It’s been nearly five decades since Anne Rice released Interview with the Vampire (1976) , the first of a series of novels that would garner her fans worldwide. It also was turned into a major Hollywood blockbuster movie, starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in somewhat homoerotic roles. Those homoerotic illusions have now become a reality in the new adaptation.

In the year 2022, the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac lives in Dubai and seeks to tell the story of his life or afterlife to renowned journalist Daniel Molloy. Beginning in early 20th-century New Orleans, Louis’ story follows his relationship with the vampire Lestat du Lioncourt and their formed family, including teen fledgling Claudia. Together, the vampire family endures immortality in New Orleans and beyond. As the interview continues in Dubai, Molloy discovers the truths beneath Louis’ story.

The series was created by Rolin Jones, and stars Sam Reid as the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, Jacob Anderson as his lover and protégé Louis de Pointe du Lac, Bailey Bass as the teenage vampire Claudia, and Eric Bogosian as the reporter Daniel Molloy. It has already been renewed for a second season, after premiering on AMC. 

Interview with the Vampire follows Louis, and Claudia’s epic story of unconventional love, blood, and the perils of immortality, as told to journalist Daniel Molloy.. Chafing at the limitations of life as a black man in 1910s New Orleans, Louis finds it impossible to resist the rakish Lestat’s offer of the ultimate escape: joining him as his vampire companion. But Louis’s intoxicating new powers come with a violent price, and the introduction of Lestat’s newest fledgling, the child vampire Claudia, soon sets them on a decades-long path of revenge and atonement.

In the original novel and the 1994 film, Louis is an owner of a plantation in the Antebellum South, but the queer elements of the novel are almost invisible in the film adaptation. In the TV series, Anderson portrays him as a closeted Creole black man whose wealth comes from a chain of brothels in Storyville, a now-subsumed red light district in early 20th century New Orleans. Writer Rolin Jones said that the changes were made in order to place the story in a “time period that was as exciting aesthetically as the 18th century was without digging into a plantation story that nobody really wanted to hear now”

Overall, it’s a spirited and updated modern adaptation for the times, with the prerequisite amount of flesh and blood. Catch it streaming now on AMC/Prime Video.

About the Author

Bryen Dunn is a freelance journalist with a focus on travel, lifestyle, entertainment and hospitality. He has an extensive portfolio of celebrity interviews with musicians, actors and other public personalities. He enjoys discovering delicious eats, tasting spirited treats, and being mesmerized by musical beats.