The following contains spoilers for Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire Season 1, Episode 1, "In Throes of Increasing Wonder" and Episode 2, "...After the Phantoms of Your Former Self," now streaming on AMC+
From Fantasy Island to Fresh Prince of Bel Air, audiences love a good reboot. Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire is the latest to ride the wave with a brand-new television series on AMC, almost thirty years after the film was first released. Both are based on Anne Rice's debut novel of the same name, published in 1976. The 1994 film starred Brad Pitt as vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac and Tom Cruise as his maker and companion, Lestat de Lioncourt. Game of Thrones' Jacob Anderson and Australian actor Sam Reid take on the roles of Louis and Lestat in the 2022 retelling.
The central premise is the same: a vampire named Louis meets with a reporter to tell him about his centuries-long life in New Orleans with the vampire Lestat who transformed him. There are of course key differences as well; Louis is a white plantation owner who became a vampire in 1791 in the film adaptation, and a Black brothel owner whose vampiric birth occurs in 1910 on the series. But one of the biggest updates to the contemporary series is its unabashed portrayal of the queer relationship between its central figures, Louis and Lestat.
AMC's Louis and Lestat Are Openly Queer
Where the film is suggestive, the series is overt. There are plenty of close encounters and sensual moments in the film, but their queerness is mostly implied and never directly addressed, much less depicted. Scenes of gentle face caresses and almost-kisses are as intimate as it gets for Pitt and Cruise compared to the overt physical love between Anderson and Reid on the series. In a later scene from the film, Cruise's Lestat tells Pitt's Louis he's beautiful and that the more he tried to refuse him, the more he wanted him. But the series' dialogue has nothing to hide; Anderson's Louis openly comes out as "queer," and when he demands an answer from Reid's Lestat about his own sexuality, he cheekily responds "non-discriminating."
Beyond sexuality, the series also goes farther in portraying Louis and Lestat as a couple. When Lestat fears that Louis will leave him and go off on his own in the film, he turns a young girl, Claudia, into a vampire and declares that they are a family now and Louis and Lestat are her fathers. But beyond this declaration, Louis and Lestat do not appear to be in a romantic relationship. The series makes them feel more like a real-life couple by showing the back-and-forth banter of typical domestic life, except they're arguing over sharing a coffin instead of a bed.
Interview with the Vampire Embraces the Novel's Sensuality
Reboots, remakes and prequels/sequels are a dime a dozen these days, from House of the Dragon to The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. It can often feel like Hollywood is running out of ideas and regurgitating old properties, or wildly expanding existing ones (see Star Wars and Marvel), to profit from pre-existing fandoms. When updates are made, older audiences don't always take kindly to the changes. After Pixar released the highly anticipated Lightyear earlier this year as somewhat of a prequel to the beloved Toy Story from 1995, critics were quick to sound the alarm over the "moral collapse" of society for featuring a lesbian couple who share an on-screen kiss.
Though AMC is no Disney, queer representation is lacking across all categories, including horror, making the 2022 Interview with the Vampire feel like a revelation. Ironically, the more inclusive series is closer to the source material of Anne Rice's novel than the 1994 film, despite major changes in setting and the character of Louis. Critics have praised the metamorphosis of his character, noting how the shake-up "adds fascinating depths to Louis and allows Interview to grapple with prickly questions of race, sexuality, and history — and all the shifting power dynamics that come with them."
New episodes of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire debut Sundays on AMC+