“Anne Rice is probably responsible for the reason why vampires are so universally loved because they are so human and they’re the most human monsters,” Actor Sam Reid said of the allure of vampires. Sam stars as Lestat in the new AMC series adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, which debuted today on AMC+ and will broadcast at 10/9c on AMC. The cast and creative team recently gathered together at a TCA press conference to celebrate the show’s launch. And perhaps nobody was more excited to join the series than Sam Reid, who spent 12 Halloweens dressed as a vampire before getting this role. “They reflect our own humanity back, they talk about our own darkest desires, and they’re constantly questioning their existence, why they are here, because they are motive-conscious demons, who don’t really ever get to die.”
(Alfonso Bresciani/AMC)
“We are going through the first half of the book of Interview with the Vampire and AMC has bought all of the books,” series creator and executive poroducer Rolin Jones revealed about the longterm plans to adapt the book series, which consists of 12 titles (collectively called The Vampire Chronicles). “I'm just trying to work backwards from what it is in the late novels,” he said of the homosexual undertones in the books, which became canonized by the end of the series. “When I was tasked with the books from AMC, a number of things they wanted: make it here now, make it big and grand, I just came back to them. I said, ‘I don't think it’s a horror show. I think it is a gothic romance.’ And I want to kind of write a very excitable, aggressive, toxic, beautiful love story. And they were down for it. I don't think we went much deeper than that. I mean there's queer sexuality, but there's queer ethics and queer aesthetics.”
“Brad Pitt is Brad Pitt,” Jacob Anderson said when asked about viewers’ pre-existing point of reference for Louis form the hit 1994 film adaptation. “I’m not going to try and compete with that, and I think he’s a brilliant Louis. This is another thing, and there are things about Louis in this interpretation that are contextual with things and that are reflective of the time… How amazing that all of these Anne Rice stories can exist, all these Anne Rice interpretations and the books can all exist at the same time?”
“I was, like a lot of people, in love with the Claudia from the novel and the particular challenge she had,” director and executive producer Alan Taylor explained about one of the most changed characters from the book. For logistical reasons of depicting a character locked in her youth, the decision was made to age up the 7-year-old to a young teenager. “Even if it was arrived at for practical reasons, what Rolin built out of it of finding this other crisis point in a young girl’s life and having that extend forever became a really beautiful story to explore. I have two teenage daughters and it’s fascinating to think what would happen if this phase, that we frequently think of as a phase, was extended for potentially eternity.”
(Alfonso Bresciani/AMC)
“It was really exciting to play Claudia partly because she’s stuck right before puberty,” 19-year-old Bailey Bass shared. “Claudia is stuck in this 14-year-old body and we do touch upon what it means to be a Black woman, but also a Black child in that time. It was interesting doing research for Claudia being a Black child because there's not much research to be found, so we kind of had to create it on our own from what we had. You can see a lot of pictures of Black women, but not necessarily Black children who were to a wealthier family because there wasn’t much of that in the 1920s. So we did a lot of research. But it was great playing Claudia and I'm excited for people to feel seen, especially young women and young girls.”
“He’s at a point in his life where this is an opportunity and he’s not going to miss it,” Eric Bogosian said of playing journalist Daniel Molloy, the titular interviewer. “He’s afraid, and he’s attracted to Louis. I mean that’s sort of sitting there. Louis and Daniel have a very complex relationship and it takes the whole season to completely explore all of the nuances. It’s sort of bubbling off to the side but it is real and it’s complex and involves all kinds of irregular narratives and memory lapses.”
“Anne was so great at capturing the essence of a place, and capturing New Orleans, and Rolin has done that in a different time period,” production designer Mara LePere-Schloop explained. “As a designer that’s lived in New Orleans for over 20 years, this is beyond a dream. It doesn’t get better than this and Rolin’s idea to change the timeline of this to present a New Orleans that hasn’t really been seen in TV and film, Storyville is a time period that hasn’t really been depicted visually and it doesn’t exist anymore. So, it was just a dream job and there was so much support from the producing team and from AMC to let the world be a huge part of the show. Living in New Orleans and the entire crew who also lived in New Orleans and got to do a show set in New Orleans and do such a beautiful, specific, incredible thing, it was a rare gift. It’s exciting to see where this might go from here.”
(Alfonso Bresciani/AMC)
To find out where it goes form here, you’ll have to stay tuned. The first two episodes of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire are now streaming on AMC+. The first episode will air tonight at 10/9c on AMC, but AMC+ subscribers will stay one week ahead of broadcast with weekly episode releases.
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