‘Bring Me the Beauties’ star Hoyt Richards on surviving a cult — and how Fabio helped him escape: ‘It’s like meeting Thor’
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When director Chris Smith first heard Hoyt Richards tell his story, he almost couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“The mix of this world of fashion and modeling, and this other life that he was leading — it seemed hard to believe that they could coexist in the way that they did,” Smith tells Gold Derby.
Richards was one of the first male supermodels, a fixture of the glossy 1980s fashion world. At the same time, he was sleeping on a mat in a Manhattan apartment, funding a New Age cult, and believing — sincerely — that he was the luckiest man alive.
When director Chris Smith first heard Hoyt Richards tell his story, he almost couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“The mix of this world of fashion and modeling, and this other life that he was leading — it seemed hard to believe that they could coexist in the way that they did,” Smith tells Gold Derby.
Richards was one of the first male supermodels, a fixture of the glossy 1980s fashion world. At the same time, he was sleeping on a mat in a Manhattan apartment, funding a New Age cult, and believing — sincerely — that he was the luckiest man alive.
That story is now the HBO docuseries Bring Me the Beauties: A Model Cult, premiering June 1. But the more remarkable thing is that Richards is the one who wanted to tell it.
“I’ve watched a lot of survivor stories,” he says. “It just feels like that information — that’s a duty to share. Because why else did I go through it?”
The Promise
It started on a Nantucket beach in 1978. Richards was 16 years old when he met Frederick von Mierers, a self-described Manhattan socialite who preached a mix of astrology, Eastern philosophy, and self-realization. The group von Mierers ran was called Eternal Values, and it would consume the next two decades of Richards’ life.
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Content retrieved from: https://www.goldderby.com/tv/2026/bring-me-the-beauties-hoyt-richards-cult-fabio/.
