Tall, blond, improbably symmetrical, Jason Lewis arrived at the tail end of Sex and the City as Smith Jerrod, the younger man who adored Samantha Jones with such patient, uncomplicated devotion that he almost seemed engineered in a laboratory to stabilize the psychic damage of Manhattan dating culture. He was less a boyfriend than a fantasy correction: Women wanted him, men wanted his abs, HBO wanted another season.

Before Sex and the City, Lewis belonged to the last great era of male supermodels, when fashion still manufactured masculine mystique at industrial scale. He worked constantly, appearing in campaigns and magazines at a moment when male beauty was becoming its own form of celebrity currency. By the time he arrived on HBO as Smith, he already carried the strange unreality of someone audiences had spent years looking at before they ever heard him speak.

And then, more or less, he disappeared.

Not entirely, of course. There were roles, appearances, the occasional resurfacing. But Lewis never seemed particularly interested in remaining trapped inside the machinery of celebrity maintenance. He was not asked back to appear in And Just Like That… and seemed perfectly happy with that turn of events. (“As much as I appreciate the flattery, the conversation is about the 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 sprawling fantasy epic 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, agency, tyranny and redemption. The first book he plans to release is technically book seven.

“I chose to start at the end,” Lewis, 54, says matter-of-factly over Zoom from Costa Rica, sounding less like a celebrity with a side project than a man who has spent an alarming amount of time alone with his own cosmology.

The scale of the thing is almost absurdly ambitious, which is partly what makes it compelling. Lewis describes the series as “epic fantasy,” closer to Lord of the Rings than science fiction, though with a “hard magic” system rooted in physics rather than traditional spellcasting. He casually references quantum theory, multiverse concepts and Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman while explaining the underlying logic of his world-building, though he insists readers won’t need a background in theoretical physics to follow along.

“It’s not a lecture on physics,” he says. “It’s magic.”

The deeper you get into conversation with him, the deeper you get into what drove him to write them in the first place. Lewis talks often about external validation, belonging and self-worth, ideas that inevitably take on added resonance coming from a man whose face once functioned as a global commodity.

When I bring up a separate story I’m working on involving former male model Hoyt Richards and the cult that consumed his life during the height of his fashion career, Lewis immediately gravitates toward the psychological dimensions of the story.

“I think inherently as human beings, sociologically and biologically, we all have a desire to belong and matter,” he says. “That can make people very vulnerable.

“And it’s very much playing on those external validation centers and worth from outside yourself,” he adds. It is hard not to hear some autobiography in that answer.

Lewis is careful throughout the conversation not to overstate what he’s doing. There’s no self-coronation as the next Tolkien, no crypto pitchman energy, no insistence that Hollywood simply failed to appreciate his genius. If anything, he seems slightly wary of talking publicly at all. He only recently returned to Instagram after encouragement from his representation and admits he struggled with how to re-enter public life without falling into what he calls “performative posting.”

“I very much like to try and create a community,” he says, “and not just be in the broadcast of, ‘Hey, check me out. Aren’t I awesome?’” The fantasy series, meanwhile, continues to expand. Lewis says he writes every day, usually in two-hour bursts, aiming for between 1,000 and 2,000 words daily. He is currently on the fourth draft of book seven, which will serve as the entry point into the larger saga. The structure itself mirrors the themes he keeps returning to in conversation: idealism, corruption and the long road back from both.

“The first one’s an idealistic tale,” he explains. “The second one is when good intentions go terrible. You become the monster so the monster can’t hurt you. And the last one is a redemption story.” It is, in other words, not difficult to imagine why this particular project might appeal to someone who has already lived through one kind of mythology and now appears 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 publicly again after years largely outside the spotlight.

Hi Jason. I caught your cryptic Instagram post from Costa Rica. What exactly is going on?

So I was in a space where I’ve been working on a fantasy book series. Three trilogies.

And when you say fantasy, are we talking Lord of the Rings fantasy or sci-fi?

Closer to Lord of the Rings. It’s epic fantasy. It’s my own magic system based more in physics than the soft magic of casting spells and stuff like that.

Wow. Do you actually have a background in physics?

No. I’ve just always been curious — I think from the first time the idea of atoms was introduced to me as a kid. I’ve paid attention to it over the years. I like looking in on what quantum theory is doing and [Richard] Feynman had a really interesting theory that all of reality is just a single electron moving through spacetime at a bunch of different convergences. That’s something I kind of incorporated into the books. Or it’s kind of like string theory, where energy, in its ordering, becomes matter.

I’m going to be honest, this stuff goes over my head a little.

It’s not necessary for the reading. 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 lecture on physics. It’s magic.

So you moved to Costa Rica basically to isolate yourself and write this thing?

Yes. I’d been working on it for quite a while and I found myself at a point where I knew it was large when I started, but it just kept expanding and growing into this bigger and bigger world as I plotted it and figured it out. I literally sat down with pen and paper and did kind of a “what do I need, what do I want” design-of-life list.

Certainly at the top of the list was the space to do this because this is me on a journey of discovery as much as anything. I’ve 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 access to good food. I surf, and being right next to a beach is very easy motivation for me to stay healthy. Sometimes you don’t want to go to the gym, but I always like to go play in the water. And I also wanted to learn Spanish.

Do you have a strict writing schedule?

I pretty much write every single day. Demands of life depending, sometimes you can’t get to it because of travel or something, but I don’t think I’ve taken a day off for two weeks. I can only hold focus for maybe two hours at a time before I start drifting. I’ve become pretty cognizant of staying in a valuable head space. Sometimes you just need to step away because you’re just drifting on the page.

What does your daily routine look like?

I usually get up around four o’clock in the morning. I do my thing and walk the beach or run the beach if the surf isn’t good yet and then have my coffee and settle in and get to the desk and have a session and then have breakfast and then go back to the desk. Depending on what I’m doing revision-wise, sometimes I can get a little bit more words, but I try and get anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 words on the page a day.

That’s serious work. So where are you in the process now?

I’ve outlined three trilogies. They’re each set in the same world in different eras. It’s a triptych. There are arguments each one in terms of the same themes of power and agency and wielding that. 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 summary.

Wait, so this is the seventh book in a nine-book series and it’s the first one you’re writing?

Yes.

And you’re actually going to release book seven first?

Yes. The idea is to start with the release of seven.

That’s very Star Wars.

Truth be told, I think it started because of being a fan of Star Wars and other stuff where I thought, “Oh yeah, let’s just do this in reverse.” But as I developed the themes and the presentation and the story and how things get there, there are really three different arguments happening in the same space. The first trilogy is an idealistic tale. The middle one is when good intentions go terrible, when you become the monster so the monster can’t hurt you. And the last one is more of a redemption story. A more realistic worldview of doing our best with what’s handed to us.

Is there anything specific you can tell people about the actual world or characters?

I hate giving anything away. I’ve worked so hard at crafting this and continuing to work so hard at crafting this. Even this, I was hesitant to do. But I understand that if I’m going to do this, I have to do it in collaboration with an audience.

Is that 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 an audience. The representation I’ve had has been talking to me about rejoining that conversation for a while. I put a lot of thought into how I wanted to do that. I know it’s a broadcast medium, but as much as possible I very much like to try and create a community and not just be in the broadcast of, “Hey, check me out. Aren’t I awesome?” I want to try not to get lost in the idea of performative posting.

You’re doing all this independently right now? No publisher attached?

No publisher. I’ll take everything a step at a time.

I’m actually working on another story right now about Hoyt Richards and the cult he got pulled into during his modeling years. Hearing you talk about themes of power and validation made me think about that whole world.

I know who Hoyt is and definitely remember him from passing. I don’t think we ever really sat down.

It’s a wild story. This guy basically befriended him at 16 and all through his supermodel career he was coming home and sleeping on a mat in this guy’s apartment while getting psychologically consumed by this cult.

Oh, shit.

It’s fascinating because it happened right in the center of all that glamour and Studio 54 mythology and yet nobody really saw it happening. It made me wonder whether you think modeling is a destructive industry.

I don’t think it’s right to say it’s a destructive industry. I think inherently as human beings, sociologically and biologically, we all have a desire to belong and matter. And that contextually can make people very vulnerable to the predations of very talented people.

And I think even when you look at the people who perpetrate abuses like that, you’re often looking at the same thing that came from their need to matter and self-importance. Tyranny isn’t born. It comes from a great deficit.

So is it a destructive industry? I don’t think it’s inherently destructive. But it certainly attracts a lot of people who are seeking external validation and worth from outside themselves.

Is that connected to what you’re writing about now?

Absolutely. Those are the themes of what I’m working on. I’m playing with themes of agency and power and the cost of those and what it means to seek one’s worth and how that plays out, from the tyrannies we do to ourselves, to the interpersonal tyrannies of immediate family and society, to the overall sociological tyrannies that get perpetrated.

If there’s anything that’s consistent throughout human history, it’s that. I’ve read a lot of historical texts along the way and if Marcus Aurelius was talking about it in Meditations, it seems pretty ingrained in us. But also so are the beauties and the possibilities of rising above it.