Mom, Prison Break and Armageddon actor William Fichtner says he loves that his Talamasca vampire Jasper is a completely new character operating in a beloved, established universe created by the late Anne Rice.

ADVERTISEMENT
Wrapping up its first season Sunday on AMC and AMC+, the contemporary drama follows the shadowy, well-funded, titular organization that monitors the actions of immortal creatures in Rice's Vampire Chronicles and Mayfair Witches novels and the TV series they inspired.

Nicholas Denton plays Talamasca investigator Guy and Elizabeth McGovern plays his supervisor Helen. John Lee Hancock and Mark Lafferty are co-showrunners, while Mark Johnson serves as executive producer.

"To my knowledge, there is nothing about Jasper in previous Anne Rice writings and John Lee took off with that and, so, I kind of had a blank slate, which was lovely," Fichtner, 68, said at a recent New York Comic press conference.

"To me, there's nothing more fun than discovering a journey, fresh. It's not like I had to mirror something or come up with a new interpretation," he explained. "I really could walk where I wanted to go and, with some great directional guidance, there's no better path to be on for an actor than what happened with this show and the character of Jasper."

Fichtner said he never read any of Rice's books before he was sent the script for Talamasca.

"It wasn't until I knew I was going to meet these gentlemen here," he said, indicating Hancock and Lafferty, "that I watched Season 1 and 2 of Interview."

"So, by the time I blazed through that in a matter of a week, I was pretty excited about meeting them," he recalled. "We are not making Interview. It's a different show. It's Talamasca, a different world, but I was excited about where we were going."

FOLLOW REALITY TV WORLD ON THE ALL-NEW GOOGLE NEWS!
Reality TV World is now available on the all-new Google News app and website. Click here to visit our Google News page, and then click FOLLOW to add us as a news source!
Fichtner said that, like the creatures in the other shows based on Rice's work, Jasper realizes immortality comes at a price.

"I think Jasper is having a good time," he laughed.

"It's lonely," he added more seriously. "There's certain things that you just don't get to have. You get other things, but it's like everything else in life. It's a big give and take."

Perhaps best exemplifying this is Jasper's relationship with Guy.

"There's such a great buildup in this season of Talamasca to the character of Guy, who, certainly, has heard about who Jasper is, but it's kind of a surprise to me, eventually, when we really connect," Fichtner said.

"I find it just an absolutely fascinating set of circumstances because Jasper's very clear about the things that he wants, but he's certainly open to anybody that comes along that he thinks can help them and when he meets Guy, this is almost like: 'Oh, I get the cake and a cherry on top, too. This could be really cool,'" he added. "That's what was written and that's what we got to play and that's a lot of fun."

Denton described the dynamic between the two characters as being filled with "peaks and troughs."

"it has a really, quite complex conclusion to it. It'll be very interesting for audiences to watch that because there's a lot of mixed emotions throughout," Denton added.

Fichtner agreed.

"I don't want to give away too much, but we kind of run the gamut on good times, bad times," he said.

While there are plenty of splashy, intense scenes in Season 1, Fichtner said it was the smaller moments that were his favorite.

"There's subtle moments throughout where I'm like, 'Wow, that's really cool,'" he added. "Sure, bigger things happen, but there's a lot of intimate glances and looks that speak volumes."