On Saturday Night Live, the late Weekend Update anchor and occasional short-form film critic Norm MacDonald delivered what would become the definitive review of 1994’s Interview with the Vampire: “Not gay enough!” At the time, he was being facetious, a ripe homoerotic energy radiating from every frame of the undead Louis de Pointe du Lac’s recounting of his dalliance with fellow bloodsucker Lestat de Lioncourt. Nevertheless, a new take on Anne Rice’s 1976 novel (rising from the grave in TV series form on AMC) presents itself in part as a corrective, directly servicing the interests of those displeased that the slim distance between the faces of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt never vanished with a kiss.
The remixed sequel created by Rolin Jones – a Pulitzer prize finalist playwright spending more time these days on lower-profile small-screen work such as Low Winter Sun, Perry Mason and, most germane to the matter at hand, The Exorcist – makes text of a subtext already so glaring that it eclipsed all other interpretations. Having relocated his upscale bachelor crypt from San Francisco to Dubai, Louis (Game of Thrones alumnus Jacob Anderson) summons journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) for another tell-all chat, now with an added revisionist wrinkle. As he once again relates the story of his time in turn-of-the-century New Orleans with the debonair Lestat (Sam Reid), he diverges from the record he previously laid out, explaining that the world of 2022 allows him to be candid about certain things that were best left unsaid 30-ish years earlier. Namely, that this pair of adult male companions given to ostentatious Gothic attire and arch double entendres were in actuality lovers. Molloy, ever the model of writerly professionalism, refrains from responding with “no doy”.
