Justin Kirk Explains Raglan James’ ‘Talamasca’ Crossover

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Talamasca: The Secret Order Season 1 Episode 4.]

Raglan James is still a mystery even to Justin Kirk. The actor first donned those black, thick-rimmed glasses for Interview With the Vampire Season 2, and Episode 4 of the Talamasca spinoff gave him the chance to slip back into the uniform for “the slippierest fish” you’ll ever get a hold of, as Nicholas Denton (Guy Anatole) described him to us at New York Comic Con.

“I think I saw that clip,” Kirk says with a laugh when that label is brought up in our Talamasca interview. Kirk reprised his role in the season’s second Interview With the Vampire crossover episode on Sunday, November 9, on AMC. The first was with Eric Bogosian‘s Daniel Molloy in the series premiere. Neither episode is narratively connected to The Vampire Lestat (premiering in 2026) or Mayfair Witches (Season 3 filming now), but both characters had run-ins with Guy that make you question the trustworthiness of this secret order, a concept that already bleeds through the Immortal Universe. (Ask William Fichtner‘s Jasper, and he’ll say not to trust them at all — and as we learned in this episode, he has good reason for this bias.)

Kirk has only had a few episodes to dig into Raglan so far, and the character — the titular figure of Anne Rice’s Tale of the Body Thief — is still in prequel mode. Until Body Thief is adapted, all Kirk has for source material is whatever the writers give him and the fact that Raglan will one day be fired from the Talamasca. Interview With the Vampire creator Rolin Jones gave Kirk complete creative freedom with the role. The Succession alum can’t remember exactly when Jones pitched the role, but he says it’s possible that it was before Interview Season 1 was released (memory is a monster).

“I then took a look at the book, and then I came to [Jones] with various, ‘Hey, can I do this? What if I do this?’ And he is like, ‘Do you want to?’ And I was like, ‘Well, did you read the book?’ He goes, ‘It’s been a year or so,’” Kirk recalls to TV Insider. “It’s been very, I go there and we do it and I say, ‘What do you think? I’m just throwing sh*t at the wall.’ And they say, ‘Looks good to me.’”

He recalls the first time he tried out Raglan’s accent while filming Interview Season 2: “I think they were like, ‘Well, that’s weird, but we’re totally into it.’”

Raglan reminds Kirk of Christopher Lloyd’s Jim Ignatowski from Taxi.

“When we very first see Christopher Lloyd as Reverend Jim, it’s a guest spot, and he’s about halfway to what the character ends up being,” Kirk explains. “Obviously, it was such a good appearance that they were like, you know what? We’re going to have this guy back and make it a regular. And the next time you see him, he’s dug deeper into the actual way he looks and sounds. That’s kind of how I felt. You do it once, you’re like, ‘OK, I’m getting there, but I’m going to really get it right on the next time I show up.’ And that’s how I’m starting. I’m still aiming at getting it right, but doing Talamasca felt like I had dug in a little bit more. Because that first time we did Season 2 in Prague, you’re just feeling it out, and you’ve flown across the world, and you’re like, ‘Well, I hope this kind of works. And there’s Eric Bogosian. Let’s see how it goes.’”

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Kirk and Jones have been good friends since they met on Weeds. Jones previously told us that when casting Raglan, a character that wouldn’t become a bigger role until several seasons into Interview, but with no guarantees, he knew he needed to bring in a trusted friend.

“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,” Jones told us in 2024, adding, “I needed an actor that would be able to compete with Jacob [Anderson] and Sam [Reid] by the time we do that.” Kirk’s admiration of Jones made it an easy yes.

“He’s not only one of my dearest friends, but certainly one of my favorite artistic collaborators,” Kirk shares. “So I knew that whatever was coming down the pike would be fun.”

When Jones said that the role could be bigger in the future, Kirk recalls thinking, “That’s cool, but I probably would’ve done it anyway,” he tells us, laughing. “The fun thing about doing this part and being a floater is, they write you some cool things to do, you go there for a few days, and then you go home.”

Kirk has played Raglan in Prague for Interview Season 2, in Manchester for Talamasca, and he wrapped filming The Vampire Lestat in Toronto just hours before the Talamasca New York premiere on October 21 (at which TV Insider was present). No matter where he’s filming, Kirk just says, “Give me the glasses, and on we go.”

“I always ask them to be at rehearsal,” he adds, “so I can put them on and immediately be in Raglan vibe. I don’t have a prescription, but I probably should. I’m thinking in future seasons, I might just go down to the LensCrafters, get a thing, and then say, let’s match it with this.” Then Raglan would really take over him. Speaking of…

Helen (Elizabeth McGovern) seemed to impersonate Raglan in Talamasca Episode 3 when popping the lenses out of a pair of sunglasses, putting them on, and pulling her silver hair back while looking in a mirror. What viewers haven’t seen onscreen but book fans know is coming is that Raglan has powerful psychic abilities that allow him to switch bodies with people. Helen is high up in the order. She must know about Raglan’s powers, right? Or are we to believe that some body thievery has already begun?

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“I saw that scene!” Kirk says, intrigued. “I mean, look. If that was a thing and I knew about it, I wouldn’t tell you. But I don’t. Maybe they know something! That’s the other thing that I always leave open, is that all these various theories and possible conspiracies, I’m open to the idea that the writers might know them and not tell me. I just go play the scene.”

If Helen is impersonating Raglan, is he a well-known member of the order? Perhaps his abilities are already a thing of legend in this group?

“I don’t know how high up he is, and I don’t know exactly what it is that gets him kicked out, but we could speculate based on this episode where he is clearly off on his own track doing stuff,” Kirk says.

Raglan is out for blood in Episode 4 — literally. He’s at a vampire hotel to collect some ancient vampire blood in what Kirk says is “his own side hustle” that “seems to have nothing to do” with his work at the Talamasca. Perhaps this shady deal will be one of the reasons he’s kicked out. Guy winds up at this hotel while on the hunt for the 752 on his secret mission with Jasper. Legend has it that the 752 is the only remaining archive of the Talamasca’s centuries’ worth of research. Both Jasper and Helen are desperate to get their hands on it, if it exists, because whoever controls the 752 controls the Talamasca.

Raglan clocked that Guy was Talamasca immediately in this hotel bar. When asked how, Raglan quipped, “Hookers and spies can always make out their own kind, adjunct professors, too.” When Guy ambushed his way into Raglan’s shady deal in a luxury hotel room, Raglan eagerly sold him out to the vampire blood dealers by revealing the young spy’s telepathic abilities. After a tip from Doris (Celine Buckens) that Guy was in trouble, Jasper’s revenant pet, Checkers (Will Brown), scaled the wall of the hotel and snuck into the hotel room. The blasting music covered the sounds of Checkers ripping the vampires in the room to shreds. Raglan and Guy entered the room while Pat Benatar’s “We Belong” blared.

“It’s a bit of a Boogie Nights homage,” Kirk says, “the scene with Alfred Molina when he’s got the Night Ranger song in the background and all the violence is going on. When I read it, I thought that, and then I later heard the guys, Mark [Johnson, executive producer] and John Lee [Hancock, writer and director] say the same. And I was like, ‘Oh, did you go through a list of songs to make sure you could clear it?’ And they said, ‘These were our first choices.’”

After reading about the blood-soaked room in the script, Kirk “was very excited to see it” come to life. “The first thing that I did when I arrived in Manchester was, we had a rehearsal for that scene,” he says, “My favorite part of all that was digging in the ripped off leg to get the keys [to the briefcase full of blood].”

Raglan’s scene should tell viewers that “everyone’s looking for their own interests” in this secret order, Kirk says. That’s certainly the story Jasper told Guy in this installment when sharing how the Talamasca killed his family centuries before.

“It’s funny, I read about beforehand how he was the big bad,” Kirk says of Fichtner’s vamp. “I find him, at least through Episode 3, to be a wildly sympathetic character.”

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There will be more to see from Raglan in The Vampire Lestat, but Kirk notes that “it’s not referred to in Vampire Lestat what we did in Talamasca. I know those guys all communicate, but I think for the most part, they’re all telling their own story.” What can fans expect the next time they see Raglan?

“I can’t answer that,” Kirk says with a smile. “I didn’t say I didn’t know, but I can’t.”

He doesn’t seem to have reached any Body Thief plot just yet. He says he’s most excited to see how the team makes the story its own.

“Because I wasn’t overly familiar with the Rice books before I started this, I love that they use it as a jumping off point and are also reverential to it and respectful of it, and then sometimes they’re just making their own way,” he says, “so that’s what I expect actually … I’m excited to hear what he did to get kicked out of the Talamasca.”

Kirk offers this nugget of Vampire Lestat intel as we close out our conversation: “In Season 2, I only worked with Eric and a little bit of Bally [Gill], and of course, the sushi chef. But this year I got to spend time with all of our favorites.”

Talamasca: The Secret Order, Sundays, 9/8c, AMC

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