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Interview With The Vampire

By Kraven The She Wolf



Okay, so when I first learned that there was in production a new TV series based on the Ann Rice novel my first thought was…WHY? This very book was so brilliantly covered in the 1994 movie of the same name with Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and a then young Kirsten Dunst (who by the way is now 40 years old) and was made to absolute perfection. So in my mind I’m thinking, why would anyone mess with this perfect gem of a movie and the novel that it spawned from. How in the world could it even somewhat compare to what came before? Then I watched the first season and holy shit, it's F**king amazing!


I could not believe how good this show was and on AMC no less! One of the things that gave me some ill feelings for the show before I saw it was the changes to the story itself. One was that the series is set in 1910 when Louis first meets Lestat, jumping the story ahead into the 20th century and making Louis the owner of a series of cat houses….oh yeah and he’s black now? But you know what…from the minute this show starts, you nearly forget all that and are drawn into the story. Even if you’re a devoted fan of the movie like me, that all falls away and this new retelling of the story you know so well replays itself so damn good that you don’t care.

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Unlike the movie, with a run time of 2 hours, even a single season of only seven episodes could cover much more character development then a movie ever try for. With this extra five hours to play with, the show’s producers dove deep into the relationship of its two lead vampires. From what I learned, Rice herself had a hand in the show's production before her death and so it literally bleeds her influence into the story's plot even more so than the film ever did. One case in point in her novel Interview With The Vampire is the relationship between vampires Lestat and Louis is one of love as they raise their vampire child Claudia as a devoted couple. This was something that 1994 studio politics had to skirt around making their relationship seen much more platonic as a close friendship than anything else. And to be fair at the time the movie still works because although we all know the underline subtext of their companionship, we the viewer know whether or not the two share a coffin or not, they were close and it didn’t need to be addressed in another fashion. However in today’s much more opened minded world, Lestat and Louis could be free to be who they were really meant to be.


More time in the series also gave much more attention to the interview itself on which the plot is hinged on. Where the movie gave much more screen time to the vampires in their past lives, the series gets to play with the conduction of the interview Louis gives to journalist Daniel Molloy. Here Molloy is played up more than in the movie as Louis tells his story to the human from his lush apartment in Dubai.

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Another slight change from the film and novel is Claudia the vampire child Louis and Lestat raise after her mother dies from the plague. In the book, Claudia is only 5 years old when she is turned into a vampire and 10 in the movie. Here Claudia is about 14 when she is turned leaving her in a physical state of an adolescent and yet as she ages into the mind of a grown woman. This frustration is very present in both the book and movie where she really is a woman stuck forever in the body of a child. The series touches on this subject too only with her being aged up by an older actress, it has a little less of an impact than if she was 5 or 10 when turned. Still, this frustration is there and played to perfection by actress Bailey Bass. Like with Louis now being played by a black man now, so is Claudia. I’m not sure why this change was made from the book and movie versions, but the change in the character's race is never once called into question because it’s so well performed that who the hell cares at this point what color their skin was.


Speaking of acting…we have to talk about the actor playing Lestat. At the present time, only three actors have taken up the role of Ann Rice’s beloved vampire in film and TV. The first is that of Tom Cruise in the film Interview With The Vampire in the 1994 movie. Although upon his casting, Rice herself bitched that how the hell could Tom Cruise be cast as her vampire creation and saw him all wrong for the part. She however changed her tune when seeing his astounding performance in the movie and after recanted her ill comments. Next Stuart Townsend took the role in the movie Queen of The Damned in 2002 and although just fine for the story, I think he lacked a little of the Cruise magic that made him so mind-blowing in that role. Now jump ahead 20 years and actor Sam Reid takes on the iconic character in the television adaptation of Interview With The Vampire. Okay, Cruise really set the bar high when it came to playing Lestat and made big shoes to fill, but damn if actor Sam Reid didn’t nail it with command.




His take on Lestat is remarkable playing the vampire killer with compassion, a hint of loneliness, and affection for those he cared for but with utter brutality that only a homicidal vampire could bring out when called upon. I really didn’t think anyone could possibly out-perform Tom Cruise as the vampire Lestat, but Sam Reid made the role his own and pulled it off nicely.


Playing Louis is Jacob Anderson who does a masterful job with portraying the tortured soul made a vampire against his will and is constantly conflicted with the advantages of his new life against the savagery of it. As mention above, there are many changes to his character like race, being in the 1910’s and being a business man as opposed to a wealthy plantation owner in the 1790’s. But Anderson does a wonderful job with the role change and fits the character to a tee. He plays the relationship with Lestat with equal parts disgust and love that gives Brad Pitt a run for his money in the role.


The series with only seven episodes which only covered the first half of the Ann Rice novel leaving it conclude with the death of Lestat with the rest of the book to be covered in season two set sometime in 2023. Yeah, this show was damn good and it actually had me looking forward to seeing the next episode. It really is worth seeing.