Maisie Richardson-Sellers is in new territory with Talamasca: The Secret Order.
Not only is AMC’s Anne Rice TV series a completely new story not based on any of the author’s books, but Richardson-Sellers is also getting to do something she’s never done before in her career, despite making her name in multiple other supernatural TV universes including the Arrowverse and The Vampire Diaries spinoff The Originals.
“What I like about it is I’m playing a human, which is fun,” Richardson-Sellers tells Entertainment Weekly. “It’s my first time being in that universe but not being the supernatural creature. I’ve been superheroes, I’ve been witches, vampires, stuck in witches’ bodies, but I haven’t been a human around them, and it does give you a heightened awareness of your mortality.”
Talamasca is AMC’s third TV show based on Rice’s beloved The Vampire Chronicles book series, following Interview With the Vampire and Mayfair Witches. The new spinoff (airing Sundays 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. Richardson-Sellers stars as ambitious and morally ambiguous Talamasca agent Olive, a master of disguise and handler to new recruit Guy (Nicholas Denton).
David Gennard/AMC
“Even though Olive’s weapon is her brain, she’s so smart and she’s laser-focused on her mission, she’s mortal, unlike the people that she’s up against,” the actor says. “It adds a new kind of danger and really raises the stakes for me as a performer and also within the world.”
While the series follows vampires, witches, telepaths, and other supernatural beings, Richardson-Sellers loves how the world is still “grounded in reality.”
“It feels to me like this is completely believable, this could happen,” she explains. “These people could be living among us, the Talamasca could be operating. It’s very relevant in a creepy way. It’s contemporary, it’s gritty, it’s earthbound. It has that real classic spy-thriller suspense and mystique and mystery and high stakes, and yet there’s a supernatural element to it, so it allows us to really go into the emotions and the vulnerabilities and the real nuance of human interaction whilst having the love that we do of vampires and otherworldly creatures and witches.”
David Gennard/AMC
While Richardson-Sellers had almost no information about the role when she auditioned, she’s thrilled with who Olive has turned out to be across the six-episode first season.
“It was one of those clandestine auditions where you don’t really get much context, which I kind of love because you get to fill in the gaps for yourself,” the actor says. “I knew that she was this Talamasca agent, very deft with information, and very much skilled in the old tradition of spycraft, be that disguises and going undercover and all that clandestine work. And then the rest, I was like, ‘Okay, let’s play.'”
Throughout the first three episodes, not much has been revealed about Olive. But Richardson-Sellers teases that much more will be revealed in the back half of the season.
“I love how she is a mystery,” the actor says. “She’s so multilayered and multifaceted, so you are constantly adjusting and learning throughout the whole season new sides of her personality and her motives. She’s a lone wolf. She really exists within the gray. I think for her, there’s no such thing as good and evil. It’s all about her own personal moral compass, and she believes that is sharper and more accurate than any kind of global or institution’s moral compass.”
While she can’t reveal much about the final three episodes, she says there is going to be a massive action scene that gave her chills during filming.
“There’s this huge fight scene later in the season down by the docks, and there’s about 50 witches and other people who are having this big fight,” she says. “It was just so cool. I get to watch it from a bridge above, so I was looking down and I was like, ‘Look at how much fun we have.’ That was a really special, beautiful moment that was very sort of humbling when you look at the scale of things.”
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As for where the first season is heading in the finale, Richardson-Sellers warns that no one is safe… not even Olive.
“Everyone is at risk in this season,” she teases. “There’s really clever twists. You’re constantly left playing catch up and trying to figure out who is good, who’s bad, what does good even mean within this world, how do we define it, who can we trust? It’s a real crescendo. It ramps up and it will leave you, I hope and believe, really gunning for a season 2. Everything is a perfect setup for the next chapter. And I think season 2, it’s only going to get bigger and better.”
Find out what happens next when Talamasca: The Secret Order airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and AMC+.
