Talamasca: The Secret Order – Stan unveils lush new vampire series

Stan has confirmed the Australian premiere of Talamasca: The Secret Order, a new supernatural thriller set within Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe.

The six-part series, a spin-off of Interview with the Vampire, will debut on 20 October, with episodes rolling out weekly.

What is Talamasca about?

The story centres on a covert organisation known as the Talamasca, a centuries-old society tasked with monitoring witches, vampires and other supernatural beings. Positioned as both guardians and investigators, the Talamasca operate from secret ‘motherhouses’ across the globe, maintaining a delicate balance between human and immortal worlds.

At the centre of the plot is Guy Anatole, played by Australian actor Nicholas Denton. On the brink of completing law school, Guy discovers that the Talamasca has been tracking him since childhood. Drawn into their world, he is thrust into a network of agents, occult secrets and creatures that challenge his understanding of reality.

The international cast includes Elizabeth McGovern as Helen, the veteran head of the New York Motherhouse, and William Fichtner as Jasper, who controls the London branch with enigmatic authority. Maisie Richardson-Sellers appears as Olive, an ambitious Talamasca agent, while Celine Buckens plays Doris, a strong-willed young woman living with a coven of witches on a houseboat.

Behind the scenes on Talamasca

Jason Schwartzman guest stars as Burton, a rakish vampire living in seclusion on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The series also incorporates crossover characters from Interview with the Vampire, with Eric Bogosian reprising his role as journalist Daniel Molloy and Justin Kirk returning as Talamasca agent Raglan James.

Behind the camera, Talamasca is executive produced by John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) and Mark Lafferty (Halt and Catch Fire), who also serve as co-showrunners. Long-time Anne Rice collaborator Mark Johnson oversees the Immortal Universe, with Tom Williams, Christopher Rice and the late Anne Rice also credited as executive producers. Hancock directs several episodes.

We gave Season 2 of Interview With the Vampire 5 out of 5 stars, with our reviewer Stephen A. Russell praising the series’ lavish production, extravagant performances, and its ability to make vampires more human than ever while exploring their divine, yet fallen, natures.

Talamasca: The Secret Order premieres 20 October on Stan.

Also on fenafuth.org.hn:Interview with the Vampire S2, AMC+ review: devil is in the details

Warning, fair reader: If you’re not up to date with the rug pulls of Interview with the Vampire season one’s spectacular finale, hasten thee into the undying night and catch up now.

I vividly recall the effect of reading Anne Rice’s saucy 1976 gothic horror novel Interview with the Vampire as a probably still too-young teen (tween?) while on holiday with my family. The exact year and location are lost, but the impact is not. The book awakened a hunger in my blood I couldn’t quite comprehend, some years before I’d come to realise myself as gay, and even longer yet before I was comfortably out.

So much of our identity is bound up in our memories. And yet those memories are often suspect, tainted by forgetfulness as much as tectonic shifts in how we see ourselves and desire to be seen by others; in how we tell our own stories.

American playwright and TV showrunner Rolin Jones (Weeds, United States of Tara) grasps the inherent riches of an unreliable narrator by the throat in his deliciously wicked AMC+ TV series, sinking his teeth deep into how immortality might further complicate the lies, deliberate or otherwise, told by the coven of vampires at its no-longer-beating heart.

This is the twisted tale of too-good-for-this-vamps-life Louis de Pointe du Lac (Game of Thrones actor Jacob Anderson) and his savagely narcissistic maker Lestat de Lioncourt (Australian Sam Reid); of their broken ‘child’ Claudia (Delainey Hayles, replacing Bailey Bass in season two) and the ‘boy’, San Francisco-based reporter Daniel Molloy, to whom Louis relays his story once more with feeling, to Eric Bogosian in the present and Luke Brandon Field in flashback.

And then there’s Armand. Introduced in season one as butler-cum-acolyte Rashid (Assad Zaman), he unmasked himself as Louis’ controlling boo number two in the finale. A Days of our Lives-style reveal, it was exactly as campily fantastic as the late Rice surely intended, setting the scene for season two with a moustache-twirling wink. Watch the trailer.

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