With Season 1 of the series recently debuting on Netflix and new Season 3 footage giving fans a glimpse at Sam Reid‘s rock star Lestat, there’s never been a better time to fall dangerously in love with AMC’s Interview with the Vampire. Showrunner Rolin Jones‘ latest take on author Anne Rice‘s novel offers audiences everything they could want from a vampire story and more, balancing 20th-century gothic horror with contemporary mass media and a nuanced look at abusive relationships. Add some steamy, immortal sexiness, unapologetic queerness, and unsettling visual effects into the mix, and you’ve got one of the most compelling vampire dramas on television.
For those just sinking their fangs into the fandom, Interview with the Vampire revolves around the eponymous interview given by veteran reporter Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) to Jacob Anderson‘s scene-stealing Louis de Point du Lac, a vampire who has lived over a century and recently decided to tell his long life story. Beginning with the final days of his fleeting humanity, Season 1 captures Louis’ troubled beginnings as a business owner in early 1900s New Orleans and subsequent seduction at the hands of the irresistible Lestat de Lioncourt, an elder vampire whose charisma is only matched by his fashionable persona. Season 2 of the series goes on to explore the aftermath of Louis and Lestat’s turbulent relationship, giving fans a glimpse of the real Lestat while also offering a unique take on vampiric tropes that can trace its origins back to one of the most important scenes of Season 1.
‘Interview with the Vampire’ Shocks With Its Season 1 Transformation Scene
One of Interview with the Vampire’s most impressive feats is how the series embraces its unsettling premise early. Rather than drawing audiences into a slow-burn romance that relies too heavily on lavish set design and ominous foreshadowing, Jones’ adaptation doesn’t waste time pretending like the devil’s not in its title. Refusing to ignore the familiar plot points already put onscreen in Brad Pitt‘s previous Interview with the Vampire movie, the series reveals Lestat’s vampiric nature by the end of its first episode. After the death of his beloved brother, Paul (Steven G. Norfleet), Anderson’s Louis blames himself and seeks penance by confessing at his local church. His repentance is soon interrupted, however, by Lestat desecrating the parish and subsequently seducing Louis into living as a vampire.
This early scene is shocking for a few reasons. First, while fans’ prior knowledge of the story and Lestat’s murder of a lamplighter earlier in the episode makes it clear that the Frenchman is a vampire, Lestat’s bloody rampage in the church is the first time Jones’ series establishes its bloody, unforgiving tone. Watching Lestat put his fist through the back of a clergyman’s skull almost makes Interview with the Vampire feel like an episode of The Boys, and the contrast between Lestat’s well-mannered, suave exterior at the Fair Play Saloon and his blood-soaked, fanged hunger in the church is utterly unsettling to behold. On what feels like a whim, both the audience and Louis alike are forced to confront the unfeeling, calculating cruelty underneath Lestat’s human performance, but horror is far from the only feeling at play in this entry from Anne Rice’s iconic universe of stories.
‘Interview with the Vampire’ Subverts Stereotypes by Making Louis’ Transformation Empowering
Without a doubt, the relationship between Louis and Lestat lies at the heart of Jones’ series. Even with the latter figuring less prominently in Season 2, the series allows the nocturnal pair to explore their heated intimacy in ways previous Interview with the Vampire adaptations have been too afraid to do, and that intimacy is born in Louis’s transformation scene. While Louis and Lestat begin exploring one another’s bodies earlier in the episode, neither can truly open up until Lestat reveals his vampirism in the church, a revelation that ultimately reverses the classic depiction of vampires. Rather than depicting Lestat’s seduction of Louis purely in predatory terms, Interview with the Vampire doubles down on its exploration of sexuality by turning Louis’s transformation into a moment of queer becoming.
While Louis himself describes Lestat as a predator in his discussions with Molloy, and the series does address the power imbalance between the pair, Season 1’s transformation scene doesn’t depict a traditional loss of humanity. Before Lestat interrupts Louis’s confession, the future vampire is so ashamed of himself that he equates sleeping with Lestat with more traditional vices like crime and drunkenness. Lestat’s bloodbath therefore delivers Louis from his self-declared sins and derives its power from Lestat’s insistence that Louis is better than the bigots who break him, characterizing the receiving of Lestat’s dark, vampiric gift as a way for Louis to shed his social masks and embrace his true identity as a man in love with men. Instead of draining him of life, Louis’s transformation, therefore, gives him a second chance to live honestly, establishing how the empowering allure of immortality can result in some of the most heartbreaking relationships in Interview with the Vampire.
Seduction Is Never Just About Lust in AMC’s ‘Interview with the Vampire’
Although Louis’ acceptance of Lestat’s gift ultimately results in him being repeatedly betrayed, beaten, and tormented by a lover he and Season 1’s Claudia (Bailey Bass) are eventually forced to incapacitate, Interview with the Vampire retains its focus on unconventional seductions throughout the series. In Season 2, the Paris coven led by Assad Zaman’s Armand deviates from the more uplifting implications of Lestat’s method in favor of entertainment. The ancient vampire describes how the coven’s theatrical productions attract the public and victims by hiding in plain sight, exploiting audiences’ suspension of disbelief to protect their unbelievable identities. Although this same coven later gives fans what is easily the most brutal scene of the series, the Paris troupe’s uncommon approach to classic vampire seductions underscores how AMC’s adaptation puts a fresh spin on tired Hollywood tropes.
Of course, the more traditional image of vampires feasting upon naked human necks and carelessly sipping blood constantly recurs throughout the adaptation. Still, these casual feasts are often contrasted by the series’ memorable transformations. Likewise, Interview with the Vampire also demonstrates how a transformation’s more empowering qualities can be used as punishment, such as when Armand, who hides in plain sight throughout most of Season 1, turns Molloy at the end of Season 2 as retribution for uncovering his lies about the night Claudia died. As the irascible devil’s advocate who ceaselessly defends the worth of human life throughout Louis’ interviews, Molloy’s immortality is a sly poetic irony for the writer, whose own advanced age will undoubtedly hinder his ability to fully enjoy the dark gift bestowed upon him out of spite.
Before the series delved into Molloy’s messy relationship with vampires, however, Season 1 of Interview with the Vampire showcased the creative potential of its seductions with Louis’s original transformation. The handling of Lestat’s revelation to Louis foregoes the aesthetic of Bram Stoker‘s Dracula in favor of something a little more Oscar Wilde, highlighting how supernatural power can be a force for self-actualization in addition to infatuation. Expanding upon this scene’s innovation, later installments of the series experiment with their variations of vampiric transformations, repeatedly reinventing what it means to be changed by someone with a sense of tenderness that inevitably leaves the viewer hungry for more.
Interview with the Vampire Season 1 is available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.
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