Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches

By starrymag | February 26, 2023

By: Kelly Kearney

 

 

Q) How far off from where you expected your character to end up did they? How surprised were you once you read the last script?

 

Harry Hamlin: I was totally surprised that I was the father of Rowan. Yeah, that was a curveball, for sure.

 

Jack Huston: I was surprised, and I’m still surprised.

 

Tongayi Chirisa: Yeah, I think for everybody, I think that’s the great thing about their writing is that a lot of things that you thought were supposed to go one way, don’t, and it just opens up a can of so many other endless opportunities and questions that need to be asked. There’s a lot that’s under the rug that needs to be exposed. Yeah, it left me gob smacked for sure.

 

Jack Huston: Yeah, it felt very sort of apropos to Anne Rice, and sort of her legacy of, by that season finale, we were like, “Oh, now we’re really getting to see Anne Rice.” Yeah, that lady had one hell of an imagination. Our writers did a phenomenal job of taking that from the page to the screen. I just really can’t commend them greater for it.

 

Q) Back when you guys signed up for your roles, was there anything from your previous roles or extra inspirations that got you into your head spaces for your characters?

 

Harry Hamlin: Yeah. Yeah, I don’t usually take anything from anything I’ve done before and bring it into some new character. They’re all new to me. There you go.

 

Tongayi Chirisa: I think, for me, it was just the excitement of getting into this gothic type of franchise that delves into the fantasy of mythology and all that good stuff. I’ve always been a geek about that stuff. It was really nice to get into this, and just really explore this character and this world that Anne Rice has given us. That was my initial jump to it. I was like, “Oh, yes, I can finally get into this genre of television making.”

 

Jack Huston: I think shooting in New Orleans was an absolute gift for everybody as well. It just lends itself so well to this world. Obviously, it’s where Anne Rice lived and wrote and everything on set. I was excited.

 

Q) For each of you, what was your favorite scene to shoot this season?

 

Harry Hamlin: To me, the favorite scene was they rewrote my introduction in the piece after they saw what I was doing with the character. I think toward the very end of shooting they had me audition with an alligator and a snake for my opening scene in my trailer. The alligator was terrible. I had to eighty-six the alligator, but the snake was great. We had a 1ten-foot python that I got to play around with while I was having my toes massaged. For me, it doesn’t get any better than that.

 

Tongayi Chirisa: Toes? That’s hilarious. I think for me, it was definitely the episodes five and six, where Ciprien is just progressively getting worse in the house, and they’re unaware that he’s got a stab wound, and they don’t know for how long they’ve been in the house for. I think just having that play out in a linear way was just really nice because it kind of allowed me as an actor to just really get into the emotional space every day to match the energy that was needed. That was really fun.

 

Jack Huston: Yeah, and I loved going back to Scotland. I thought that was one of the great ones, apart from we almost lost Tongayi when we burnt the village, lying on the road. It was such a spectacle. It was amazing what they’d done. That was kind of fun. I thought that was an exciting, if not very long night, but it’s always cool when you get to jump around in different periods and play with different actors. It was great.

 

Q) This question is for Harry. In a family where magic is passed down through the maternal line, Cortland Mayfair has been skipped over in a spell-tacular way, and it kind of turned him into a monster. How did you keep the fun uncle separate in your approach from the selfish murderer because the man we met in the beginning, was definitely not the guy we meet at the end. How did you approach that and keep those two people separate?

 

Harry Hamlin: Well, in my mind, they’re not separate. What happened to Cortland is he got ALS. When you’re diagnosed with ALS; however fun-loving you are, you’re told that you are going to die, because ALS is a death sentence. What I had to do was try and figure out how Cortland was going to deal with that. Clearly, he made a deal with the devil. We don’t know the ultimate outcome of that deal or what is going to happen. We do know that for the time being, I’m Medusa-like. I have been turned to stone. How that’s resolved. I don’t know yet, but I think that now that he’s cured, I think he can allow a lot more of what we saw from Cortland at the beginning– to be re-injected into his character next season.

 

Q) Congrats on getting a Season Two. What do you hope will happen with your character in Season Two? I guess Mr. Hamlin already addressed this–being turned into stone would be the end of your character, but not in a world with witches, I’m guessing. What do you hope happens with your character going forward?

 

Harry Hamlin: I don’t want to be turned into stone for the rest of my life, so I just want them to find a way to get me back.

 

Tongayi Chirisa: I think for Ciprien, we’re starting to see him kind of unfold into who he truly is. I think the one takeaway is how Rowan has been able to embrace these new power. That’s something that Ciprien hasn’t really done, henceforth the gloves.

It will be interesting to see what happens when he chooses to fully embrace the capacity of what he’s capable of doing and what that might look like for his personal journey, as well as everybody that he loves and cares for. I’m very excited to see how that’s going to be impacting in the coming season.

 

Q) For all three of you, what have your own characters taught you about yourself?

 

Tongayi Chirisa: Wow. Yeah. I think for me, I feel like it’s a dangerous thing to keep people at a distance. There’s a saying, “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer” and for good reasons. I think that it’s always good to know people’s intentions, whether they’re good or bad, but it’s always good to have an idea of individuals. I think that’s something Cip has always been very distant about because his powers allow him to tap into people’s minds and memories, but he’s never one that you can easily approach. That for me was just a good reminder to be intentional about knowing people.

 

Jack Huston: It was quite hard to sort of say what my character taught me, probably don’t be the devil.

 

[laughter]

 

Tongayi Chirisa: That’s a good reason. Yeah.

 

Jack Huston: I was learning to maybe not manipulate and deceive and be altogether a little evil, but they were lessons I already knew, so …

 

Harry Hamlin: For me, it taught me nothing about myself. That’s the truth.

 

Q) Playing in the Anne Rice universe, has that allowed you to do anything as actors that you found yourselves not being able to do, playing in another sandbox?

 

Tongayi Chirisa: I think that’s the beauty about this genre, that you get to tap into all kinds of acting styles that the different genres that are out there don’t allow. I think for me, personally, there’s much more to tap into. I do love the end scene where Lasher disappears from the memory. There’s a moment of insanity that takes place. It’s good to really explore how far you can take the emotional journeys of these characters who become unhinged. I’m looking forward to more of that in the following season. We’ll see what adventures Cip has to go through, now that Lasher is going to be in the picture in real-time.

 

Harry Hamlin: I think, for me, it was kind of a split personality for Cortland. At the beginning he’s very fun-loving and after he is diagnosed with ALS he, of course, is facing his death. His personality changes a lot. What I love about working in this universe is that I’m just having a blast doing it. They’re letting me kind of out of my cage and allowing me to do it to create a character that I’m not sure was on the page when I first read it.

I’m just having a really good time with it. The first time in many, many years, I’ve been able to actually do character work like this and take it to where I want to take it. A lot of times, the director will say, “Stop it. Don’t go down there,” because Cortland, there’s a side of him that’s quite performative, and that’s when he’s in his happy-go-lucky moments. I’m hoping that that will come back in next season.

 

Jack Huston: Yeah, I’m just really excited about the next season as much as the discovery of where they’re going to take him because this whole first season was a discovery for all of us. It’s where you’re sort of finding your footings, your understanding, getting into the characters and discovering who these characters are and what they can do and what they’re capable of. Now, it’s like everything’s just been turned on its head. It’s going to be an entirely new fun season. Where we’re probably going to be, it’s almost like back to square one with Lasher. Yeah, it’s an entirely new form, I guess. I’m excited to see where they take it.

 

Q) This show obviously has a very strong fan base, especially on social media. Have you as actors engaged with that and looked at the reactions, or do you try to keep that separate?

 

Harry Hamlin: I don’t look at all. I don’t do social media, so I can’t answer that.

 

Tongayi Chirisa: Yeah, I try …

 

Jack Huston: Yeah, social media is very bad.

 

Tongayi Chirisa: Yeah. You try to keep your sanity about you because it can be gnarly out there sometimes. It’s like, better not to know what’s being said and just get the drips and drafts from the teams.

 

Harry Hamlin: There’s the old saying, “what the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over.”

 

Q) This question is for Tongayi. In the finale, we saw Albrecht (Dennis Boutsikaris) wipe Ciprien’s sister Odette’s memory. What would you like Ciprien to do in response to that in Season Two?

 

Tongayi Chirisa: Wipe his memory back. Just to take him out! I don’t know. It’ll be interesting. I think Albrecht has answers to questions that I probably will have, but I don’t know what those questions are, because he’s obviously done something to me. I think that discovery of trying to figure out what he knows, and still play off as I’m still one of his subjects is one that I’ll be really looking forward to seeing play out. How I can outsmart the man that taught me everything about the Talamasca?

 

Q) This is for Jack. What would you say Lasher’s ultimate game plan is after being born into the world?

 

Jack Huston: World domination. I have no idea. I’m sorry. I’m really interested to find out though. I think he’s waited for thirteen witches to be born, and the world is his oyster. Your guess is as good as mine. I can’t wait to see what the writers are cooking up for us, though, because I think whatever it is, it’s going to be pretty wild, as the last two episodes might have shown you more. It was pretty out there.

 

 

*CONFERENCE CALL*