Mayfair Witches isn’t exactly a spellbinding extension of AMC’s Anne Rice universe
Led by Alexandra Daddario, Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches fails to conjure up an intriguing horror-romance drama
TV Reviews Anne Rice
We’re living in the age of the “expanded universe”: Marvel, DC, Star Wars, The Fast & Furious, The Lord Of The Rings, and Harry Potter—take your pick. AMC entered the game with the Immortal Universe, based on the works of gothic romance master Anne Rice, in October 2022 with an adaption of the late writer’s iconic novel, Interview With The Vampire. Rolin Jones’ series proved to be a refreshing update of and tribute to its source material, equal parts compelling, sexy, intelligent, and—most importantly—very fun. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for the second entry, Mayfair Witches.
Esta Spalding and Michelle Ashford’s series is a paint-by-numbers take on the supernatural melodrama genre, working from a palette of dull grays and washed-out blues. Everyone involved seems to be sleepwalking through each plodding story beat. In its first five of eight episodes, Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches fails to create enough dramatic (or sexual) friction to work viewers up into a lather; it’s a soap opera without any suds.
Based on Rice’s 1990s trilogy, Lives Of The Mayfair Witches, the show follows a family of witches whose centuries-long entanglement with a mysterious, ageless spirit proves to be both a gift and a curse. The show centers on Dr. Rowan Fielding, played by Alexandra Daddario, who earned an Emmy nomination for her turn in the first season of The White Lotus. Like many a chosen one, Rowan has it all: she’s a talented, beautiful neurosurgeon who learns she’s a powerful witch to boot. Her latent powers manifest when she’s feeling angry or overwhelmed. So, yes, shitty men who talk down to her tend to wind up with spontaneous brain hemorrhages. After the death of her adoptive mother, Ellie (Erica Gimpel), Rowan uncovers information pointing to the magical lineage hidden from her.
In search of answers, Rowan travels to New Orleans to seek out her biological mother, Deirdre Mayfair, played by Cameron Inman as a teen and Annabeth Gish as an adult. Her birth mom is the lens into the titular family—and what a fucked-up brood they are. Deidre grows up under the thumb of her controlling Aunt Carlotta (Beth Grant), who tries to pray the devil out of her niece. This leads her straight into the arms of said demon—a charismatic, malevolent spirit named Lasher (Jack Huston). There’s also Mayfair patriarch Cortland (Harry Hamlin), who hangs mainly on the fringes, oozing vague Southern menace. The other major player is Ciprien Grieve (Tongayi Chirisa), a new character created for the show. As an agent of a secret society that investigates “the unexplained,” Ciprien is sent to watch over Rowan, acting as her protector and guide.
Mayfair is hungry to pull the audience into Rice’s realm of sexy witches, decaying mansions, and sultry nights, but the show feels inert. There’s little sense of place or mood here, even though it’s set in the Big Easy, and the vibe is horror-romance. This is a world of bland, beautiful characters who stand around in tasteful outfits, carrying on stilted, humorless exchanges that tell us little about who they are as people. Even the villains don’t get to do much more than murmur threats and deliver dry exposition.
The few promising setups—a seduction at a second-line funeral parade, a witch hunt in 17th-century Scotland—don’t go anywhere very interesting. And despite the show’s subject matter, feats of magic are thin on the ground. Witchcraft has always been a potent subject for horror, whether claiming power, losing control, liberation, subjugation—or hell, even pure cackling, spell-slinging aesthetics. But Mayfair never finds its arcane focus.
Most of the actors get lost in this vaguely defined reality. Daddario does little to breathe life into Rowan, who feels more like a collection of descriptors than a human being. (She’s the kind of character who prompts lines like “She’s different than the others” and “You know you’re special, don’t you?”) It’s hard to root for this hero when Daddario plays her as a cipher, little changing beneath her icy blue eyes whether she’s furious, amazed, or heartbroken. Huston falls short as the series’ big bad, failing to convey Lasher’s supposedly irresistible charm and malice. As Ciprien, Chirisa has the thankless task of being the third point of this less-than-compelling love triangle; but you get the sense he could do much more with his character if he had decent material to work with.
Thankfully, one person in Mayfair understood the assignment: character actor extraordinaire Grant, who plays Carlotta as a high-camp villain, all hissing sadism and pious zealotry. If only the creative team had adopted this kind of go-big-or-go-home approach. Sadly, the show never conjures enough atmosphere to transport us anywhere beyond the couch.
Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches season one premieres January 8 on AMC and AMC+.
74 Comments
So it sounds like a reasonably faithful take on the materials. I read this trilogy years ago and from what I recall it’s almost entirely mood and foreboding, with splashes of action thrown in. It’s a lot to push through over the course of three books. Sounds like this Ciprien guy is an amalgam of Talamasca characters, so while the specific character may be new the purpose of the role is likely the same. IIRC it first pops up in some of the Vampire books and eventually there’s a crossover.ETA: Except for the sex. Damn there was a lot of sex in those books. If they stripped that away there’s not a ton left.
Yeah, hard to count on a lot of sex when they apparently cut Rowan’s husband as a character entirely. Where’s big old sweater wearin’ Michael?
Say wha???? Michael Curry is a big part of the books. How could they eliminate the character altogether? 🤦♀️
Dunno, I didn’t actually watch it. I just see a love triangle between Lasher and some new guy, and not a mention of Michael anywhere.Honestly if we can’t get Michael in here why are we even bothering with this age of the witches. Let’s just do a Julien series and watch some N’Awlins dandy fuck his way through like three generations of witches and dudes and stuff. Guy was the worst, and the best at it.
I found this in the New York Times in an interview with Alexandra Daddario, who plays Rowan:“They restructured the chronology, condensing many of the historical elements into short segments that appear at the beginning of each episode. And they combined a major character from the novels, Michael Curry, Rowan’s love interest, with another character, Aaron Lightner, into a new character, Ciprien Grieve, played by Tongayi Chirisa (“Palm Springs”).”Well, that settles it. I read all three of the books in the 90s. I’ve been looking forward to an adaptation of the books for years. I’m so bummed out by this.
They have created a near composite character/new character in Ciprien Grives (he is supposed to represent Aaron Lightener and Michael Curry). That is a change I am not a fan of at all.
The most Anne Rice thing ever was when she [SPOILER] finally makes Lasher incarnate he comes with a massive schlong, which apparently he’d been using to get Mayfair women off spectrally for generations. Rice was an odd duck.
That’s not so odd. What else would you use?
Not odd that what would be used should that opportunity arise (haha), just that Rice would think at all to include with her generational family protective spirit the ability to ghost-fuck the women. Well.
Her vampires can’t get it up though (as far as I remember) despite all the sex elsewhere.
Lestat can get it up (apparently) in the later books, at any rate. Because, I guess Rice got bored of him not being able to so had him see someone about that…
Interesting. I mean I’m sure he got it up in The Tale of the Body Thief while temporarily mortal but other than that the vampires were supposed to be perpetually flaccid. I stopped reading the series at The Vampire Armand, however, because I found the first half of the book incredibly dull and I only just managed to finish it. I didn’t realise until just now how many more books there have been. Some people can do a lot in 20 years! Then, there’s me.
Trust me you aren’t missing anything–except that I assume Rice finally decided she liked the idea of a Lestat that could have sex.
Why wouldn’t you want that?
Joy Behar?
Fair.
Notably Rowan in particular was absolutely a size queen. Half the first book is her revealing how she only goes after giant firemen because she’s killed people accidentally and only wants to get fucked by heroes, and they have to be big of dick enough to actually hurt her, because she thinks she can only enjoy sex if it hurts enough to assuage her guilt. So Lasher showing up with exactly the girth gear she wants is hardly surprising.
Have you seen her actual porn books? Yeah, odd duck…
Rice was a deeply erotic writer.
I know! He was my favorite character in the books.
No Michael, no Aaron.
So you’re telling me that Daddario could have been banging someone this whole time? But the showrunners decided “to hell with that” and cut out her character’s husband completely?God damn feminism… TV sucks now.
She can still take ghost dick.
she’s good like that.
Well, at least there’s that.
Are they eventually going to include Mona Mayfair, the 13-year-old genius who has sex with all of her male relatives?That’s where I stopped reading Anne Rice.
Hell they’ll probably also skip how Julien was the male partner for three generations in a row of Mayfair daughters. They just want “Sexy smart witch love triangle.”
If you have sex with three different generations, it’s more like a love diamond.
The World According to Ubi, with 3 generations of Boobies.
A love rhombus.
Two is “pitching both ends of a double-header”, per Carla to Sam on Cheers.
I was perplexed when I read that. However, I was also a teenager myself. I kept reading, unsurprisingly. Anne Rice did that a lot. Belinda has a 14 or 15 year old ingenue who ends up with some old guy artist as a happy ending. I think he even transports her across state lines.
Anne Rice is a Chuck Berry fan?
The number of underage abuse victims in her work is really shocking to look back on as an adult. I think the fact that so many young wannabe goths (myself included) read the books at 13 – 14, it made it all the more romanticized and looking back, yikes. I genuinely have never re-read past the first five books of the vampire chronicles because so much of the Armand stuff went so far off the rails.
It was book five of the Vampire Chronicles that made me give up, even as a teenager (and I actually lined up to get her to sign my Memnoch—I think I was the only teen there who wasn’t dressed as… well as one might expect.) And I mean I made it through the Sleeping Beauty books (but probably just because–and in this case especially as a young teen–they were so over the top shocking.) Not that I haven’t enjoyed reading the synopses of her later books, but…
Honestly with the amount of underage sex and incest in this series (which was quite something when I read these as a teenager) I would regard it as fundamentally unfilmable. Most of it actually relates to the plot, so it’s not easy to cut without leaving plot holes.
The books that Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon are based on also had a lot of underaged sex and incest, those shows got made and are extremely popular. So I don’t blame this team for thinking it’s possible.
I had a theory that after the creative debacle of the Interview film, Rice decided (perhaps subconsciously) to write unfilmable material, starting with Memnoch the Devil, where Lestat bites Jesus Christ in the neck.
Creative debacle of the Neil Jordan film? I thought the general consensus (certainly mine, anyway) now was that ultimately it mostly worked really well.
It may have been financially successful, but it was HORRIBLE (aside from Kirsten Dunst). And horribly miscast: the leads should have switched roles (which wouldn’t necessarily have saved it) and the less said about Banderas the better…Of course, Queen of the Damned was even worse.
Well we agree on your last point. And of course I can’t argue with your opinion on the first film–I like it and the general consensus now seems to be (even among many hardcore Rice fans) that it’s good. I was just objecting to you saying Rice wrote unfilmable material because she hated the movie so much which, unless she lied for years, didn’t seem to jive with what she said about the movie (once it was finished of course…)
She changed her tune publicly, because it was in bad form and bad business to slag the production, even going as far as to be effusive in praising Cruise’s performance. But privately she continued to express other feelings. I say this as a hardcore fan who’s spent a lot of time in New Orleans and got to meet Ms. R in the late ‘90s. This new adaptation of Interview wouldn’t be happening if she had been truly satisfied with the film. I think she would have loved what they accomplished in the first season.
That’s where I might start.
Not reading this since AVclub ignored the already terrific “interview with a vampire” series. no reviews, no coverage ignored in your top Tv of 2022.
There were good reviews/recaps on Gizmodo.
AV Club did review “Interview,” actually—and loved it https://www.avclub.com/interview-with-the-vampire-review-tv-amc-1849603575
That’s unfortunate. After Interview, I had high hopes. Still going to try it, though.
I just watched the first episode and it’s not nearly as bad as this review paints it (although the reviewer has watched five episodes, of course). As a big fan of The Witching Hour, I do wonder how updating the story from the ‘80s to the present is going to play out, since the genealogical chronology and historical details were so important in the novel, e.g., Rowan’s great-grandmother Stella was a flapper, and that won’t be possible if she was born in the ‘30s…
I have the same questions. I watched the first episode last night and I can see little hints to the original timeline. For instance, Deirdre’s mother was flapper witch Stella in the 1920s in the book and in the show when they show Deidre out at the party, she is wearing a flapper reminiscent gown. The time periods, mood, sense of history, magic, and the ghost story aspects of The Witching Hour, are what make it so compelling. That is going to be very difficult to create on screen.
Stella was Deirde’s grandma, poor Antha was her mother…https://talamasca.msjekyll.com/Antha.html
So many Mayfairs, so much family history to remember!
We’ll just do a quick rebrand: Don’t Trust The W In Apt. 23
Too soon, man. That one never stops hurting.
From what I’ve read here and on Wikipedia I’m gonna quote Norm McDonald. Not gay enough!
Long time since I read it but I take it the 13 year old who seduces her adult uncle (to no significant consequence for either) has been cut from the TV version?
I don’t remember the details—but was that even in the first book? A lot has been changed (I’d say even more than in Interview—and I kinda get the reasoning for that that since the book is like all mood and, well, moody monologues). That said, I doubt she will show up if it continues for more seasons.
Well, it’s so long ago that I can’t remember but it might have been Lasher. I do think it was the Withcing Hour though. It’s the same one with a character having to wear gloves to stop their powers affecting folk when they touch them… I think it is the first one. Regardless, I always thought she was an amazing storyteller (well, up until about 1998).
No its not in the first book. The whole Michael/Mona storyline happens in book 2.
This could have been so soapy! (Harry Hamlin is right there..) Maybe down play the underage incest/rape and play up the cousin lovin. Plus you need Michael, he’s the warm heart to Rowan’s stone cold bitch.
Damn, damn Harry Hamlin!
I was a hardcore Vampire Chronicles fan back in my mall goth days (who also really liked the first season of the show), but I could never get into the witches. I’m assuming their goal is future crossovers, but I wonder if it wouldn’t have worked better to introduce characters and concepts on Interview and then spin them off.
Crossovers were already hinted to as the TV version of Interview happened in Storyville which is also where Julian spent much of his time.
More than hinted – the Mayfairs were mentioned by name in Episode 1, I believe.
I just knew it. Interview with the Vampire was pretty good—I mean, damn good if you consider the movies before it. Daddario is an unusual kind of bland where she can sort of let others explode around her, and that can be fun with her as the bolt, but whenever she’s trying to lead the show it all gets so incredibly stale from scene to scene. I never would have picked her to carry a show.I am not sure I would have picked Huston, either, for something as pivotal as Lasher, who if I recall correctly would possibly provide a means to crossover the two series.Having said all that, I will watch Beth Grant and be content, at least for a while.
Interview with a Vampire was surprisingly excellent. I was a little sceptical of this one going in because Daddario hasn’t impressed me much acting-wise before, but I was open to her being able to up her game with the right project/material/director. Sounds like this isn’t it though.
I dunno. I need something to fill the Witches of East End-shaped hole in my heart. And I’ve found Daddario to be a good Meg Foster crush replacement.What? I was young, I didn’t realize that They Live was about as good a movie as she would get.
sigh when is Daddario going to get her own vehicle that is actually good?
I’m a little surprised that this whole comment section isn’t variations on this post. Seriously, there are more fans of Anne Rice’s non-vampire output than of Alexandra Daddario’s piercing eyes? I learned something today.
based on her performance in the pilot I don’t think it’s possible to make her the star of something actually good.
ive seen her be good in stuff! But then her agents get her stuff like this and its just deflating
…a witch hunt in 17th-century Scotland*snorts*Gashlander got there before you, my dears.
Lol are these tests to make sure we’re actually reading these articles? Fast And the Furious doesn’t have an extended universe it’s just a franchise and you just dumped the name into your list there lmao. There’s one spinoff film called Hobbs & Shaw… until there are plans for a sequel to Hobbs & Shaw or some other spin off that’s not an expanded universe that’s just called a spinoff.
The AV Club’s long running joke about how everything has a cinematic universe now because of the MCU is the most exhausting thing please retire it. I almost threw my shoes at my screen when I saw you guys refer to X and Pearl as the “XCU”. Woof.
I’m only here because the hype from White Lotus season 2 pushed me to watch both seasons and now I’m in love with Daddario (and mad at Plop).
Your comment on Daddario’s acting plays a role in the moment in the opening episode that I realized the show was going to have some real problems – the leadup to the “I’ve had a terrible day and need to blow off stress” hookup scene.In theory and even possibly on paper, the scene would have been fine. I have little doubt based on her comments after the episode that the showrunner did it as a feminist power flex of ‘the women portrayed in this have taken control over their sex lives and omg can have casual sex too!!’, but it didn’t work for a lot of reasons. Daddario’s character isn’t set up to take impulsive actions prior to it, Daddario’s FWB bartender doesn’t have a problem with her hooking up with someone else until he suddenly does (and is apparently mad about not having a relationship), and the blunt truth of the matter is that someone as drop dead gorgeous as Daddario can have casual sex at any moment with pretty much almost anyone, which meant her walking over to the table to select a lucky random was strange since you’d figure she’d at least focus on a specific hot guy in the bar first.But the worst part was that, as you note, Daddario seems to have been deliberately directed to not emote much save for the death of her adoptive mom, including even keeping things tamped down despite being furious enough to kill a bunch of awful men. The character should have been really agitated at the bar, or down, or just something to indicate she was more than a bit of a wreck emotionally given the day and hence needed comfort sex. Instead, she’s indistinguishable from when she’s doing surgery or anything else, and Daddario’s demonstrated enough range in previous roles to make me think that’s probably not the actress’ decision.