Our Deputy Editor, Zaynab Khuder, recaps AMC’s Interview With The Vampire as not only a satisfying adaptation of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles but as a melancholic story of love and loss, and why you should be catching up with it!
Warning: spoilers ahead for both seasons one and two of Interview With The Vampire.
Television is no stranger to monsters and it's certainly no stranger to the blood-sucking, fang-toothed vampires who seduce us with their ageless beauty. Whilst most freshly-turned 13-year-olds found comfort in the sparkly-faced Edward Cullen, I was stealing a copy of Interview With The Vampire from my highschool’s library (yes, it’s still on my bookshelf). Whether you were reading Interview With The Vampire in the seventies or watching the film in the nineties, it has a special place in the hearts of all the goths, freaks and Lestat De Lioncourt apologists (me, sorry). For a long time, fans of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles were limited to a small number of mainstream live-action adaptations. These included the 1992 film with Tom Cruise as Lestat, Brad Pitt as Louis and Kirsten Dunst as Claudia, and The Queen Of The Damned, whose only redemptive qualities are Aaliyah as Akasha and Korn’s Jonathan Davis scoring the soundtrack. Although the 1992 film gets a lot of hate from newer fans of the series, there is no denying the mind-altering impact of Tom Cruise’s Lestat in contrast to how terrible Brad Pitt’s Louis is. That, I believe, many IWTV fans can agree on.
So picture this, 29 years after the 1992 film’s release (and 45 years after the novel), AMC announces they’ve bought all the Anne Rice books and plan to adapt the widely loved and treasured Interview With The Vampire. I remember feeling sceptical about it. I mean, another adaptation? After what Stuart Townsend did to Lestat De Lioncourt?! It did not seem promising at the time. But, boy, was I so glad to be wrong.
In 2022, the show is finally airing with Australia’s, no, NSW’s own Sam Reid as Lestat De Lioncourt, Jacob Anderson as Louis De Pointe Du Lac, Bailey Bass as Claudia and Eric Bogosian as Daniel Molloy. The show’s adaptation of the novel spans across two seasons. The first season is set in Dubai in 2022, where Louis recalls his life in 1910s New Orleans to journalist Daniel Molloy. The series establishes Louis’ character in a different light to the novel and film with both his backstory and race being changed. Not only has this benefited AMC’s take, but it has created a depth and perspective into Louis’ character that we haven’t been confronted with before. Jacob Anderson also brings a dedication to the role of Louis that makes you love Louis and root for him, even at the most questionable of times; this is something Pitt’s Louis lacked greatly. Bailey Bass’ Claudia is also aged up from five to fourteen and her race also changed to fit the setting and context of this adaptation. The show shifts between the past and the present (2022) where Daniel Molloy, now in his 70s, revisits Louis’ story 50 years after their first initial interview. Much of season one introduces Louis as not only a human, but as a Black-Creole gay vampire navigating his immortality within the constraints of society’s stigmatised view of both homosexuality and race. Although Louis' character in the original novel and film portray him as a slave owner, the significance of his moral ambiguity is not lost in the TV series as he’s now a brothel owner – which allows us to still mull over Louis’ multifaceted nature. He is held back because of his race, but harbours an immortal power, separating him from his human counterparts. He may be a brothel owner, but he was turned by Lestat – a white vampire – and now, living amongst vampiric society, in the world of monsters, race and morality are not the determining factors of one’s power or importance.
Season one ends with Louis and Claudia fleeing New Orleans, believing they have killed Lestat. In season two, we are introduced to Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Claudia (Delainey Hayles) as they navigate Paris in the 1940s. While Claudia searches for a new start, and a home in the Théâtre des Vampires and their coven, Louis tries to move past Lestat, (or ‘Dreamstat’, Sam Reid playing a version of Lestat curated by Louis subconscious) in the arms of another vampire, The Vampire Armand (Assad Zaman), who is revealed, at the end of season one to have masqueraded as the character Rashid.
One undeniably captivating aspect of AMC’s Interview With The Vampire is its ability to keep us yearning for the ghosts of the past with its poetic writing and dialogue. In season two, Louis is presented with a letter written by Lestat in the event of his death. This letter has stuck with me, ringing in my head verbatim in that classic Sam Reid-Lestat voice:
“In the event that you are reading this, something dreadful has occurred. Which is not my own death, but rather, the fact that we both now exist in two different worlds. Do not waste your life seeking revenge on the person or persons who did this. Do not give them the satisfaction of the hunt. Let treachery eat away at them from within. And you, you go carry on with your living. Know only this, mon cher: you are the only being I trust, and whom I love, above and beyond myself. All my love belongs to you. You are its keeper. A veil will now forever separate our union. But it is a thin veil, and I'm always on the other side, face pressed up against your longing.”
The show is filled with an intense and parasitic longing to escape the loneliness of immortality. It's why Louis struggles as he’s haunted by Lestat, cast aside by Claudia and becomes increasingly amicable to Armand’s romantic pursuits. So while this letter is meant to represent a path to forgiveness, of Louis letting go of the past – Lestat continues to plague him in an all encompassing Lestatian way. He’s there, beyond the grave, having died a second time, his face on the other side of that veil, pressed against his longing. Meanwhile, unknown to both Claudia and Louis, the Paris coven plots their demise as they’ve figured out their crimes against the Vampiric code, killing another vampire, their maker.
While most of AMC’s Interview With The Vampire is a bloody, complicated and monstrous love story, at its core it is a tale of loss. Claudia (Bailey Bass in season one and Delainey Hayles in season two) is a symbol of the loss Rice experienced when she lost her five-year-old daughter to cancer. Rice creates the character of Claudia, saves her from the brink of death, immortalises her and then we watch as she grows – a forever five-year-old, a forever 14-year-old, stuck in a body not akin to the mind that grows and changes. When we strip back the series to its core, it's always been about Claudia. It's about Louis and Lestat, their love and their loss, and how they can’t ever seem to move past it.
In discovery of their crimes, Louis and Claudia are put on trial in season two, with Madeline – Louis’ fledgling and Claudia’s companion. Here, Lestat makes his return and is forced to play along on stage, acting out a trial against Louis and Claudia for orchestrating his supposed death. The vampire judges – the Paris coven – are relentless and cruel, Armand – who is said leader of the coven – is forced to watch as his lover, Louis, is paraded in front of a crowd of humans in charge of his fate. Louis is supposedly saved by Armand, who admits to controlling the human jury and altering their decision from “death” to “banishment” with his ancient vampiric powers. Claudia dies and we are left empty and angry at the injustice. She was meant to live forever and yet, she doesn’t. She is the girl who never ages and never dies, and here she is, killed and dead because it is inescapable. The loss that is threaded into the narrative of Interview With The Vampire is inescapable. Her death was destined from the beginning. She was dead when Louis rescued her from a fire in season one and begged Lestat to turn her. She could not escape her fate. It reminds us of the pain and suffrage of humanity, how these monsters, with super strength and unbelievable power, cannot escape the pain of loss. And it angers you.
Louis takes his revenge on the vampires who orchestrated her death – but it still plagues him in the present. Amongst the memories and stories he recalls to Daniel Molloy, we are reminded of that phrase in season one: “Memory is a monster.” And what an ugly, inescapable monster it is. Season two uncovers all the lies and the memories buried beneath Louis' story. His present day companion, Armand, begins to see the life he’s built for them crumble beneath his feet as Daniel and Louis uncover the truth about their past in San Francisco and the events of Paris.
And after all the love, loss and revenge – Louis seeks out Lestat in the present day, where he’s become a hermit in an abandoned house in the middle of New Orleans, “I am she, she is me” (Lestat when asked about New Orleans). Louis, after discovering it was Lestat, not Armand, who had saved him during the trial, confronts Lestat. And in true, heartbreaking fashion, they dwell on the loss of Claudia and how they can’t seem to let go of that pain. There is forgiveness and there are words unheard that are spoken between them as a hurricane plagues the city of New Orleans. It is the perfect ending to the geyser that is their companionship.
So what now? Well, there are 13 books in the Vampire Chronicles, so it's not exactly the end yet. By far, the most exciting announcement has been season three, The Vampire Lestat. Fucking finally. I won’t say too much about it, because you should probably read the book (and you get a sneak peak into some of it in season two) but it will be as Armand likes to say: Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat! And for the first time ever, we finally get a live action adaptation of The Vampire Lestat and an in-depth look into Lestat’s backstory, which has never been done before. Both Interview With The Vampire season one and two are now available to watch on AMC+ and ABC iView. So, as they say, let the tale seduce you.
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