The late Anne Rice’s trilogy of novels, “Lives of the Mayfair Witches,” hit our TV screens in January 2022, much to the delight of queer witches everywhere. The series, “Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches,” centers on a neurosurgeon (Alexandra Daddario) who learns that she comes from a family of witches. Naturally, this knowledge turns her world upside down. Daddario is joined by a stellar cast including trans actor, Jen Richards, who plays Jojo, one of the many members of the witchy family.
Richards recently spoke with LGBTQ Nation about her role in “Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches.”
When asked to articulate her feelings on witches as avatars for the queer community, Richards said “I guess I’d consider myself a witch? I think in a kind of general sense, there are certain things that I practice. I definitely feel a part of that legacy. […] There’s been a lot of good history that a lot of the imagery and particularly the accusations associated with women being witches were often just based on men’s fear or jealousy of women’s role as healers, but also just their economic position and the independence that came with that. When you deconstruct a lot of the imagery around witches in the pejorative sense, it really had to do with women being healers and financially independent and brewers of beer and other things like that. As a woman, just reclaiming that legacy is really interesting.”
While Jojo’s trans identity isn’t outwardly addressed in the first season, Richards brings her own interpretation of Jojo’s backstory when playing her. “This isn’t necessarily canon, this is just what I’m bringing to the role when I’m performing it: Jojo, at some point, realized she’s trans and decided to transition and probably had a justifiable fear that she would lose her family and lose all of the wealth and power that she had grown accustomed to. She did it anyway and found that her dad loved and supported her through it,” Richards told LGBTQ Nation.
You can watch “Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches” here.
