AMC’s latest series in their Anne Rice Immortal Universe focuses on one of the unifying elements that ties together her world of vampires and witches, the Talamasca. This ancient order studies the supernatural and has agents all over the globe. In the new series Talamasca: The Secret Order, our main character is Guy Anatole, a young psychic who gets coerced into the organization for a dangerous mission. We spoke to the actor portraying Guy, Nicholas Denton, about bringing this unique character, not from Rice’s novels, into the Immortal Universe:
Nerdist: To prepare for the role, did you actually research psychics, or anyone who says they’re psychic? Like the kind that help police out in investigations and the like?
Nicholas Denton: I don’t really know how you research someone who’s a mind reader. I think I came to it from a place of his always believing that he had a mental illness. He always believed that there was something wrong with him. And so, I did do a little bit of work into delving into different kind of mental illnesses for him. And the stress and the anxiety and the pressure of that. But I met with a spy, which was quite interesting. It helped me a lot to kind of access that quality. So when we were progressing in his journey of learning to be a spy, I kind of knew some of the tactics and techniques that would help with tracking someone. But I tried to hopefully make the mind-reading as realistic as possible. I didn’t meet a mind reader. I have been to psychics before, though.
The series gives some of Guy’s tragic backstory, but it leaves other things a bit of a mystery. Did you fill in some of the blanks for your character with any backstory you created for him when playing him on the show?
Denton: When you figure out the things that you and the character really care about, you start putting things in place. So, figuring out if Guy really cares about family, or cares about honesty and respect. Then you start to see what in the script is concerning him. So the stuff with the betrayal, with Helen, the Talamasca, and the lying. The fact that his life has not been his own. But what I do as Nicholas is try to figure out the concerns of that character that I relate to. What concerns do I face that I can access him from? So if I did a lot of backstory, it all came from a natural place. He’s not a very guarded character. From the middle of episode one, he’s adrift. So he doesn’t really have many other options, but just to go forth and suffer whatever comes his way.
Most of your scenes, I think, are with Elizabeth McGovern. And she plays almost a maternal figure to you in a way by the end. Can you talk about what it was like creating that dynamic with such a legendary actress?
Denton: I remember watching her in Ordinary People and Ragtime. And so I was a big fan of hers when I went in. When we were in Manchester, we had a couple of weeks rehearsing together with John Lee, figuring out the dynamic and the relationship, and it didn’t feel maternal. It felt like we were friends, it felt like we were a true kind of team that was working together. When we got to that first day of shooting, we shot in Suffolk Park in Liverpool, which was matching for Central Park in New York. And we were doing our first scene, which was when Guy approaches Helen after he’s just seen his adopted mother in Florida, Guy says, “How did you know my family? How did you know everything about me?”
Guy sits down next to her and tells her that everything that he’s done has all been bullshit. And she says she kind of did something on a line read, which was very moving and very affecting, and it felt like it was like, you are my kid in a way, and “I got you and I’m really sorry that I’ve put you through this, but I really, I want you to fly. I want you to flourish.” I didn’t know where we were going to go with that, but I’m glad, because it means that Helen cares about him. And she really does have something deep inside of her that hurts her, and she’s conflicted as well.
This show differs from the other Anne Rice Immortal Universe shows as it’s not based on any one book of hers. Did you find it liberating to create a character from scratch? Or did you ever wish you had a book to fall back on?
No, I’m so happy to have a character from scratch. I think it’s also from [series creators and showrunners] John Lee Hancock and Mark Lafferty, because they created this character, they created Guy. But I think the fact that they trusted me to do what I wanted with him was really nice. It’s quite a safe environment, a secure environment, and I’ve got these great actors and characters that are surrounding him.
And it isn’t until the middle of episode two that he starts to take things into his own hands, being like, “I can’t allow these beings that exist outside of me to control my life or to control who I am. I have these feelings for the injustice that’s been done towards me that I’ve never felt before. And I’m going to go after something here. I’m going to try and dig deep into this and uncover the truth about what this organization is. Just why the hell did they do this to me, and who I am, and who Guy is.”
AMC shot most of the series in the UK, as that’s where the Talamasca motherhouse is. Do you feel it helped to shoot on location for this series, instead of somewhere in Canada, which is the usual for these shows?
It was very powerful. The location is a character in itself in a way. So I’ve always found it very easy. It’s easier to shoot on location than it is to shoot in a studio. I’d never really done it that much until we did a couple of scenes in this at Space Studios. But really, you do feel the difference.
Talamasca: The Secret Order premieres on AMC and AMC+ on October 26.