Almost thirty years ago on Saturday Night Live, late Weekend Update anchor Norm MacDonald famously swatted down 1994’s Interview With the Vampire with one chief complaint: “Not gay enough!” Even back then, the dripping homoeroticism between the story’s lead characters, played by Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, was impossible to ignore.
If only Norm could see AMC’s new Interview With the Vampire TV series, which, unlike the 1994 movie and the classic Anne Rice novel it’s based on, goes all in on the electric, chaotic gay romance between vampires Louis Pointe (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), with a levitating gay vampire sex scene that I cannnot stop thinking about.
The pilot (titled “In Throes of Increasing Wonder”) wastes no time in establishing the wonderfully maximalist queerness at the show’s center. Still framed around the titular interview between journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) and Louis, the latter spends the first episode explaining how he first connected with his creator/lover/messy ex in early 1910s New Orleans.
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The chemistry between the two is undeniable from the moment Louis lays eyes upon Lestat in the brothel he runs. Soon enough, the pair go from friends to passionate lovers, complete with a little bloody foreplay. During their first hookup, Lestat bites Louis on the neck, and the passion of the moment literally lifts both men into the air. Watching two guys making out like teenagers in mid-air 30 minutes into a TV show is deeply, absurdly horny in the best way possible.
The pilot embraces the weird lore of Rice’s world throughout, including a gorily satisfying moment in which Lestat devours a priest and punches a hole through a church docent’s skull after Louis arrives at the church seeking “forgiveness” for, among other things, his queerness. The episode ends with the pair passionately making out and drawing blood from each other amid the church carnage. As Louis transforms into a vampire alongside his lover as music swells, setting the stage for plenty of immortal gay melodrama for viewers to sink their teeth into (sorry!) in the weeks to come.
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As seductive as Interview with the Vampire’s premiere was, it turns out that that mid-air love scene wasn’t quite so romantic behind-the-scenes. In a recent interview with Decider, Anderson and Reid revealed that they shot the scene on a small platform lifted by a mechanical crane, which makes actually filming it… a bit awkward, to say the least.
“It was quite uncomfortable, I got to tell you the truth,” Anderson said. “We’re balancing on that [rig] and sort of holding onto each other for balance as well. I don't want to kill the magic of that scene, but… we were naked in front of the whole stunt team… basically on a steel seesaw.”
Still, that doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate the scene’s potency. In an interview with Esquire, Richardson noted that the scene helped introduce Louis and Lestat’s “intense connection” on screen.
“Anne Rice describes drinking each other’s blood as incredibly erotic, almost like having sex. So how do you translate that on screen? I guess nude levitation translates quite well,” Richardson said.
Interview with the Vampire is enjoying some great reviews and has already been renewed for season two. That is a better fate than some queer vampiric shows out there. Streaming giant Netflix killed the series, despite high viewership, after only one season.
Interview With the Vampire airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on AMC.
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