How Interview with the Vampire is different from the book

Whenever a novel is adapted from the page to the screen, some liberties must be taken to make the source material work for a completely different medium. Sometimes these changes are cosmetic, and sometimes they can be fundamental. In the case of Anne Rice Interview with the vampirewhich premiered Oct. 2 on AMC, the 1976 book received an episodic overhaul from showrunner Rollin Jones that included changing some character arcs, locales, and even time periods to freshen up the overall narrative and fully honor Rice The Vampire Chronicles mythology.

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With the first two episodes on AMC’s Interview with the vampire now available, we’ve highlighted some key differences between the book and the series that make some fascinating changes to the stories of vampires Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reed) and their circle of friends and foes.

Daniel Malloy has a much bigger story

In Rice’s novel, the interviewer, Daniel Malloy, is a relatively passive listener to Louis de Pointe du Lac’s life story. In the series, Malloy is now a much bigger player in the narrative. Aged and with a very salty attitude, Eric Boghossian portrays Malloy as a man who reunites with Louis with a professional and personal ax to grind. As a young reporter with addiction issues, Daniel didn’t get much or remember much from his first interview with the vampire. Now, 47 years later, Malloy has Parkinson’s, so there is a palpable ticking of the clock on his own mortality.

Boghosyan says of his character: “He’s much closer to who I am in real life. I am a veteran in my life and so is Daniel. What does this mean? It means that when Daniel/I go after the story, it’s with a lot more experience, insight, and just knowing how to understand the story, how to cut through any kind of duplicity that Lewis might throw at me. the truth.”

From the Plantation to Storyville

Readers of the book will recall that Rice’s account of Lewis’ origins begins in 1791 as the owner of an indigo plantation in Louisiana. Despondent over his brother’s death, the suicidal Louis meets Lestat and is turned in at the property. He then struggles to feed on humans and tries to subsist on animal blood until Lestat’s behavior prompts the slaves to rebel and start a rebellion. Louis then burns down his family’s ancestral home.

Showrunner Rollin Jones says in 2022 that he didn’t want to tell a plantation story, so he knew he had to find a better place and time to establish Louis’ background. He chose the infamous red light district of New Orleans known as Storyville. A destination for gamblers and drinkers, not to mention a hotspot for prostitution, Lewis is one of the few black entrepreneurs in the area. After his father’s death, Louis financially supported his mother and two older siblings, maintaining their upper-middle-class lives through the success of his brothel.

Pointe du Lac Family Tea

While the death of Louis’ brother in Rice’s book is a life-changing moment for the character, the series actually gives the de Pointe du Lac family much more history and influence over Louis’ life. Paul de Pointe du Lac (Stephen Norfleet) is portrayed as a devout Catholic who has serious issues with sin and Louis’ lifestyle and appears to suffer from mental illness. The audience gets to know him before he makes his dramatic exit from the world right in front of Louis. There’s also Louis’ mother, Florence de Pointe du Lac (Rae Dawn Chong), who is a sophisticated matriarch happy to turn a blind eye to Louis’ lifestyle until Paul kills himself. She then blames Louis for everything that is wrong with their family. And then Louis’ love for his sister, Grace (Kalyn Coleman), gives the audience a glimpse into the softer side of the man who often puts on a tough facade to exist in his town.

Director Alan Taylor says Lewis’ ability to separate the two halves of his life sets the stage for his vampiric future. “Louis was from a pretty wealthy family, and that’s a part of black history that doesn’t get portrayed as much,” Taylor says of how they framed de Pointe du Lac in the series. “Him going out on the street and becoming a tough guy who can hold his own in the business he’s in was a bit of a representation of him.” So there are already layers to Lewis, even early on in the story, that then just deepen over time.”

Lestat gets a vote

The entire narrative construction of Anne Rice Interview with the vampire Lewis tells Malloy the story of his life. And that means the audience learns about Lestat only from the perspective of Louis’ long, complicated, bitter relationship with the vampire who fathered him. For showrunner Rollin Jones, it was a prospect that simply wouldn’t work for a TV series. “If we were following the main version of Anne as a strict point of view, and Louis was just a jilted lover, that’s a really awkward way to present a series,” Jones tells SYFY WIRE. “Imagine if you said the first season was complete bullshit?”

Only in Rice’s other novels do readers get Lestat’s perspective on their relationship, and it becomes clear that they certainly have different perspectives on how things developed between them. Jones says that by giving Lestat more leeway in telling his own story on the series, audiences get a more authentic portrayal of Rice as both Louis and Lestat, which only becomes clearer when The Vampire Chronicles novels were published. “I just try to work backwards from what’s in the late novels and kind of canonize that and go back and revisit that and say, ‘Okay, with the extra time we have to tell the story, let’s see them really go through all the little hurdles and challenges of a relationship.”

New episodes of Interview with the vampire airing Sunday night on AMC.

Looking for more horror to sink your teeth into? Stream lots of great scary movies on Peacock. Looking for more vampires? Check out SYFY’s new original series – Reginald the Vampire.