‘Mayfair Witches’: Annabeth Gish Talks ‘Tragic’ End to Deirdre (Exclusive)

The second episode of Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches premiered on AMC on Sunday and featured a shocking moment. The end of the episode saw Deirdre Mayfair (Annabeth Gish) die in an elevator as she was looking to reunite with her daughter Rowan (Alexandra Daddario). Now the question heading into Episode 3 is who killed Deidre and why? PopCulture.com spoke exclusively to Gish who explained her reaction when she read that her character was going to die. 

“Well, it’s frustrating and tragic, right?” Gish exclusively told PopCulture. “High-drama tragic that the opportunity to reunite with my daughter is completely cut short. Literally cut short. But it also adds to the intensity of the story, for sure.” The last time Deidre saw Rowan was right after she gave birth to her over 30 years ago. Deidre just woke up after being sedated and felt Rowan’s presence thanks to Lasher (Jack Huston). Rowan was there when Deidre died, and something like that will likely impact her for the rest of the series. 

“I think it’s huge. It’s unrequited love,” Gish said. “Especially when you have a woman awakening to the potential of a truth she never knew existed. And then not being able to know that truth in embodied form is, I think, it’s a total tragedy.” Carlotta (Beth Grant), Deidre’s aunt, is responsible for taking Rowan away from her and sending her to her adoptive mother Elena (Erica Gimpel) who knows all about the Mayfair family. But is Carlotta the villain in the series? 

“Carlotta means well,” Gish explained. “She is repressing Deirdre’s sexuality. She is trying to keep her from this legacy of this monster and the energy. So she means well. In her heart of hearts, she’s not trying to harm anyone. She’s trying to keep Deirdre safe. Now, you can expound that on many levels and see how people thinking that they have their best intentions doesn’t really help anyone at a much more macro level, right? So I think there’s a theme there that’s like, oh, okay. Well, her best interests were really not such.”

It looks like Gish’s run on Mayfair Witches has come to an end. But the 51-year-old actress loved her time on the series. “I mean, I could make a joke and say I don’t know, because I was on Thorazine the whole time as a character, or I was dead,” Gish said. “No, it was… It’s a great cast. Alexandra is mesmerizing just as a woman and an actress. And Tongayi is amazing. I can’t wait for everyone to see his interpretation of Ciprien. And yes, Beth, everybody. There’s just… The characters are so finely drawn and magnetic that everybody has a little something magical to bring.” New episodes of Mayfair Witches air every Sunday on AMC and AMC+.