This is a spoiler-filled recap of season 1 episode 1 of the AMC TV series Interview with the Vampire. My review of episodes 1 and 2 (with minimal spoilers) is HERE.

Interview with the Vampire is based on Anne Rice’s 1976 novel of the same name and follows the misadventures and twisted affections of two vampires, Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt. Louis narrates the tale via the framing device of the titular interview, given to ageing investigative journalist Daniel Molloy. The series alternates between their discussion in the present day and depictions of the past as Louis describes it.

Present day Louis lives in a customized penthouse in Dubai with a staff of devoted servants and a fabulous art collection. Now that they are both older and wiser, he invites Daniel to visit and have a second go at the disappointing interview they did together almost 50 years ago.

Louis begins the new version of his story in 1910, when he was the human owner of several brothels in New Orleans, which he maintained in order to support his elderly mother, engaged sister and mentally ill, religion-obsessed brother in the style they’d enjoyed while his father was alive. He was a Black Creole business owner in the Jim Crow south, which meant his business options were strictly limited. He’d kept from his family how close they’d already been to financial ruin when his father died a few years earlier.

Louis had to alter the way the family made its money because their sugar plantations (changed from indigo plantations in the book) no longer supported them due to restrictions imposed by the racist Jim Crow laws. Rather than accept the truth, his family believed that he preferred the low life and fast money of the red-light district and had willingly chosen this life over their genteel lifestyle.

As the story begins, the vampire Lestat arrives in town, fresh off the boat from France, and discovers New Orleans is a town that very much suits his tastes.

And that Louis is a man who very much suits his tastes.

Continue reading “Interview with the Vampire Season 1 Episode 1: In Throes of Increasing Wonder… Recap” →