"In an effort to save the story from Interview and to save Claudia," [Anne Rice] said, "I suggested we make Louis a woman [in a proposed film version] It works. It's all the same passivity, the same philosophical ideas, the same inability to fight Lestat's domination. It's fine for Louis to be a woman because he is a woman - he's really me." With Cher or Meryl Streep in mind, she set about creating a transvestite, trans-gender female [sic], whose husband and daughter had died on the way to Louisiana from the Islands. Since women could not inherit plantations, the character steps on shore in her husband's clothes and challenges anyone to say she's not a man. Everyone knows she's a woman and she gets into brawls. "She was a good swordsman," said Anne, "and a good gunfighter, and she kept her plantation, which everyone wanted, by fighting people off. So it was an interesting story. And there were very famous transvestites in this era. It was a common motif."

Katherine Ramsland, Prism of the Night: A Biography of Anne Rice