Interview With the Vampire: Who is Raglan James?

The second season of AMC’s and with three episodes down, the series, based on Anne Rice’s iconic novel of the same name, is deep into exploring Louis de Pointe du Lac’s time in Paris after he and Claudia killed their maker and fled to Europe in search of others like them. Woven into the telling of Louis’ history, however, is a more contemporary story, one of journalist Daniel Molloy’s second interview in Dubai. This week’s episode, “No Pain”, brought into sharper focus that the story in Dubai might be just as interesting as the Paris of the past — and introduced into the mix a character that has major importance in Rice’s novels.

In “No Pain”, Daniel (Eric Bogosian), is seen away from Armand (Assad Zaman) and Louis (Jacob Anderson) for a bit at a restaurant where he’s trying to make sense of some of his interview notes. It’s there that he’s approached by a mysterious man who knows quite a bit about not only Daniel’s interview, but seemingly about vampires and their workings on a larger scale. The man introduces himself as Raglan James (Justin Kirk) and while Daniel thinks the mystery man could be MI6 or Mossad, Rice fans know he may just belong to a very different secret organization.

By the Book: Who is Raglan James?

In Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles, Raglan James is a character introduced in the fourth book in the series and is, indeed, the character the title refers to: The Tale of the Body Thief. James is a human man who has psychic abilities, particularly that he can switch bodies with people. James approaches the vampire Lestat and offers him the chance to trade bodies to experience what it is like to be human again. As it turns out, James was a former Talamasca agent who is also a kleptomaniac and conman. It’s revealed that he was thrown out of the organization and that everything James has, he gained by theft — and he may be trying to steal immortality by trading bodies with Lestat. Things end up going pretty awry when James does indeed try to steal Lestat’s immortality, but things work out in the end with Lestat regaining his body and the thief being dispatched — you’ll have to read the book for the finer details.

While AMC’s Interview With the Vampire has not yet fully revealed exactly what organization the mysterious Raglan James works for nor has the series given any indication that he’s stealing bodies, he does seem to have some uncanny inside knowledge of the vampires and Daniel’s interview and is even seen having access to Daniel’s laptop, supplying him with notes and records that Armand and Louis very carefully had made sure to not give him access to. With the Talamasca established as an organization in AMC’s other Immortal Universe series, Mayfair Witches, and a third series centered around the Talamasca is in development.

“We’re developing three other things, at the same time, all of them different,” executive producer Mark Johnson said previously about telling stories about the Talamasca. “People ask me what these shows have in common, or what these books have in common, and I actually think it’s her characters, no matter how tortured or odd. Her vampires, unlike most vampires that we see all the time, are human beings. It’s not humans and vampires. They are human beings who happen to be vampires, and they suffer from loss of love, lack of love, and lack of friendship. The idea that we all say, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to live forever?’ of course, that would be terrible. You’d fall in love with your partner, your parents would die, and you’d still be there, the same age.”

“Some of the themes are the same … in Mayfair Witches, there’s that whole middle section about the family and you go off to Haiti, and there’s a series in there,” Johnson said. “Is there a show to be made about Lasher? Is there a show to be made about the Fang Gang? There’s no book that is about the Talamasca, but I think there’s a great series about the Talamasca. Their job is to monitor these extraordinary events and creatures and not get involved, but to watch. So, I think that answer is yes, this will keep going.”

Interview With the Vampire airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.