How to reread 'Interview with the Vampire' for 21st century television

In 1976, Anne Rice published

and, with it, marked the path that an entire genre would follow.

With his stories —the

series of novels had 13 installments, the last one in 2018—, he changed the paradigm of those monsters that they had in Bram Stoker's

to their great literary reference to bring the reader closer to their desires and passions, that is, to get closer to what unites us vampires.

The story of the bloodsucker Lestat de Lioncourt and his victim, adventure partner and lover Louis de Pointe du Lac is set in New Orleans (the writer's hometown) at the beginning of the 18th century, in a gothic and decadent environment.

Those elements are recovered, with some tweaks, by the television series

which premieres on AMC+ this Thursday the 12th.

The title, which includes the name of the writer, gives a clue about one of the keys to the television adaptation: the objective is to recover the essence of the books and separate from the 1994 film version directed by Neil Jordan and starring Tom Cruise ( the vampire) and Brad Pitt (his victim).

Rolin Jones, head of the television version, sees the film as a time capsule that reflects the moment it was released.

“The film is as 1994 as you can find.

One of the things that AMC asked for is that they didn't want a

, they didn't want a six-hour movie.

We wanted to go back to the books, and that led us to do something very different, ”he explained to EL PAÍS in an interview by video call in mid-December.

More information

Interview with Anne Rice in 1994: "It is not easy to create a monster that is not a bad guy"

In the series, Louis de Pointe du Lac tells his story, for the second time (after an unsuccessful first talk in the 1970s), to a journalist in the post-pandemic United States of 2022. “The easy metaphor is that we were all locked in our houses like we're in our coffins, all thinking about mortality more than usual because we've lost a lot of people on the planet… But we didn't want to put too much weight on that, we just wanted, if anyone watches the show 20 years from now , find something in the argument about what surrounds us.

But it does bring something related to tone, more reflective.

Louis and Daniel [the journalist] begin to think about what went wrong in that first interview, in the seventies, and they return older and wiser, as has happened to all of us after the pandemic ”,

Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid, in the third episode of 'Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice'.Alan Taylor/AMC

Any audiovisual adaptation of literary material entails changes in the transition from one medium to another.

But to stay as true to the books as possible, the writers tried to respect the literary style in which the characters express themselves, with lofty and lofty language.

Then, Jones explains, they needed actors who could deliver the lines without sounding weird.

The chosen ones were Jacob Anderson (

) and Sam Reid (

).

As for the changes, one of them was to place the main story at the beginning of the 20th century.

Another is found in the character of Lestat, for which they took traits that appear in books beyond the first.

“If you read the novels, in the first one he's not charming at all, he's pretty obnoxious, but that's not where Anne [Rice] wants to go.

The good thing is that we can have all the material about the character and not just his first novel”, says the screenwriter, whose previous television work was another adaptation of literary material that already had an audiovisual version,

(HBO Max).

Sam Reid, as Lestat de Lioncourt, in the first episode of the series.Michele K. Short/AMC

Neither Louis de Pointe du Lac has gotten rid of some changes compared to the original.

“To be honest, it's 2023 and nobody wants to see the story of a grieving plantation owner,” Jones explains.

The protagonist of it seeks to escape a tedious existence and accepts the seductive offer of a man he meets in the nightclubs of New Orleans and to whom he feels hopelessly attracted.

The fact that Louis is now black adds another difference to the original.

“Actually, that decision is due to purely practical reasons.

AMC wants to do ten seasons, and at its center is this couple who, at the time, are wildly attracted to each other but aren't cut out for a long-term relationship.

So what we do is bring in as much conflict and internal tension as we can so we have enough to play with.

Lestat doesn't understand that turning someone into a vampire in the early 20th century, especially a black man, is going to change everything.

But for us that added dramatic possibilities.

Plus, it's Louisiana, there are a lot of black people."

The place where the story takes place does remain unchanged, even though they have jumped back in time from that original 18th century.

To set themselves apart from the film, they searched for the next historical moment that would draw them inside New Orleans.

And, as Jones says, "the biggest feast for the senses is when jazz comes along."

There, at the beginning of the 20th century, is where he places the main plot.

“In a country as puritanical as this, that was a brief period in which we had a red light district,” he adds.

The city also allowed them to delve into Creole culture and maintain an aesthetic in keeping with the Gothic style of the novel that involved the love story between the two immortal protagonists.

Jacob Anderson, Louis de Pointe du Lac, in the first episode of 'Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice'.Alfonso Bresciani/AMC

attraction to vampires

Almost half a century has passed since

was published , but its characters, its aesthetics, and its universe still resonate in the present.

What is it about Anne Rice's novels that her story still appeals to today?

“I don't know, she asks people that they make a new Spider-Man every seven years.

Or you go to the British theater and have a

every season.

I think with this production, AMC is trying to say that there is a series of books that have a huge fan base but that maybe they have been left behind a bit.

They believe that they really have literary height and weight.

And why vampires?

They are the sexiest monsters, the ones that can most easily pass into our world and live among us.

They are violent, a predatory species, and they have that primal urge that we all have and do our best to suppress, but they can live freely.

There's something recognizable about them."

You can follow EL PAÍS TELEVISIÓN on