Near the end of the premiere of Interview With the Vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac declared, “The vampire is bored.” But were you? Before you weigh in on AMC’s series adaptation of Anne Rice’s 1976 novel, let’s recap the first episode, along the way pondering whether, as its title implied that it would, it left us “In Throes of Increasing Wonder.”
In the present, Louis (Jacob Anderson) invited investigative journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) into his luxe coffin penthouse to redo the Q&A that had gone so awry nearly 50 years earlier. As the blood-sucker began retelling his story, he turned back the calendar to 1910 New Orleans, taking us with him as he went. In that era, we learned that, much to his family’s embarrassment, Louis made their green in the red-light district of Storyville. Particularly disapproving was kid brother Paul (Steven Norfleet), who was told by the birds in his head not to leave any Bible un-thumped. So yeah. Louis was affluent but unhappy.
In fact, so far as we could see, the only real comfort that the closeted future vamp could take was in the company of a prostitute named Lily, who wasn’t fazed that he was all talk, no action. That safe harbor was, of course, soon made extremely dangerous by Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), the filthy-rich Frenchman that Louis had immediately and unintentionally bewitched.
Alternately outright antagonistic and telepathically appealing to Louis, the vampire set about seducing him. Or hunting him. They were pretty much the same to Lestat, anyway, as we all know. Finally, he made his move by initiating a threesome with Lily, then putting her to sleep so that he could “neck” with his crush.
In the aftermath, Louis, who back then didn’t identify as gay, distanced himself from his one-night stand. He even managed to enjoy himself at his sister’s wedding, kicking up his heels with Paul in one of his saner moments. But Louis hadn’t turned a corner so much as he’d gone in a circle.
Watching the sunrise from the roof of their family’s home following the nuptials, Paul confided in his brother that Lestat had come out and told him that “he’s here to take souls” — and then he’d plunged to his death. “That was the last sunrise I ever saw,” Louis told Daniel. For the night of Paul’s funeral, Louis skipped the wake to visit Lily, only to be told that she’d died of Lestat’s bite “the fever.”
Wracked with guilt, Louis began to make a tearful confession at St. Augustine, only for Lestat to interrupt, murdering not one but two priests and offering an appealing alternative to feeling like crap about himself. “I can swap this life of shame,” the vampire said. “Swap it out for a dark gift and a power you can’t begin to imagine. You just have to ask me for it.” Utterly disarmed by Lestat’s argument, Louis did indeed ask for it and allowed himself to be transformed.
And you? Were you transformed into someone whose blood runs cold at the thought of missing the second episode? Grade the premiere below, then hit the comments with your reviews.