Posted in: AMC, Current News, TV | Tagged: Talamasca, The Vampire Lestat

Talamasca Showrunners: How "The Vampire Lestat" Easter Egg Happened

Talamasca: The Secret Order showrunners Mark Lafferty and John Lee Hancock on how "The Vampire Lestat" music ended up in Episode 5.

Back in October, Anne Rice's Talamasca: The Secret Order co-showrunner Mark Lafferty teased that the show's fifth episode (S01E05: "The Puzzle Palace") would have a very interesting easter egg for fans of AMC's Sam Reid, Jacob Anderson, Delainey Hayles, Assad Zaman, and Eric Bogosian-starring Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat (aka, "Interview with the Vampire" Season 3). While discussing how The Vampire Lestat, "Talamasca," and Mayfair Witches weave characters and storylines together, Lafferty advised fans to listen very carefully to the music playing in the background. "If a viewer is listening very closely in episode 5, they might hear something coming through the speakers of a bar that is a direct tie to another of the series, and might also give somebody some residuals from Talamasca," he shared. "If they're listening at just the right time, they just might hear a track or two that comes from Lestat."

That's precisely what they got, with Helen (Elizabeth McGovern) entering a pub, nodding to the bartender, and then proceeding to make her way into the bathroom to retrieve an "equalizer" (translation: gun) waiting for her in a condom dispensing machine. And what was that playing in the pub when Helen entered? Yup, it was "Long Face" from global rock star Lestat de Lioncourt (Reid). Checking in with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss the season finale and the series overall, Lafferty and co-showrunner John Lee Hancock offered some insights into why they wanted to include Lestat's music, how it came about, how they worked on using it effectively, and how it speaks to the way "Anne Rice's Immortal Universe" is connected.

"Rolin [Jones, TVL's creator and showrunner] came into our writers' room. He had an office 10 feet from our room for much of our season one. He came in at some point and said, 'Can I play you guys these songs? These are what we're thinking about doing for season three.' So he played us a lot of them, and he said off the cuff, 'If you guys want to think about digging one of these in at some point, do it.' We put it in our brains, and then went away to shoot season one. We came back and were in post, and Tom Williams, who is an executive producer on all three shows, reminded us of these songs," Lafferty revealed.

He continued, "At first, we thought there was nowhere to really put it; we don't have a lot of cars or interior scenes where people are just playing music. Then it hit us: the bar. When Helen comes in to get the gun, of course, there's always music playing in a bar, and it would be fun for those who have keen hearing to get a little bit of a lick of that. The broader idea is, while all the shows don't constantly intersect, and while we're not constantly crashing into characters and storylines from the other two shows, we definitely want to make sure that people are aware that these shows exist in the same universe. And of course, there are things that you're going to get echoes of from the other shows in our show.

Hancock built on Lafferty's last point, noting that the connected universe is about much more than crossing over characters. "And it's not just crossover characters. It's more, like Mark just said, about something as consequential as that song being played, or the hotel in episode four is given a name that 'Interview' is now taking, and it may appear in an ad on a TV in the background of their show. It will be these six vampire-owned hotels, and they're being advertised. It's just the ingraining back and forth."

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