Sinking Our Teeth into "Interview with the Vampire"--"In Throes of Increasing Wonder..." (S1, Ep. 1)

The first episode of the new adaptation of Anne Rice's most famous work is a decadent, delicious delight.

“You have to let the story seduce you,” Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) says to Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) as he relates his life story, for the second time, to the aging interviewer. It's a line that’s perfectly delivered by Anderson, with all of the intense, pretentious self-regard for which one of Anne Rice’s two most famous vampire creations has always been famous. It is also a perfect distillation of this series’ entire ethos. It is a tory designed to draw you in, to sink its fangs into you (if you’ll forgive a very tired and overused vampire pun), and to fill your head with intoxicating visions of Jazz Age New Orleans and sexy, tortured vampires. 

In short, it’s everything you could ever want from an adaptation of the works of Anne Rice.

To say that I’ve had a very long and deep relationship with the vampiric works of the late Rice would be something of an understatement. When it comes to the cultural touchstones of my youth, The Vampire Chronicles are right there at the top next to The Lord of the Rings (strange as such a pairing must be to many). Louis, Lestat, Armand, Marius, and all the rest were key to my development as a queer person, for in these delicious, melodramatic, overwrought immortal blood-drinkers I found, strange as it might sound, kindred spirits. And, while I loved Interview with the Vampire with Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and Antonio Banderas, to me it never quite captured the absolute sexiness of the original works. We won’t say anything about the absolute travesty that was Queen of the Damned. 

Which is why I was so delighted to see this new adaptation of Rice’s work. From its very first scenes, it’s clear that this is going to be an adaptation that, despite its numerous changes to the source material–changing the setting to the 20th century, making Louis a gay Creole, etc.--nevertheless is, in my opinion at least, closer to the spirit and the ethos of Anne Rice’s original book. These are vampires who are the very epitome of sexy, and both Anderson and Sam Reid (who portrays Lestat) are positively overflowing with sinister charisma. Each, in their own way, brings out layers and nuances of Rice’s characters in ways that never felt quite natural in the 1994 film (though in my opinion Pitt comes closer to the true nature of Louis than Cruise does to Lestat). Some of this, I suspect, stems from the fact that neither is a big star in the same way that Cruise and Pitt were when their version of Interview hit theaters, and this allows them to lose themselves in their roles. 

As this first episode unfolds, we learn a great deal about Louis, who is a peddler of sin and vice in Jazz Age New Orleans. He is, as Daniel Molloy bluntly puts it, a pimp, and his activities allow his family to live in a great deal of wealth. At the same time, this Louis, like his book counterpart, is riddled with angst and conflict, both because of his sexuality–this version of the story is much more explicit about his queerness than its predecessor–but because his brother, tormented by his own inner demons, despises and condemns him for his participation in the economy of vice. Matters come to a head when said brother takes his own life by jumping off of a roof and a despairing Louis, offered the dark gift of immortality by Lestat, gives in, paving the way for their unholy marriage. 

Anderson does a truly magnificent job as Louis, for while he’s a bit harder than his book counterpart, there is still a soulfulness and an intensity to his performance that lends it credibility. You can see how he will become someone who is tormented by darkness, despair, and melancholy (three of the traits most often associated with Louis). Fortunately, this adaptation has stripped away some of the self-indulgent and lachrymose elements of Louis’ character, which is hard enough to swallow in book form let alone in roughly eight hours of screen time. Much as I, like Louis, can be quite self-indulgent when it comes to my emotions, I don’t need to spend so much time with such a character. 

But, for me, it’s Sam Reid’s Lestat who truly steals the show. With his rich, deep voice, his sexy aura of command, and his devil-may-care attitude, he is everything that Lestat should be and so much more. It’s easy to see why Louis finds himself besotted with the blonde-maned vampire from the very first moment that he sets eyes on him. This isn’t to say that Reid doesn’t also capture Lestat’s cruelty, because he most certainly does. He delights in toying with Louis and with his family, and he can’t stand the idea that Louis might have feelings for anyone else, which is why he kills the high-class prostitute with whom Louis has been having a longstanding (largely emotional) affair, leaving her to be seen as yet another victim of the mysterious fever  that seems to have afflicted the good citizens of New Orleans. Even in this first episode, it’s clear that Lestat is determined to have Louis all to himself, and anyone who stands in his way–including Louis’ brother, will almost certainly meet the same fate.  

All of which brings us to this series’ biggest selling point: it’s sensuous queerness. Anyone who has read even one of Rice’s vampire novels knows that the homoeroticism was never very far beneath the surface. Far from being subtext, it was often right there on the surface. Some of this was hinted at in the 1994 film, bit AMC’s Interview with the Vampire goes all in, showing just how powerful is the desire between everyone’s favorite vampires. Seeing them together on-screen in a passionate embrace is just as enticing and delicious as it should be, and it aroused in me all of the feelings that reading Rice’s works did in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

And, finally, there is Daniel Molloy. Eric Bogosian endows this character with a feverish intensity that almost leaps off of the screen. His blue eyes flash with righteous indignation, and his dialogue crackles with all of the rage of a man who is staring both mortality (he has Parkinson’s) and immortality (he is talking to a vampire) in the face. The fact that this is the second time the two of them have interacted lends their verbal sparring a rich dimension it might have otherwise lacked. I am curious, though, as to whether Armand will make Daniel into a vampire in the way he does in the novels, or whether this will be another chance they make to the source material. 

I am well aware that this particular series has earned quite a lot of opprobrium from some outraged members of the Anne Rice fan community, and I truly do think that’s a shame. As I said in the beginning, her works were and are key to my own development as a queer person, and I have been hungry for a screen adaptation that truly does them justice. This series really does hit the ground running, and I felt myself swept up in its beautiful and baroque stylings. Anyone who is complaining about the high-flown dialogue has clearly never read a page of Anne Rice in their lives, for if there was one thing the late author did well, it was to indulge in the decadent richness of the English language. 

This isn’t to say that the series is perfect, because it isn’t (and, of course, no series is perfect). One of the most egregious missteps was the moment in which Lestat puts his fist through the head of a fleeing priest. It was a moment of gratuitous violence that felt jarring not just because such moments were rare in Rice’s work (at least early on) but also because it seemed out of place in the series that I was watching. Yes, Lestat is a dark and sinister monster, but moments like that one seem more in place in a shlock-fest, rather than a series based on the work of Anne Rice. I’m also still very much on the fence about the moments in which we see the vampires with blood smeared all over their mouths, as Rice is very clear that vampires never let a drop spill. However, this is a conceit that the 1994 version used, as well, so I’ll give it a pass.

Overall, I thought that this was an extraordinary beginning to what is already promising to be a luscious, overwrought, decadent adaptation of Interview with the Vampire. I don’t yet know just how far they’re going to take the action of the story, but I was excited to learn that it had already been renewed for a second season. I’m sure that I am not the only one who can’t wait to see just what sinful pleasures will be in the offing. 

Until next week!