Talamasca: The Secret Order is the third television series in AMC Networks’ expanding Anne Rice Immortal Universe, joining Interview with the Vampire (retitled to The Vampire Lestat in its third season) and Mayfair Witches. Fans got their first glimpse at the new series during San Diego Comic-Con 2025 when the first teaser trailer was released. At SDCC, ComicBook spoke with Talamasca co-showrunners John Lee Hancock and Mark Lafferty, along with cast members Nicholas Denton (Guy Anatole), Celine Buckens (Doris), Maisie Richardson-Sellers (Olive), and William Fichtner (Jasper) about the series, including how Talamasca stands apart from its predecessors.
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“It is different,” Hancock said. “All three [are] under the same tint, in the same world, but each unique. And the Talamasca is an organization that Anne Rice mentioned in books, but there was no book specific to it. So, we had a lot of runway to do kind of what we wanted to do with it, based on her ideas about it and several characters that she had created and things like that. So, we kind of have our own world, but the other worlds exist alongside.”
“If you’re an Anne Rice fan and you’ve seen the other shows, like, it’s the show for you,” Lafferty added. “But also, you don’t have to be the biggest fan in order to have access to the show and appreciate it. It’s its own thing, but it totally rhymes and intersects with the other two shows.”
Talmasca: The Secret Order Adds New Stories To Anne Rice’s Universe
Regarding whether it was challenging or more freeing not having to adapt Talamasca from a book, the showrunners agreed that they enjoyed creating their own characters and stories without being restricted by already established plots. “It was nice to have the support of Anne Rice having created it and given it a name and several characters,” Hancock said. “But, for me, Mark can speak to it as well, I found it kind of great to be able to just create what she hadn’t yet created.”
“It was very liberating,” Lafferty said. “It is also great to know that you have this… She’s got a whole canon of stuff that you can always go back to. And having Rolin Jones, who created [the series] Interview with the Vampire, his wealth of knowledge, all the work that those guys did to get us all to where we are today was just incredible. But, yeah, it was nice to have the freedom to be like, we’re not hemmed in by this plot point or this character, we can kind of go our own way.”
Buckens noted how their characters are not in Rice’s books and that she only began reading the novels after filming, preferring to keep the scripts separate from the rest of the author’s work and relying on the world Hancock and Lafferty created. Lead star Denton also agreed with the showrunners that “it is very liberating” for all of them to have more leeway with the material, partly because it allowed the actors to chime in with ideas for their characters.
“I’ve been in projects before where it’s kind of based on sort of real characters or characters that are inside books, and that can be quite difficult for the trainspotters who really love those books to watch it,” Denton said. “They’ll kind of pick apart certain things, but we were given that kind of license from [Hancock and Lafferty] and the characters that they’ve created to add whatever we wanted to it. And it was really, really fun and really exciting. And it’s an incredibly exciting project, and the characters are really real and very octagonal, lots of different sides to all of them.”
Richardson-Sellers added that what makes it “exciting” for her to play new characters in this established universe is that “you don’t know what’s coming next.” She said, “You get the scripts as you’re shooting, so you have no idea what’s around the corner. So, we’re living in the excitement of discovery just like you guys are, and it keeps it very alive, all the interactions between the characters.”
Fichtner shared that he read the first two episodes of Talamasca before meeting Hancock and Lafferty, and then watched the first two seasons of Interview with the Vampire. He explained this made him “appreciate even more” those initial episodes of Talamasca because “it was so different” while still maintaining certain “elements that are spooky and cool” from the Anne Rice Immortal Universe.
Described as a supernatural spy series, the first season of Talamasca: The Secret Order consists of six episodes and centers on those responsible for not only tracking but also containing vampires, witches, and other magical and supernatural creatures around the world.
Denton plays Guy Anatole, officially described as “brilliant, handsome, and sharp on the surface, but he’s always known his mind works a little differently. On the cusp of graduating law school, he is approached by a representative of the Talamasca, a secretive agency that monitors and protects us from the supernatural world. When Guy learns that the Talamasca has been tracking him since his childhood, he falls headlong into a world of secret agents and immortal beings who, up to now, have maintained a fragile balance with the mortal world. But for that balance to hold, and for Guy to survive, he will have to learn to embrace the dark, treacherous depths of his true and singular self.”
Talamasca also stars Elizabeth McGovern (Downton Abbey) and Jason Schwartzman (Mountainhead).
Talamasca: The Secret Order debuts Sunday, October 26th, on AMC and AMC+.
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