Alexandra Daddario’s latest role is downright magical.
The Emmy nominee stars in “Mayfair Witches,” a new AMC series based on the Anne Rice books of the same name.
“The character was very cool, and Anne Rice was someone … I hadn’t read her, but I had heard about her. I felt it was a cool learning opportunity to figure out what motivated her to write these types of stories. It was fun for me,” Daddario, 36, told The Post.
Premiering Sunday, Jan 8 (9 p.m.), the supernatural drama (which is the second Rice adaptation for the network, after “Interview with the Vampire”) follows neurosurgeon Dr. Rowan Fielding (Daddario), who is unaware that she’s secretly the heiress to a powerful dynasty of witches haunted by a sinister entity called Lasher (Jack Huston, “Fargo”).
Daddario said that while she wasn’t familiar with Rice’s work before, she dove into reading about the late author while preparing for the show.
“That was incredibly helpful in developing the character. I think [the show] is about the relationship between good and evil, and who we are, and what a woman’s place in the world is,” she said. “And how no matter what kind of power you have, are people jealous of that? Are people wanting a piece of you? Can you still be a mess and together at the same time?
“This is a very complex character,” she said. “I was intrigued by Anne’s relationship to the world around her. She lost a child at a young age. She was in and out of the church, but really believed in God. She also believed in ghosts [and] she got involved in studies of the supernatural. That helped me understand these stories and the out-there nature of a lot of it. She wrote erotic novels; I didn’t know that.”
In the show’s opening episode — during a confrontation with boorish male colleagues — Rowan appears to have the supernatural power to give them seizures when she gets angry. That unnerves her, and her search for answers about her background and her mysterious abilities takes her from California to New Orleans, which is where the show was filmed.
It’s also where Daddario, who married her producer husband Andrew Form in June, had her wedding.
“First, we were going to get married in Italy, and then we happened to be shooting there [in New Orleans]. And I didn’t think I wanted to be jet-lagged while shooting the show and getting married at the same time,” she said. “So, I was like, ‘Let’s just get married in New Orleans, I love it here.’ Maybe everyone will get drunk and think the party was a lot more fun than it was! We sort of threw it together in a month or two. I still think I didn’t invite enough people. But I just thought it was a great city to get married in. It was so special.”
in “Mayfair Witches.”
Aside from “Mayfair Witches,” Daddario has appeared in “True Detective,” “American Horror Story: Hotel,” “Percy Jackson and the Olympians,” and in Season 1 of HBO’s buzzy dramedy, ““The White Lotus,” for which she snared an Emmy nomination. Although that series has a new cast each season, Daddario said she’d be open to returning if creator Mike White asked.
“Sure, yeah. I don’t think that’s where the show is going, I think it’s an anthology except for [Jennifer] Coolidge,” she said. “But if Mike White had a great idea for something and asked me, I trust him. But I’m so grateful to have been part of it at all. I’m happy leaving it where it was.”