Mayfair Witches: Esta Spalding Explains the Changes in Anne Rice’s Work from Page to Screen for AMC Series (Exclusive)

When any story is adapted from the page to the screen, changes must be made. It’s the nature of shifting a tale from one medium to another, but when stories are as loved as are the works of the late author Anne Rice — who was herself infamously very protective of her characters — the idea of changes can make fans wary. Now, Esta Spalding, co-creator of AMC’s Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches tells ComicBook.com what she would say to fans who are perhaps a little unsure of the changes they’ll see in the series, particularly the decision to combine the characters of Aaron Lightner and Michael Curry into Ciprien Grieve (Tongayi Chirisa) explaining that they wanted to do their best to preserve Rice’s story, but also find a way to tell a “woman’s story” with Rowan by letting her be the driving force, rather than the men around her.

“I guess what I would say is we are also incredible fans of this book. We are such fans that we’ve given our lives over to the making of this story. And as we are telling this story as best we can, as people who love this material, knowing what we know about the sort of limits of the number of episodes and what you can do and so on, it’s going to have their own version of it,” Spalding said. “We feel extraordinarily lucky that we got to tell our version. And there’s lots of reasons we made the choices we made. I know that combining Aaron and Michael is a kind of big conversation piece. I think that for us, if we wanted to focus on the story of Rowan and tell a woman’s story, we just felt that having Aaron and Michael and Lasher around her trying to guide her did not focus her as a powerful and driven force.”

She continued, “We had to find a way to let her narrate and drive her own journey. And that to us meant that it should be Lasher and one other person. So, that was the feeling that we had in the telling of the story. But again, we’re just fans who are loving the material as best as we can.”

What is Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches about?

The series is based on Anne Rice’s trilogy of novels, Lives of The Mayfair Witches. The series synopsis is as follows: “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.”

Who stars in Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches?

The series stars Alexandra Daddario as Rowan Fielding, 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 debuts Sunday, January 8th on AMC and AMC+.