‘Interview With the Vampire’: Claudia Age in the AMC Series Explained

AMC’s Interview with the Vampire adaptation has a new take on Claudia (Bailey Bass). Claudia was a five-year-old girl in the book, but 11 in the 1994 movie, played by Kirsten Dunst. In the show, Claudia is 14 for some very good reasons. You’ll start to see her in the third episode of the series.

Bass and series creator Rolin Jones were on a Television Critics Association panel on Aug. 10. They discussed making Claudia a teenage vampire in the show. Interview with the Vampire airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on AMC and streams on AMC+.

‘Interview with the Vampire’ makes more changes to Claudia than her age

Jones will explain why Claudia is a tad older on Interview with the Vampire. But, Bass has even more to deal with. Interview with the Vampire made Louis (Jacob Anderson) a Black man living in early 1900s New Orleans. Claudia will experience being a Black woman in the same era, but she won’t even get to grow up.

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“Claudia is stuck in this 14-year-old body,” Bass said. “And we do touch upon what it means to be a Black woman, but also a Black child in that time. It was interesting doing research for Claudia being a Black child because there’s not much research to be found, so we kind of had to create it on our own from what we had. You can see a lot of pictures of Black women, but not necessarily Black children who were to a wealthier family because there wasn’t much of that in the 1920s of anything. So we did a lot of research. But it was great playing Claudia and I’m excited for people to feel seen, especially young women and young girls.”

‘Interview with the Vampire’ decided to make Claudia older

Claudia is a major part of the show. Were she as young as in the book, or even the movie, Bass, or a younger actor rather, would literally not be able to film as many scenes.

“There are some things in Louisiana in terms of child labor laws about actors that are younger than 18,” Jones said. “And Claudia is such a huge part of this show and this universe, we want to have as much screen time as possible. So you throw all of that down and then you go to the writers’ room. So what do we do? And I think we thought there would be a third way to go about this and that is to lock Claudia sort of in the chemistry of a 14-year-old, the body chemistry of that and all the fluctuations and passions that happen, and be locked into that. I think Bailey’s done a really remarkable job of giving this third version of Claudia. I think everybody’s going to be quite thrilled and surprised by it.”

Jones added that there are more surprises coming for Claudia on Interview with the Vampire.

“For Claudia fans, we do something exciting structurally when she makes her entrance,” Jones said. “We set something up in her initial episode that I think will be exciting and thrilling for fans of Claudia.”

What could that mean? The one change one hopes Jones might make is the death of Claudia in the book and movie. It’s a powerful, tragic scene, but if the series is going to run for years, we want Claudia to be in all of it. Season 1 only covers the first half of the book, so there should be a lot more Claudia to come. But Bass will grow up so they’ll have to start de-aging her.

Teenage Claudia adds more problems for Bailey Bass

Teenage years are tough for everybody. Imagine living them forever.

“It was really exciting to play Claudia partly because she’s stuck right before puberty,” Bass said. “So just like Rolin was saying, she has all of those emotions for the rest of her life that she has to deal with, on top of dealing with the fact that she’s stuck in a 14-year-old body even though she turns 20, 30, 40, 50.”

Director Alan Taylor added his thoughts on the new conception of Claudia. 

“Even if it was arrived at for practical reasons, what Rolin built out of it of finding this other crisis point in a young girl’s life and having that extend forever became a really beautiful story to explore,” Taylor said. “And I have two teenage daughters and it’s fascinating to think what would happen if this phase, that we frequently think of as a phase, was extended for potentially eternity, and the fact that Bailey took that on and made it her struggle, sink or play the character in her first audition. It was like, okay, yes, we have it now.  This works.”