About a month ago AMC officially pulled the trigger on its Anne Rice Universe, a network of TV shows based on the work of the famous author. The first series is going to be Interview with the Vampire, adapted from Rice’s most famous book. And now, Deadline reports that they’ve cast one of the main characters: Lestat de Lioncourt, a French aristocrat turned into a vampire in the 18th century. He takes the lead in many of Rice’s books, so AMC will have to get him right.
To play Lestat, AMC has tapped Australian actor Sam Reid, who’s been working steadily since the late 2000s in TV series like Lambs of God, The Hunting and The Newsreader. What do we think? Can he pull off Lestat’s devilish charm?
Lestat has been played by several people over the years. Tom Cruise tore it up as Lestat in the 1994 movie version of Interview with the Vampire, and Stuart Townsend stepped into the role in 2002’s Queen of the Damned.
It’s unclear exactly how much of Rice’s Vampire Chronicles this new Interview show will cover. Will it just be that book? Will they incorporate Lestat’s backstory from The Vampire Lestat? Will they go forward to The Queen of the Damned?
Who will play Louis and Claudia in Interview with the Vampire?
AMC has the rights to tons of Rice’s books, not just the ones about Lestat. But again, we don’t know what they’re going to do with them. I think I’d prefer if they just made one show connecting several of the books and see how it did, but it sounds like they want to take things right from zero to cinematic universe.
There’s no release date for the Interview with the Vampire show as yet. We’ll be on the lookout for who they’ll cast as Lestat’s vampire companions Louis and Claudia, played in the 1994 movie by Brad Pitt and a young Kirsten Dunst respectively.
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