Neil Jordan’s 1994 film adaptation of Anne Rice’s literary classic “Interview with a Vampire” with Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise gets a queer and political update almost 30 years later. The new US series not only lets the vampires Lestat and Louis finally be openly gay, Louis is now a black man in the racist South America. The series has long since started in the USA and can also be seen on Sky from Friday.
Who doesn’t remember the baroque soap opera starring Tom Cruise as the glamorous vampire who gave world-weary handsome Brad Pitt a porcelain complexion, and their “daughter” Kirsten Dunst, who was doomed to everlasting childhood. Interview With a Vampire was Neil Jordan’s glorious 1994 film adaptation of the 1976 novel of the same name by Anne Rice and the first in a thirteen-part cycle of homoerotic vampire novels by the late American author.
Both the novel and the film adaptation had a queer underbelly, but explicitly making Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise a homosexual couple was still too daring for Hollywood in the 1990s. In a new, very sensual and lavishly staged seven-part series, the two vampires are now openly gay. In addition to hot, sometimes blood-smeared sex, Louis and Lestat also have intimate moments, from a united heartbeat to a shared bed coffin.
The classic narrative follows journalist Daniel Molloy (played by Christian Slater in the film) who is told by the centuries-old vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac regarding how he was seduced by the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt. The series mostly sticks to the broad lines of this original story and the film adaptation, but it made some very interesting changes instead of opting for a simple remake.
It starts with the aging reporter (Eric Bogosian) never publishing the interview and in this day and age gets a second chance to hear Louis’ story. Basically, it’s now a gay love story above all: Louis, who was played by Brad Pitt in the movie and is now embodied by Jacob Anderson (“Game of Thrones”), is an unoutted, black brothel operator in segregated New Orleans in the 1910s- Years. New possibilities open up for the sensitive Louis when the white, rich, French vampire Lestat appears, who is no longer played by Tom Cruise but instead by Australian actor Sam Reid. Lestat convinces him that vampirism will give him more power and the freedom to be himself.
And so the series opens up whole new storytelling possibilities regarding how power, race and sexuality are intertwined. Showrunner Rolin Jones (“Perry Mason”) has fun with the idea of gay vampires running amok. At the same time, he undertakes serious explorations of sex and gender politics. Louis is a Jim Crow-era black gay man and a vampire in a toxic relationship with a manipulative older white man who “created” him. Not an easy fate. Things get even more complicated when young Claudia (played by black actress Bailey Bass) becomes part of the family.
In Germany the series is broadcast on Sky, but in the USA it is broadcast on US channel AMC. “Interview with the Vampire” is just the first installment in a new franchise (dubbed “The Immortal Universe”) that the network has created following acquiring the rights to many of Anne Rice’s most famous works. Unfortunately, she was unable to see the adaptation. But nothing ever really dies. This is as true on TV as it is in vampire fiction.
(S E R V I C E – https://www.sky.at/serien/interview-with-the-vampire)
