It's in the news today, but it was actually on TV Reload, the podcast last week Their Life. Welcome back to TV Reload. My name is Benjamin Norris, and this is your podcast to get all the inside goss on the popular TV shows you may be watching from around the world. Undeniably, our TV sets are a major part of our home entertainment, and yet very little is known
about how our favorite shows get made. However, each week I've been finding guests that want to dive just that little bit deeper into the shows they're currently making, so that you can hear all their exclusive stories and gain access to the biggest names in television. I want to thank you for downloading or subscribing to this podcast. I love hearing your feedback, so make sure you leave a
review or a comment on your chosen podcast platform. On today's podcast, I have Esther Spaulding, the AMC Plus showrunner from the exciting new series Mayfeel Witches that is adapted from the massively popular and Rice novels. Esther is an American author's, screenwriter, and poet and now has a fantastic career in tel division writing and is the showrunner of the Mayfield Witches, working on shows like The Bridge, Masters
of Sex and the reboot of Party of Five. You would have seen her work over the years, and this show, which has a double episode dropping on AMC plus this Sunday, is definitely worth watching. I will talk to Esther about her career and what it was like to write for the Party of Five reboot. Esther will also talk about the process of adapting the Mayfield Witch's novels and how she chose what to include. We will also talk about Tom Cruise, Harry Hamlin, Lisa Rinner, and how David Lynch
inspired some of the Mayfield Witches. Plus we'll get plenty of exclusives from behind the scenes. Anyway, let's bring Esther into the podcast and I hope you enjoyed this episode. Hi, Esther, how are you.
I'm wonderful. Hi, thank you for talking to me.
I'm pretty excited to be talking to you because not only am I loving Mayfield Witches, but I remembered that you produced the reboot of Party of Five, which I really loved, like I rewatched it a few times.
Like Mayfair Witches, which you know, everyone who's worked on the show are fans of the books. Party of Five had so many fans, and it was such a labor of love. It was great. I wish we'd had more than the one season.
Was it fun though? To work with Amy and Christopher though, because you know, they were on the project right from the start in the first version.
And Amy and I have written together a lot. We worked on a show together called Masters of Sex, which was set in the nineteen sixties and was about sex researchers, and we became really good friends doing that. So it was exciting to be able to do Party of Five together as well, and to like kind of go back to her roots with Chris when they were writing partners when they were on Party of Five together.
Yeah, had you been a big fan of the source material of that, Like had you watched Party of Five when it was originally on television or did you rewatch it? You know, getting ready to work with them.
It was completely new to me when I started work on the show, and it was exciting. It was one of those kind of nostalgia tours back to something that I was not in touch with when it happened, but you know it's like, oh, that's what people were talking about, oh that moment. So yeah, it was wonderful.
It's literally my childhood. It was the first show that you know, anything had ever really spoken to me and I felt really seen, and it actually was the start of my love of television. So forgive me while we're talking Mayfield Witches to keep talking about it.
I'm going to pass that on to Amy and Chris. That is wonderful to hear. It hit me in my life at a time when I was too broke town a TV set, and of course nobody was watching on computers or laptops or phones back then, so I missed it. You know, later acquired a television, but it was it was too late.
It kind of worked in our favor, though, because I'm assuming without a television, you just got to work on your writing and your reading.
I started as a literature student. I studied, you know, Renaissance literature. I just did so many things before I became a television writer.
I was going to ask you how did that happen? Because I mean, you, yes, you're a writer, and I read that you're a teacher, But then what was it about television that made you want to write in that media?
I was trying to make a living and I was writing poetry and publishing. I had published a novel and I was just, you know, like trying to have a job that would support those things. And I found my way to someone who had started a TV show, who was a showrunner looking for an assistant, and so I thought, this is a great way to support my habit. I'll be around writers whatever. So I applied to be this showrunner's assistant, and the showrunner wouldn't hire me because I
did not type fast enough. This was a long time ago and there was typing. But he loved my poetry books and was surprised to find out that I was a pre med student. I had been pre med and it was a show about a corner. So he invited me to come and sit in the writing room, and I completely fell in love with the process. I mean, it's like being paid to play dolls all day, which was what you know, if you could do as an adult what you love to do as a kid, would
just sit in a room and make up stories. It was so fun, it was so collaborative, and I just never looked back. And he was very generous and you know, brought me into the writer's room, gave me a By the end of the the first season a script to co write, and I kind of got my start that way.
What shows had you watched growing up and had any of the shows that you'd been watching growing up or in your young adult life, has that inspired you in the type of writing and producing that you want to do well.
I'll tell you that one of the things that I one of the shows that first hooked me on that like, I must watch television every week and I have to sit down with a group of friends to watch it. Whatever was La Law And so to get to have Harry Hamlin on Mayfair Witch's was such a weird kind of coming around the wheel of life, you know, it seemed so far away. I watched it obsessively, in particular the year that I was in graduate school studying Renaissance literature.
Never thought I would be a TV writer. So yeah, it's really exciting to be working with Harry Hamlin. That was also a year that I watched a lot of Twin Peaks, which is a favorite favorite show of mine, and that really got me in the grip of kind of serial TV watching and a very different tone from Mayfair Witches, but that kind of feel of horror and strangeness. And we talked a lot about Twin Peaks when we were talking about like, what is the psychological space that
Deer dras in when she's in thorazine? What is that space in her brain where she talks? And it was sort of like it's a David Lynchian space. It's like that scene in Twin Peaks. Whatever. So those were two that in particular feel resonant for different reasons with this show.
And you know, I mean, I've so much television since then, but obviously when TV sort of broke into you know, mad Men and Breaking Bad and so on, the idea of working on a show for AMC is just absolutely thrilling to me because those are.
I remember my mom used to watch La Law on a Tuesday night and it was the first show that I was allowed to stay up and watch, and it was kind of a novelty that, you know, I couldn't really understand what was going on in La Law, but I felt really happy to be, you know, on the you know, grown up. And then funny that you've got Harry Hamlin looking you know young again. You've you've made him look quite youthful.
Right, took thirty years off of him in the pilot. He's yeah, he.
Was so obsessed with La Loay. You were like, do you know what, do you know what, Harry Hamlin, We're going to make you look exactly like that again. And he would have signed on the double line.
And he was so happy too, because when we shot that scene. I went to his trailer the day before and I said, or maybe it was a few days before, but said, okay, so it can be a snake or it can be an alligator in the scene with you in your party, which would you prefer. So he got to audition, you know, a snake versus as an alligator for that scene in the pilot, and he said it was it was one of the most exciting, uh, you know, like days getting ready for set.
I have referred to him now as Harry Hamlin because his wife's on the Real Housewives and she only refers to him as Harry Hamlin, and I was wondering, does everyone refer to him as Harry Hemlin Totally?
It seems like, yeah, we have we have Lisa's habit now it has to be both names.
Had you seen Harry Hamlin when he has his little I had not, but I.
Have now I can at least say I've watched the birthday party episode his Birthday.
I love it. How did Mayfiel Witches come about?
AMC had optioned Anne Rice's material. They just felt like, in all of these books and there are so many of them, and they create this enormous universe that overlaps and weaves together, that there was, you know, the riches of all these stories to be told on their network. And Mark Johnson, who's done so much work with them, He you know, he was the producer on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul Halt and Catch Fire, so he's worked a lot with AMC, was brought in to produce
the Anne Rice material. So I was I was, you know, connected through Mark and sent the books through Mark and a mutual friend Michelle Ashford, who helped me write the pilot. Like Amy Littman a Party of Five, Michelle had also worked on Masters of Sex. She was the showrunner on it. So we had collaborated a lot and wrote together a lot that was a very fun, tight knit, small writer's room.
And so Michelle and I and Michelle had worked with Mark and the two of us talked to him about how we would approach the material, and we were offered the job. So it was a chance to work with another woman and collaborate and write about witches and of course like be in the extraordinary world of Anne Rice and her characters and her New Orleans. And I love New Orleans so much. I love shooting there. I had shot a show there called on Becoming a God in
Central Florida, which was set in Florida. So we shot New Orleans as Florida. And to be able to embark on a project where not only could we shoot New Orleans as New Orleans, but that it was Anne Rice's New Orleans, I mean, you know, she in some ways kind of gave you know, she's one of the people who's given the mythology of that city back to the city. And so to be able to do that and with a crew who loved the material, were devoted to the material, was really really thrilling.
People go one two of these places because I went.
On a ghost tour myself when I was there shooting last night, and I kept thinking they're going to be talking about locations from art. It was very weird. I was like, by next year, there will be you know, our interview with a vampire, because of course there's also interview with a vampire on AMC now, and you know, if we were lucky, our Mayfair Witch is being referred to in the tour.
Had you read the books back in the day, like what was your relationship with Anne Ross?
I had not read the Witch's books. I had not read Mayfair Witches when Mark put them in my hands, and so it was like a whole new you know. I described the beginning of it and starting to read and it was like, oh, somebody threw open the doors of Aladdin's cave and it's like mounds of gold and treasure chests and jewelry and lamps and all this, and then you think, okay, we have eight episodes to do this book, Like how am I going to possibly take the riches out of this room and do any kind
of justice to any of it? You know. So it was it was heartbreaking in many ways because there was just so much that we couldn't do in one season. We knew that the first season was going to be the first book, and the second season would be the second book and so on. So yeah, that was the hard part. But it was you know, to be able to have somebody hand you the books and say what would you do with this? Was thrilling.
I read the original trilogy in nineteen ninety four. You know, my mother was a child educator, and mum really wanted us to read, so anything we said that we would read or would read didn't matter what the age breakat was. She was like, yep, you can read that. And I was quite traumatized. I mean, I loved it because I was disappearing into such a very well written world.
It's amazing that my mother was exactly the same way. Any book you want, take it off the shelf. It doesn't matter. Words can't hurt you. You know, that's a but it's interesting that you were terrified.
I was fourteen, and I'd made a really big leap from you know, children's novels really to then reading something that was black. And it all came about because of Interview with a Vampire. You know, that was the year that was coming out. So I was like, well, I hadn't seen that film yet, but I knew that the Anne Rice books, you know, was the source material for
Interview with the Vampire. So I was like, oh, okay, So I read Interview with the Vampire first, and then I read The Vampire of stat But then I went and read the Witches because I had this roll Dal obsession with the witches. So ultimately I went from what I'm saying to you is I went from roll Dale's Witches.
Switches. Wow, that's a chef.
Like giving children acid, you know, and do all.
Is edgy too, but you know, it's like another level with Ann Race.
I love Dan Rice as well, because I also loved how vocal she was about her work. Do you remember how outraged she was when she heard Tom Cruise was going to play the Vampile of Stead.
I remember reading she took out a full page ad in one of the newspapers, a national newspaper about it. Yeah, I'm yeah, terrifying. Yeah, I would. When I was living in New Orleans during the shoot, I was living about eight blocks from the house on First Street where she wrote the Mayfair Witch's books, and pretty much every day, definitely at the beginning when I first got there. Later production got crazy, but I would say close to every day.
I got up in the morning and I walked to this loop went past her house, and I would say, I'm trying, Anne, I'm trying my best. You know, I'm like, I know that house has ghosts in it, so it's like, if you're there, know that I'm trying, you know.
Helps you understand that world a little bit more, just being in the actual place. And whilst I probably don't really believe in ghosts and all the rest of it.
Our locations manager grew up in that house and he said that there was a ghost that used to come and pat his hair before he fell asleep when he was a kid, and his parents said to him, Oh, it's a nice ghost. Just let it pat your hair, don't worry about it.
What do you think Ann would have thought of the AMC plus tellings of you know, her work.
I don't. I mean, no one can know. We can only just hope that we're you know, I'm sure she would have felt like eight episodes wasn't enough. We can only hope that we did the best we could with that.
What choices or conversations did you have about, you know, the source material and where you wanted to take it, because you were mentioning about how there was so much to choose from, you know, what was that selection process like when you got into the writer's room, so one thing, you know.
There's a huge section in the middle of the first book that is like all thirteen generations are the first twelve generations of the witches, and I knew there was no way we could contain all of that material, so I thought, Okay, I would like to try to do one of the generations, which is Suzanne's generation in Scotland, the origin story of Lash's relationship to the witches, and to try to do justice to that. So that was how the idea of having these little bits at the
beginning of the episodes about Suzanne was born. And then my hope was to bring Suzanne's story into Rowan's story so that it mattered in some way in the present day, and that was through the character of Cyprian. And then the other thing was just to in some way gesture to all of those generations. In the finale, when Rowan is kind of like on her way to the Witching Hour and Lashers like sending her on this psychological journey, we could see some of those rooms and some of
those women in those generations. So that's just an example of you know, sort of like trying to respect the source material as best we could with the compressed storytelling and with needing to make it feel like television other things where you know, we knew we wanted to start with Rowan's birth in this kind of past sequence in the pilot, and to end with Rowan giving birth at the end of the season, which is how the first
book ends. So those two things felt like the right book ends for the season, and there were just a
bunch of choices like that. I thought, you know, midway through the season, that's when she's Deirdre's funeral, the family, meeting everyone in the family, and at the end of it, she kind of goes through the looking glass into the second half of the season, which where things become much more witchy and she really gets in touch with who she is, the good, you know, the evil, all of it that's in her, the destructive force, the creative force.
And so on.
So it was those I guess there were sort of certain pillars and partitions in thinking through what eight episodes can do that help divide the material.
And the cost is great. You know, I'm loving Alexandra Jadaria. You know, she's a fantastic actress. I've loved her and basically everything that she's done, what might do right for the role.
Do you think she just like, you know, she has to be able to play witchy. She has, first of all, those extraordinary eyes, but she also has to be able to be a surgeon believably at the beginning and feel like a professional woman who can you know, is commanding in a room and all that stuff, and then pivot to being emotional and vulnerable and close with her mother
and those turns. I mean, Michelle Ashford and I met with Alex and we were both just absolutely blown away by her and thought, she can do all of that. She can do that I'm going to be scary and witchy and kill someone part, She can do the vulnerable part. She can sometimes do them in the same scene. You know. It's there's so much going on in her face and
behind her eyes and her expression. She's just extraordinary. So that was exciting, and we were thrilled to get Jack Houston as Lasher because he really has the charisma necessary to that character who's kind of a you know, a ghostly spectral rock star essentially, which Jack is. Teresa is just you know, someone who I saw audition on tape and he was, you know, my mind just for months as we were auditioning other parts and so on, kept coming back to him and thinking, that guy really made
me know how to write the character better. He's really great, so we were excited that he was interested in doing it.
All of these people help you believe this world, I mean, and that's you know. I guess they're the best actors to be able to do this, but they really do exist in that world. I wanted to ask you, though, what are your thoughts on witches themselves? Do you believe the witches really exist in the in the real world.
I you know, I grew up in Hawaii and there is a feeling when I'm there that I have that there is much more in the universe than is you know, dreamt of in scientific philosophy and so on. And when I'm in New Orleans, I feel that same feeling. I don't feel it everywhere. I don't feel it in particular in Los Angeles, but when there are certain places I am in the world, I think like, yes, this is possible,
this is this kind of magic is possible. And maybe it's just me, you know, my imagination or dreaming, but I go to that place in certain in certain places in the world, what.
Is something from behind the scenes, something that we won't say, something that the audience might appreciate, kind of like a maybe a funny story of your experience of making the Mayfield, which is wow.
I wish I wish I'd had time to think on this before. This is so tricky. I don't know, I was so My most exciting sort of scene that we shot was the cemetery scene, and there are so many musicians in it who are New Orleans musicians. We found this incredible group, the Skull and Bones Gang, with this guy Big Chief Sunpi, who's written a lot of this music and has drawn on this and they perform all the time, but they've never been filmed, so to have him.
And then I had watched this show that was a cooking show about food in New Orleans and seen this young burlesque dancer who goes by the name Grandma Fun on this show and I was like, she's really interesting. We got her to come in and be the woman with the shotglasses. So that piece, in particular, k has a whole bunch of New Orleans talent, so many New Orleans actors and musicians that to me, it's like a really,
really fun homage to the city. And then of course we're shooting in this cemetery there's about three blocks from Anne Rice's house, who was like the most New Orleans, New Orleans moment of the shoot.
Forget the green screen, We're going to the real place. And I have to say thank you so much for your generosity with your time and chatting about this series. I'm obsessed. I'm up to episode four. I have to leave you now myself to go and finish the entire series.
But people, it's weird, enjoy it.
And then I've got my girlfriend, my best girlfriend, coming around to watch your film, which I only watched the trailer four this morning and I was like, we were looking for something to watch tonight, so I'm going to be watching that, which looks brilliant. So anyway, congratulations on this series.
Thanks so much, wonderful to talk to you.