AMC’s Interview with the Vampire show is basically everything you could ever want in a decadent, entertaining, Southern Gothic vampire tale. Best of all, the new series is unabashedly gay, throwing out the vague subtext presented in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles and the 1994 Interview With The Vampire movie starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise that we’ve all been parsing for decades.
The inherent queerness of Lestat and Louis bursts onto the scene like the Kool-Aid Man, and it’s glorious. The premiere episode embraces queerness and camp, and the show shaping up to be a bold, bloody delight.
Everything about the new rendition of the series is confident. It’s a little campy, very self-aware, bloody, and downright sexy. Interview with the Vampire is tailor-made for addictive television viewing. The writers are aware of the medium and use it to create a striking premiere episode that hits all the right notes while seamlessly introducing us to the world in a way that’s equally inviting for long-time fans and newcomers alike.
Spoilers ahead for Interview with the Vampire Episode 1
The series begins by introducing us to the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian). Molloy is clearly talented and successful, but he’s also been around the bend a few times and spends more time cooped up indoors than outside. Much of that is thanks to living in the era of COVID-19 as an older man with Parkinson’s disease. Then a package arrives that changes everything.
Vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) requests a meeting with Daniel, and we learn that the first “interview with the vampire” occurred in the 1970s. But Daniel was too inexperienced and high on drugs at the time to give Louis’ story the proper gravitas. “You weren’t worthy of my story then.” Now it’s 2022, and Louis wants to try again.
In a way, the setup is a meta nod toward the AMC series reinventing the wheel after the 1994 film. Once the interview begins, our story takes shape via flashback.
Louis was a businessman in the early 19th century, owning several brothels in New Orleans’ red-light district. His work let him rub elbows with powerful people like the local alderman, and give him a chance to establish a name for himself as a Black man living in the south during a volatile era.
Of course, navigating the racism and politics of the time is a delicate thing. That’s put into perspective early on when Louis is called to assist the alderman after an altercation with one of the girls. It’s clear these men don’t respect him or value Louis as an equal, and that’s something Interview with the Vampire will further explore throughout its first season.
Meeting Lestat de Lioncourt
Our first look at Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) happens early in the episode during the establishing scene in New Orleans. After cleaning up after the alderman, Louis has to handle his brother Paul (Steven Norfleet), a devoutly religious man who wants to turn his brother away from a life of sin. When Paul refuses to leave and stop antagonizing the girls with prayer and pleas, Louis whips a knife out of his cane and threatens him with it, catching Lestat’s eye.
Later, Louis goes to visit a local working girl named Lily. Interview with a Vampire is not shy in its queerness, and it’s established early that Louis is a gay man. But being as being an openly Black gay man in the 1900s could easily get Louis killed, so he masquerades with Lily on occasion. More often than not, they just talk.
Louis finds Lestat already deep in conversation with Lily, and the two bicker over who can pay for her time that evening, with Lestat winning. It’s clear from their first conversation that Lestat is prepared to seduce Louis just as this story slowly enthralls its audience, and the entire debacle with Lily is an exercise in that seduction, and a power play.
Lestat stalks and seduces his prey
The dangerous and obsessive relationship between the two men deepens quickly. As a vampire, Lestat has supernatural gifts that allow him to get inside Louis’ mind, to isolate him like a snake injecting its victim with slow-acting venom. Although some of that fascination is likely due to Louis’ own burgeoning sexual attraction to the man.
One night, Lestat books another room with Lily and invites Louis along. After putting Lily to sleep, Lestat and Louis devour each other in a haze of lust. Sealed with a kiss, Lestat sinks his teeth (literally!) into Louis, biting him for the first time and revealing his true vampire nature.
After that, people start dying. First it’s Louis’ brother Paul. They attend their sister’s wedding, and later Louis and Paul head to a spot on the roof to chat. Paul starts talking about religion and his desire for his brother to save himself from the den of sin he dwells in. And then he intentionally falls off the roof, killing himself. It’s a significant moment in Louis’ life, especially because his mother blames him for Paul’s death. She can’t stop asking him what he said to Paul to make him take that final leap.
Bloody religious mayhem
It’s no wonder that Louis finds himself in church by the end of the episode, hoping his confession might save his soul. There’s an undercurrent regarding Louis’ struggle between his profession and personal life and his relationship with God and religion, deepened by his brother’s death, and it’s further amplified by Lestat’s persistent presence in Louis’ head.
He ends up pleading with the priest to help him because he can’t shake Lestat’s voice from his mind, and he feels like he’s going crazy. He can’t even find solace with Lily because, surprise! She’s dead. Guess who killed her?
Lestat murders Lily and goes to the church to hunt down Louis, viciously killing several of the clergy in a bloody feeding frenzy as he comes for Louis. Lestat is in love with Louis and wants him as an eternal companion. Is that love healthy or normal? Probably not. It’s airing heavily on the side of toxic, but both men are intoxicated and entranced by one another.
A match made in hell
As Louis says, when Lestat finds him at the church, he cannot help but fall under the vampire’s spell once again. All his guilt and his hopes of dying seem unimportant in the face of Lestat’s alluring speech about greatness, love and power. “For the first time in my life, I was seen.”
Lestat asks Louis to be his companion, “Be all the beautiful things you are, and be them without apology, for all eternity.” And Louis nods his gorgeous head and says yes, so Lestat turns him into a vampire.
Not gonna lie, if Lestat was looking and talking to me like that I’d say yes too, Louis, so I get it. The sharing of blood between the two men is even more erotic than their actual kissing scene, which tells me that Interview with the Vampire is finally going to be the saga we deserve.
Everything about the final scene and coda of this episode is pitch perfect, cementing just how well cast the show’s leads are, as well as how well-written it is. I can’t wait to see where Interview with the Vampire goes next.
“The end, the beginning.”
Episode Grade: A
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