Anne Rice’s best-selling trilogy, Lives of the Mayfair Witches, becomes the second series in AMC’s Anne Rice Immortal Universe following the successful launch of Interview with the Vampire last fall. On Sunday, January 8th, Mayfair Witches debuts across all of AMC’s linear networks (AMC, BBC AMERICA, IFC, SundanceTV, and WEtv) at 9/8c and begins streaming on AMC+, added to Shudder, Sundance Now, Acorn TV, and ALLBLK beginning Thursday, January 12th. AMC gave TCA members an early look at the series last fall, an 8-episode adaptation of the first novel, The Witching Hour. From sharing sets with Interview with a Vampire to consulting with witches and Latin experts, it was an insightful and engaging conversation.
(Alfonso Bresciani/AMC)
“Before they were called witches, what they really were were healers,” writer and executive producer Michelle Ashford shared about a revelation during the research process that made it clear why Anne Rice made the lead character of the book a doctor. “She made her a witch because she really knew what she was talking about in terms of starting her off as a doctor. So it’s very steeped in research of what witches were back then, and what happened to them as healers when they encountered a patriarchy, and so this is how this started for Esta [Spalding] and myself. We thought that is really fascinating, and it’s incredibly relevant for now in terms of telling a very female-centric story about what it’s like for a professional woman who is a healer who then finds out that she’s attached to all these incredibly dark and positive supernatural powers.”
Hot off her Emmy-nominated role in the first season of White Lotus, Alexandra Daddario stars as Rowan Fielding, a neurosurgeon who discovers she’s part of a long line of witches. “It's disturbing in these very uniquely psychological ways that only Anne Rice could do,” the actress explained. “It's incredible to do something that is based on an Anne Rice novel and also bring that sort of unique touch of weirdness and just her investment in the dark side of human nature with no rejection of it. That creates a real unique genre piece, I think.” While she hadn’t read the books prior to taking the role, Alexandra was inspired to read it in her free time while filming. “I'm almost done with the book now as we're finishing the series and I've started Interview with the Vampire, so I'm really getting into Anne Rice, reading a lot of her interviews and learning more about her and the metaphors and the material and where these characters came from, where these crazy ideas came from, and it's been amazing. Anne Rice is a fascinating woman.”
“We shot on the same stages,” showrunner, executive producer, and writer Esta Spalding said of the connection to AMC’s adaptation of Interview with the Vampire, which is also set in New Orleans. “We're really using each other's spaces physically, but we're trying to, in the first season of this show, have only these very selective Easter Eggs for the audience to pick up on, and otherwise, to let them be defined unto themselves, at least for Season 1.” With spells in Latin, Mayfair Witches used a Latin expert to help with pronunciation and witchcraft consultants about the delivery. “There are lots of spells we've been given help on. I mean, we're shooting in New Orleans. The book is set in New Orleans. The city is full of all of this mythology, and we've tried to tap into it everywhere we can.”
“I went to this thing called the White Linen Night the other night in New Orleans where the whole town comes out in white linen, and they go to all the art galleries, and there's music in the streets, and there's a lot of fun and just camaraderie,” actor Harry Hamlin said of the atmosphere he encountered while filming in NOLA. Hamlin plays Cortland Mayfair, patriarch of the magical Mayfair family. “I was not a voracious reader of Anne Rice,” he said of his unfamiliarity with the source material. “I did get the book on audiobooks on Audible. It's, like, 55 hours of listening. I got through about ten hours of it before I started work on the show. And the thing about this show is it's so mysterious and exotic and wonderfully sick in so many cool ways. And the character that I play has all of those things combined in kind of a delicious bouillabaisse of exotic New Orleans food.”
“What we're trying to do with Anne Rice, which she's done so well on her own, is somehow make what was so relevant when she wrote these books and is so relevant about them now, somehow embrace them in a way that is true for our time,” executive producer Mark Johnson concluded. “I think everybody should go back to Anne Rice, and if they haven’t read her already, start reading again because the applicability to being who you are and to transformation and to acceptance and to, quite frankly, a really, really profound love is at the base of what we’re doing.”
Discover your own profound love for Anne Rice with Mayfair Witches, premiering tonight from AMC.