It’s been far too long since an adult vampire drama scintillated TV screens. AMC‘s Interview With the Vampire is here to fix that. Premiering October 2 on AMC and AMC+, Anne Rice’s groundbreaking novel is getting a new interpretation with Jacob Anderson (Game of Thrones) as Louis de Pointe du Lac and Sam Reid (The Newsreader) as his maker, Lestat de Lioncourt, bringing the genre back to prestige TV dramas after True Blood ended in 2014.
In this TV Insider exclusive clip, above, viewers get an eery look into the vampire lovers’ complicated romance fraught with passion and peril. The video jumps between early 1900s New Orleans decadence and the sleek modernity of Louis’s life in 2022. And the air of danger in the eponymous interview with the journalist in need of a win Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian, Talk Radio, Succession) can be cut with a knife. Above all else, you’ll realize it doesn’t matter how many vampire shows there are: We’ll always be (blood)thirsty for more.
The 1976 novel became a cultural touchstone for LGBTQ+ readers because of its homoerotic nature. AMC’s interpretation of the Rice classic (on which she served as an executive producer until her death in 2021 — her son, Christopher Rice, now carries the mantle) takes that homoerotic subtext from the novel and 1994 film from implicit to explicit in a natural evolution of the source material.
The subtext is clear: Louis and Lestat raise Lestat’s fledgling vampire Claudia (Bailey Bass in AMC’s version) together, they call each other lovers, and the novel is full of men admiring the beauty of other men. What’s more, Rice agreed that Louis and Lestat were, in fact, a same-sex couple.
In a 2012 interview discussing the graphic novel Interview With the Vampire: Claudia’s Story by Ashley Marie Witter, Rice confirmed Louis and Lestat are parents with a child, calling them the “first vampire same-sex parents.” This new drama is just making undeniably clear what was teased in previous versions. But it’s also drawing out the inherent power imbalance between the two men.
In the video, Louis says he did not take to killing easily once turned by Lestat. And yet, in conversation with Daniel, he describes Lestat as his mentor, lover, maker, and equal. Daniel isn’t buying it. “The abused-abuser relationship, but equal in the quiet dark,” he wryly responds as Louis wipes blood from his chin.
Interview With the Vampire Season 1 will consist of seven episodes. It debuts on Sunday, October 2 after the Season 11C premiere of The Walking Dead. (Two episodes will be available on premiere night on AMC+.) The series is the first adaptation of Rice’s novels after AMC acquired the rights to her catalogue in 2020. The next adaptation will be Mayfair Witches, premiering in late 2022.
Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, Series Premiere, Sunday, October 2, 10/9c, AMC & AMC+
