The fact that the podcast interviewer does not know the backstory grates on me.

I'm yELLING at Rolin describing seeing both Sam and Jacob's auditions. Praising Jacob for his genuine warmth and then straight up dragging Sam for filth at his desperation over wanting to play Lestat lmfaoooo they been knew how bad he wanted it whilst also knowing he was the chosen One™️. I'm dead.

ROLIN JONES SAYING LOUIS WOULD KEEP BEING IMPORTANT/A MAIN CHARACTER, CALLING ARMAND "THE SINGLE MOST FASCINATING CHARACTER" OF SEASON 2 AND CONFIRMING TVL SEASON 3 . IF GOD HATES GAYS WHY DO WE KEEP WINNINGGGGG

this clip is so insanely horny

(episode one of the iwtv podcast with eric bogosian)

something that just occured to me is the question of what it means for the events in paris that louis was the one to “kill” lestat. in the vampire lestat, lestat confesses to armand that claudia “killed” him (not with the intention of having her killed tho since he doesn’t know her and louis are in paris yet) and in interview with the vampire, he repeatedly tells santiago and co he wants them to spare louis so he can go back to new orleans with him. armand then uses lestat’s info to have claudia killed because she broke te rules, but also because he wants louis all to himself.

but how is this going to work in the show? if lestat lies to armand that claudia killed him in order to protect louis, i feel like that’s going to make it even harder for him to be somwhat redeemed in the tvl season(s) in the eyes of a lot of fans since it’s straigh up not a good look. and if armand has claudia killed despite knowing louis actually slit lestat’s throat, that might make armand into more of a villain than in the books. 

i love lestat’s “death” in episode seven so much, it’s beautiful, tragic, poetic etc. i’m just kind of worried about what it means for season two.

Anne Rice wanted Cher to play Louis in the 1994 film, because she imagined Louis as transgender 😭💕🥺🏳️‍⚧️

They mention this at the end of episode two of amc’s “Interview with the Vampire” podcast.... But can you imagine if this ever made its way into the canon??? Louis as a closeted trans man in the 18th century, running his family’s plantation, passing himself as cisgender, knowing that he would lose everything—including control of his own life, his property, his money, his freedom, maybe even his life—if anyone discovered his secret... Then Lestat appears and can see straight through him, knows everything about him, including that he is “a woman pretending to be a man,” as they would have seen it in the 18th century. While becoming a vampire could have been very empowering to a trans person in this time period, being trans also would have given Louis even less of a “choice.” If he refused Lestat, Lestat could have done more than kill him: he could have exposed his secrets, made his life a living hell, brought disgrace and terrifying consequences upon him and his family... So many possibilities. I feel like I need to re-read book 1 and imagine Louis as a closeted trans man who doesn’t disclose this to the interviewer.

Mr. Rolin Jones, creator and showrunner of Interview with the Vampire appeared on the post-finale episode of the companion podcast to talk about this first season but also season 2, and the future of this series. It's super insightful, I highly recommend giving it a listen, we learn so much about the process behind creating this show and this season but also about what's coming next like he's thinking about this show in long-game terms like going on for 8yrs minimum, and by the sounds of it so is AMC. The first book is going to be explored in 15 episodes total, we've got the first 7 which means s2 would be 8 episodes. And start getting excited for s3 because the current plan is that the third season will give our brat prince the opportunity to tell his side of the story and explore the second book, The Vampire Lestat.

In this post, I have compiled some highlights of his interview but I reiterate that if you can do so to give the full thing a listen cause it's really interesting.

On getting picked to be the showrunner:

"I came back to the loving arms of AMC. I had done some work with them before and there were a lot of really savy executives, I had a big overall meeting- here are 19 things I wanna do for you guys, talk, talk talk, talk, talk, as I'm leaving the door one of them goes 'you know we forgot to mention our bosses bought the Anne Rice books' and I stopped, and I put everything down, sat back down and said 'we're gonna take another 45 minutes for this meeting' and by the time I walked out I kinda knew that's that I was gonna do. And then they put me through a gauntlet of things to prove that I was the guy and it wasn't just about what's a good pilot story, what's a good first season it was what does this thing look like 8 years from now?"

Up until today, I didn't know showrunners basically had to audition.

About the decision to change Louis race:

"I kinda came around to his ethnicity through a very weird way which is through Lestat. So, there's a very famous sort of rewrite of Lestat starting with book 2 he's an aggressively different character than he was in book 1 but that's the Lestat that she carried on for the rest of time. And I was like okay that should be Lestat and so we tried to take the given circumstances that are set with Lestat and put him back into this time period, and so he had this sort of super emo relationship with this guy named Nicki, and then he had a very...uh, excitable relationship with his mother as his second companion choice- get into that season 3 y'all. And then I was like let's give Lestat a legitimate third attempt at trying to figure out how to be with somebody for the rest of his life and how do you not repeat your mistakes. So, I started from there and I wanted somebody who had some money cause I think he wanted to be you know with his own folks there, and I think he wanted someone I thought who could fight back and who could be a challenge and who would force him to restrain himself. And nobody at AMC was really interested in seven seasons of the regretful plantation owner so you know- even with that though you want it to have some connective threads to the novel so we made Louis come from a lineage that once did own a plantation, did own slaves. The other thing was sort of aesthetic if you were gonna take away the ruffled shirts and all the swampy goodness and you wanted to make this something new, what's the next hot time that had a sense of smell and taste and sound? The birth of jazz seemed pretty right on, and it just so happened there was a spot at that historical time where a black man could get in on some business and still have the sort of morally grey thing that owning a plantation would and- I don't know it all actually clicked into place pretty quickly."

How do they decide when they deviate from the books?

"There were a couple caveats. Make it here and now, make it grand and big but we said you know look she wrote a very transgressive groundbreaking novel in 1973 and try to put her in the room where she was tasked in 2021 with making a tv show out of this and you want it - there's no reason to do something if you're going to just run rough shot over it. So you're constantly, constantly revisiting the book and that's not only in the room where you're building story but that's when you're in draft, that's when you're in after production draft, that's when you're last minute like little things and you find some things that you had passed over didn't think were relevant like 'I'm screaming back at you' and dropping in as much Anne as we could, and that we were gonna write this sort of heightened language that is in the novel we're gonna make our actors talk like that; she is our safety net all the time."

This is insane, when they were in pre-production they were writing scripts for the entire book but due to covid and the cost of lumber AMC called and asked if they had enough in the first half to stay in New Orleans for the entire season. At first, Rolin's put up a fight but what they did was they turned what was originally the first four episodes into this first season. And they did so 50 days before they shot the first day! His original pitch was 10 episodes, they were aiming for 8 but it's now a 15-episode book. He does think the change was to the benefit of the show. I agree, it's mind-blowing to think that the amazing 7 episodes we got were originally compacted into just 4 and that they managed to change course and deliver a product of such high quality within just 50 days.

"Memory is a very, very huge part of this show. The tagline for this show should be: memory is a monster. We're only on episode 7 of 15, you only know half of it. Maybe." 👀

Why is Louis truly doing this interview?

"It is absolutely the question. If you wanna know what we're still digging out of it, it is the why of it. There's a real reason why this is a second interview and the first interview is super important. Tune in season 2. And I will just say this, these two (Daniel and Louis) have been brought together because something very significant happened, life-altering happened to them in 1973. And they didn't get it right and they weren't the right people at the time to do it, and know they think they are, and yet like all of us you still don't know who you are and you still gotta go deeper but that just means there is a lot of meat not only on Louis side but on Molloy's side and most importantly Armand's side who has become for us the single most fascinating character of season 2. Yeah, there's a lot in Dubai that's yet to be revealed."

I need s2 to hurry tf up because what does that mean sir 👀👀👀👀

The real reason he wanted to do this show is s3, The Vampire Lestat. He really knows how he wants to do it, and he couldn't be more excited about it. As goofy as body switching is, and they'll come up with some elegant way, he thinks there's something in the Tale of the Body Thief, Queen of the Dammed he has to think about because it's so massive, and he doesn't know if that's gonna be covered over one season or two.

AMC please be serious............ what is this. why did you do this 💀

i'm so delighted. every friday amc emails me to try to remind me that i pay them 10 bucks every month for continued obsessive access to interview with the vampire encourage me to watch other things on their platform--rarely if ever a recommendation for iwtv. but TODAY. they remembered our vampire show existed, and that hey the epic queer of all time vampire property could be spotlighted for pride in their promo. good job guys. lil baby steps.

So... Sam said that a big part of his casting for Lestat was in French

“There will come a day, I think, when Lestat will turn around and goes: actually, this is how it fucking happened.“

October 10th, 2022

IWTV Podcast

NEW EPISODE INCOMING!

Hey kids, did ya miss us?! We’ve been awakened from our deep sleep once again because, y’all, the Vampire Chronicles TV show is ALMOST HERE!!!! We sat down to watch the trailer for the first time together last weekend and OH BOY is it a journey! Buckle up for lots of complaints, praises, questions, and of course, mourning the age of our beloved Daniel. Sorry in advance for all the shouting!

LISTEN HERE

Welcome to our *new* -ish podcast! Same name, but now with MORE pop culture, more media, and more nerding out. In this episode, Anne Rice superfan Sally and generally vampire-obsessed Kira discuss AMC's "Interview with a Vampire" adaptation.

Love the show, love the podcast. Available on any podcast platform. I'm delighted to be able to listen to it on Audible.

Psst… VC/AMC IWTV tumblr I brought you something…

I’m never getting over the way Naomi (the lady that hosted the podcast) called Armand “the Vampire King” 😍