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ABOUT IWTV

Interview With The Vampire is a TV show released in 2022, based off of Anne Rice's novel of the same name released in 1976. The show is also set to adapt the rest of her Vampire Chronicles series, season 3 being about the second installment, The Vampire Lestat.

The pilot episode opens to Daniel Molloy, a journalist who is seemingly at the end of his career. We find out Daniel is sick while he's on the phone with his doctor, opening a package he received in the mail, but he soon hangs up because of it's contents. A box of cassette tapes and a letter from one Louis De Pointe Du Lac.

Louis invites Daniel to his penthouse apartment in Dubai, and Daniel goes, despite having Parkinson's disease and being in the middle of a pandemic. We learn Louis is a vampire, and he attacked Daniel the first time he interviewed him, and now wants a do-over and another chance to tell his life's story.

The series follows a mix of Louis and Daniel in the present, and Louis in the past, starting in New Orleans in the year 1910. I won't go further, as I wouldn't want to spoil the whole thing.

The show is very different from the books, but unlike other shows that stray from the source (at least in my experience), it does so thoughtfully and smoothly. This isn't to say the show doesn't have it's problems, but in terms of writing, and doing so respectfully, in my opinion it does a much better job than the books.

The books start similarly to the show, but with the first (and only) interview. Daniel, referred to only as "the boy" in this first book, was followed by Louis in an alleyway, and is now interviewing him. As opposed to Louis in the show, a Black Creole man at the beginning of the 20th century, this Louis is a white plantation owner at the end of the 18th century.

I personally welcome the change and highly dislike book!Louis, but nonetheless it was controversial in some parts of the fandom when it was first announced.

Other adaptations of The Vampire Chronicles include the 1994 Interview With The Vampire movie by Neil Jordan starring Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and Kirsten Dunst (among others), the Lestat musical from 2006 with music by Elton John, and the Queen of the Damned movie starring Aaliyah and Stuart Townsend from 2002. Universal Pictures also acquired the film rights to the entirety of The Vampire Chronicles in the 2010s, and teased production of some of the movies, but they were never finished/released.