Interview with the Vampire (TV Series)
Dec. 6th, 2023 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThis is one of the shows that when you describe it shouldn't work, especially as an adaption, and yet it does, and the result is fascinating and eminently watchable. When I first heard about it, including some of the major, major changes made to the book - Louis now gets made a vampire in 1906, not in the late 18th century, Louis thus isn't a white plantation owner, in fact, he is a man of colour, and his initial (inherited from his late father) wealth comes from owning a brothel instead, Claudia when made a vampire is in her teens instead of a much younger child - I thought, but that's essentially a new story, why call it an adaption? Then the series started to get broadcast in the US, and word of mouth was actually very good. So good that it made me curious, and I had to wait for a long, long time till it became available in my part of the world. Now it is, and I have watched it. And speaking as a fan of Anne Rice's first three (okay, maybe four, I'm going back and thro about Tale of the Body Thief all the time) Vampire Chronicles novels and the Neil Jordan film, it is, in fact, an adaption, an intelligent and fascinating one, and a compelling show in its own right. (It covers two thirds of Interview with the Vampire the novel, up to the point when after a certain major event Louis and Claudia leave New Orleans, and I really hope the show will get a second season, because I want them cover the rest of the book and the next two as well, the seeds for which have been sown. Doesn't mean I don't have some criticism, but it's really just one point I can't quite reconcile myself with, and that's from the pov of an adaption, not from a "story in its own right" pov. (Unsurprisingly, it's Claudia's age and the repercussions thereof.) So, on to much praise and attempt at explanation why most of this tv show just works for me.
Before I get into the show itself, I do wonder which came first, deciding Louis and Claudia would be Black, or deciding to move the story into the early 20th century. Once you make the first decision, it pretty much has to be, because: if you keep the story in the 18th century, then the social inequality, to put it mildly - even though yes, there were poc plantatiown owners in Lousiana at that time - before any vampire sire/fledglings factor is so big, even with Lestat as a French immigrant, that it really changes the entire dynamic too much. In the early 20th century, racism is still a front and center factor for Louis' daily life before and after he gets turned into a vampire, and Claudia shortly before her successful grand plan explicitly makes master/slave comparisons, but Lestat's increasingly unbearable dominance over them comes from vampire and emotional reasons, not because he's white and they're not.
(Lestat, btw, is still from the 18th century, though due to the change of era isn't the relatively young vampire he's in the book, where he actually has brought his (blind) mortal father along to live out his life at Louis' plantation. Mind you, Neil Jordan's film doesn't include the father, either, and the tv series actually restores Louis' religious brother Paul as the family member he grieves for where the movie gave him a dead wife and daughter), and includes his living sister as a character as well.)
Anyway, making Louis a Black man (who did hold power over others, and narrator!Louis in an early episode says he was kidding himself about doing the brothel owning in a "good" way much as book!Louis might have kidded himself about being a "good" master) who had to deal with living in an extremely racist society all his life and showing how on the one hand gaining vampiric power (and sexual liberation, I'll get to that) but on the other being in an increasingly unbalanced co-dependent relationship with the person responsible for that change gives him a compelling emotional arc. Since Anne Rice orginally wrote her novel in the 1970s, there have been dozens of "good" vampires who on the one hand don't want to kill but on the other feel compelled to, and while Neil Jordan's Louis in the movie still has that dilemma, it's in a two hour movie when a lot of other things happen as well, so the deja vu factor doesn't matter there. I imagine the writers and producers of the tv show were aware that a series works differently, and giving Louis nothing but this dilemma for several episodes before Claudia's arrival would not work in this day and age.
One more Doylist speculation: I imagine Claudia's age change was mostly due to the problem of working with child actors, especially in a role where it's part of the premise of the character that there is no physical change and you need her for at least one more season which might be shot a year or two later. (Jake Sisko growing and growing and growing on DS9 was no problem because Jake is a normal child and teen growing up in story as well. Meanwhile, Lost's first two seasons had Walt who visibly grew but in story, only weeks passed for much of the first season.) And Claudia is a main part, a lot of work to do. Of course, you can luck out - child!Kirsten Dunst put in an incredibly strong performance as Claudia in Jordan's movie (and while she was older than mortal Claudia is in the novel when the movie was shot, she still was a pre pubescent child), but it might have been too big a gamble for the producers to expect another child to repeat it. More about Claudia and while this is the one change where I'm torn between "doesn't work as an adaption" and "works within story" later.
Now, on to the story as shown to us. The "boy" from the first novel who is later made into a character named Daniel Malloy in the subsequent novels is now an Eric Bogosian shaped older man when interviewing Louis in the present, but it turns out he did interview Louis in the 1970s, only for the whole experiment to terminate when he wanted to become a vampire. This series of interviews is the second round. At first I thought this was just meant as a meta wink at the audience and a reminde rof the original premise and also at the way Anne Rice retconned her own Lestat characterisation from the first to the second novel (when in the tv show Daniel confronts Louis with some of his original comments about Lestant - which are in fact straight quotes from the novel - versus how he describes him now in the early episodes), but no, older human Daniel serves another narrative purpose as well. Not only does he have the confidence and lived experience to keep challenging Louis, but he's the pov character through whom we see Louis and his circumstances in the present. Said circumstances include "young" Rashid, wom Daniel at first takes to be a human vampire groupie type of follower to Louis but who is revealed in the last episode to be none other than Armand. This, btw, was guessable if you're familiar with how Armand is described in the novels - very much not like Antonio Banderas - and also through some hints like "Rashid" looking at a Renaissance painting by one Marius - for which of course he has modelled - , even before the cliffhanger of the last but one episode revealing "Rashid" was already around in the 1970s when Daniel had his original encounter with Louis in a San Francisco bar, it's just that Daniel, who was on drugs at the time, did not remember. But the hints are used just sparingly enough that the show keeps you guessing. Now, Armand is of course a major character in the remaining part of the "Interview with the Vampire" tale. In the book, he and Louis travel together for a few decades until Louis reveals he knows Armand was involved in Claudia's death and breaks up wiht him. In the movie, this happens immediately. In the tv show, they're still together, so I'm guessing it will be Daniel who in the second part will either figure it out or contribute via asking the right questions to Louis figuring it out. Either way: the "interviewing" scenes and framing narration are part of the story the show is telling, not just a MacGuffin, and I never was tempted to skip.
Jacob Anderson's Louis is shown enough with his original human family at first to make the rejection by his mother and the increasing loss of his relationship with his sister once he's turned into a vampire something the audience can empathize with and care about. (And the moment where his sister hands him her baby and he starts to hear the baby's heartbeat in a vampire way is one of the truly terrifying moments of the show without any gore at all, and you can understand Louis getting the hell away and not showing up for the next few years after that one.) One thing the show altered from the novel was making the subtext main text in that Louis and Lestat don't just become lovers in a symbolic vampire way, they do have on screen sex, and part of Louis' self realisation in the first few episodes is that he's gay (which, as present day Louis tells Daniel: being a Black man in 1906 New Orleans is tough. Being a gay Black man...). They are not the only ones, which helps avoid any "gay sex = road to serial murder" subtext. And the actors have great chemistry. BTW, I was wavering on Sam Reid's Lestat at first, but by the second episode he'd won me over. The cockiness, the ability to be seductive or insufferable or both at the same time, the occasional backstory hints (for example, at the whole Nicky saga which is textually teased at in this show and presumably will get revealed if AMW ever reaches The Vampire Lestat territory in the narrative) - it's all there. Also singing and general musical ability, which is why I'm assuming we're still heading towards rock star Lestat if the show makes it so long. I have to say, replacing the scene with Lestat killing the two prostitutes by Lestat killing a hapless tenor who displeased him by butchering Donizetti in front of Louis worked amazingly well and, like the original scene, manages to be absolutely chilling and darkly funny at the same time.
Speaking of The Vampire Lestat, among the books, that's the novel which updates and retcons vampiric powers to include telepathy (except betweeen sire and fledgling). The show, having all of Rice's novels to draw from for its lore, does the telepathy thing from the start, and lets Louis be able to do this, too, but let's him be the one who at first tries to make killing more palpable to him by trying to kill only bad guys. (Not something that works out.) It also uses the telepathy as a way in which Louis and Claudia can communicate that excludes Lestat which heightens the tensions between the three of them even before Claudia decides to kill Lestat.
Which brings me to my "yes, but" reaction to all things Claudia. Like I said, on a Doylist level, I can understand why teenager Claudia would be easier for a tv show than child Claudia. But the thing is, Claudia being a child in form but after a few years not any longer in spirit, and after a few decades being an ageless immortal locked in a child body - that's what makes the character. That gives her her well justified rage against mostly Lestat but more repressedly also against Louis, as much as she loves him, and that's why she can't just leave them - no being looking like a child this young, no matter hoiw lethal, would be able to live alone in a society where she could not even rent a room without being questioned about her guardians. It wasn't until I read this novel back in the day that it realized the horror story potential of the entire Peter Pan/eternal child concept. Now, to its credit, the show didn't just age Claudia up, it altered her storyline accordingly instead of pretending she's in exactly the same situation as book and movie Claudia. Looking like a fourteen years old means she can and does leave for a time, for example. (Only to run into her first other vampire, who turns out to be a rapist, because a fourteen years old body is still weaker than an adult one.) Before that, she can and does experiment with a human teen boy. (At a point when she's only a few years into being a vampire, i.e. nineteen with a fourteen years old body.) And realising her sex life through immortality will constrict her to either older creeps who are into barely pubescent girls or teens close to her original physical age whom she, however, no longer will be drawn to is its own kind of horror. But it's still something that makes this Claudia closer to book!Armand (who did get sired by Marius as a teenager) than to the unique character from the novel. So the show adds something else to give its Claudia enough incentive to murder Lestat (as far as she knows). While in all versions of the story, Claudia while closer to Louis originally gets on with Lestat very well until enough time passes for her to realize the full horror of her situation as an immortal in a child's body, and in all versions, he reacts to her accusations with anger instead of understanding, and reacts to her not talking to him anymore with taunting her, the show's Lestat is much, much colder and vicious to Claudia after their initial big argument, telling her he only created her for Louis, stopping her from leaving a second time and forcing her to return (again with a "not that I care about you, but Louis will be unhappy without you" rationale and with threatening her should she try to leave against his will). Interview with the Vampire the novel does have Lestat threaten Claudia with "replacing" her by siring another vampire (which he also does in the show), but in it and the subsequent novels, you do get the iimpression he also cared for Claudia for her own sake, not just as an instrument to keep Louis. (The film paid homage to this by letting Lestat ask "we forgive each other, then?" just before biting the victim Claudia poisoned.)
Again: I can see the narrative need for the show version of their relationship given the changed circumstances for Claudia. But I still miss the original version. Oh, and one more Claudia thing: by the time she "kills" Lestat, she's 33 years old (the show makes that textual), as opposed to the 60 plus years in the book. The actress playing her in the show is good in a lot of things - not least the simmering rage after the original outbursts, and also the way Claudia eventually manages to outsmart and outthink Lestat precisely because they are more similar than Claudia and Louis - , but she doesn't have an eerie ageless quality; I didn't have the impression of Claudia as a 33 years old woman in the wrong body from how she played her in the last two episodes, she still came across as a rebellikous teen to me.
Back to the stuff I'm on board with: the show gives Louis both a more active hand in Lestat's "demise" than the book did - Claudia does all the planning and he doesn't know the plan, but he knows long in advance what her end goal is - killing Lestat - and he's on board with that at this point; once the poisoning via corpse blood has happened, he's the one to slit Lestat's throat, not Claudia - and greater ambiguity about it, not just because he holds Lestat and cries while doing it, but as Daniel points out, he's aware Lestat, who is of the three of them physically the strongest, has a chance to survive even this as long as there's no decapitation and no incineration, and he not only actively refuses to do either but ensures Lestat's "body" gets dumped amidst the city trash where all the rats (and their blood) are. The season finale was an outstanding episode in a very good show, and the Armand-in-the-present reveal a good hook for a second season, which I really hope we'll get.
Before I get into the show itself, I do wonder which came first, deciding Louis and Claudia would be Black, or deciding to move the story into the early 20th century. Once you make the first decision, it pretty much has to be, because: if you keep the story in the 18th century, then the social inequality, to put it mildly - even though yes, there were poc plantatiown owners in Lousiana at that time - before any vampire sire/fledglings factor is so big, even with Lestat as a French immigrant, that it really changes the entire dynamic too much. In the early 20th century, racism is still a front and center factor for Louis' daily life before and after he gets turned into a vampire, and Claudia shortly before her successful grand plan explicitly makes master/slave comparisons, but Lestat's increasingly unbearable dominance over them comes from vampire and emotional reasons, not because he's white and they're not.
(Lestat, btw, is still from the 18th century, though due to the change of era isn't the relatively young vampire he's in the book, where he actually has brought his (blind) mortal father along to live out his life at Louis' plantation. Mind you, Neil Jordan's film doesn't include the father, either, and the tv series actually restores Louis' religious brother Paul as the family member he grieves for where the movie gave him a dead wife and daughter), and includes his living sister as a character as well.)
Anyway, making Louis a Black man (who did hold power over others, and narrator!Louis in an early episode says he was kidding himself about doing the brothel owning in a "good" way much as book!Louis might have kidded himself about being a "good" master) who had to deal with living in an extremely racist society all his life and showing how on the one hand gaining vampiric power (and sexual liberation, I'll get to that) but on the other being in an increasingly unbalanced co-dependent relationship with the person responsible for that change gives him a compelling emotional arc. Since Anne Rice orginally wrote her novel in the 1970s, there have been dozens of "good" vampires who on the one hand don't want to kill but on the other feel compelled to, and while Neil Jordan's Louis in the movie still has that dilemma, it's in a two hour movie when a lot of other things happen as well, so the deja vu factor doesn't matter there. I imagine the writers and producers of the tv show were aware that a series works differently, and giving Louis nothing but this dilemma for several episodes before Claudia's arrival would not work in this day and age.
One more Doylist speculation: I imagine Claudia's age change was mostly due to the problem of working with child actors, especially in a role where it's part of the premise of the character that there is no physical change and you need her for at least one more season which might be shot a year or two later. (Jake Sisko growing and growing and growing on DS9 was no problem because Jake is a normal child and teen growing up in story as well. Meanwhile, Lost's first two seasons had Walt who visibly grew but in story, only weeks passed for much of the first season.) And Claudia is a main part, a lot of work to do. Of course, you can luck out - child!Kirsten Dunst put in an incredibly strong performance as Claudia in Jordan's movie (and while she was older than mortal Claudia is in the novel when the movie was shot, she still was a pre pubescent child), but it might have been too big a gamble for the producers to expect another child to repeat it. More about Claudia and while this is the one change where I'm torn between "doesn't work as an adaption" and "works within story" later.
Now, on to the story as shown to us. The "boy" from the first novel who is later made into a character named Daniel Malloy in the subsequent novels is now an Eric Bogosian shaped older man when interviewing Louis in the present, but it turns out he did interview Louis in the 1970s, only for the whole experiment to terminate when he wanted to become a vampire. This series of interviews is the second round. At first I thought this was just meant as a meta wink at the audience and a reminde rof the original premise and also at the way Anne Rice retconned her own Lestat characterisation from the first to the second novel (when in the tv show Daniel confronts Louis with some of his original comments about Lestant - which are in fact straight quotes from the novel - versus how he describes him now in the early episodes), but no, older human Daniel serves another narrative purpose as well. Not only does he have the confidence and lived experience to keep challenging Louis, but he's the pov character through whom we see Louis and his circumstances in the present. Said circumstances include "young" Rashid, wom Daniel at first takes to be a human vampire groupie type of follower to Louis but who is revealed in the last episode to be none other than Armand. This, btw, was guessable if you're familiar with how Armand is described in the novels - very much not like Antonio Banderas - and also through some hints like "Rashid" looking at a Renaissance painting by one Marius - for which of course he has modelled - , even before the cliffhanger of the last but one episode revealing "Rashid" was already around in the 1970s when Daniel had his original encounter with Louis in a San Francisco bar, it's just that Daniel, who was on drugs at the time, did not remember. But the hints are used just sparingly enough that the show keeps you guessing. Now, Armand is of course a major character in the remaining part of the "Interview with the Vampire" tale. In the book, he and Louis travel together for a few decades until Louis reveals he knows Armand was involved in Claudia's death and breaks up wiht him. In the movie, this happens immediately. In the tv show, they're still together, so I'm guessing it will be Daniel who in the second part will either figure it out or contribute via asking the right questions to Louis figuring it out. Either way: the "interviewing" scenes and framing narration are part of the story the show is telling, not just a MacGuffin, and I never was tempted to skip.
Jacob Anderson's Louis is shown enough with his original human family at first to make the rejection by his mother and the increasing loss of his relationship with his sister once he's turned into a vampire something the audience can empathize with and care about. (And the moment where his sister hands him her baby and he starts to hear the baby's heartbeat in a vampire way is one of the truly terrifying moments of the show without any gore at all, and you can understand Louis getting the hell away and not showing up for the next few years after that one.) One thing the show altered from the novel was making the subtext main text in that Louis and Lestat don't just become lovers in a symbolic vampire way, they do have on screen sex, and part of Louis' self realisation in the first few episodes is that he's gay (which, as present day Louis tells Daniel: being a Black man in 1906 New Orleans is tough. Being a gay Black man...). They are not the only ones, which helps avoid any "gay sex = road to serial murder" subtext. And the actors have great chemistry. BTW, I was wavering on Sam Reid's Lestat at first, but by the second episode he'd won me over. The cockiness, the ability to be seductive or insufferable or both at the same time, the occasional backstory hints (for example, at the whole Nicky saga which is textually teased at in this show and presumably will get revealed if AMW ever reaches The Vampire Lestat territory in the narrative) - it's all there. Also singing and general musical ability, which is why I'm assuming we're still heading towards rock star Lestat if the show makes it so long. I have to say, replacing the scene with Lestat killing the two prostitutes by Lestat killing a hapless tenor who displeased him by butchering Donizetti in front of Louis worked amazingly well and, like the original scene, manages to be absolutely chilling and darkly funny at the same time.
Speaking of The Vampire Lestat, among the books, that's the novel which updates and retcons vampiric powers to include telepathy (except betweeen sire and fledgling). The show, having all of Rice's novels to draw from for its lore, does the telepathy thing from the start, and lets Louis be able to do this, too, but let's him be the one who at first tries to make killing more palpable to him by trying to kill only bad guys. (Not something that works out.) It also uses the telepathy as a way in which Louis and Claudia can communicate that excludes Lestat which heightens the tensions between the three of them even before Claudia decides to kill Lestat.
Which brings me to my "yes, but" reaction to all things Claudia. Like I said, on a Doylist level, I can understand why teenager Claudia would be easier for a tv show than child Claudia. But the thing is, Claudia being a child in form but after a few years not any longer in spirit, and after a few decades being an ageless immortal locked in a child body - that's what makes the character. That gives her her well justified rage against mostly Lestat but more repressedly also against Louis, as much as she loves him, and that's why she can't just leave them - no being looking like a child this young, no matter hoiw lethal, would be able to live alone in a society where she could not even rent a room without being questioned about her guardians. It wasn't until I read this novel back in the day that it realized the horror story potential of the entire Peter Pan/eternal child concept. Now, to its credit, the show didn't just age Claudia up, it altered her storyline accordingly instead of pretending she's in exactly the same situation as book and movie Claudia. Looking like a fourteen years old means she can and does leave for a time, for example. (Only to run into her first other vampire, who turns out to be a rapist, because a fourteen years old body is still weaker than an adult one.) Before that, she can and does experiment with a human teen boy. (At a point when she's only a few years into being a vampire, i.e. nineteen with a fourteen years old body.) And realising her sex life through immortality will constrict her to either older creeps who are into barely pubescent girls or teens close to her original physical age whom she, however, no longer will be drawn to is its own kind of horror. But it's still something that makes this Claudia closer to book!Armand (who did get sired by Marius as a teenager) than to the unique character from the novel. So the show adds something else to give its Claudia enough incentive to murder Lestat (as far as she knows). While in all versions of the story, Claudia while closer to Louis originally gets on with Lestat very well until enough time passes for her to realize the full horror of her situation as an immortal in a child's body, and in all versions, he reacts to her accusations with anger instead of understanding, and reacts to her not talking to him anymore with taunting her, the show's Lestat is much, much colder and vicious to Claudia after their initial big argument, telling her he only created her for Louis, stopping her from leaving a second time and forcing her to return (again with a "not that I care about you, but Louis will be unhappy without you" rationale and with threatening her should she try to leave against his will). Interview with the Vampire the novel does have Lestat threaten Claudia with "replacing" her by siring another vampire (which he also does in the show), but in it and the subsequent novels, you do get the iimpression he also cared for Claudia for her own sake, not just as an instrument to keep Louis. (The film paid homage to this by letting Lestat ask "we forgive each other, then?" just before biting the victim Claudia poisoned.)
Again: I can see the narrative need for the show version of their relationship given the changed circumstances for Claudia. But I still miss the original version. Oh, and one more Claudia thing: by the time she "kills" Lestat, she's 33 years old (the show makes that textual), as opposed to the 60 plus years in the book. The actress playing her in the show is good in a lot of things - not least the simmering rage after the original outbursts, and also the way Claudia eventually manages to outsmart and outthink Lestat precisely because they are more similar than Claudia and Louis - , but she doesn't have an eerie ageless quality; I didn't have the impression of Claudia as a 33 years old woman in the wrong body from how she played her in the last two episodes, she still came across as a rebellikous teen to me.
Back to the stuff I'm on board with: the show gives Louis both a more active hand in Lestat's "demise" than the book did - Claudia does all the planning and he doesn't know the plan, but he knows long in advance what her end goal is - killing Lestat - and he's on board with that at this point; once the poisoning via corpse blood has happened, he's the one to slit Lestat's throat, not Claudia - and greater ambiguity about it, not just because he holds Lestat and cries while doing it, but as Daniel points out, he's aware Lestat, who is of the three of them physically the strongest, has a chance to survive even this as long as there's no decapitation and no incineration, and he not only actively refuses to do either but ensures Lestat's "body" gets dumped amidst the city trash where all the rats (and their blood) are. The season finale was an outstanding episode in a very good show, and the Armand-in-the-present reveal a good hook for a second season, which I really hope we'll get.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-06 10:36 am (UTC)I read Interview with the Vampire in college specifically in order to be able to beta-read a paper for a friend of mine who was writing on exactly this aspect of horror in the novel.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-06 03:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-06 06:30 pm (UTC)No, it was just for a class. But it does mean I also feel that particular kind of frozenness a fairly key concept to the narrative.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-07 08:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-06 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-07 08:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-07 01:14 am (UTC)Oh, and there will be a second season, most likely in April. They just wrapped up shooting a couple of days ago. YAY.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-07 08:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-07 11:07 pm (UTC)You know the "chapter in Vanity Fair" that Daniel tells his editor they can publish? I wrote it, and the slave labour trade in Dubai plays a big part in his article.
On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50629231
And here's the magazine spread (which looks much prettier but is tough to read on mobile): https://indd.adobe.com/view/adef4dcc-2d27-4dd5-b8c4-06abeba12bdc
no subject
Date: 2023-12-12 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-13 06:25 pm (UTC)