Raglan James made his enigmatic debut in Interview With the Vampire‘s second season. The Talamasca agent is played by Justin Kirk, who shared his scenes with fellow Succession alum Eric Bogosian. As previously announced, Bogosian will return as Daniel Molloy in the series premiere of Talamasca: The Secret Order, premiering October 26. This week, AMC announced that Kirk will be back as Raglan in Episode 4 of the supernatural spy thriller’s first season (get an exclusive look inside the new series in our 2025 Fall Preview). He’ll also be in Interview With the Vampire Season 3, which is now being called The Vampire Lestat.

TV Insider asked Interview boss Rolin Jones about Raglan’s introduction in April 2024 ahead of the Season 2 premiere. What he shared gives some hints about Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat’s (Sam Reid) roles in adaptations after The Vampire Lestat, assuming the series continues to get renewed. With Raglan’s return on the horizon, we’re looking back at this interview with Jones to get a read on the show’s potential long game.

Anne Rice readers know that Raglan is an important figure in The Vampire Chronicles. He’s the titular character of the fourth book, The Tale of the Body Thief. He’s still working for the agency in Interview‘s second season, but he’s been kicked out of the Talamasca for frequent thievery in book four. Body Thief finds Lestat struggling with loneliness and grieving Claudia. Raglan pops up and offers Lestat a “temporary” fix. He’s a gifted psychic who can switch bodies and offers to switch with Lestat for a day, but he steals it for much longer than that. Lestat, in Raglan’s body, sets out to find the thief. Other vampires won’t help him, and neither will Louis when Lestat asks him to turn his Raglan form into a vampire. This is a storyline that Anderson has expressed particular interest in bringing to life in the series. Reid has also said he’s excited by the idea of tackling Queen of the Damned (book three) and Body Thief. And both have said they can’t wait to do scenes with Gabrielle, Lestat’s mother, from The Vampire Lestat (Jennifer Ehle will play her in Season 3).

“Obviously, I’ve dropped in some stuff about Body Thief [in Season 2], and Queen of the Damned has been dribbled in right from the beginning of the show,” Jones told us in 2024. “The onrush that is coming is already seeded throughout that.”

It’s true. Lestat’s “Those Who Must Be Kept” mention in Season 1, the Akasha name drop and Daniel’s vampiric transformation in Season 2, and Ella Ballentine’s casting as Baby Jenks in Season 3 are all Queen of the Damned bread-crumbing. That “onrush” Jones refers to is Akasha, the original vampire/titular character of QOTD, whose arrival threatens all vampiric existence.

Jones has been thinking about how he’d adapt more TVC novels since the show’s early days. Part of that thought process was figuring out who would agree to play Raglan, a role that wouldn’t become significant for years if/when the show gets renewed for Season 4 and beyond.

“I knew these books, and I had a future for them [in mind],” Jones explained. “It’s really hard to get an actor of weight to commit to something that is three or four years off, so I called in a dear friend of mine. We go way back. And he’s been in one of my plays, so I love him. I think he’s a really beautiful, beautiful actor.” Kirk and Jones worked together on HBO‘s Perry Mason and Showtime‘s Weeds.

“I said, ‘Hey, we can’t pay you sh*t, just blah, blah, blah, but here it is,’” he said of his pitch to Kirk. “It’s all based on, if you go deep into the books, there’s only one mention. It’s, like, one sentence where it’s like, ‘Raglan James used to be with the Talamasca.’ If you were running through it, you’d never get it. That, we just grab on and we go, ‘Oh, I could work on two seasons of how do you start there and how do you get to The Body Thief?’”

What Jones said next was a sign that Anderson would continue to be a lead after Season 3. “I needed an actor that would be able to compete with Jacob and Sam by the time we do that, so that’s what I can say about Justin Kirk,” Jones shared.

With that, Jones subtly hinted that Louis is still a lead in his mind moving forward along with Lestat. This may seem obvious, given that AMC’s adaptation has put Louis and Lestat’s romance squarely at the center since the very first episode. But there have been fan concerns about Anderson’s role in Season 3 and beyond because Lestat becomes TVC‘s main character after the first novel. The cast and creators have repeatedly stated that Louis is not disappearing or any less important.

The Season 3 renewal announcement listed Louis, Armand (Assad Zaman), and Raglan, among others, as returning characters alongside Lestat, so they were never not coming back. But the show confirmed Zaman’s return at San Diego Comic-Con 2025 for good measure, and they surprised fans with the news that Delainey Hayles would be coming back as well (her character, Claudia, died in Season 2). Jones told us in our Season 2 finale interview that he’s “not putting Jacob Anderson in a corner” after the finale concluded the first book’s plot.

“The next turn, center stage is Lestat, but I don’t think we’re going to be pushing Louis to the side like he is in those books,” Jones said, adding, “I don’t think Louis, as we leave him, is going to be this guy who is suffering as much. Actually, I think he’s maybe beginning his legitimate vampire experience there at the end.” Executive producer Mark Johnson said that Louis’ closing line of the season, “I own the night,” was “not an exit line.” Anderson assured us in a Season 2 look-back and in SDCC 2025 interviews that Louis’s not going anywhere. They’ve been keeping the new Louis plot a secret because, well, why would they spoil their own story, especially when their version of him has been so exciting and new since the beginning? (Watch our SDCC interview to see their entertaining attempts to avoid spoilers in response to our apparently spot-on Season 3 questions.)

Lestat and his backstory are in the spotlight in Season 3. The series changing the show’s name to The Vampire Lestat caused some more concerns for Anderson’s role moving forward, understandably so. But even back in 2024, before Season 2 had even released one episode, Jones was describing Anderson and Reid as the show’s now and future leads and was looking forward to them facing off with Kirk in a potential Body Thief adaptation. Now, the question is, how much will Raglan’s Talamasca episode impact The Vampire Lestat?

Talamasca: The Secret Order, Series Premiere, Sunday, October 26, 9/8c, AMC

The Vampire Lestat, Season 3 Premiere, 2026, AMC