Mayfair Witches From Page to Screen

The Mayfair Witches house is real And it neighbors Anne Rices former home! You may copy and paste the URL of the article URL below to read on Fancy Pants Homes:

https://www.fancypantshomes.com/movie-homes/the-mayfair-witches-house-in-real-life/

Let's start with the house.

The house used in the new show is not the actual house Anne Rice lived in and set her Mayfair Witches books in. BUT. It has a lot of structural similarities, doesn't it?

Soria-Creel House, Prytania Street, New Orleans - NOLA.com The house used is apparently about half a mile from the Brevard-Rice house. It is the Soria-Creel house on Prytania Street. A little over a year ago, I was doing some research in the very beginning stages of rebuilding the site here, and it was sort of reminiscent of when Michael Curry shows Rowan Mayfair books about some of the historic homes surrounding hers.

There are other homes in the Garden District that are townhouses like the Brevard-Rice house, and look very similar in details. Details such as the row of four columns on the upper and lower galleries on the fronts of the homes, a main entrance on one side with two parlor windows next to it, and similar basic floor plans. Of those houses like the Brevard-Rice house, I could see that the double parlor was quite a prominent feature in them.

The Soria-Creel house is a bit more ornate in places, and the only thing I saw that was a major difference on its facade was the doorway. The Egyptian keyhole doorway, that is. However, the Brevard-Rice house was not available for filming for whatever reason (I do not know the reason, although I have seen the house has recently received quite a paint job). Some of the houses similar to the Brevard-Rice house do have Egyptian keyhole doorways at the entrance, but not all of them.

So far, I recognize Rowan Mayfair's focused anger being the unintentional source of the sudden deaths of some of the people in her life. You can see the aneurysm happening, and there's no question as to what has happened to these people. It's what drives her to search for her own history to answer these troubling questions. We see Ellie, and then we see Dierdre Mayfair, both at the time of Rowan's birth and, presumably, just before she dies.

It took me a moment, but I also recognized Harry Hamlin. I remember him in a movie made for TV years ago called Deceptions. He was married to his co-star from that movie, Nicollette Sheridan, for a while, if I recall. He was on L.A. Law in the late 1980's to the early 1990's. And if you are a fan of early Hollywood and ghosts of 1920's flappers, he had an uncredited role in a film called Maxie, a 1985 movie starring Glenn Close.

I think I just spotted on Hamlin's list of credits that a movie had been made of the prequel to Flowers In the Attic?!

I might have seen the actress playing Rowan, Alexandra Daddario, in something else. The White Lotus? So far, so good, though. In the novels, Rowan Mayfair had pale blonde hair and gray eyes, but it always seemed to me that this was something that indicated what traits she had inherited from her Mayfair ancestors rather than something that had a pivotal role in the story. In the book, though, it was Carlotta who insisted the baby be named Rowan, despite the priest's insistence that it was not a proper Christian name.

Rice once said the name Rowan was chosen because she wanted to portray the character as fairly androgynous. The rowan tree has appeared in Greek, Norse and Welsh mythology and has long been believed to protect occupants from evil if a branch of a rowan tree is hung over entrances. Decidedly un-Christian, especially since this was the reason Carlotta insisted the baby be named Rowan.

Another difference is that it was Dierdre Mayfair who insisted her child retain her surname of Mayfair and her claim on the Mayfair legacy or she would not cooperate with the adoption. The film does, however, show Ellie as a young woman being given Rowan, and being told she must change their names from Mayfair. Ellie was a Mayfair in both book and film, and this seems to have been kept.

Does it matter if Rowan first spotted Lasher on the deck of the house in Tiburon, California or the deck of the Sweet Christine? In both scenes, when Rowan wakes and realizes something strange is going on, the Pacific ocean is very turbulent, causing the floor Rowan is standing on to move around. It's a given this will happen onboard a seaworthy vessel, yes. The Tiburon house in the book is described as being able to gently move on its stilts, as the house is built on a hillside--and over the water.

There has been no mention of Ellie having a spouse, and the only character so far who has to wear gloves to avoid inadvertent peeks into residual aftereffects of events long passed is in New Orleans, not San Francisco. It's hard to say just yet whether or not modifications to this early part of the story will help or hinder, but I haven't been scared off yet!

I even found a book on Garden District homes that I plan to add to the Suggested Reading which had some fascinating historical photos of some of the houses.

One photo in this book was of two young ladies sitting on a gallery in front of a massive window with shutters like the ones on the Brevard-Rice house. It was not that house they were at in the photo, but it gave a good idea of just how massive those windows were and are...

I'm guessing this might have been why instead of a small, thumbnail shaped emerald set in a rectangular or square setting, the Mayfair Emerald is actually a setting of smaller emeralds in what looks like an enormous skeleton key. To compensate for not being able to feature the doorway in the film, or simply that film is a different medium. You have a finite amount of time to tell a story, but it can't be told only in words. Imagery helps tell the story. Settings, costumes, props of any kind help tell the viewer what is going on, what might be going on, what might not be going on. A piece of jewelry that looks ordinary might not be able to do that in such a limited amount of time, hence making the piece of jewelry something unique and symbolic.

To be honest, I haven't yet gone into the series in any real detail as I wanted to see where it went before I did. There were a few things that jumped out at me along the way, and I'll do my best to rattle off some of them off the top of my head.

I'm thrilled to have a closer look at the Mayfair Emerald in the form of a key necklace, and it is quite interesting.
The origins of the key in the series seems to have been Scotland. A key Lasher used to (figuratively or literally) unlock a cage Suzanne Mayfair was kept in after (presumably) being convicted of witchcraft.

Lasher's connection to the Mayfair Witches did begin in Scotland when Suzanne, the village midwife, attempted to call up the spirit at the center of a local legend but pronounced his name incorrectly. Instead of the saint, she ended up with Lasher.

Who taught a midwife how to do this?

A witch hunter unwittingly taught her this on a trip through the village, and thought he was cautioning her against it.

Unfortunately, Suzanne was indeed burned as a witch in the book. It was her daughter Deborah, whose father is believed to have been the Earl of Donnelaith, who was taken out of Donnelaith by a mysterious scholar, Petyr van Abel.

Deborah was spared from being burned at the stake, probably due to her young age (12), but also because no one wanted to take the chance of burning at the stake the Earl's daughter.

Petyr van Abel took Deborah to the Talamasca motherhouse Amsterdam. Here, this mysterious order of scholars, of which van Abel is one, made a startling discovery. Deborah had already made Lasher's acquaintance, and brought him with her.

It was in Amsterdam where Deborah saw a beautiful necklace with an emerald pendant. Its physical description was that it was about the size of one's thumbnail, set in gold, on a gold chain. The necklace was most certainly something Deborah could never have afforded to buy herself.

However, it wasn't long afterward that Petyr van Abel discovered that Lasher had somehow acquired the emerald necklace for Deborah. Eventually, Deborah went out on her own, taking Lasher with her. She had sat for Rembrandt, who painted her portrait that the Talamasca later acquired and authenticated, then married Roelant, another painter many years her senior.

When Roelant died, Deborah saw Peter van Abel in Amsterdam one last time before she married the Comte de Montcleve and moved to France. This was when she conceived Charlotte by Petyr Van Abel.

The emerald key above looks like it has some symbols on it. I haven't looked at what they are yet.

See this image on Lexie Jordan Fine Jewelry: https://lexiejordanjewelry.com/blogs/posts/how-to-tell-if-an-emerald-is-real

Off the top of my head, though, here's an interesting factoid about genuine emeralds.

Africa (particularly Egypt) and South America have in common pyramids as royal tombs, but they also have something else in common: emerald mines. In fact, the emerald was a favorite gemstone of Cleopatra VII. But here is an interesting factoid you might not have heard of: oil.

Most of us living today are used to seeing gemstones cut and polished by jewelers, and emeralds from jewelers are a deep green with some clarity. That is, they are synthetic emeralds. Emeralds that came directly from mines are actually a bit murky looking in an interesting way. They can't be cleaned with a jewelry cleaner the way synthetic emeralds can.

That is because genuine emeralds have tiny little veins of oil in them. So when you go to clean or polish them, oils are used instead of cleaners of a detergent type. Those types of cleaners can dry out the oil in the veins and cause the emerald to crack, crumble.

Does this make a difference to the emerald key used in the series? Not necessarily.

The emeralds the key is set with don't glint and sparkle the way you would expect a gemstone to in modern jewelry. Emeralds are predominantly green, but can appear to be more of a dark teal color leaning towards green. But the gemstones seem to show up the way you would expect genuine emeralds to, especially when they are as old as the ones in the key.

But why did the series go with an emerald key on a chain instead of a necklace matching the one in the novels?

I'm going to take my usual guess at this one.

On a movie screen or a TV screen, you don't have the kind of time to describe why something appears and what makes it so important to the story the way you do in novels. The Mayfair emerald was the key to a doorway, and the doorway was the thirteenth Mayfair Witch.

A literal key would have to have figured in the history of the Mayfair witches in some "key" way. Unlocking a cage door, allowing for the continuation of the line of witches would be one way of doing that. Lasher, in the book, helped Deborah acquire the emerald necklace, which is the beginning of Lasher's assistance in acquisition of wealth of the Mayfair witches.

Deborah herself was not immune to the decisions and demands of those around her, as she was eventually convicted of witchcraft in France after her husband died of injuries in an accident caused by Lasher. He knew the man had been having an affair behind Deborah's back, and decided his death was what Deborah would have wanted.

To protect her oldest child, her daughter, Charlotte, Deborah lied to French authorities, telling them Charlotte had gone to Martinique with her husband, Antoine Fontenay. In reality, she had gone to Saint Domingue ("san domang"), Haiti, and had established an indigo plantation, Maye Faire.

Oddly, Petyr van Abel did not know it was to Deborah's own execution as a witch he was traveling to when he headed to the small French village. But when he traveled to Saint Domingue to warn Charlotte about Lasher, he found that she, too, had already made Lasher's acquaintance.

As I go further into the genealogy of the Mayfair family, I fully expect my ancestry software to choke on what happens next. It had to have been difficult to try to figure out how to explain the history of the Mayfair Witches in a way that made it easier to understand how and why it landed Rowan at the point in the story she found herself in.

Oh, this one is interesting.

Is anyone here an American Horror Story fan? If so, here is something interesting:

Alexandra Daddario as Stella Mayfair

Alexandra Daddario as Natacha Rambova

This was the only season of American Horror Story I've ever actually watched. It wasn't because of what the Hotel Cortez is in real life. I like almost anything to do with Old Hollywood, and in particular, silent Hollywood. I didn't realize this was the same actress who had played Natacha Rambova in this season of American Horror Story until I happened to come across it after the Mayfair Witches series aired.

In Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches, this seems to be Rowan in "the shoes of" her ancestor, Stella Mayfair. For those who have read the books, Stella Mayfair was officially the 10th Mayfair Witch, but there was something of a complication early on. Her older sister, Carlotta, was originally designated the 10th witch, but, she claimed, she resisted it.

What?

Let's go over what is most known about Carlotta. In the series, her father was said to have been a banker. In the books, her father was Judge Daniel McIntyre, and his wedding to Mary Beth Mayfair, the 9th witch and also Stella's mother, was said to have been the last big Mayfair wedding in their parish church. Carlotta became a lawyer like her father (judges are lawyers), and took the same street car to the same law firm every day of her working life well into her old age. And it was not the firm of Mayfair and Mayfair, founded by sons of Julien Mayfair (including Cortland, who was a lawyer in the books, as well).

Mary Beth Mayfair declared Stella the next designee of the Legacy, as "Stella has seen The Man". The Man being Lasher. After Mary Beth's death of cancer in 1925, it seemed her daughters were at each other's throats. Stella had already given birth to her daughter, Antha, in 1921, which obviously fueled what turned out to be a deadly sibling rivalry.

Let's fast forward to the fall of 1929. Yes, the time of the stock market crash, but that is not the crash that concerns the Mayfairs here.

Stella Mayfair was known for her parties, the kind most people think of when they think of the Roaring Twenties. She could afford a bootlegger, and one rumor was that Stella had had the Mayfair swimming pool filled completely with champagne for one party. This was the kind of party you can imagine hearing and seeing the Charleston at. Stella was a 1920's flapper, and often called people "ducky".

This was no environment for Antha to be growing up in, Carlotta would often argue, and most people would agree. Unfortunately, Carlotta didn't do much better herself.

Beth Grant as Carlotta Mayfair

On this night in the fall of 1929, there was a party, one which was attended by two of the Talamasca, Arthur Langry and Stuart Townsend. Yes, Antha was supposed to stay upstairs in her bedroom as it was, no doubt, past the bed time of an 8 year old girl. Whatever Stella's affection for her station in life, she did want to get away from certain aspects of it.

Her brother, Lionel, seemed to have grown very attached to Stella. The idea of her leaving the family home would make him distraught, something Carlotta knew. And somehow, Carlotta managed to trick and confuse Lasher, who could not stop Lionel standing on the main staircase and shooting Stella in the head as she stood in the double parlor of the Mayfair house. The commotion woke Antha, who came down the stairs just far enough to see her mother dead on the parlor floor while everyone was screaming and making hasty exits through doors, windows...

Then Lasher threw the customary storm he always did when a Mayfair witch died, which caused the electricity at the house to flicker and fail.

Arthur Langtry, who had apparently tried to get someone to get Antha away from the site of her dead mother, died of a heart attack in his stateroom on route back to England.

And Stuart Townsend, the young Talamasca investigator Stella wanted to help her leave?

Well...he didn't exactly leave, either.

Recall the room upstairs in the Mayfair house that had some of the most ghoulish "family heirlooms" you could imagine?

That room didn't just contain a doll made of parts of each Mayfair witch.

Which is another difference between the page and the screen.

In the series, it is one doll made from several parts of each Mayfair witch. In the books, it was an old chest, yes, but there was one doll for each witch. They really were made from bits of hair, bone, and blood of each witch, however. The oldest ones were so old that one could not handle them without them turning to dust.

But Stuart Townsend...he didn't leave the house, either. Because Carlotta killed him. How it is that no one ever smelled that, I don't know. But kill him she did, and left his body rolled up in an old rug to sit and liquefy onto the wooden floor for the next 60 years...when Rowan found him.

Tongayi Chirisa as Ciprien Grieve

Ciprien Grieve, who is not in the novels, but seems to be a mix of Michael Curry, Aaron Lightner and new character, saw a scene when he put his bare hands on the iron fence in front of the Mayfair house. He saw a woman hanging from a tree, as if she had committed suicide. The young woman he saw was Antha, Dierdre's mother.

Antha Mayfair had left New Orleans for New York City at a young age, where she met Sean Lacy. Sean Lacy's name is on the list of Mayfairs entombed in the crypt in the series, but in the novels, he was not a Mayfair. He and Antha lived together in Greenwich Village, where Antha hoped to make a career out of her writing. When Antha became pregnant, it seemed as if Sean Lacy was starting to get "cold feet" when he was killed. Antha ended up at Bellevue Hospital, and eventually returned to New Orleans with her baby, Dierdre.

One thing that no doubt made people question the claim that Antha had committed suicide was her conversation with the mail man earlier on the day she died. She seemed hopeful, happy, and mentioned she wanted to restore the Mayfair house. Even by 1941, the house seemed to be deteriorating. But there was something else.

In the books, Antha died when she "jumped" from the roof of the Mayfair house. But Red Lonigan, the owner of the funeral home who came to the house to collect Antha's body, saw something that could not have been caused by the fall alone, despite the injury to Antha's skull.

Her eye (put food DOWN) had clearly been clawed out.

But this was the Mayfair family. They could afford to answer questions with hush money.

Cameron Inman as young Dierdre Mayfair

The scenario of Carlotta Mayfair maintaining control of the Legacy Witch throughout childhood would continue into adulthood for Dierdre Mayfair. When Dierdre became pregnant with Rowan, her efforts to stop Carlotta from taking her baby from her would ultimately fail. Carlotta would then spend the next three decades convincing doctors that Dierdre was "mentally ill", in part by doing or saying whatever it took to trigger a reaction from Dierdre that she could claim was the result of mental illness. Dierdre was institutionalized for many years, until 1976, when she was brought home for good.

For the rest of Dierdre's life, she would be seen sitting comatose in her rocker on the side porch, a "nice bunch of carrots". Only those who knew the Mayfair family's history well had any idea that Dierdre was, in fact, the owner of the house and extremely wealthy in her own right.

Only when Rowan went to the Mayfair house after Dierdre's funeral did Carlotta admit all of this. She did so in a way that taunted Rowan, It was like she was saying, "See what I got away with? See how...powerful...I really am?"

Was it to provoke Rowan's deadly rage? Most likely, yes.

But there is something else to keep in mind.

Carlotta's confession to Rowan included things that made it impossible to rule out sibling rivalry. Carlotta told Rowan she had indeed been designated the Legacy witch, but she had rejected Lasher, rejected the emerald and all it represented. It was not a secret that Mary Beth, the mother of Carlotta and Stella, did not love Carlotta, and that Carlotta was deeply proud of her father.

In the books, Carlotta Mayfair was fifteen years old when Julien Mayfair died in 1914. Julien Mayfair was 86 years old at the time of his death, and yes, was the father of Cortland Mayfair. Carlotta would also say that though Julien Mayfair would make himself appear as a much younger man, Carlotta knew when he tried to bed her that his age could be felt on his very skin as she rejected his advances.

How did Carlotta ever justify all of this?

For all of her behavior that made her the classic "wicked witch" of this tale, she understood something that perhaps others around her did understand as well, but she was the one who was never fooled into believing something else. Carlotta knew what Lasher was, yes. For the most part, the Mayfairs all recognized that Lasher was a ghost. An unusual ghost, one that also had the basic characteristics of both angels and demons, yes. But a ghost.

Carlotta knew what Lasher wanted.

And what Lasher wanted, as those who have read the books and/or seen the first season now know, was to be "like us". To be like a human. In the flesh. And he manipulates the line of Mayfair witches to produce one strong enough to bring him through, and into the world.

In both book and film, Carlotta's provocation of Rowan works. Rowan directs her deadly rage at Carlotta, who slumps over dead.

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Since this is not working in the table below, I'll mention an interesting detail here. The character Daniel Lemke in the AMC series was actually named Karl Lemle in the novels. If that name sounds familiar to those of you who are fans of early Hollywood, have a look at this Fun Factoid towards the bottom of this page of the Parlor...

The Books

The Screen

Self Portrait Albrecht Durer
Albrecht Durer Self Portrait used in the novels to describe Lasher

Jack Huston as Lasher
Jack Huston as Lasher in Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches on AMC

Rowan was born in 1959

Rowan Fielding
Rowan was born in 1991

Rowan always went by her own surname, Mayfair

Rowan went by the surname, Fielding

Ellie Mayfair and her husband, Graham Franklin, adopted Rowan at birth

Ellie Mayfair adopted Rowan at birth and was told she had to change both her and Rowan's surname

Karl Lemle (See Fun Factoid Below)

Daniel Lemle

Rowan was not taken off of any rotations at the hospital where she worked or advised to seek grief counseling

Rowan was taken off of rotations at the hospital where she worked and advised to seek grief counseling

Rowan and her adoptive parents lived in a house in Tiburon, California with a private dock, where the Sweet Christine was moored

Rowan lived on the Sweet Christine, a cabin cruiser, which is a small yacht

Michael Curry is the character who had to wear gloves to keep unwanted visions under control

Ciprien Grieve
Ciprien Grieve had to wear gloves to keep unwanted visions under control

Michael Curry was not with the Talamasca, although he was approached with this in mind due to his hands

Michael Curry is missing

Aaron Lightner was the Talamasca agent who was assigned to the Mayfair Witches

Aaron Lightner is missing

The Mayfair emerald necklace was an emerald gemstone about the size of a thumbnail, not a key

The Mayfair emerald necklace is a key

Deirdre Mayfair died at home, likely due to health complications arising from her near catatonic state

Deirdre Mayfair
Deirdre Mayfair was murdered in an elevator at the hotel owned by Cortland Mayfair

Deirdre Mayfair was never able to leave any place of her own free will due to being catatonic, her reported rage the day she died only occurring inside her house

Deirdre Mayfair's catatonic state dissolved due to the doctor only pretending to give her the shots that kept her catatonic

Cortland Mayfair was a lawyer who died in a fall on the main staircase of the Mayfair house just before Rowan's birth in 1959

Cortland Mayfair
Cortland Mayfair owned the hotel where Rowan was staying and Deirdre was murdered

Tessa was the name of the female Taltos kept by the rogue Talamasca members in hopes of finding her a male Taltos to breed with

Magic Circle
We're not there, yet!

Mona Mayfair became the new designee of the Legacy due to Rowan not being expected to survive the complications from the birth of Emaleth

Magic Circle
Tessa Mayfair became the new designee of the Legacy because Rowan did not want it

Rowan did survive, but had to undergo a hysterectomy to save her life, which also led to Mona's being designated the Legacy witch

Magic Circle
We're not there, yet!

Mona Mayfair had red hair, dressed like a little girl, and did not die of a gunshot wound

Tessa Mayfair
Tessa Mayfair is a blond teenager who is shot to death instead of eventually being made a vampire by Lestat

Rowan gave birth to Lasher in the parlor of the First Street house, not the Mayfair crypt

Lasher
Rowan gave birth to Lasher in the Mayfair crypt

The Mayfair crypt was in New Orleans, not in a rural location

Lasher
The Mayfair crypt was in a rural location

Carlotta did not actually set the house on fire, but she did make Gerald Mayfair promise he would do it, which he had no intention of doing

Carlotta
Carlotta set the house on fire, but failed to destroy the entire house

Antha Mayfair died when she was chased by Carlotta out the windows of the third floor onto the roof of the side porch after Carlotta (ulp) gouged Antha's eyes out to stop her from being able to see Lasher. Antha then fell from the porch roof onto the flagstones below.

Death of Antha Mayfair
Antha Mayfair died by hanging

The Mayfair emerald was acquired in Amsterdam by Deborah Mayfair with Lasher's help

The Mayfair emerald was acquired in Scotland by Suzanne with Lasher's help

The Mayfair Witches traditionally called for Lasher by certain words. In the books, the witch would begin this formal command with, "Come now, my Lasher!" It is possible that this command might have been in other languages, even Latin.

To formally call for Lasher, a Mayfair Witch would command him in Latin, beginning with, "Mi Daemon".

Coming in or not
"Are you coming in or not, Rowan Mayfair?"
~WH pg. 683, Mass Market 1993 and Amazon Kindle Editions

Rowan Fielding long dead Rowan Mayfair
Rowan Fielding is really the "long dead" Rowan Mayfair

Anne Rice's Immortal Universe created the absolutely gorgeous vintage wallpaper and frame graphics above, as well as the animations promoting the series. Images from Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches AMC/AMC+.

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The Wicked Words

Initial Thoughts on Season 1

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Fun Factoid