Executive Producers Mark Johnson and John Lee Hancock along with cast members William Fichtner and Nicholas Denton held a press conference at New York Comic Con Friday afternoon to discuss the new series Talamasca: The Secret Order, based on the supernatural world of Anne Rice.
“There is no Talamasca book,” Mark Johnson explained. “So it’s not based on a specific book, but it’s based on an organization that Anne Rice has peppered throughout a number of books. In fact, Talamasca appears in Interview With A Vampire, and also The Mayfair Witches.
The series follows Guy, a law student who is approached by the organization. Guy is an original invention of the series not included in previous Anne Rice novels. “In this role, once this control mentality that Guy has in that first sort of half of episode one has shifted and he’s adrift, he has nothing else but to trust what’s inside of him and go after that in a very kind of raw way,” Nicolas Denton said.
“I wanted to go the spy route with Guy. I found that most helpful because we are grounding this in a reality that is spy with vampiric and immortal qualities to it,” Johnson said.
“And what was fun was there was a certain understanding of this organization, this clandestine organization, extremely well-funded, in which its members, its functionaries, are meant to keep tabs on the otherworldly goings on in our universe but not interfere, just to keep tabs. And that’s the basis of it. Ok, so what’s the story? I realized it fit very well into the spy genre.”
Photo: David Gennard/AMC
“I think it’s a bit of a blessing and a curse, whatever you want to say,” Hancock said, “because Anne Rice created this organization and peppered it with individuals throughout the books that are Talamascans, and they have their own separate histories that she’s laid out. And yet there is no book about it. And there wasn’t great, great, great detail given about the organization, institution, whatever you want to call it.”
He continued, “So I looked at that as an opportunity to hopefully fill that out with the questions that I had about the Talamasca when I’d read everything that Anne had written about it. I had a lot of basic questions. Do they hide in plain sight? What do their offices look like? These Motherhouses, do they have a sign? Can you ring the bell and go in? How do they recruit? What do they pay? How are they funded?”
William Fichtner plays Jasper, a mysterious man who controls Talamasca’s London Motherhouse. “There’s nothing about a Jasper in previous Anne Rice’s writings, and John Lee took off with that,” Fichtner said of his role. “So I kind of had a blank slate, which was lovely. It’s not like I had to mirror something or bring a new interpretation. I really could walk where I wanted to go.”
“Our relationship, it has so many peaks and troughs,” Denton said. “And it has a really quite complex conclusion to it. And it will be very interesting for audiences to watch that because there are a lot of mixed emotions throughout.” Fichtner added, “We kind of run the gamut on good times/bad times.”
“What I wanted to honor about Anne Rice’s world was essentially having these morally ambiguous characters, and playing into that with Guy, his skepticism, his journey,” Johnson said. Hancock added, “The supernatural world and the spy genre both have shadows and lies and secrets right at their core.”
Talamasca: The Secret Order premieres October 26, 2025 on AMC.
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