The AMC gothic horror drama Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire is based on a 1976 novel, Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice. The series features multiple vampires and the complicated relationships they've developed throughout their centuries together. The series is set to premiere on Oct. 2, 2022, almost 28 years after the Tom Cruise-led cinematic adaptation in 1994. The novel and film served as a biographical piece for Louis de Pointe du Lac as he described his origins as a vampire in 1791 to the present day.
Although there have been multiple vampire-centric shows over the last few decades, True Blood still stands out as one of the most iconic series that featured vampires and the deeply sexual and animalistic rituals of their kind. The undead characters were often portrayed as sexy and dangerous before the show's protagonist learned of their softer sides. There were multiple love triangles and tribulations for Sookie Stackhouse as she navigated these complicated relationships. While these two shows might be wildly different, Interview With the Vampire could serve as a solid replacement for True Blood's television legacy.
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A major difference between True Blood and Interview With the Vampire is the connecting piece between the plot and the audience. Sookie served as the audience's gateway into a supernatural world full of vampires, fairies, werewolves and more. She had telepathic powers, but she was a relatively average human at the beginning of the series. She pursued vampires for romantic and sexual reasons, which led her to experience how dangerous the creatures of the night could be.
Interview With the Vampire's premise does feature another human as the audience's connecting piece to the vampire world, but he's not considered the main character. Daniel Molloy introduces viewers to Louis de Pointe du Lac and his maker, Lestat de Lioncourt, but the vampires take over the story from there. In this universe, vampires still lurk in the shadows and aren't recognized by the public, which offers different circumstances than what was seen on HBO's True Blood.
Another huge difference will probably be the consistency of sex and violence because Interview With the Vampire will premiere on AMC. HBO is usually known for its explicit content while AMC is still a basic cable channel. Part of what made the original film and novel popular was the sexual nuance of the vampires, which created a cult following of Anne Rice fans (if they weren't already fans of her book series). There's a high probability that the series will still hold true to that dynamic, especially when it comes to the LGBT+ representation in the plot.
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Interview With the Vampire does serve to provide audiences with a different perspective that is often not seen in vampire literature and culture. The premise features an in-depth look at how vampires interact with one another without human witnesses. Humans often play a critical role in vampire media as they serve to connect the audience like Sookie on True Blood (or even in vampire hunter roles like Buffy on Buffy the Vampire Slayer), but creating a story in which humans don't star as a vital character definitely changes the dynamic audiences are used to seeing.
In this version of vampire history, they are still bloodthirsty creatures of the night. Although they're depicted as having immense beauty, they still hide from human eyes. They are a unique combination of being alluringly sexual and also dangerous. Interview With the Vampire could serve to replace True Blood as the current vampire series with dark themes and intriguing situations. Lestat's origins will prove to be an interesting gateway into the psyche behind classically beautiful, alluring and tragic vampires.
Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire premieres on AMC on Oct. 2, 2022.