The Secret Order’ Made Jason Schwartzman’s Character an ‘Unexpected Vampire’

Fans of AMC’s Interview With the Vampire and Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles know its world contains a wide range of vampire types. Interview With the Vampire‘s third season, retitled The Vampire Lestat, will give us a rock n’ roll creature of the night when it arrives next year. But AMC’s latest Anne Rice series, Talamasca: The Secret Order, has its own offbeat vampire variation in Jason Schwartzman’s character, Burton.

The show’s main character, Guy (Nicholas Denton), is a new recruit into the Talamasca. He’s startled by his first meeting with Burton, an “unexpected vampire,” according to co-showrunner John Lee Hancock. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Hancock explained why the show wanted the offbeat character to stand out.

“We’ve got this skeptic [Guy] who’s going to meet a vampire, and who is that vampire? I wanted it to be complicated,” Hancock said. “I didn’t want it to be a dark room with someone in a velvet chair, looking, and you see their eyes, even though I knew that would be scary. I wanted to meet it on its own terms. So who’s the unexpected vampire?”

He continued. “The thing about that character is that he is someone who has sold out vampires. He is being put up in the Dakota in New York and has a wonderful life. Yet it’s lonely, and he doesn’t fully trust the Talamasca, even though they’re paying his way and bringing him gifts,” Hancock explained. “In my mind, all those televisions that are up on the wall—he doesn’t have a lot of friends, so he and the woman who runs his life, along with Helen [Elizabeth McGovern’s character], probably sit on Tuesday night and watch reality television on Bravo. That’s not a vampire that I’ve seen, and I like that.”

Like those rigorously glamorous Real Housewives, Burton is also image-conscious, according to Hancock.

“He knows he’s being presented. He’s the first vampire that [Guy] has ever met. How does he expect me to look? I told Jason, ‘Here’s the thing I can tell you about this character: he changed clothes five times in anticipation of this meeting to be just right.’ Jason said, ‘That’s a character I can play.’”

New episodes of Anne Rice’s Talamasca: The Secret Order arrive Sundays on AMC and AMC+.

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