Anne Rice made one thing clear in The Vampire Chronicles books: Louis and Lestat are a couple. But you wouldn’t know that watching the 1994 Interview With the Vampire movie starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. Interview With the Vampire series star Jacob Anderson says the exclusion of Louis and Lestat’s relationship is “really disappointing,” especially given how groundbreaking that storyline would have been to see in a 1990s film starring the two biggest stars of the decade.
“In the books, they’re like married,” Anderson says in the January 25 episode of the Stirring It up With Andi and Miquita Oliver podcast. “By the later novels, they’re fully married. I think [Rice] reframed it that they kind of weren’t in the first book. By the second book, she wrote as Lestat and she felt like she identified more with him, because Louis was like a stand-in for her grief. She lost a child, so she was writing this book in grief and Louis represented that grief. The second book, she kind of rejected him a little bit because she’d come through it.”
“She’s a beautiful writer. She didn’t have an editor, and sometimes you notice it,” he says, but that’s not a complaint from the Game of Thrones alum. “Actually some of those passages are my favorite. They’re really funny, or they’re hyper-descriptive.”
“She basically decided that Louis was basically repressed and was in denial about their relationship and about the nature of their relationship,” Anderson goes on. “So by the second book, they were lovers and they always had been.”
“They watered that down in the Tom Cruise one, didn’t they?!” Andi Oliver says. Anderson replies, “Yeah, it’s really disappointing. When you see that film, you’re like, that would’ve been such a massive deal as well in the ‘90s.”
“Especially then to do it properly,” adds Miquita Oliver (daughter of co-host Andi). “And [with] Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise,” Anderson replies.
“Imagine! Wow, that’s kind of hot,” Miquita says as they all laugh. “I am imagining it,” Anderson cheekily replies.
While there’s some sexual and romantic subtext between Cruise’s Lestat and Pitt’s Louis in the 1994 film (for which Rice wrote the screenplay), the exclusion of their romantic relationship is a disappointment to some. The AMC adaptation, however, made the toxic romance the series’ focal point (brought to life by Anderson and Sam Reid), and they’ll do it again with Louis and Armand (Assad Zaman) in Season 2, premiering this Spring.
Assad Zaman as Armand and Jacob Anderson as Louis in Interview with the Vampire Season 2 (AMC)
Anderson also shares a story from when they wrapped filming Season 2 with the Olivers, revealing how he said “goodbye” to Louis (for now).
“I can say this without spoiling anything, I think,” he says. “At the end of shooting this season, I got a handful of rocks from the Dubai set and I put them in a little pouch, like in a little baggy, and I started to spread them. I started to basically spread Louis’ ashes in significant places. It was in New Orleans. To make sense of this, I put them in Louis places to say goodbye to him for a bit, because that show and him have been so much a part of my brain for the last two years.”
Anderson then started spreading the rocks in more personal places, like a park he frequents with his family, “which is not a Louis thing, that’s a me thing,” he says. “But it felt way more significant than where I was putting them before. Like in the sort of Interview With the Vampire iconic places … connected places. And I thought that was really significant, even doing this symbolic thing, which is not what I do. I wouldn’t describe myself as a spiritual person. There’s this weird place where me and him have met and have become the same person, and it’s a good thing for me to [separate]. Louis is very similar to me at my messiest, that destructive thing.”
Elsewhere in the podcast, Anderson shares filming memories from the Game of Thrones set, opens up about his upbringing in Bristol, his life with his wife and daughter, and his music career as Raleigh Ritchie.
Interview With the Vampire, Season 2 Premieres Spring 2024, AMC
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
