inserted for sexual pleasure? Investigative reporter Allen Salkin spent six-years examining documents and interviewing Hollywood players, doctors and everyone involved to answer everything — including why it matters more than ever. The Hollywood Reporter will release the first two episodes of Gerbil on Sept. 17, and installments will be released weekly on Thursdays after that.