New Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches Teaser Hints at Rowan’s New Legacy

On Sunday night, the first series in AMC’s Immortal Universe, Interview With the Vampire, concluded its first season but fans don’t have a long wait for the arrival of the next — nor did they have to wait too long for a tantalizing new teaser. The network has released a new look at Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches, one that teases Rowan’s new legacy. The series is set to debut on AMC and AMC+ on January 8th.

In the teaser, which you can check out for yourself below, Rowan (Alexandra Daddario) says that she draws her strength from “both the good and the bad” and “in the end, they cannot be separated.” While that may sound like balance when it comes to power, the teaser definitely has something of an ominous tone making it pretty clear things are going to be very complicated for Rowan and likely very quickly.

What is Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches about?

Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches centers around Dr. Rowan Fielding (Alexandra Daddario), a brilliant neurosurgeon 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. Written by Esta Spalding and Michelle Ashford, the series also stars Harry Hamlin, Annabeth Gish, Tongayi Chirisa, Beth Grant, Jen Richards, and Jack Huston.

“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.”

Houston also acknowledged the late author’s impact on various franchises, not just with her Mayfair novels, but her Vampire Chronicles series as well.

“Anne Rice inspired many of the sort of more present sort of… such as the Twilight pictures,” he said. “You realize when you’re reading her work just how influential she was on certain writers and franchises and what not. I mean, she was also pretty daring and pretty out there.”

Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches will now debut on Sunday, January 8th on AMC and AMC+.