Game Of Thrones‘ Jacob Anderson to play the whiniest vampire in AMC’s Interview With The Vampire
Anderson joins Sam Reid in AMC's adaptation of Anne Rice's bestseller
TV News Interview with the Vampire
Is there a whinier vampire in all of fiction than Interview With The Vampire’s Louis de Pointe du Lac? Sucking on rats, angsting about the existence of God, and spending literal centuries moping around, Anne Rice’s titular The Vampire has been the biggest, deadest whiner in all of vampiredom for 45 years now. (At least Angel got to cut loose every now and again and be a puppet! We’re just sayin’.) Now Louis has found a new actor to embody his un-life-long journey on the WHAAAAmbulance of the Damned, with Entertainment Weekly reporting that Game Of Thrones’ Jacob Anderson has signed on to play the character in the upcoming Interview With The Vampire TV show.
Anderson played Grey Worm on the last 5 seasons of HBO’s TV mega hit, battling the enemies of Daenerys Targaryen with what could, even uncharitably, be called the bare minimum of complaining or whinging. This new project, in development at AMC, will reunite Anderson with Game Of Thrones regular Alan Taylor, who’s set to direct the first two episodes of the Anne Rice adaptation, developed for the small screen by Rolin Jones.
Meanwhile, the role of Louis’ maker/far more interesting companion, Lestat, has also already been cast; Sam Reid will play the far more fascinating bloodsucker, who was portrayed by Tom Cruise in the 1994 version of Rice’s books, where Brad Pitt played Louis. (The fact that Anderson, unlike Pitt, is a person of color will presumably feed into Louis’ latest on-screen portrayal, notable given that Rice’s original version of the character was a prosperous Louisiana slaveowner.)
The new Interview show is part of a push toward adapting Rice’s bestselling books at the network, which is also reportedly developing a TV series based on her Mayfair Witches series of novels. Interview is set to premiere on TVs next year.
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The source material has plenty of issues especially as the books get on, but this definitely has some big implications for the character – I wouldn’t say Louis directly engages with race per se, but it’s pretty well established that his wealth is a big reason for Lestat approaching him. I’m intrigued.
There was an entire class of free wealthy Creole gentry in Louisiana in the 18th century (Gens de Couleur Libre) who owned plantations and slaves just like Louis. Having Louis be biracial may not be completely faithful to the source material (although I can’t recall if Rice ever explicitly stated he was white) but it does track with the history of the area and time
Exactly what I was going to say as well in my reply. Right, it’s not that far fetched and in reality, Louis could have very well been described as Creole as well. Especially when you consider other books by Anne Rice in which she features wealthy Creole characters in the book, Feast Of Saints.
I don’t think it’s far-fetched. The books do explicitly describe Louis as white, but changing that for an adaptation makes it more interesting. I just hope it’s more than a surface level change. “Louis is a person of color” does change certain plot points, certain relationships, and frankly, the way he interacts with the world. If that’s addressed, awesome! If it’s not and it’s going to be something we just don’t talk about then I’m less impressed.
It would definitely affect the ways he disguised himself among the aristocracy through the years. Part of being a vampire is you look exactly the way you did when bitten (Dunst’s character in Interview attempting to cut her hair a fun example) and Louis was a rich white guy.
I absolutely think it’s possible and interesting to go in that direction. Nuance isn’t always Anne Rice’s strong point and hopefully someone who is on the writing staff is helping to shape that a little bit more so that it is well done.I’m here for it – I just think that it could make some significant changes to certain plot points especially if they bring in some of the stuff with his brother that was excised from the movie and some of the class related things that again did not get brought into the previous adaptations and may not be relevant in the end. I do think it would bring something that likely needs addressing in the relationship with Lestat – bringing in race does add more layers to their relationship.From an acting perspective, I think he’s a great choice and I don’t mean to imply the changes would be bad.
There’s even some precedence there in Anne Rice’s work – her second published novel, The Feast of All Saints, was set in the gens de couleur libres of New Orleans. I remember finding it surprisingly sensitive when I read it as a teenager, but I expect it’s aged terribly.
What was sensitive about it? It could be released now and the reaction would or reviews would be same as it’s pretty timeless like, Interview With A Vampire. The only book and/or movie that would need to be updated to degree would probably be parts of Lestat where he exists in the modern world as a rock star.
I think there’s been a misunderstanding – the novel I’m talking about is not a part of the Vampire series. The Feast of All Saints was a drama set in New Orleans amongst the “free people of colour”, and I expect it hasn’t aged well because it deals primarily with race and was written by a white woman in the 70s.
There’s a lot of things in Interview with the Vampire (and later works in the series) that very much don’t feel timeless. The 70’s and 80’s vibe is VERY strong in a lot of it and some of the male/female, male/male and adult/child relationships read a bit differently with 2021 eyes. There are some choice descriptors around race, complexion and class that also seem a bit short-sighted or outdated. I’ll take ‘em from a vampire narrator, but I suspect certain details would shift a little bit if it were written today.
WI’ll they’ve adapting the S & M fairy tales as well?
please dont put that horror out into the world. we have enough problems as it is.
I’ve read shit-tons of horror and would like to ask if there is a more over-rated horror author than Anne Rice? I had friends who were really into the IWtV books back in high school. I read several and they were meh at best and just bloody awful at worst (pun fully intended).
She’s not a horror writer. She is a supernatural romance writer.
Well that explains it then.
She is not a supernatural romance writer. She is a preternatural romance writer.
there were worse horror writers of the era: Tony Robbins, Peter Gabriel, Boutros Boutros-Ghali
Interview with the Vampire is one of my prime counterarguments whenever someone says that movie adaptations are never better than the original book (albeit because the movie was passable and the book SUUUUUUUUUCKED).
The Godfather is a pretty good example.
I tried to read IwtV while I was laid up in hospital but ended up giving up and staring at the walls and ceiling instead.
Yeah, Ann Rice’s Vampire Chronicles are not meant to be horror.
I felt the first book, Interview, was really good. I read the second, but could not finish the third. They went downhill super fast.
I read the first four in high school, so it has been a while, but I remember the first two being pretty good actually. Of course, I was a dumb teenager without taste back then. Still, the third and fourth got progressively worse, and then I just stopped reading Anne Rice, which was the right call.
I liked Interview fine, but her expanded universe just got worse and worse, and I typically tapped out when whatever I was reading turned into a 50 Shades of Twilight snoozefest.
I …liked the first few books as a teenager/young adult , but Jesus they went downhill by the third one.Kim Newman absolutely rips the piss out of Lestat and his mates in the Dracula AD books (which are much better and NEED to be a TV series, I mean its Dracula , but Van helsing fucks up at the end and gets killed by Big D , who then worms his way into the British royal family , and in turn allows other vamps(a lot of which come from other works of fiction) to come out of hiding and live as part of high society, I mean what more do you want?!?)
Glad to here he will be in this role and don’t think it will conflict with the character’s origin. That said, there is nothing “whiny” about Louis character. Sure he was melancholy in the books and portrayed as lamenting his being a vampire when portrayed by Brad Pitt. But this was because he thought he could relieve the pain he felt at losing his family when he became a vampire. But if blogger read the book they would understand why he didn’t like what became of him and not “whiny” at all.
Wasn’t the original character a white plantation living slave owner?They’re gonna have to change that lol
Not necessarily. There were Creole plantation owners who owned slaves at the time in Louisiana.
As a fan who has read all the books, some of them numerous times, and seen the movie more than once, I can definitely say Louis is whiny. I mean, it’s not his entire personality, but he is whiny.
Read through Memnoch and beyond (stopped when Rice lost it on Amazon reviewers): Louis was kinda whiny. Nothing wrong with it, part of the allure was that he gave a shit and wanted some damnable meaning to it all whereas the bulk before him was all big house/vamp bride/gladabout or sewer-dwelling blood fiend. But man was a downer
“Oh Louis, Louis. Still whiiiining Louis. Have you heard enough? I had to listen to that for centuries!”
I believe Lestat is the one who claims he’s whiny. In the movie he definitely says “Still whining, Louis?” I don’t think he says it directly in the book, but he says versions of it.
It’ll be interesting how they change Louis from being a slave owner living on a plantation to something else.I’ve heard they’re making him brothel owner which considering the casting somehow seems worse.
I wonder if the Rice name carries enough weight in 2021 to draw in a crowd. i remember ‘interview’ being a perfectly fine movie, but that was almost 30 years ago and it doesn’t seem like gothic fantasy romance followed rice’s lead in general.
I dunno, I think middling American vampire fiction – think Twilight for movie adaptations and The Vampire Diaries for tv adaptations – was really just watered-down and slightly repurposed Rice vibes.
She’s sort of the historical baseline against which to judge this stuff. Movies like Daybreakers, 30 Days of Night and Let The Right One In can be quickly labeled as “more serious than Rice” in myriad ways, and that’s a fairly useful yardstick.I’m also not sure I fully buy into this idea that she was writing “gothic fantasy romance.” She was playing around with eroticism (and definitely homoeroticism) as vampire writers often do, and as supernatural-bullshit-for-young-adults writers always do. That doesn’t make them romances. Louis was something of a doomed romantic, for sure; maybe his vibe threw people off. After Interview, though, Lestat became an out-and-out protagonist, and also the audience’s window into Rice’s burgeoning mythology. His “romantic” adventures, such as they were, tracked a lot more closely with those of a pulp protagonist.
Her Mayfair Witches books could probably be classified as some sort of supernatural romance because they do fit the mold, but the Vampire books really don’t because that side of it is more subtext and left unsaid. (Except for some weird stuff in Memnoch the Devil, but that book sucks.) It’s kind of like J.D. Robb (AKA Nora Roberts) …In Death books. They have sex scenes that are similar to romance novel scenes, but the romance isn’t the plot and if you took them out, they wouldn’t be missed, story-wise.
I suspect in 2021, the eroticism that was downplayed in previous adaptations will be ratcheted up. Rice is also an erotic writer in that she has written full on erotica so I think that certainly rolls into her work. I’m interested to see how they structure this. The Vampire Lestat is perhaps my favorite book, but if you do Interview chronologically, it’s hard to put that stuff in. Conversely, if they do flashbacks to Lestat’s past a la Lost, it makes the plot work but pulls a lot of the tension out of the material because Lestat is too sympathetic at the jump. (Also everything post Queen of the Damned gets SUPER weird imo)
Pretty sure Interview is the only book of hers I’ve read that didn’t have multiple extended sex scenes. Hell, one of the defining features of Lasher was that he was brought to physical life featuring a giant dick.
Here to agree that The Vampire Lestat is my favorite and the best of the four.For adaptations, while I enjoyed Interview plenty, I have a huge soft-spot compellingly terrible Queen of the Damned adaptation with Stuart Townshend because my teenage-self was OBSESSED.
Same on Queen of the Damned.
I don’t know how the books sell these days in general, though I was gifted a box set recently by a family member that suggest there is still very much a market for merch, but I do think the movie is well-regarded and I think sexy prestige drama vampires might be enough to get eyes on it. Game of Thrones was a more niche series until HBO made the show.
i just wonder if it sits in an awkward space now. its too liberal for the twilight crowd but its too conservative for the true blood crowd.
plus its pretty old. 30 years is a long time to let a property (especially one that was very topical about sex and social mores) lay fallow.
That makes me interested to see how they might update material. I think a lot of it depends on her level of involvement – If she’s just an EP vs if she is calling shots.
Interview With the Vampire is my favorite vampire movie, so I think it sounds pretty cool. Couldn’t really get into the books, I did read Interview, and didn’t like it as well as the movie, that movie ending is just fantastic.
I read the books out of order, checking The Vampire Lestat out of the library at the impressionable age of 12. I had no idea Interview With The Vampire existed at the time. I went on to read Queen of the Damned when it was released and followed it up with IWtV. I didn’t follow the rest of series after those first three books, but not for lack of trying. IMO, Queen of the Damned is the only one I enjoy for rereads and even that is for the side characters more than Lestat. The movie was disappointingly bad.IWtV is angsty, sure, but The Vampire Lestat just drags and drags, much like the movie version of Interview. Hated it and I have hopes this will be a better adaptation.
So long as it’s not Queen of the Damned. Cause: yeeesh. Basically if going by the books try for a general order or just have it be limited and focus on Interview.
: so long as it’s done well, who cares? It is plausible to keep the starting beats given the French and Spanish systems of slavery vs. the British system
Taking the Marvel’s What If…? approach, I see
And then in the last season he murders everyone because his girlfriend got a stake to the heart
Let them adapt Vampire of the Mists instead. Give me that Dungeons & Dragons gothic horror flavor on-screen, world!
I just want to take this opportunity to say that Aaliyah deserved so much better than that Queen of the Damned movie.