For many years, Jason Lewis has existed in culture as an idea rather than a person.
Tall, blond, improbably proportioned, he reached the end of his tail Sex and the City Like Jerrod Smith, the younger man who adored Samantha Jones with such patient, uncomplicated devotion that he seemed almost designed in a laboratory to stabilize the psychological damage of Manhattan’s dating culture. It was more of a sidekick than a fictional corrective: Women wanted him, men wanted his abs, and HBO wanted another season.
before Sex and the CityLewis belonged to the last great era of male models, when fashion was still manufacturing masculine mystique on an industrial scale. He worked constantly, appearing in campaigns and magazines at a time when male beauty was becoming its own form of celebrity currency. By the time he arrived at HBO as Smith, he already carried the uncanny realism of someone audiences spent years looking at before ever hearing him speak.
And then he more or less disappeared.
Not quite, of course. There were roles, appearances, and occasional appearances. But Lewis never seemed particularly interested in remaining trapped inside the celebrity maintenance machinery. He was not asked to reappear And like that… He seemed quite happy with this turn of events. (“As much as I appreciate the compliment, this is about girls,” he said at the time.)
Three years ago, he moved from California to Costa Rica, where he now spends his days surfing, learning Spanish, and waking up at 4 a.m. to work on a massive epic fantasy book series that has quietly consumed years of his life.
Not one novel. nine.
Or rather, three interconnected trilogies set across different eras in the same universe, all exploring themes of power, strength, tyranny, and redemption. The first book he plans to release is technically the seventh book.
“I chose to start at the end,” Lewis, 54, said matter-of-factly over Zoom from Costa Rica, sounding less like a celebrity with a side project and more like a man who has spent an alarming amount of time alone with his cosmology.
The scope is almost absurdly ambitious, which is partly what makes it compelling. Lewis describes the series as a “fantasy epic” that is closer to fantasy Lord of the Rings Rather sci-fi, though, with a “powerful magic” system rooted in physics rather than traditional spellcasting. He makes occasional references to quantum theory, multiverse concepts, and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman while explaining the underlying logic of his world-building, though he insists that readers will not need a background in theoretical physics to follow.
“It’s not a physics lecture,” he says. “It’s magic.”
The deeper I got into the conversation with him, the more I delved into what prompted him to write it in the first place. Lewis talks a lot about external validation, belonging, and self-worth, ideas that inevitably gain additional resonance coming from a man whose face was once a global commodity.
When I bring up a separate story I’m working on involving former model Hoyt Richards and the mob that consumed his life during the height of his modeling career, Lewis is immediately drawn to the psychological dimensions of the story.
“I think we all as humans, both socially and biologically, have a desire for belonging and substance,” he says. “This can make people very vulnerable.
“It’s very much playing on those external validation centers and gaining value outside of yourself,” he adds. It’s hard not to hear some autobiography in that answer.
Throughout the conversation, Lewis is careful not to overstate what he’s doing. There’s no self-culmination as the next Tolkien, no energy in the crypto world, no insistence that Hollywood simply failed to appreciate his genius. If anything, he seems a bit wary of speaking out at all. He only recently returned to Instagram after encouragement from his rep and admitted that he struggled with how to return to public life without falling into what he calls “performative posting.”
“I really like to try to create a community, and not just be on the podcast, ‘Hey, watch me,’” he says. Aren’t you great?
Meanwhile, the fantasy series continues to expand. Lewis says he writes every day, usually in two-hour intervals, with a goal of writing between 1,000 and 2,000 words a day. He is currently working on the fourth draft of Book Seven, which will serve as an entry point into the larger saga. The structure itself reflects the themes he constantly returns to in conversation: idealism, corruption, and the long road back from both.
“The first is a perfect story,” he explains. “The second is when good intentions go wrong. You become the monster so the monster can’t hurt you. And the last is a story of redemption.”
In other words, it’s not hard to imagine why this particular project might appeal to someone who has already lived through one kind of mythology and now seems determined to build another.
Below, Lewis discusses his writing routine, his fascination with physics, why he left Los Angeles and the strange challenge of learning how to speak in public again after years largely out of the spotlight.
Hi Jason. I caught your mysterious Instagram post from Costa Rica. What exactly is happening?
So I was in a place where I was working on a fantasy book series. Three triads.
And when you say fantasy, are we talking? Lord of the Rings Fantasy or science fiction?
Closer to Lord of the Rings. It’s an epic fantasy. It’s my own magic system that’s more physics based than the soft magic of casting spells and things like that.
amazing. Do you already have a background in physics?
No, I’ve always been curious – I think since the first time I was introduced to the idea of atoms as a child. I’ve cared for him over the years. I like to look at what quantum theory does [Richard] Feynman had a really interesting theory that all of reality is just one electron moving through space-time at a bunch of different convergence points. This is something I have incorporated into the books. Or it’s like string theory, where energy, in its arrangement, becomes matter.
I’ll be honest, this stuff goes over my head a little bit.
It is not necessary to read. It’s just that when you’re creating fantasy or even science fiction, there’s a fine line between hard science or hard magic and soft magic. For me, I wanted to understand the hard magic of it, but it’s not a physics lecture. It’s magic.
So you moved to Costa Rica to isolate yourself and write this thing?
Yes. I’ve been working on it for a long time and found myself at a point that I knew was big when I started, but it kept expanding and growing into this bigger and bigger world as I planned it and figured it out. I literally sat down with pen and paper and made a “what do I need, what do I want” life design list.
The space to do this was definitely at the top of the list, because this is me on a journey of discovery like nothing else. I’d never written novels before this, so I don’t have a bunch of feathers in my cap to lean on. I wanted a healthy lifestyle and good food. I surf, and being near the beach is a very easy motivator for me to stay healthy. Sometimes you don’t want to go to the gym, but I always love playing in the water. I also wanted to learn Spanish.
Do you have a strict writing schedule?
I write pretty much every day. Life demands it depends, sometimes you can’t get to it because of traveling or something like that, but I don’t think I’ve ever taken a day off for two weeks. I can only stay focused for two hours at a time before I start to drift off. I have become very aware of staying in valuable headspace. Sometimes, you just need to walk away because you’re getting carried away on the page.
What does your daily routine look like?
I usually wake up around 4am. I do whatever I want and walk on the beach or run on the beach if the waves aren’t good yet, then I have my coffee, settle down, go to the office, have a session, have breakfast and then go back to the office. Depending on what I’m doing in terms of reviewing, sometimes I can Getting more words in, but I try to get between 1,000 and 2,000 words on the page a day.
This is serious business. So where are you in this process now?
I have identified three triads. Each set in the same world in different eras. It’s a trilogy. There are arguments for each one in terms of the same themes of power, agency, and the exercise of it. But I chose to start at the end. I’m on book seven. I’m on the fourth draft of it. Well, 3.5. The first draft is really just a 150-page synopsis.
Wait, this is the seventh book in a nine-book series and the first book you’ve written?
Yes.
And you’re actually going to release the seventh book first?
Yes. The idea is to start with the seven version.
This is very star wars.
Truth be told, I think it started because I was a fan of his star wars And other things where I thought, “Oh yeah, let’s do this in reverse.” But as I develop the themes and the presentation and the story and how things get there, there are really three different arguments happening in the same place. The first trilogy is a perfect story. The middle is when good intentions go bad, when you become the monster so the monster can’t hurt you. The latter is more of a story of redemption. A more realistic world view of doing the best we can with what we are handed.
Is there anything specific you can tell people about the actual world or characters?
I hate giving anything away. I have worked hard crafting this and continue to work hard crafting this. Even this, I was reluctant to do. But I understand that if I’m going to do this, I have to do it in collaboration with the audience.
Is this what inspired the Instagram post?
exactly. I know that if I’m going to do this, I’m going to have to do it in collaboration with the audience. The representation I received has been talking to me about returning to that conversation for a while. I thought a lot about how I wanted to do it. I know it’s a podcast, but as much as possible I like to try to create a community and not just be on a podcast, “Hey, check me out. Aren’t you cool?” I want to try not to get lost in the idea of performative publishing.
Are you doing all this independently now? No publisher attached?
No publisher. I will take everything step by step.
I’m actually working on another story right now about Hoyt Richards and the cult he was drawn into during his modeling years. Hearing you talk about the themes of power and validation made me think about this whole world.
I know who Hoyt is and I definitely remember him from passing. I don’t think we really sat down.
It is the story of the wilderness. This guy befriended him when he was 16, and throughout his modeling career he would come home and sleep on a mat in this guy’s apartment while this cult consumed him psychologically.
Ugh.
It’s great because it happened in the middle of all the magic and mythology of Studio 54, and yet no one really expected it to happen. It made me wonder if you think modeling is a destructive industry.
I don’t think it’s right to say it’s a destructive industry. I believe by nature as human beings, socially and biologically, we all have a desire for belonging and substance. This context can make people vulnerable to predation by highly talented people.
And I think even when you look at people who commit such abuses, you’re often looking at the same thing that came from their need for significance and self-importance. Tyranny is not born. It comes with a large built-in deficit.
So is it a destructive industry? I don’t think it’s inherently destructive. But it certainly attracts a lot of people looking for external validation and value outside of themselves.
Does this relate to what you’re writing about now?
definitely. These are the topics I work on. I play with themes of agency and power and the cost of those things and what it means to find one’s worth and how that happens, from the tyranny we carry out ourselves, to the tyranny between people in the immediate family and community, to the overall social tyranny that is perpetrated.
If there is anything consistent throughout human history, it is this. I’ve read a lot of historical texts along the way, and if Marcus Aurelius was talking about it Reflectionsit seems so ingrained in us. But so too is beauty and the possibilities of rising above it.
