Interview with the Vampire, Season 1 (2022)

 

AMC has taken Anne Rice’s novel and transplanted it into the 1920s New Orleans. Though not faithful to the source material, the writers have done a surprisingly good job of changing most of the details while remaining true to the spirit of the original.

 

It’s been a long time since journalist Daniel Mollogy (Eric Bogosian) heard from the vampire, but now his old friend summons him to take notes for a book about his life. Louis (Jacob Anderson) has everything going for him as a Negro in the deep south. A successful business where people pay good money to drink, gamble, and mess around with his ladies of the night, a loving family, and plenty of friends, even if he gets a lot of disrespect. He has an infatuation with a girl and pays for her time without ever getting physical, and an affection for his Bible-banging little brother. But then he meets Lestat (Sam Reid), a mysterious and slightly sadistic stranger who seems able to control time, plant thoughts in his head, and lure him away from his family.

 

After an impassioned encounter, Louis winds up… well, dead. A vampire like Lestat. Everything enhanced, miraculous, but with a burning need for blood and a newfound desire for revenge. The two of them eat and kill, bury and burn bodies, and share a lavish lifestyle in the high-class part of town, but Louis’ family senses something is wrong. His brother jumps off a roof. And he becomes broody, withdrawn, and full of angst about his need to suck people dry and inability to control himself. So much so that he considers leaving Lestat.

 

And that’s when he meets Claudia (Bailey Bass), a starving girl in need of a home, who may be his salvation… or his biggest mistake.

 

When I heard they were remaking this and transplanting it into another century, I went “eh.” And after the first episode, I didn’t like either of the main characters, but after several attempts, I kept going. The story gets better, the characterizations deeper, and it does a good job of altering events and situations while keeping the characters mostly true to their originals. Louis here instead of being a “problematic” white slave owner in the deep south is a gin-toting whore-mongering black man full of rage, which gives new meaning to his desire to break away eventually from Lestat (“He is our master,” a black Claudia emphasizes to him; “and we are his slaves”).

  

Compared to the novel, it’s gayer (both are bisexual on the page, but vampires in the original books don’t actually have sex; they use blood-drinking as an erotic substitute) but lacks some of the ick (Louis in this version has a fatherly affection for Claudia, and in the book… it was more than that). It’s set in a different time period. There’s a lot more sexual content and foul language, but the setting works well. New Orleans pops with beauty and ugliness, refinement and basic desires. It’s a city you can imagine strolling through and meeting fancy folks, but you could turn a corner into a rat-infested ally. Louis comes across as a man who takes a while to find his moral scruples, but then sticks to them and who festers with a controlled rage; Lestat is a sociopath from day one, but we feel sorry for him here and there. Claudia has the best expansion out of the three, as she explores what it means to be a young female vampire who will never grow up. Here, she’s older than twelve, but has a wild enthusiasm and zeal for life, and her narration is often funny (“Then I died. But I decided to make the most of it”).

  

The costumes are good, as is in the music and the setting. Many scenes are expanded and fleshed out compared to the movie, and allows us to meet new people and get sucked up into the intensity (one scene where Lestat and Louis return home to find the cops in their house, Claudia drunk and laughing, and body parts strewn about her room, is angsty for them). I enjoyed the series overall, but compared to the film, it has less of a spark. The actors are good, but it’s difficult to live up to the towering performances of the original cast. Kirsten Dunst got an Oscar nomination for her unhinged Claudia, and as playful as this actress is, she just can’t exude that level of innocence combined with meanness. It told the story with less profanity and more subtlety, and had exquisite costume design. It remains my favorite adaptation.   

   

Sexual Content:

Whores show their breasts, use sexual language, and perform for men. Several graphic, lengthy same-sex sex scenes (one of them starts as a three-way with a woman involved), kissing between men, vampire men sharing a coffin, backside nudity, and implied oral sex. Claudia loses her virginity in the back of a car, then wonders if she has to grow her hymen back every time (presumably yes) in her journal. She is raped by another vampire, but we don’t see it, and Louis refuses to talk about it with his interviewer.

  

Violence:

Louis feeds on humans first, animals later. Several times, we see him grab animals and suck their blood while they squeal, whine, growl, or make pathetic noises (rats, cats, dogs, birds). He breaks birds’ wings and leaves them in Claudia’s room, hoping to entice her to feed. Lestat rips people apart, severs their jugular, or lets them bleed out slowly to torment them. Lots of blood and gore, body parts, bodies turning up after a rain, people being jumped on, a few torn apart. The vampires go on a rampage that includes them turning on one another. To punish Louis, Lestat beats him up terribly, crashing through the walls of his home, and dragging his bloody, mangled body around, before he flies up into the air and then drops him from a great height.

 

Language:

Lots of f-words (used sexually and casually) and crass references to body parts.