How ‘Interview With the Vampire’ Series Addresses Louis/Lestat LGBTQ Themes
The AMC adaptation of Interview with the Vampire will go there with the LGBTQ+ overtones. Homoeroticism was a subtext of Anne Rice’s book which the 1994 movie adaptation mostly avoided. Now, it’s 2022 and Interview with the Vampire shows Lestat (Sam Reid) and Louis (Jacob Anderson) as lovers in the show.
Series creator Rolin Jones, director Alan Taylor and Reid were on a Television Critics Association Zoom panel on Aug. 10. They discussed the LGBTQ+ themes of Interview with the Vampire. Interview with the Vampire airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on AMC and streams on AMC+.
‘Interview with the Vampire’ is a romance between Louis and Lestat
Lestat turns Louis into a vampire in 1910 New Orleans. As Lestat teaches Louis the ropes of vampirism, they also explore their own relationship.
“It seemed pretty obvious to me what the story was here,” Jones said. “And when I was tasked with the books from AMC, a number of things they wanted: make it here now, make it big and grand. I just came back to them, I said, ‘I don’t think it’s a horror show, I think it is a gothic romance. And I want to write a very excitable, aggressive, toxic, beautiful love story.’ They were down for it. And I don’t think we went much deeper than that.”
Lestat and Louis are more than gay lovers
Louis and Lestat share love scenes on camera in Interview with the Vampire. Rollins continued about how the LGBTQ+ themes expand on many other themes of the show.
“I mean, there’s queer sexuality, but there’s queer ethics and queer aesthetics,” Jones said. “Vampires as outliers is sort of an easy thing. And so I’m just trying to work backwards from what it is in the late novels as you say they sort of canonize that and come back and revisit this and go, okay, let’s see with the extra time that we have to tell the story. Let’s see them really go through all the little obstacles and challenges of a relationship. I don’t know, Bogie and Bacall with some things, something like that. That’s all I can think about.”
Rice herself embraced the relationship between Lestat and Louis in later books. The subtext became text, so it begins as text in Interview with the Vampire.
Intimacy coordinators helped the ‘Interview with the Vampire’ love scenes
Reid and Taylor spoke about the intimacy coordinators which helped bring those Lestat/Louis love scenes to life.
“It’s really, really important working with an intimacy coordinator,” Reid said. “I haven’t not worked with an intimacy coordinator for a number of years. It’s important and it treats those scenes a bit more like a stunt scene or a fight scene so they’re properly choreographed as well as trying to keep some spontaneity in it. Yeah, it was kind of fun doing it in that way. We get to rehearse it and know exactly what was going to happen.”
Taylor said intimacy coordinators brought a sense of democracy to the Interview with the Vampire set.
“It gives anybody the right to ask any questions they want any time, which can sometimes be difficult in a hierarchical crew or something,” Taylor said. “But with a coordinator there it’s like everything is on the table. It’s nice.”
