Created by Rolin Jones 
1.01 “In Throes of Increasing Wonder…”
Written by Rolin Jones
Directed by Alan Taylor
Starring Jacob Anderson, Sam Reid, Bailey Bass, and Eric Bogosian
New episodes airing Sundays on AMC & streaming on AMC+

by Emily Maesar, Associate Editor, TVJawn

(The following is part of a larger interview about the entire first season of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire series, airing on Sundays in October and November of 2022. You can decide if that first part is true or not, though.)

MovieJawn: What’s your relationship to the source material? I think that’s a good first question, you know? It’s traditional, anyway.

Emily Maesar: (laughs) Yeah, well, who are we to buck tradition? The Vampire Chronicles is a series that feels like it’s been with me forever. I know that’s not true, there are pieces of vampire media that predate my obsession with the series (like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for instance), but I knew the moment I realized that the film Queen of the Damned was based on something… I was in for the ride of my life. So, I guess that’s my first relationship with the vampire Lestat—the absolute goth rock star version that I saw at ten, played by Stuart Townsend. From there, I read the novel Interview with the Vampire and then watched the 1994 film (which I would later write about with some lovely people at MovieJawn). 

MJ: So, how does this one hold up?

EM: It’s the best one yet. As its own piece of media, it’s supreme. Beautifully written, performed, and shot. The editing is really interesting, but not in a distracting kind of way, which is really hard to do with shows that have a lot of flashbacks. It’s like the greatest dream I’ve ever had, honestly. It feels like a secret I want to tell everyone about. And as a piece of adaptation, it’s a master class in modernity, while understanding how traditions play into how we interpret certain texts.

MJ: How so?

EM: The original novel was released in 1976, before the AIDS crisis. It’s queer in subtext (or kind of text, considering Anne Rice vampires notoriously don’t have physical sex and, instead, bites are often viewed as the act itself), but it deals a lot with mental health and abusive relationships, both of which are notoriously higher in the queer community. The series posits that the original interview between Louis and Daniel took place, but they are coming together in the modern era to set the actual record straight. The novel, or the contents of the novel, exists, but not in its totality and not as we might actually know it. It’s nostalgia, while also being completely other. 

MJ: And how does that change the narrative?

EM: Well, it allows for a few things. First, is that it gives Daniel (Eric Bogosian) and Louis (Jacob Anderson) a shared history. We don’t see it in flashbacks, which is a godsend since the majority of the show is a giant flashback. Instead, we get snippets of their preexisting relationship through hearing how they each talk about the event of the original interview, how their lives have been since that night, and how they physically behave toward each other. It’s a bright and stunning tapestry of world building and it’s a deeply smart choice. I love having an older Daniel—I think it fucking rocks. 

Second, by placing the second interview, what we can believe is the truthful one, in 2022, the series gets the option to decide if the COVID pandemic happened in this world. It did, by the way. And I think it’s handled really interestingly. A lot about modern-day Louis is conveyed in the images of his staff members in masks. Something that is clearly not for his sake, but it’s for themselves and for Daniel.

Also, I can’t say enough about the choice to move the general flashback time period. Going from 1791, where Louis is a white plantation owner (which mean that, yes, he is in fact a slave owner), to 1910, where Louis is a Black business man is a great piece of adaptational genius. That change, plus making the implicit queerness of the story into something explicit, means that the show can plainly speak on race and sexuality. It’s not side stepping around anything or having to pretend it means this, when it’s saying that. 

MJ: Would you say that the series afford the Vampire Chronicles something that it hasn’t had before, then?

EM: Absolutely. Race is kind of new to the series, especially in this particular way (it’s been deeply messy before, unsurprisingly), and I’m hopeful for the way it’s being handled in the show. Sexuality, though? This is the first adaptation of any of the Vampire Chronicles (to be fair there’s just been the two movies, Interview with the Vampire and Queen of the Damned) where sexuality is a focal point of the story—of Louis and Lestat’s relationship. It’s not just spoken about romantically, like a gothic novel where maybe it’s happening the way you imagine, or maybe it’s just guys being pals. No, AMC’s Interview with the Vampire is queer. Explicitly. Meaning both clearly and without doubt, but also in the “explicit content” kind of way. The show states, in no uncertain terms, that Louis and Lestat are both queer men. Anne Rice, herself, had confirmed Lestat’s bisexuality as recently as January of 2015 (also noting that “All my vampires transcend gender in their orientation.” Queen really said, “all my vampires are queer, get over it. [laughs])

Something else from that post, though, that I think is really interesting, is that she refutes the fan theory that Lestat had anything to do with the suicide of Louis’s brother. She’s written about it a few times, both from her own voice, but also from Lestat’s. The plotting of the novel means that Louis and Lestat don't meet until after Louis’s brother is dead. The series, however, has Louis falling for Lestat (Sam Reid) and even being bitten by him (that’s the Anne Rice sex thing, remember!) before Paul’s suicide. 

It leaves this really interesting space open for the possibility that Lestat’s toxic and manipulative nature might be even scarier than an audience of the original story can anticipate. Which… I love a messy bisexual, so I’m all about letting the vampires be as evil as possible. Especially when you have Louis in the modern era trying his best to be as far away from who Lestat groomed him into. 

MJ: So, it’s safe to say you’re looking forward to the next episode?

EM: Safe to say. It’s almost like I’ve already seen it, you know. Almost like AMC+ is dropping the episodes a full week before they air on the channel.

(pause)

I’d wink if I wasn’t so bad at it! (laughs)