Interview With the Vampire fans rejoice: AMC released the first trailer and images of the second season of the bloodthirsty drama. The second season of the TV adaptation of Anne Rice’s novel was first screened at New York Comic Con 2023.
The show stars Jacob Anderson (Game of Thrones), Sam Reid (The Newsreader), Delainey Hayles (Something In The Closet), Eric Bogsian (Succession), Assad Zaman (Hotel Portofino) and Ben Daniels (The Exorcist).
The new season will see Louis (Anderson) and Claudia (Hayles) travel to 1930’s Europe after destroying their maker Lestat (Reid). In Paris they meet Armand (Zaman) and the immortal troupe at the Theatre des Vampires.
Almost thirty years ago on Saturday Night Live, late Weekend Update anchor Norm MacDonald famously swatted down 1994’s Interview With the Vampire with one chief complaint: “Not gay enough!” Even back then, the dripping homoeroticism between the story’s lead characters, played by Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, was impossible to ignore.
If only Norm could see AMC’s new Interview With the Vampire TV series, which, unlike the 1994 movie and the classic Anne Rice novel it’s based on, goes all in on the electric, chaotic gay romance between vampires Louis Pointe (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), with a levitating gay vampire sex scene that I cannnot stop thinking about.
The pilot (titled “In Throes of Increasing Wonder”) wastes no time in establishing the wonderfully maximalist queerness at the show’s center. Still framed around the titular interview between journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) and Louis, the latter spends the first episode explaining how he first connected with his creator/lover/messy ex in early 1910s New Orleans.
Interview With the Vampire is one of the most influential vampire stories ever told, and also one of the gayest. Originally published as a novel in 1976, the book spawned 12 sequels, a wildly successful film (and one less-successful one), graphic novels, a Broadway musical, and now a TV series – each one dripping with blood, debauchery, and fanged monsters whose passion for each other spans centuries.
But this tasty tale didn’t just spring into being by itself. The saga builds on queer vampire stories going back 150 years, through exploitation films of the 70s, early motion pictures, and Victorian novels full of forbidden gay encounters with creatures of the night. So, where did Interview with the Vampire come from, why was it such a hit, and how did an aspiring writer’s scandalous debut novel change vampire stories forever?
Just in time for spooky season, the television adaptation of the homoerotic classic Interview with the Vampire is hitting AMC Plus on October 2. Unlike the (still titillating) film adaptation of Anne Rice’s classic novel starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, the series looks like it will skip directly past subtext and deliver full-on gay text.
A new trailer (only available in the US & Canada for whatever reason) for the series introduces us to vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson), who is being interviewed by a journalist played by Eric Bogosian. Rather than being set in the late 18th century, as was Anne Rice’s original novel and the 1994 movie, du Lac’s story begins in 1910. He meets Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) in New Orleans, who tells him, “I know who you are, sir. We’re destined to be very good friends.”
Good friends is certainly one way of putting it, as we’re quickly shown a steamy threesome between the two men and an unnamed woman just a few seconds later. Then we’re shown Lioncourt and du Lac kneeling in a church together, as the former bites the latter’s neck, turning him for good.
Many fell in love with Interview With The Vampire after watching the 1994 film starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, but the beloved book series by the late Anne Rice is one that has brought joy to many fans throughout the years.
Titled The Vampire Chronicles, the books follow the life and stories of Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt that is being recounted in the first book between Louis and a reporter. Now, AMC is developing the story into a new series, and have just released their first trailer.
When Interview with the Vampire was released in cinemas in 1994, audiences for the most part completely missed the glaring homoeroticism and queer subtext. Looking back, it’s hard to see how anybody could watch Interview with the Vampire and not see a queer story. The film’s queer themes always remain implicit rather than explicit – but they’re still there, lurking in the background, informing the characters and the journeys they’re on.
For those not in the know, Interview with the Vampire, based on Anne Rice’s 1976 novel of the same name, tells the story of a man called Louis (Brad Pitt) who is turned into a vampire by Lestat (Tom Cruise). Over the course of the film, the men become a couple of sorts – Lestat even turns a girl called Claudia (a young Kirsten Dunst) into a vampire, and they raise her as their own daughter.
As if that wasn’t queer enough, Interview with the Vampire also has plenty of scenes of very homoerotic bloodsucking. The vampires at the heart of the film need to feed to survive – but it’s clear that drinking blood is about so much more than just survival. It’s also a source of a deep, almost sexual pleasure.
