Resurrecting "Interview With the Vampire"

I went through an Anne Rice phase in high school, as I'm sure many '90s teenagers did.  The Neil Jordan adaptation of "Interview With the Vampire" was fun, but felt rather compromised in spite of the big name actors.  I wasn't expecting much when I heard that AMC and Rolin Jones were adapting the book again for a television series, this time with the participation of Rice and her family.  I underestimated what a television production would be capable of, and was delighted to find that in a season full of splashy fantasy series, the new "Interview With the Vampire" outshines most of them, and is one of the best shows of the year.

This adaptation immediately distinguishes itself in several ways.  First, and most importantly, it departs from the text of the novel significantly, treating the titular vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) as a very unreliable narrator.  The original novel exists in universe, written in the '70s by Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), who is now summoned to Dubai in the present day for a second attempt at getting a truthful account of Louis's life story.  Daniel is now elderly and suffering from Parkinson's, but also a much tougher, more combative interviewer.  He questions Louis's recollections at every turn, picking apart his motives and his framing of events.  

And it's almost immediately apparent why.  The first season is seven episodes that cover roughly three decades, starting in 1910.  Instead of the white plantation owner from the novel, Louis is Black creole, and now the owner of a New Orleans brothel in the notorious Storyville red light district.  His relationship with the vampire who turns him, Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), is explicitly homosexual and romantic, instead of vaguely homoerotic. Their adopted daughter, Claudia (Bailey Bass), is also black.  This immediately adds much more social and historical material to chew on, and the show's writers jump in with relish.  Now Louis's story is not only about the struggle to reconcile himself with his existence as a vampire, but also as a black man in a world that barely tolerates him.  The early episodes track his eroding humanity not only through his development as a vampire, but the gradual destruction of his ties with his family, and the thwarting of his business ambitions by racist local authorities.  

This version of Louis is far more interesting and sympathetic, benefiting greatly from Jacob Anderson's nuanced, passionate performance.  However, he's frequently overshadowed by Sam Reid and Bailey Bass just due to the nature of their characters.  Reid gets the showiest part as Lestat, the charismatic French vampire whose love for Louis becomes selfish and controlling.  To be blunt, he blows Tom Cruise's Lestat out of the water, terrifying one moment and completely delightful the next.  The accent alone is a vast improvement.  Claudia has been aged up to fourteen and is a far more difficult, provocative presence, with destructive adolescent growing pains.  Though physically weaker, she's soon on the same level as her guardians, intellectually and emotionally.  Bass is especially good when Claudia verbally spars with Lestat, who she contemptuously refers to as "Uncle Les."      

The first season covers the first half of the book, and takes place almost entirely in New Orleans.  I don't know what AMC spent on the series, but it looks absolutely stunning.  The production values are to die for, and includes copious amounts of sex and violence.  What really won me over, however, was the writing.  The show is not afraid of being a romance when it needs to be, or a horror story, or a piece of historical fiction.  It's not afraid of being complicated, with monstrous protagonists who are terribly sympathetic and anything but easy to parse.  And I've rarely heard such literate, sharp-witted, delightfully self-indulgent dialogue in any sort of recent American media.   Lestat will incorporate French phrases without bothering to translate for the English speaking audience.  Daniel Molloy is such an uncompromising asshole, he might be my favorite character in the show.      

In short, the creators of the series did such a good job that I'm not only looking forward to the next season of "Interview With the Vampire," but the other planned spinoff series that are in the works, starting with the "Mayfair Witches" series coming in 2023.  This is one of the best updates of a genre franchise that I've ever seen, and I can't wait to see how other parts of this story will be adapted.

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