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Never underestimate the power of a digital cover. Interview with the Vampire has been on my long list of shows to watch for a while now, but there was an energy to Entertainment Weekly's cinematic cover shoot for its upcoming return that made me realize I needed to catch up now before the show has what I suspect will be a major moment this summer. I figured that if I started this weekend, I could leisurely finish before the third season—rebranded The Vampire Lestat—debuts on AMC on June 7. Instead, I consumed the entirety of the seven-episode first season in one sitting and finished the eight-episode second season nearly as quickly. (Both are currently streaming on Netflix.) Needless to say, I was hooked.
Based on Anne Rice's iconic Vampire Chronicles book series, Interview with the Vampire is one of those cult shows that's been just on the edge of breaking into the mainstream since it debuted in 2022. I've heard nothing but raves from the people who love it, so I suspected I'd like it too; especially because I'm such a genre TV fan. But I wasn't prepared for just how good the show would be or how much I would love it. I don't know exactly how to explain what I mean by this, but there's an emotional vibe to this show that I've only really felt before in Heated Rivalry and the 2005 reboot of Doctor Who—a sort of intense exploration of the idea of companionship wrapped up in a heightened sense of melodrama, anchored by some of the best performances in TV history; something both gloriously over-the-top and yet deeply earnest too. I get why once you're in the cult of the show, you want to get everyone else in too.
There are a lot of obvious things that make the show so good: The phenomenal chemistry between immortal vampires Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid)—who thankfully don't have to keep their romance subtextual the way it was in the 1994 Tom Cruise/Brad Pitt film. There's also the thoughtful exploration of race, sexual identity, and trauma. The unexpectedly wry sense of humor running under everything. And the way the show so unabashedly embraces both the passion and the horror of its gothic romance premise.
But I think what impressed me most is the show's sense of patience. One of its central ideas is that vampires live such long lives, they conceptualize time differently than humans do. And you can feel that in the very way the show is constructed. It's easy to imagine a version of this series that introduces us to Louis and Lestat in their first meeting in 1910 New Orleans and then jumps ahead to their sexy vampire adventures further down the road. But Interview with the Vampire works in a more patient, methodical key. It takes literal decades for Louis to feel comfortable with his queer identity because when you've spent the first 33 years of your life having shame ingrained in you, that doesn't just magically go away because you get some fangs.
In a way, the show's entire first season is about the difficulty of letting go of your human past in the early days of your immortal existence. While a vampire's life may be infinite compared to a human one, a human life is still quite time-spanning in its own right too. Though the first season covers 30 years of New Orleans history, Louis doesn't fully cut ties with his human family until the antepenultimate episode. And he and Lestat are still interacting with characters they knew in their “youth†in the finale. The slow-burn way the show charts the daily realities of their immortal lives makes the true length of their existence feel so much more palpable than in vampire properties like Twilight or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Flashing back to a vampire's distant origin story makes it easy to forget they lived every day in between too.
