TV’s Interview with the Vampire absolutely has teeth

After the publication of Bram Stoker Dracula in 1897, vampires were a near-constant object of pop-culture fascination, with each creator putting their own stamp on the… condition? suffering? Lifestyle? Vampires can be monstrous, as in The strain. They can be sexy, as in True Blood, Twilight, The Vampire Diaries. They can be funny, as in What we do in the shadows. They can even be sweet, as in Monster High, toy line/upcoming live-action kids movie on Nickelodeon and Paramount+. AMC Interview with the vampire series, which premieres October 2, reminds us of what many romanticized versions of vampire “life” politely keep off-screen: vampires can be psychopaths.

Adapted from Rollin Jones (on HBO Perry Mason) from the Anne Rice book series, the show revolves around the titular vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson). We are told that in 1973 he met the journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosyan) to tell his story. Nearly 50 years later, Molloy, entering the online masterclass phase of his writing career, receives a surprise delivery of the original tapes: Lewis is still alive (or “lives”) and wants to revisit their collaboration. Molloy travels to Louis’ luxury apartment in Dubai to interview him again and learns that since the last time they spoke, Louis’ opinion of his father, Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), have evolved.

While the book (and the 1994 film based on it) set Lestat and Louis’ first meeting in 1791, the series introduces us to a still-human Louis in 1910. The setting remains New Orleans, even though that Louis is no longer a widower whose wife and child did not survive birth (as in the film, the book Lewis mourns the death of his brother); nor is he a plantation owner with dozens of enslaved workers; nor is it white. The show’s Louie is a black Creole red-light owner who runs several “sports houses” in Storyville, the city’s red-light district. One evening, the newly arrived Lestat sees Louis skillfully (and fiercely) defending his business interests on the street and, as he later tells Louis, is driven to buy a townhouse in the French Quarter to stay close to him. Louis becomes competitive when Lestat outbids him for the sex worker Louis visits to quell the “delays”, but soon realizes that Lestat is most interested in seducing Louis. The triple turns into a pair. Lestat feeds on Louis, and soon, after a crisis in Louis’ family, Lestat makes the offer Louis can’t resist: “I can trade this life of shame—trade it for a dark gift and power you cannot begin to do I imagine.”

In the run-up to the film’s 1994 release, Rice was vocal in her opposition to the casting of Tom Cruise as her “Brat Prince” Lestat (although she came around after seeing him in the role). But while a concurrent profile of Cruise in the Vanity Fair describes the character as a “bitch” and “bisexual”… you know, the 2022 viewer might see the former more than the latter in Cruise’s performance. There’s a lot of queer subtext in the movie, but that’s about it; the only transgressive kiss, not counting all the ones involving necks and teeth, comes when between the vampire Claudia (Kirsten Dunst, 11 during filming and disagrees with it) gives one to his “father”, Louis (Brad Pitt). But the new show is no coy about the nature of Louis and Lestat’s relationship: After Lestat has become a lover, he invites Louis to share his coffin, smiling, “It’s all right. You can be at the top.”

Vampirism metaphorically represents the disappearing ideas of queerness – a forbidden desire to which one ecstatically indulges, ending up outside the bounds of society as a result. Making Lestat and Louis’ sex life an unambiguous part of this story separates Louis’s horror from the collateral damage of his thirst for shame, which other versions of the character have shown about sexual interests that are only (broadly) hinted at. In between hunting, Louis and Lestat settle in as hosts and have the same arguments as all couples. How do you balance the demands of your birth family with the needs of your chosen family? How do you handle it when one partner adopts a new diet (like when Louis decides he’s not going to take human life anymore and survive by draining animals) and the other feels judged (jk, Lestat doesn’t care what Louis thinks of his murders) ? When is the right time to have a child and how to raise it? How often is too often to go to the opera?

Months before the film came out, describing her (then) objection to Cruise’s casting, Rice said Film line‘c Martha Frankel that Lestat should be “a super-strong man… very blond, very tall, very athletic, very full”. Rice did not live to see Sam Reed’s performance, which equated exactly to her brief; we end up seeing pretty much all of Reed and he is so “very athletic, very full”, this one shirtless shot made me gasp out loud. (Apparently he also grew out his strawberry blonde hair for the role, and in an age when bad TV wigs are an urgent topic of concern, we just have to applaud the commitment.) Lestat is an esthete, a womanizer, a charming dinner guest, a card sharp— whatever he needs to be to fulfill his ultimate goal as a serial killer. Not since Mads MikkelsenHannibal Lecter has a fictional character killed with such purpose and artistry.

Jacob Anderson has the tougher job: as Lewis, the note he most often has to play is tortured anguish. This is especially true after he saves Claudia (Bailey Bass) by fire—too late for her to have escaped injury, so Lestat saves her life by fathering her and weaving Louis more fully into their chosen family in the process. (It might not shock you to learn that a girl whose mind continues to mature while her body remains 14 turns out to be something of a handful.) Today’s Louis is less active, but shows more emotional depth once he’s moved over a century, through his resentment of Lestat and to his desire for “truth and reconciliation.” This Louis has the carefree manner of someone who has felt every one of his years, which is why, as his main scene partner, Boghossian’s Molloy can grate. Molloy, we’re told, has his own regrets and urgency: an addict now long in recovery, he’s being treated for Parkinson’s disease; even boarding a plane during the COVID-19 pandemic is a risk in his condition. The choice was made, I guess, to make Molloy seem extremely modern against a character who came of age in another century, another world, but his archaic dialogue seems like it belongs in a different series. Despite the title of the series, however, the interview scenes of Interview with the vampire include relatively little of their content; The joy of Sam Reed feasting in every scene is what makes the show unmissable.