Graphic by Mari Al Tayb '26.
Fang Cieprisz ’26
Staff Writer
Content warning: This article discusses slavery, racism and suicidality.
The final episode of season one of AMC’s “Interview with the Vampire” premiered on AMC+ Sunday, Nov. 6, and aired on cable on Sunday, Nov. 13. The show adapts author Anne Rice’s “The Vampire Chronicles” series, beginning with the 1976 novel “Interview with the Vampire,” also adapted into a 1994 movie of the same name. “Interview with the Vampire” follows Louis de Pointe du Lac as he tells his life story to a reporter, Daniel Molloy. In the book, Louis begins his story as a plantation owner in late 18th-century Spanish Louisiana, distraught over the death of his brother and hoping for death himself. When he meets the mysterious Lestat de Lioncourt, his wish is granted in the form of vampirism. The two have an intense relationship and eventually take in a young orphaned girl named Claudia, whom they turn into a vampire and raise as their own. The three vampires exhibit a pseudo-family dynamic, rife with all the chaos and tension that comes from eternal life as a brutal killer.
While still an adaptation of the book series, the TV show makes many changes. In contrast to the contemporary periods of the book and movie, the show’s numerous references to the COVID-19 pandemic recontextualize it for the modern era. Flashbacks during the interview take us back to the early twentieth century, a starkly different backdrop from the book’s late eighteenth century setting. Another notable difference is the show’s casting of a Black man, Jacob Anderson, in the role of Louis. Louis’ status as a slaveholder is certainly a controversial issue in the book, one that Rice glosses over in an effort to make the character seem sympathetic and relatable to the audience by writing him as disinterested and uninvolved in plantation work while still reaping the benefits. The author’s choice to write a character who owns slaves without engaging with that in the text causes race to be conspicuously ignored throughout both the book and the movie. Anderson’s casting is, therefore, a complete upheaval of the story, adding an entirely new layer to his characterization and the story as a whole. Despite these changes, the show manages to retain the original spirit of the books, even improving on their shortcomings.
Louis’ race increases his character’s complexity. Instead of being a plantation owner, the show’s version of the character is a wealthy, light-skinned Black man who manages several brothels in New Orleans’ red-light district. Despite apparent differences from earlier iterations, the character’s background — his family and relationship with religion — remain similar enough to his literary and cinematic counterparts that the change does not feel jarring. The differences only add to the story rather than detract from it. From the beginning, viewers see the fine line Louis walks: He is privileged enough due to his class status to associate with the district’s white businessmen, yet still not viewed as an equal. Once turned into a vampire, Louis continues to live in gray areas — living and dead, human and nonhuman, good and evil. Being a vampire intersects with Louis’ Blackness in a truly unique way; even though vampirism comes with benefits — eternal life, super strength, quick healing and perhaps even the ability to fly — Louis still experiences the world as a Black man, with all of the discrimination and disrespect that comes with it.
The show also takes care to demonstrate the difference between Louis’ experience with vampirism and Lestat’s, who is white. Lestat has always played the role of mentor to Louis, but the show’s inclusion of race adds another level to the inherent power imbalance between the two. Being both French and a centuries-old vampire, Lestat lives so far removed from American and human racial hierarchy that he fundamentally misunderstands Louis’ experience and why he is still bound to such a hierarchy despite his vampirism, which would presumably give him some sort of upper hand. In the second episode, when Louis uses his newfound powers to kill a disrespectful white man, Lestat scolds him for his carelessness in the murder, calling him a “fledgling.” “You need to stop using that word right now, [because] it’s sounding a little like ‘slave,’” Louis responds. “There’s some things you don’t get about America, Lestat,” he tells him, referring to the obvious differences between them that Lestat overlooks. This distance only grows deeper when the two men take in Claudia, played by Bailey Bass in the show. Unlike her book and movie counterparts, Claudia is also Black. She experiences the same power imbalance as Louis, which is further complicated because of her age and gender. Race permeates every aspect of the show, further developing the narrative and the characters’ relationships.
While the book and movie are rife with homoerotic subtext, the show makes the relationship between Louis and Lestat explicit. Vampires have always been linked by some audiences to sexuality and queerness, as the inherent sensuality of vampiric neck-biting combined with the fact that vampires look mortal but are not subject to human social norms makes them the perfect medium through which to explore society’s simultaneous fear of and desire for sex. Because of this, a male vampire biting another man, such as in “Interview with the Vampire,” has definite queer connotations. “The Vampire Chronicles” have been hailed for their queer representation at a time when it was uncommon, and Rice has always been outspoken about her support for the LGBTQ+ community: “People told me ‘Interview With the Vampire’ was a gay allegory, and I was very honored by that. I think I have a gay sensibility and I feel like I’m gay, because I’ve always transcended gender, and I’ve always seen love as transcending gender. In my books, I’ve always created bonds of love that have transcended gender,” Rice said in a 2017 interview with The Daily Beast.
The bond between Lestat and Louis in the original book is typically read as a romantic one even though it is never made explicit, but the show leaves no room for doubt, with on-screen kisses and sexual activity. “I don’t think it’s a horror show, I think it is a gothic romance. And I want to write a very excitable, aggressive, toxic, beautiful love story,” series creator Rolin Jones said in an interview with Showbiz CheatSheet. Sydney Bloom ’26 recalled, “I watched the movie for the first time since I was a kid in January with my best friend and we both were shocked about how gay it was. It’s some of my dad’s favorite media so I expected it to be very ‘straight white man,’ and was just surprised it wasn’t. … When the show came out, it was even more gay. I was very happy to see this queerness in less of a subtextual way.” Louis and Lestat’s relationship is not a healthy one, nor is it a good example to follow. However, it is not meant to be portrayed as such, and the show’s effort to portray the complexity of queer relationships is incredibly compelling.
Despite its many changes to the original story, AMC’s “Interview with the Vampire” is still deeply faithful to its characters. Furthermore, it diversifies the narrative in a way that adds not only representation, but also depth to the storyline and characters. The first season only adapts a portion of the first book in the series, and AMC “entered into an agreement” to acquire the rights to 18 Anne Rice books, with season two already confirmed, AMC Talk reported. Viewers can look forward to much more of Louis’ story, as well as many more of Rice’s vampires.