CHARMET, Louisiana — Actors Jacob Anderson and Sam Reed shot a scene last March in a cavernous studio in St. Bernard Parish, about a 20-minute drive from New Orleans’ French Quarter. had just finished. The evening air was muggy and he looked exhausted from a filming schedule that required him to spend some vampire time under hot lighting.
As they spoke, they glowed. Looking like a tiger or a raver isn’t just because of hand-painted contact lenses.
It was also because they were in their own sweet spot, growing up as self-proclaimed outsiders with an affinity for the darker side of art — Poe’s literary demon to Reid, Portishead’s spectrum soundtrack for Anderson. And a few years later, they donned ragtime-era costumes to play his two most beloved misfits in popular culture. Lestat and Louis from Ann Rice’s novel “Interview with the Vampire”. AMC.
“I’m a very proud nerd,” said Anderson, 32, who plays the reluctant vampire Louis. “I love fantasy. I’m emo. I think I’m a little goth. This is a dream.” gray worm, leader of the Unsullied. )
Reed, 35, grew up with similar sensibilities. Having spent his childhood in Australia, he liked to dress up as a vampire for Halloween and later devoured Rice’s blood magic saga. He said he felt a responsibility to play Debonair Arrestat to do the right thing for the author, who died almost a year ago at the age of 80.
“If you love an original and are a fan yourself, you put pressure on yourself like any other lover of that book,” he said. It’s about justifying what you have.”
And then there is the pressure. In an era dominated by endlessly expandable telecinematic universes like Marvel and Star Wars, AMC relies heavily on the success of its shows.network got The rights to “Interviews” and 17 other Rice novels from two of her literary series, plans to spin that catalog into at least five new series over the next decade.
Perhaps more importantly, the series must ensure that it does not alienate its huge existing fan base. is the major rice dramatization of Over 40 books that define genres And a very dedicated, very protective readership. Based on pre-delivered episodes, the series does more than just adapt the novel. It radically changes that, shifting the central timeline back more than a century, swapping the book’s implied homosexuality for outright gay sex, changing the protagonist’s racial identity, etc. I am making changes.
A pedantic and often racist take on Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel The Ring of Power and HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragons. Given the backlash it’s received recently, this new version of “Interview” is bound. To take out trolls, as you actually already have. The series also has to compete with the 1994 release of Neil Jordan on the big screen. Whatever its flaws, the film was a huge success and helped solidify the popular images of Lestat and Louis as Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.
The show’s creator and showrunner Rollyn Jones (“Perry Mason,” “Weez”) said in a video interview last month that he knew there were people he didn’t like. Claiming that the series remains “deeply respectful” to the spirit and prose of the book, he called it “an essential work of American literature.”
“It’s the inner life,” he argued, that made the novel great, but “it almost always results in poor drama.” As such, it was to try to find new ways to externalize that drama for the modern television audience. was
“There’s something inherent in this story that we want to revisit from generation to generation,” he added.
Published in 1976Interview with the Vampire is one of the most widely read vampire stories in the world and perhaps the most influential story since Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1897. And the young man he transformed into an undead companion, Louis de Pointe du Lac, sold in the millions and spurred dozens of sequels collectively known as The Vampire Chronicles, which together It sold tens of millions more.
Stanley Stepanek, an assistant professor of Slavic languages and literature who teaches a class called “Dracula” at the University of Virginia, said Rice’s book was groundbreaking by making vampires feel more human. rice field. That’s especially true for its narrator, Louis.
“She told the story from a first-person perspective, through his voice, for most of the book,” Stepanek said. “He seems to regret it.”
When AMC announced in 2020, was getting Right to Rice “Interview” called it “It’s one of the most important and thrilling deals of my long career.” Although she wasn’t creatively involved with the series, one that appeared two years later — its full title is “Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire” – is in many ways true to her source material. (Season 1 is based in part on the first novel.) Daughter, I still have an interview with a giant vampire. New Orleans, Rice’s hometown, is a pivotal place.
But it’s also more romantic. Where the original book was more traded in homosexual undertones, Louis and Lestat are definitely a gay couple. It’s brutal and terrifying depending on your tolerance for horror. There’s gay and bisexual sex, his chilling threesome, and lots of flesh. I am very sweaty.
Jones described it as “Cassavetes with a lot of emotion and not many edit buttons”, and like “a nasty Fiona Apple album of vampire tales” where gay vampire dads “play”.of Toxic relationships in 2022. AMC “spent big bucks on a really weird beauty,” he said.
In a walkthrough of the laid-back set on March night, Jones showed off some of the changes. The crew built a street in 1910 that looked like Storyville, New Orleans’ upscale red-light district, rather than in the 18th century as in the novel. In a building made to look like a man, Louis reunites with the reporter (played by Eric Bogosian) who interviewed him decades ago in 1970s San Francisco.
From the director’s chair, Jones watched actress Baillie Bass, who was 18 at the time, playing Claudia. In the novel, Claudia is a stubborn 5-year-old, and Lestat transforms into some sort of vampire daughter of him and Louis, while in the series, she is 14-years-old, trapped in a body at the onset of puberty. left to mature emotionally.
Then there is the racial composition of the characters. Louis is implied to appear in his novel so strongly that he is no longer white. (When he met Lestat in 1791, he was the owner of a Louisiana plantation and slaves.) In the show, Louis is the owner of a Creole brothel who travels in white circles and tells the pilot that he is “openly gay.” You can’t be a black man.”
Lestat remains white, which makes their couple biracial. Jones said his overall changes were about things that “work for the season and the series,” especially for Louis.
“You think about season five, not the first episode,” he said. “What I wanted was someone who was very complicated and ultimately selfish. Not this kind and innocent person.”
Pitt played Lewis as a reluctant vampire, as he appears in the novel, but that wasn’t the main reason why some fans, especially queer fans, hated the film. Professor of English, Co-Editor, Town University Journal of Dracula StudiesIt publishes articles on the literature and history of vampires.
(In a brief phone interview, Jordan said he did nothing in the book to intentionally belittle being gay or anything else. As for the gay content, he said: said to
Based on his speculations about the new series so far, Herr said:
American fans are enthusiastic After two years of trying to figure out what AMC’s series had in store, and with multiple trailers and various drops and drops about the production, the reaction on the fansite ranged from enthusiastic to outraged. in one Private Facebook Group Dedicated to The Vampire Chronicles.
Others, like Mary Hutter, a video editor from Grand Rapids, Michigan and a Rice reader for most of her 46 years, said they were looking forward to the series. A fan of the online Ann Rice community reading is “mostly about it being super gay,” she said. , hopes to be a “very captivating, almost love story” between Lestat and Louis.
Jones said he would be nervous if someone took his favorite book and turned it into something new. What if you don’t like that “grand design”?
“They can beat me at the next Comic-Con,” he said with a joking smile.
Whatever its duration, ‘Interview’ will be on Showtime this season, just like ‘Interview’.put in the correct“Peacock’s”vampire academy” and Syfy comedy “Reginald the Vampire“FX Comedy”what we do in the shadows]has already been renewed for the 5th and 6th seasons and boasts a strong popularity.
With its timeless themes, the vampire mythology clearly proves to be a very flexible and durable framework, all of which makes Anderson feel like an outsider, much like he grew up feeling. It’s possible that someone has a vampire story.
“I hope people understand that these characters, who feel deep shame and sorrow and guilt, are not monsters, even though they feel like monsters,” he said in a follow-up video in August. “I hope people understand that this is a celebration that calls for self-acceptance and that searching for meaning is not an indulgence.”