Horror

Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches Gets Official New Trailer

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AMC is asking fans to open their minds and welcome the gift. On Wednesday, the network released a new trailer for Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches, the upcoming second series in their Immortal Universe. The series is set to debut on Sunday, January 8th. The new trailer gives fans their best look yet at Alexandra Daddario as Rowan Fielding, a neurosurgeon who discovers that she is the heir to a family of witches and has immense powers and that she must content with a presence that has haunted the family for generations. The series is based on Anne Rice’s trilogy of novels, Lives of The Mayfair Witches. You can check out both the new trailer and the series synopsis below.

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“Based on Anne Rice’s Lives of the Mayfair Witches, Mayfair Witches is an exploration of female power and the mortal implications of our decisions.  Mayfair Witches focuses on an intuitive young neurosurgeon (Alexandra Daddario) who discovers that she is the unlikely heir to a family of witches. As she grapples with her newfound powers, she must contend with a sinister presence that has haunted her family for generations.”

The first season starts where the book starts, in that mood of New Orleans and the sort of ghost story of this house,” showrunner Esta Spalding previously said about the series. “We meet really quickly Rowan Fielding who’s the main character of the first book and through the series.”

She continued, “The middle section is about 300 or 400 pages of 13 generations of witches going all the way back to Scotland. We used a piece of that, and then we feel like we’re gonna save some of that great story and saga of all the different generations for later seasons, should we be so lucky.”

How is the series influenced by Rice’s novel, The Witching Hour?

Speaking with ComicBook.com at New York Comic Con about the upcoming series, Jack Huston and Harry Hamlin both spoke about how the series is in influenced by Rice’s novel rather than a direct adaptation.

“I downloaded it. I saw that it was 56 hours long and I thought, do I have 56 hours, you know, and I listened to nine hours, and I realized that really what we have here is an interpretive show,” Hamlin said about how he prepared for the series. “The characters are not exactly the same as they are in the book. The story’s not exactly same. They’ve taken the whole ethos of the witches and The Witching Hour, the first book, and they. have compiled it into what is a really wonderful, engaging television show. It’s not a book. It’s a TV show.”

When asked about the network’s plans to adapt the other two books in the series, Lasher and Taltos, Huston said that the thinks there are indeed plans but also noted that not everything can go from page to screen, especially with books as rich as Rice’s

“I think there’s plans and question it’s all gonna depend on you know, people’s response to it. I think we’ve done something really daring. I think something very cool,” Huston said.  “As Harry was saying, you know, the books themselves are dense. You know, brilliant, sort of like a literary feat, but you know, you can’t put all of that in right TV series, but you can be inspired by it. You can be influenced and inspired in many ways. So, you know, I there’s definitely plans, you know, in our first season finishes at the same point as The Witching Hour.”

Who stars in Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches?

In addition to Daddario, the series stars Harry Hamlin as Cortland Mayfair, Jack Huston as Lasher, Tongayi Chirisa as Ciprien Grieve, Annabeth Gish as Diedre, Beth Grant as Carlotta, Erica Gimpel as Ellie, and Jen Richards as Jojo.

Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches is set to debut on Sunday, January 8th on both AMC, and AMC+.