''Interview with the Vampire'' is a

gothic horror Gothic fiction, sometimes called Gothic horror in the 20th century, is a loose literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name is a reference to Gothic architecture of the European Middle Ages, which was characteristic of the settings of ea ...

and vampire novel by American author

Anne Rice Anne Rice (born Howard Allen Frances O'Brien; October 4, 1941 – December 11, 2021) was an American author of gothic fiction, erotic literature, and Christian literature. She was best known for her series of novels ''The Vampire Chronicles''. B ...

, published in 1976. It was her

debut novel A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to ...

. Based on a short story Rice wrote around 1968, the novel centers on vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac, who tells the story of his life to a reporter. Rice composed the novel shortly after the death of her young daughter Michelle, who served as an inspiration for the child-vampire character Claudia. Though initially the subject of mixed critical reception, the book was followed by many widely popular sequels, collectively known as ''

The Vampire Chronicles ''The Vampire Chronicles'' is a series of gothic horror novels and a media franchise, created by American writer Anne Rice, that revolves around the fictional character Lestat de Lioncourt, a French nobleman turned into a vampire in the 18th ...

''. A film adaptation was released in 1994, starring

Tom Cruise Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (born July 3, 1962), known professionally as Tom Cruise, is an American actor and producer. One of the world's highest-paid actors, he has received various accolades, including an Honorary Palme d'Or and three Go ...

and

Brad Pitt William Bradley Pitt (born December 18, 1963) is an American actor and film producer. He is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award. ...

, and a

television series A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, or cable, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are typically placed ...

premiered in 2022. The novel has also been adapted as a comic three times.

Plot summary

A vampire named Louis de Pointe du Lac tells his 200-year-long life story to a reporter referred to simply as " the boy". In 1791, Louis is a young

indigo plantation A slave plantation was an agricultural farm that used enslaved people for labour. The practice was abolished in most places during the 19th century. Slavery Planters embraced the use of slaves mainly because indentured labor became expensive. ...

owner living in

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a U.S. state, state in the Deep South and South Central United States, South Central regions of the United States. It is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 20th-smal ...

. Distraught by the death of his brother, he seeks death in any way possible. Louis is approached by a vampire named Lestat de Lioncourt, who desires Louis's company. Lestat turns Louis into a vampire and the two become immortal companions. Lestat spends time feeding off slaves while Louis, who finds it morally repugnant to murder humans to survive, feeds from animals. Louis and Lestat are forced to leave when Louis's slaves begin to fear the vampires and instigate an uprising. Louis sets his own plantation aflame; he and Lestat kill the slaves to keep word from spreading about vampires living in Louisiana. Gradually, Louis bends under Lestat's influence and begins feeding from humans. He slowly comes to terms with his vampire nature, but also becomes increasingly repulsed by what he perceives as Lestat's total lack of compassion for the humans he preys upon. Escaping to

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

plague Plague or The Plague may refer to: Agriculture, fauna, and medicine *Plague (disease), a disease caused by ''Yersinia pestis'' * An epidemic of infectious disease (medical or agricultural) * A pandemic caused by such a disease * A swarm of pes ...

-ridden, five-year-old girl, whom he finds next to the corpse of her mother. Louis begins to think of leaving Lestat and going his own way. Fearing this, Lestat then turns the girl into a vampire "daughter" for them, to give Louis a reason to stay. She is then given the name Claudia. Louis is initially horrified that Lestat has turned a child into a vampire, but soon begins to care for Claudia. Claudia takes to killing easily, but she begins to realize over time she can never grow up; her mind matures into that of an intelligent, assertive woman, but her body remains that of a young girl. Claudia blames Lestat for her state and, after 60 years of living with him, hatches a plot to kill Lestat by poisoning him and cutting his throat. Claudia and Louis then dump his body into a nearby swamp. As Louis and Claudia prepare to flee to Europe, Lestat appears, having recovered from Claudia's attack, and attacks them in turn. Louis sets fire to their home and barely escapes with Claudia, leaving a furious Lestat to be consumed by the flames. Arriving in Europe, Louis and Claudia seek out more of their kind. They travel throughout eastern Europe first and do indeed encounter vampires, but these vampires appear to be nothing more than mindless, animated corpses. It is only when they reach Paris that they encounter vampires like themselves, meeting the 400-year-old vampire

Armand Armand refer to: People * Armand (name), list of people with this name *Armand (photographer) (1901–1963), Armenian photographer *Armand (singer) (1946–2015), Dutch protest singer *Sean Armand (born 1991), American basketball player *Armand, ...

and his

coven A coven () is a group or gathering of witches. The word "coven" (from Anglo-Norman ''covent, cuvent'', from Old French ''covent'', from Latin ''conventum'' = convention) remained largely unused in English until 1921 when Margaret Murray promot ...

at the Théâtre des Vampires. Inhabiting an ancient theater, Armand and his vampire coven disguise themselves as humans and feed on terrified humans in mock plays before a live audience (who think the killings are merely a very realistic performance). Claudia is repulsed by these vampires and what she considers to be their cheap theatrics, but Louis and Armand are drawn to each other. Convinced that Louis will leave her for Armand, Claudia convinces Louis to turn a Parisian doll maker, Madeleine, into a vampire to serve as a replacement companion for her. Louis, Madeleine, and Claudia live together for a brief time, but all three are abducted one night by Armand's coven. Lestat arrives, having survived the fire in New Orleans. His accusations against Louis and Claudia result in Louis being locked in a coffin to starve, while Claudia and Madeleine are locked in an open courtyard. Armand arrives and releases Louis from the coffin, but Madeleine and Claudia are burned to death by the rising sun; a devastated Louis finds their ashen remains. Louis returns to the Theatre late the following night, burning it to the ground and killing all the vampires inside, leaving with Armand. Together, the two travel across Europe for several years, but Louis never fully recovers from Claudia's death, and the emotional connection between himself and Armand quickly dissolves. Tired of the Old World, Louis returns to New Orleans in the early 20th century. Living as a loner, he feeds off any humans who cross his path, but lives in the shadows, never creating another companion for himself. Telling the boy of one last encounter with Lestat in New Orleans in the 1920s, Louis ends his tale; after 200 years, he is weary of immortality and of all the pain and suffering to which he has had to bear witness. The boy, however, seeing only the great powers granted to a vampire, begs to be made into a vampire himself. Angry that his interviewer learned nothing from his story, Louis refuses, attacking the boy and vanishing without a trace. The boy then leaves to track down Lestat in the hopes that he can give him immortality.

Background and publication

In 1970, while

was attending a graduate program in Creative Writing at

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...

, her daughter Michelle, then about four years old, was diagnosed with acute granulocytic leukemia."Anne Rice's Imagination May Roam Among Vampires and Erotica, but Her Heart Is Right at Home"
by Joyce Wadler, Johnny Greene, ''

People A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of proper ...

'', May 12, 1988. Michelle died of the illness about two years later, and Rice fell into a deep depression, turning to alcohol in order to cope. Later reviewers and commentators identified Michelle as an inspiration for the character of Claudia. In 1973, while still grieving the loss of her daughter, Rice began reworking a previously written short story, which she had written in 1968 or 1969. Thirty pages long, the short story was written from the interviewer's perspective. She decided to expand "Interview with the Vampire" into a novel at the encouragement of one of her husband's students, who enjoyed her writing. It took her five weeks to complete the 338-page novel: she did research on vampires during the day and often wrote during the night. After completing the novel and following many rejections from publishers, Rice developed

obsessive–compulsive disorder Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental and behavioral disorder in which an individual has intrusive thoughts and/or feels the need to perform certain routines repeatedly to the extent where it induces distress or impairs general ...

(OCD). She became obsessed with germs, thinking that she contaminated everything she touched, engaged in frequent and obsessive hand washing and obsessively checked locks on windows and doors. Of this period, Rice says: "What you see when you're in that state is every single flaw in our hygiene and you can't control it and you go crazy". In August 1974, Rice attended the

Squaw Valley Writer's Conference The Community of Writers is a writers' conference held each summer in Olympic Valley, California. Founded in 1969, it is the oldest annual writers' conference on the West Coast of the United States. The Community of Writers is a nonprofit 501(c) ...

at Squaw Valley, conducted by writer Ray Nelson. While at the conference, she met her future literary agent, Phyllis Seidel. In October 1974, Seidel sold the publishing rights to ''Interview with the Vampire'' to Alfred A. Knopf for a $12,000 advance of the hardcover rights, at a time when most new authors were receiving $2,000 advances. ''Interview with the Vampire'' was published in May 1976. In 1977, the Rices traveled to both Europe and Egypt for the first time. Upon its release, ''Interview with the Vampire'' received mixed reviews from critics. A reviewer for the '' St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' gave the book a positive review, describing the prose as "hypnotically poetic in tone, rich in sensory imagery", while other reviews were more negative. Edith Milton of ''

The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hu ...

'' wrote: "To pretend that it has any purpose beyond suckling eroticism is rank hypocrisy". , the novel had sold 8 million copies worldwide. The book spawned a total of twelve sequels, collectively known as ''

'', and the spin-off series ''

New Tales of the Vampires ''The Vampire Chronicles'' is a series of gothic horror novels and a media franchise, created by American writer Anne Rice, that revolves around the fictional character Lestat de Lioncourt, a French nobleman turned into a vampire in the 18th ...

''. The first sequel, '' The Vampire Lestat'', was published in 1985 and sold more than 75,000 copies in its first printing, garnering largely favorable reviews. 1988's '' The Queen of the Damned'' improved on ''Lestat'' numbers, receiving an initial hardcover run of 405,000 and topping the ''New York Times'' Best Seller list. Rice's vampire books share a fictional universe with her series ''

Lives of the Mayfair Witches ''Lives of the Mayfair Witches'' is a trilogy of supernatural horror/fantasy novels by American novelist Anne Rice. It centers on a family of witches whose fortunes have been guided for generations by a spirit named Lasher. The series began in ...

'' and the novel '' The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned''.

Adaptations

Film

The film rights to ''Interview'' were at times controlled by

Paramount Pictures Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth-oldes ...

, Lorimar, and Warner Bros., the distributor of the film, before

The Geffen Film Company The Geffen Film Company (also known as The Geffen Company, The Geffen Film Company, Inc., and later Geffen Pictures) was an American film distributor and production company founded by David Geffen, the founder of Geffen Records, and future co-f ...

acquired the rights. Director

Neil Jordan Neil Patrick Jordan (born 25 February 1950) is an Irish film director, screenwriter, novelist and short-story writer. His first book, ''Night in Tunisia'', won a Somerset Maugham Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1979. He won an Academy ...

rewrote Rice's first draft of the screenplay, though she received sole credit.

starred as Louis,

starred as Lestat,

Antonio Banderas José Antonio Domínguez Bandera (born 10 August 1960), known professionally as Antonio Banderas, is a Spanish actor and singer. Known for his work in films of several genres, he has received various accolades, including a Cannes Film Festival ...

co-starred as Armand, as did a young

Kirsten Dunst Kirsten Caroline Dunst (; born April 30, 1982) is an American actress. She made her acting debut in the short ''Oedipus Wrecks'' directed by Woody Allen in the anthology film '' New York Stories'' (1989). She then gained recognition for her r ...

as the child vampire Claudia. Most of the movie's shooting had been completed by October 1993, and all that remained were the few scenes involving the interviewer that would then be inserted at various points throughout the film. Production of those scenes was put on hold for a few weeks whilst

River Phoenix River Jude Phoenix (; August 23, 1970 – October 31, 1993) was an American actor, musician and activist. Phoenix grew up in an itinerant family, as the older brother of Rain Phoenix, Joaquin Phoenix, Liberty Phoenix, and Summer Phoenix. He h ...

, who had been cast as the interviewer, finished working on the film ''

Dark Blood ''Dark Blood'' is a 2012 American-Dutch thriller film directed by George Sluizer, written by Jim Barton, and starring River Phoenix, Judy Davis, and Jonathan Pryce. The film was not completed due to the death of Phoenix in 1993, shortly before the ...

''. Phoenix died from an overdose later that month, and

Christian Slater Christian Michael Leonard Slater (born August 18, 1969) is an American actor and producer. He made his film debut with a leading role in '' The Legend of Billie Jean'' (1985) and gained wider recognition for his breakthrough role as Jason "J.D." ...

was then cast as the interviewer Molloy. Slater donated his entire salary to Earth Save and Earth Trust, two of Phoenix's favorite charities. The film was released in November 1994 to generally positive critical reaction, and received

Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment in ...

nominations for

Best Art Direction The Academy Award for Best Production Design recognizes achievement for art direction in film. The category's original name was Best Art Direction, but was changed to its current name in 2012 for the 85th Academy Awards. This change resulted fro ...

and Best Original Score. Dunst was nominated for a

Golden Globe The Golden Globe Awards are accolades bestowed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association beginning in January 1944, recognizing excellence in both American and international film and television. Beginning in 2022, there are 105 members of t ...

for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film. Rice had initially voiced her objections to the casting of Cruise as Lestat, preferring

Rutger Hauer Rutger Oelsen Hauer (; 23 January 1944 – 19 July 2019) was a Dutch actor. In 1999, he was named by the Dutch public as the Best Dutch Actor of the Century. Hauer's career began in 1969 with the title role in the Dutch television series ' ...

for the role. After seeing the film, however, she voiced her support for the film, saying: "That Tom ''did'' make Lestat work was something I could not see in a crystal ball. It's to his credit that he proved me wrong". In August 2014,

Universal Pictures Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Americ ...

and

Imagine Entertainment Imagine Entertainment (formerly Imagine Films Entertainment), also known simply as Imagine, is an American film and television production company founded in November 1985 by producer Brian Grazer and director Ron Howard. Background Brian Gra ...

acquired the motion picture rights to the entire ''Vampire Chronicles'' series, with producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci signed to helm the potential film franchise. The deal also included a screenplay for '' The Tale of the Body Thief'' (1992) adapted by

Christopher Rice Christopher Travis Rice (born March 11, 1978) is an American author. Rice made his fiction debut in 2000 with the bestselling ''A Density of Souls'', going on to write many more novels, including ''The Snow Garden'', ''The Heavens Rise'', ''The V ...

. In May 2016, writer-director Josh Boone posted a photo on

Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...

of the cover a script written by him and Jill Killington. Titled ''Interview with the Vampire'', it is based on the novel of the same name and its sequel, ''The Vampire Lestat''. However, that November Universal did not renew the contract, and the film and television rights reverted to Rice, who began developing the ''Vampire Chronicles'' into a television series with Christopher.

Comics

Innovation Comics published a twelve-issue comic book adaptation of ''Interview with the Vampire'' in 1992, following up on adaptations of ''The Vampire Lestat'' and ''The Queen of the Damned''. A Japanese

manga Manga ( Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is use ...

adaptation by Udou Shinohara was published in 1994 by

Tokuma Shoten is a publisher in Japan, headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. The company was established in 1954 by Yasuyoshi Tokuma in Minato, Tokyo. The company’s product portfolio includes music publishing, video game publishing, movies, anime, magazines, ...

. It was also serialized in both ''

Animage is a Japanese anime and entertainment magazine which Tokuma Shoten began publishing in July 1978. Hayao Miyazaki's internationally renowned manga, '' Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind'', was serialized in ''Animage'' from 1982 through 1994. Ot ...

'' and '' Chara'' magazines. In 2012, the

graphic novel A graphic novel is a long-form, fictional work of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comic scholars and industry ...

''Interview with the Vampire: Claudia's Story'' was published by

Yen Press Yen Press, LLC is an American manga and graphic novel publisher co-owned by Kadokawa Corporation and Hachette Book Group. It published '' Yen Plus'', a monthly comic anthology, between 2008 and 2013. In addition to translated material, Yen Press ...

, retelling much of the original novel from the point of view of child vampire Claudia.

Television

In May 2020, AMC acquired the rights to ''The Vampire Chronicles'' and ''

'' for developing film and television projects. AMC gave the production a series order for a seven episode first season of ''Interview with the Vampire''. The series is executive produced by

Rolin Jones Rolin B. Jones (born September 22, 1972) is an American playwright and television writer. His plays include ''The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow'', for which he was a 2006 Pulitzer Prize finalist, and ''Sovereignty.'' His work in television inc ...

and Mark Johnson. ''Interview with the Vampire'' stars Sam Reid as Lestat, Jacob Anderson as Louis, Bailey Bass as Claudia, and

Assad Zaman Assad Zaman is a British actor. He is known for his stage work and his roles in the BBC thriller ''Apple Tree Yard'' (2017), the period drama '' Hotel Portofino'' (2022–) and the AMC series ''Interview with the Vampire'' (2022–). Early life ...

as Rashid/Armand. The series premiered on October 2, 2022.

References and notes

Notes

References

External links

''Interview with the Vampire''
at Anne Rice's official website * {{DEFAULTSORT:Interview with the Vampire 1970s LGBT novels 1976 American novels 1976 debut novels 1976 fantasy novels Alfred A. Knopf books American fantasy novels adapted into films American novels adapted into television shows American LGBT novels American vampire novels American gothic novels American horror novels Fiction set in 1791 LGBT speculative fiction novels Male bisexuality in fiction Novels adapted into comics Novels by Anne Rice Novels set in New Orleans Novels set in Paris Novels with bisexual themes The Vampire Chronicles novels Vampire novels