"I was scared for my life."Anne Rice’s Talamasca: The Secret Order star Nicholas Denton is literally playing with fire on the set of Entertainment W
“I was scared for my life.”
Anne Rice’s Talamasca: The Secret Order star Nicholas Denton is literally playing with fire on the set of Entertainment Weekly’s cover shoot, as he burns a surveillance photo of his rookie spy character, Guy Anatole. Of course, all the safety precautions are in place as he ignites the piece of paper, but fire is a living, breathing force of nature. And on this particular take, the flames immediately lick up the side of the prop and almost catch on the fabric of his sleeve. Like a true professional, the actor quickly flicks the photo and extinguishes the blaze without ever breaking character — despite internally freaking out — to nail the perfect shot.
“I feel like I looked cooler than I actually am,” Denton tells EW a few weeks after the overdue September cover shoot in New York. “I was really trying to be cool in that, because fire instantly makes you much cooler than you actually are. It’s like magic.”
That’s a feeling Denton is still getting used to, despite living in it for a year since production began on AMC’s third TV show based on author Anne Rice’s beloved The Vampire Chronicles book series. Following Interview With the Vampire and Mayfair Witches, fresh spinoff Talamasca: The Secret Order (premiering with two episodes on Sunday, Oct. 26, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and AMC+) explores the titular shadowy organization, featured in both existing shows and many of Rice’s books, that tracks and controls vampires, witches, and other supernatural creatures around the world.
But unlike the previous two series, Talamasca follows a completely original story not pulled from any particular novel, as fresh character Guy is recruited — well, more like forced — into the order to carry out a clandestine mission in which the tenuous peace between mortals and immortals hangs in the balance.
Elizabeth McGovern as Helen and Nicholas Denton as Guy Anatole on ‘Talamasca: The Secret Order’.
David Gennard/AMC
Much like his newcomer character, Denton says he “didn’t know anything” about Rice’s comprehensive world before getting cast as Guy, other than the fact that fellow Australian actor Sam Reid stars as Lestat de Lioncourt on Interview With the Vampire, which launched the Immortal Universe in 2022 (and is rebranding as The Vampire Lestat for season 3 in 2026). But at the start of his nearly nine-month audition process, Denton quickly learned from showrunners John Lee Hancock and Mark Lafferty that he actually didn’t need to know anything about Interview With the Vampire or Mayfair Witches — or even Rice’s novels — because Talamasca is for fresh viewers as much as it caters to superfans of the author’s works. In fact, the six-episode first season deals more in vintage 1960s and ’70s spy tropes, as it pulls back the curtain on how the organization operates in the shadows to control all supernatural creatures.
“We are kind of a different Talamasca than what people think of,” Denton says. “Ours feels more like a fully fledged business that had a payroll room and a janitor’s area. I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know if that fits into the Mayfair or the Interview world.’ There’s something sacred about Anne Rice — we’re trying to make sure that Anne Rice is honored in all ways, but also trying to invite a lot of other people into this world, because there is a lot to explore.”
Executive producer Mark Johnson, who oversees AMC’s entire Anne Rice Immortal Universe, warns that even the most dedicated fans have no idea what’s coming.
“They may know about what the organization is, and they may know some great stories about some loyal and disloyal agents of the Talamasca,” Johnson says (more on that later). “[But] there isn’t a Talamasca book.”
Karl Cam as Jimmy Cupid and Nicholas Denton on ‘Talamasca: The Secret Order’.
David Gennard/AMC
And that’s exactly why this fresh series was created. Throughout the development of three seasons of Interview With the Vampire and two seasons of Mayfair Witches, Johnson became intrigued about the organization that kept popping up at pivotal moments in the story yet was never fully explored in Rice’s books.
“We’ve often said it’s sort of like a dramatic or a non-comical version of Men in Black,” Johnson says. “And I just thought, ‘Surely there’s a show in here.'”
The executive producer approached his “good friend” and acclaimed filmmaker John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, The Rookie, Saving Mr. Banks) to helm this fresh series alongside co-showrunner Mark Lafferty with the goal of not rewriting, but rather expanding on the idea Rice first created in her books.
“Whenever Mark calls with an idea, you pay close attention,” Hancock says. “It was just this idea based on different chapters, sometimes short descriptions of the Talamasca, in Anne Rice’s books. And Mark and [executive producer] Tom Williams sent along all these different pieces from books to read. As I read them, I was taken with the spy aspect of it, to be honest.”
Nicholas Denton in EW’s exclusive photo shoot.
Victoria Stevens
As a “big fan” of espionage dramas, Hancock quickly saw “an opportunity to create a spy show that dealt in the world of the supernatural,” different from what Rice fans have already seen in the previous two shows.
“Can those two genres meld?” he remembers wondering. “I was hopeful that they could, so I sat down to write about secrets and shadows and loneliness and all the things that the supernatural world and spies have in common.”
Hancock wanted to declassify the mystery of the Talamasca by having this spinoff answer all the logistical questions he personally had about the organization — right down to the spies’ training and salaries — in order to bring the “hermetically sealed” world of Rice vampires and witches “out into the grounded pavement of the streets around us.”
“I didn’t want to start the show in Oz,” Hancock explains. “I wanted to start in Kansas and take Dorothy and throw her in and have her come across various people on the Yellow Brick Road that we recognize from Anne’s work.”
Elizabeth McGovern as Helen on ‘Talamasca: The Secret Order’.
David Gennard/AMC
The “Dorothy” in this case is Denton’s Guy Anatole, pulled from relative obscurity just as he’s about to graduate law school and begin a very normal career… as long as he ignores those pesky voices in his head. He believes those are just a symptom of “a debilitating mental illness,” managed with a steady diet of pills.
But seasoned Talamasca agent Helen (Downton Abbey’s Elizabeth McGovern), who runs the New York branch, approaches Guy to recruit him into the organization after a trusted colleague is murdered. She also reveals they’ve been secretly tracking and manipulating him for his entire life due to his mind-reading abilities, uncovering decades of shocking lies about his family and own mind. Thrown by this revelation, Guy only agrees to join the Talamasca and follow Helen’s orders in order to learn the truth about who — and what — he is.
“Quite quickly, he’s adrift and he has to find something to latch onto, and unfortunately he has to latch onto the organization that ruined his life,” Denton says. “They’re the ones that have the knowledge, so he has to join them. He is the reluctant spy, and that’s great because the reluctant spy doesn’t want to be there, so they’re a bit surly, like, ‘I don’t belong here. I’m completely ill-equipped to be a spy. Don’t do this to me. And what the hell is a vampire?!’ I like the skepticism of Guy against the certainty of Helen.”
Maisie Richardson-Sellers as Olive on ‘Talamasca: The Secret Order’.
David Gennard/AMC
As Guy leaves behind his former life and accepts his fresh reality as a spy in a supernatural world that he knows nothing about, Helen becomes his “absolute lifeline” in the Talamasca, McGovern says.
But she also warns that Helen isn’t just a helpful mentor for the fresh recruit: “Their relationship is part friendship, part mother — I think she does care about him a lot — but she’s also using him. But she feels as if she’s using him in a way that’s beneficial toward him.”
Helen’s own mysterious history and goals will be made clearer throughout the season “as you come to find that this is as much about her own journey as it is about Guy’s,” Lafferty reveals.
And McGovern loved sinking her teeth into a character who might not be totally moral — almost as much as she loved “putting on a pair of trousers, rather than my Downton Abbey rags,” she adds with a smile.
‘Talamasca: The Secret Order’ star Nicholas Denton photographed exclusively for EW.
Victoria Stevens
“This is quite new for me,” McGovern explains. “I’m so often cast as the obvious good person. I spent much of my career being the perfect girlfriend, and then as I got older, being the perfect wife, and then as I got older, being the perfect mother, and then God knows where I go from here. So I’ve liked the possibility of a Machiavellian kind of ulterior motive. That’s been quite fun.”
Denton praises his costar for bringing a surprising warmth to Helen that adds a delicious layer to her questionable character.
“You don’t know if you can trust her, but you really want to trust her,” he adds. “You really want her to be Guy’s friend and confidante and kind of sidekick in this, but they’re all out for their own needs. There’s more and more lies, and it’s so sad.”
“Who do you trust?” is the ultimate question for any spy, and that doesn’t just apply to Helen. Guy soon finds he can actually get more candid answers from the “villain” of the story, Jasper (William Fichtner)… that is, if he can survive their conversations.
Nicholas Denton Guy Anatole and William Fichtner as Jasper on ‘Talamasca: The Secret Order’.
David Gennard/AMC
Something evil’s lurking in the shadowy
In Rice’s books, Revenant vampires are terrifying, mindless, feral monsters. But on the Manchester set of Talamasca, they somehow know the dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”
“One night, we were halfway through the shoot, and all the Revenants were on the set,” Denton remembers of Jasper’s compact army of special vampires. “And they all, unbeknownst to me, decided to learn the choreography to ‘Thriller.’ The [on-set] paramedic decided to put on the ambulance’s red-and-blue lights, and so they stopped the shoot and decided to do a five-minute, fully choreographed version of ‘Thriller.’ They looked like complete psychopaths dancing in the middle of the street. It was like a flash mob of Revenants.”
While the vibe on set with the Revenants was all laughs, the only character on Talamasca who will be having any kind of fun with them is Jasper. When viewers first meet the mysterious American vampire in the series premiere, he is, very clearly, a risky force. Jasper has quietly taken over the Talamasca’s London branch for his own secret plans, and he’s able to control his own special breed of Revenant vampires to carry out acts of violence against anyone who gets in his way. He’s definitely not a good guy, but he is an candid one — and that’s very attractive to someone like Guy, who all of a sudden can’t trust anyone or anything in this fresh reality.
Nicholas Denton and William Fichtner in season 1 of ‘Talamasca: The Secret Order’.
David Gennard/AMC
“In a world of lies, I needed one person who was kind of a truth-teller, and I thought, ‘Who better than the person that you set up as your antagonist at the beginning to do that?'” Hancock says. “Now, you may not like some of the things he tells you, but they are always the truth. He never lies. And that’s something that’s admirable, even when it’s coming from someone who’s doing bad things.”
Compared to the antagonists from the other two Immortal Universe shows, Jasper comes from humble, relatable beginnings. Hancock describes him as “a middle-class vampire” from a “small town in Texas.”
“It’s not playing opera music all the time, and velvet cloaks, and those kinds of things,” the showrunner adds. “I was very taken with the idea of someone who’s good and, well, pissed off — not only at the world and the Talamasca, but also probably some other vampires. I don’t have to have written a vampire before to write a vampire with these issues, because they’re human issues.”
William Fichtner as Jasper on ‘Talamasca: The Secret Order’.
David Gennard/AMC
When Helen’s top-secret mission for Guy sends him directly into Jasper’s orbit, a treacherous fresh vigorous sparks as Guy tries to figure out who he can trust more between the two players in this larger war.
“I’ve played tough guys, I’ve played rough guys, but I’ve never played anything quite like this,” Fichtner says, teasing that “episode 5 really is a real rocket ship for Jasper and Guy’s relationship.”
And expect to question whether Jasper actually is the villain he appears to be at the beginning.
“He’s a pretty dastardly dude,” Lafferty admits. “But villains who are just mustache-twisty are not very interesting. We tried to see just how far we could take Jasper. He believes in something, he has principles, and he has a plan, and it’s not crazy. He has a true theory of the world and how it should be run. It makes sense, in the context of where he came from. This is a story that is ultimately about families, and about families that have been broken apart, whether it’s Helen, or Guy, or Jasper.”
Nicholas Denton in EW’s exclusive photo shoot for ‘Talamasca: The Secret Order’.
Victoria Stevens
The creators actually took more inspiration from British espionage author John le Carré’s works than Rice’s as they filled out all the corners of the world of the Talamasca in shades of gray.
“So much of the point of le Carré’s stuff is: As you get deeper and deeper into an organization, you start to see that you have more in common with the guy at your level who’s on the opposite side of the fence than you do with the people who are giving you the orders,” Lafferty says. “At some level, you’re starting to lose sight of what the mission is, what’s good and bad, who’s right and who’s wrong. Is Jasper the villain, or is he kind of a hero? Is the Talamasca good or bad? [There aren’t] easy answers to any of those questions.”
Good luck figuring that out, Guy.
Off the books
When a celebrity entered the world of Talamasca, it caused quite the commotion on set.
As Pulitzer prize-winning investigative journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) — fresh off becoming a vampire in the Interview With the Vampire season 2 finale — continues his book tour in New York City, he crosses paths with Guy in the series premiere for the show’s first official crossover.
“I knew that was a really big deal,” Denton says. “We had paparazzi and people were trying to [snap photos] during this scene. Everyone was trying to get photographs of Eric. And he had to be quite tight-lipped, because there were certain things that were happening to his character in the next season of Interview With the Vampire that couldn’t really be at odds with what we were shooting with his character in Talamasca.”
Filmed over the course of one night, Guy and Daniel meet in one “intense” scene in an alleyway outside of the book store as Guy continues to investigate the Talamasca. While the details of their conversation are, of course, confidential, Bogosian teases that the two characters have more in common than they first believe, especially when it comes to the Talamasca interfering in their lives.
“The Talamasca had a heavy hand in his book,” Hancock reveals. “And Molloy might not be completely pleased with that.”
Eric Bogosian as Daniel Molloy and Nicholas Denton as Guy Anatole on ‘Talamasca: The Secret Order’.
David Gennard/AMC
But Bogosian says that Daniel knows a little more about what the organization is capable of than this “naive” fresh spy, especially after his exploits on the other show.
“[Daniel’s] willing to talk with him a little bit, at least give him a clue,” Bogosian says. “Daniel wouldn’t mind sucking the blood out of him, but he does have a final scrap of empathy in him. I could feel like a tiny vestige of sympathy for this fool who’s going to basically get himself in a lot of trouble. I’m pretty much telling him that he has no idea what he’s walking into. And then I tell him, ‘You better leave before I kill you.'”
And Daniel is just the first familiar face coming this season. Fans will also recognize shady, opportunistic Talamasca agent Raglan James (Justin Kirk), first seen in Interview With the Vampire season 2, who pops up in episode 4 on a collision course with Guy.
“Raglan’s always looking out for himself, and is a real lone wolf,” Lafferty says. “There is something that our main character, Guy, has been tasked to retrieve, and it just might be that Raglan is on a similar pursuit.”
“Guns, vampires, hotel rooms,” Denton teases of Raglan’s disordered crossover episode. “It’ll scare Guy. It’s quite a fun ride because you can’t trust Raglan. There’s nothing that presents on the surface that seems like a trustworthy individual. He’s the most slippery character I’ve ever had to work across from. His performance is so bizarre that it’s genius. He is just a massive quandary.”
While Raglan and Molloy are “vastly different characters,” Denton reveals that Guy ultimately learns the same lesson from them both as he delves deeper into the world of the Talamasca: “Watch your back.”
Nicholas Denton in EW’s exclusive photo shoot for ‘Talamasca: The Secret Order’.
Victoria Stevens
The Talamasca showrunners worked closely with the other Immortal Universe producers — Interview With the Vampire creator Rolin Jones and Mayfair Witches creators Michelle Ashford and Esta Spalding — to figure out which characters and storylines can weave together across all three series.
“It was a little bit like kids getting together on Christmas Day,” Lafferty says. “There are certain parts of this story that are meaningful in these other stories, and can suggest that the whole universe is sort of talking to each other.”
Johnson teases that Interview With the Vampire and Mayfair Witches are also going to be “borrowing” characters and storylines from Talamasca moving forward.
“So it’s going to be quite intricate and circular,” he adds.
And there’s one more exhilarating crossover moment that the Talamasca showrunners managed to fit into the first season. However, this Easter egg from Interview With the Vampire — or, more specifically, The Vampire Lestat — is much more subtle than Bogosian and Kirk’s onscreen appearances.
“If a viewer is listening very closely in episode 5, they might hear something coming through the speakers of a bar that is a direct tie to another of the series, and might also give somebody some residuals from Talamasca,” Lafferty teases. “If they’re listening at just the right time, they just might hear a track or two that comes from Lestat.”
As the Brat Prince himself would say, “Siri, volume up!”
Nicholas Denton in EW’s exclusive photoshoot.
Victoria Stevens
A fresh chapter
Talamasca charts fresh territory for Rice’s works nearly 50 years after she first began publishing her Gothic vampire novels, and producers already have plans to continue adapting her books into more shows.
“You bet there is a list,” Johnson says of potential additional spinoffs. “There are so many good ideas. She is an extraordinary writer, and that much more extraordinary when you realize when she was writing — it’s really so far ahead of her time.”
Johnson teases that they have “three or four other titles [and] subjects that we’d like to pursue” based on Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. “I go to AMC every three months and say, ‘You ready for another? Ready for another?'” he adds with a laugh. “And so we’ll have one soon enough…. I think an Anne Rice aficionado could probably figure out which ones are most likely the next in line — [but] I think I’d better keep the titles to myself right now.”
The current focus is launching third series Talamasca with the hope of continuing the spy tale into a second season. Maisie Richardson-Sellers, who stars in the first season as ambitious Talamasca agent Olive, reveals that these first six episodes are “a perfect setup” for the next chapter of the show, if it gets renewed.
“It starts quite intimate, and it just grows and grows and grows until by the end, it’s a real crescendo,” she says. “It ramps up and it will leave you, I hope and believe, really gunning for a season 2. And I think it’s only going to get bigger and better.”
Denton adds, “It’s not a fairytale, it’s very messy. It is that psychological and emotional kind of rollercoaster. There’s a lot of sadness that comes with the parting of certain people. It’s very heartbreaking, [but] there’s some fantastic performances in there. It made me very excited because there’s a lot more to explore in this series.”
Let’s just hope Guy doesn’t get burned in the process.
———————–
Directed by Alison Wild + Kristen Harding
Photography by Victoria Stevens
Motion – DP: Cory Fraiman-Lott; 1st AC: Christie Leitzell; Steadicam Op: Patrick Huw Morgan; Gaffer: John Izarpate; Best Electric: Jonathan Alejando Saavedra; Key Grip: Brandon Roberts; Best Grip: Jon Mendez; Swing: Alex Sarvide
Production Design – Production Designer: Lana Boy; Art Director: Lucas Godlewski; Set Decorator: Cyrus Gainer; Props: Lana Stepanova; Art Assistant: Gawaine Ormsby
Photo – 1st Assistant: Ross Thomas
Post-Production – Color Correction: Nate Seymour/TRAFIK; VFX: Derek Viramontes; Design: Alex Sandoval; Score: Natalie Ann Holt
Nicholas Denton – Styling: Dolly Pratt Lanvin/The Wall Group; Grooming: Sandrine Van Slee/Art Department
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