The second season of Interview with the Vampire is now available on Netflix, nearly a year after its debut on AMC and AMC+. Featuring opulent, chaotic, erotic, and intensely realistic portrayals of queer characters who are complex and morally ambiguous, Interview with the Vampire stands as one of the most daring adaptations of Anne Rice’s work in recent decades, since the 1994 film of the same name.
Following a captivating first season, fans have passionately encouraged Netflix to binge on the story of vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) and his adopted daughter Claudia (Delainey Hayles), who insists she is his sister. They journey across Europe after departing from their home in New Orleans, seeking other vampires and coping with the aftermath of World War II.
Jacob Anderson, Sam Reid, Delainey Hayles and Assad Zaman at the season 2 premiere of “Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire” held at The McKittrick Hotel on April 30, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Kristina Bumphrey/Variety via Getty Images)
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With new reactions from fresh viewers and context finally added to moments they couldn’t understand without the second season, there’s still one sobering question that needs answering: What took so long for us to get one of the most compelling, unflinching, and authentically human queer stories?
In an entertainment industry where queer representation is frequently diluted or sanitized for safety and commercial reasons, Interview with the Vampire challenges the norm, highlighting how we’ve accepted less for a long time.
The AMC–Netflix Loop: A Backdoor to Cultural Relevance
AMC spends a significant amount on building Interview with the Vampire, giving us a prestige drama. Netflix acquires licensing a year after the season airs. Viewers watch it, become fans, tell others by word of mouth, and then those fans inevitably sign up for AMC+ when the next season airs, not wanting to wait another year after the latest season airs to see what happens to their favorite characters. It’s a straightforward business model and it works.
AMC has already invested its time in telling an authentic and unsensitized story in an adaptation that changes but keeps the core components of Anne Rice’s books.
Unapologetically LGBT+
A show whose first two seasons center on the viewpoint of a Black queer man turned vampire in the 1910s to the 1940s, allows viewers to see a depiction of identity in tandem with horror in a way that usually isn’t depicted onscreen. Rather than making the story a 1 1 translation of Rice’s books, Interview with the Vampire interrogates the intersection of race, sexuality, history, and survival with vampirism added into the mix. Daniel Molloy, the character conducting the actual interview echos that depiction.
“Take a Black man in America, make him a vampire, f** with that vampire, and see what comes of it.”
While blunt, what Daniel says in that scene is revealing because we see Louis, a character who drinks blood for a living and has openly admitted to draining several people throughout his life to survive, yet it still allows us to avoid defining him simply as good, evil, or tragic. Like many characters on the show, he exists in multiple shades. He’s all those things, and that’s what makes the show so captivating. A Black immortal character, rejected and judged by his family, at war with his sexuality until he fell in love with someone who didn’t make him feel terrible about who he was, vindictive, cunning, noble, greedy, and, in the end, still human in his depiction despite his transformation.
That level of complexity and the honest portrayal of Louis, the main character in the first season, are precisely what distinguish this story in a landscape where queer characters are often shown as best friends, martyrs, or background symbols rather than as individuals with desires, needs, morals, and flaws.
The Future of Queer Prestige Lies in Access
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 06: (L-R) Actors Assad Zaman, Delainey Hayles, Jacob Anderson, Sam Reid and Eric Bogosian attend the AMC Network’s presentation of “Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire” during the 2024 TCA Winter Press Tour at The Langham Huntington, Pasadena on February 06, 2024 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)
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The AMC/Netflix partnership could serve as a subtle yet transformative workaround: a specialized studio funds the project, a global platform promotes it, and both benefit. This strategy has been successful before. Nonetheless, it also exposes a seldom-discussed industry truth: authentic “representation” depends heavily on the supporting infrastructure. Luckily, AMC enables Interview with the Vampire to sidestep this issue due to the company’s commitment to accurately adapting Anne Rice’s works, along with the show’s dedicated fans who appreciate its niche appeal and prestige.
Both seasons enjoyed moderate viewership and ratings, with a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, potentially gaining wider popularity through Netflix’s global reach. The key question is whether the industry will learn from this experience and invest in similar shows from the outset with full support. If shows like these only succeed under perfect conditions or post-release, they risk not lasting long.