Well, the Anne Rice Cinematic Universe is finally upon us. I would like to be excited about this! I was one of those velvet-choker wearing teens who loved these books with a passion! I did not, however, envision them as aggressively sepia-toned.
The trailer for AMC’s Interview With the Vampire is here, and the show has clearly made a lot of choices.
One of those choices is to move the timeline: This version of the story is set in the early 1900s. According to Entertainment Weekly, there’s another major change where it comes to Daniel Molloy, who conducts the central interview with vampire Louis. “In the series,” EW reports, “it’s revealed that journalist Daniel Molloy had previously attempted to interview Louis many years prior, at the very beginning of his career as a reporter. But that interview was a total disaster, and Louis is giving him a second chance decades later to get it right.”
This actually is an interesting choice, and Eric Bogosian has a steely journalistic approach in his brief scene that makes me want to see more of him. Jacob Anderson is a perfectly acceptable emotional Louis. But Sam Reid’s Lestat? If he has the charisma necessary for this role, it’s not on display in this trailer.
Rice’s novel is about two vampires powerfully drawn together; at one point Lestat creates a tiny vampire daughter for them, because he’s afraid Louis will leave him. (In 2012, Rice herself said, “They were the first vampire same-sex parents.”) But something about this trailer feels like the suggestions that we’ll really get Louis and Lestat in love—the hand-touches, the drinking—are a tease. Not to put too fine a point on it, but as my editor asked, “Honestly what is even the point of showing live action Lestat and Louis again unless they fuck?”
Interview With the Vampire premieres on AMC on October 2nd, with the first two episodes available on AMC+ that night.
