No one was more skeptical than author Anne Rice when blockbuster boy Tom Cruise was chosen to adapt her groundbreaking horror novel Interview with a Vampire in the early 1990s. Of all people, the pretty boy from Loose Business and Top Gun should her favorite bloodsucker Lestat de Lioncourt
play – the charming anti-hero character who becomes the Brat Prince main character from the second book of her Chronicles of the Vampires. A nightmare for the goddess of goth literature.
Warner Bros. enforced its will with the casting of Cruise, who in the end not only wrapped his fans around his finger with his incredible performance, but above all also the critical author of the original. That was exactly 30 years ago and part of the making of perhaps the best vampire film of all time was released on November 11, 1994. He took the perspective of the all-too-human monsters, who were also so attractive that they paved the way for sexy vampires from Buffy, Twilight and Co.
30 years of Interview with a Vampire with Tom Cruise: A blood symphony in a minor key with frills
Filmmaker Neil Jordan adapted the melancholic horror fairy tale with a script by Anne Rice herself and a cast that was impressive: Brad Pitt took on the role of the thoughtful, guilt-ridden vampire Louis, who was initially reluctant to murder and drink blood can make friends. Tom Cruise converts him into immortality as Lestat and becomes his immortal companion. Like the first novel, the film works with a lot homoerotic subtext – only the later books become more explicit in their queerness. Still, rather unfamiliar territory for Mr. Cruise, who was rumored to be reluctant to sleep in a coffin with Pitt.
Christian Slater interviews Louis in the present as a young reporter and listens to his long life story. How the plantation operator was seduced into vampirism by Lestat after the death of his family in the 18th century, how the first years were full of “marital problems” and philosophical differences. And finally, how the two monster men create a vampire daughter with Claudia (Kirsten Dunst). The eternal toddler with an unbridled thirst for blood and a lust for killing that rivals that of her blonde creator.
In the second half of the film, the ancient vampire Armand from the Vampire Theater in Paris, played by Antonio Banderas, confirms that Lestat is an arrogant monster and a short-tempered bloodsucker bitch. But he balances out all the toxicity with a tremendous charm, so that you can’t really blame Lestat for any of this, if it’s appropriate in the end Sympathy for the Devil plays to the credits. No wonder that someone like Tom Cruise, who has a thriving acting career despite all the horror news about him and his scary sci-fi cult, shone in the role.
Devilishly charming: Tom Cruise seduces everyone as an undead bon vivant
According to the Los Angeles Times, Anne Rice had actually imagined someone like Daniel Day-Lewis, Jeremy Irons or Peter Weller in the Lestat role and was heartbroken about the Cruise casting before seeing the adaptation. Afterwards, she couldn’t stop singing her praises for the actor, as she made clear in an interview with Larry King, among others. She even went so far as to dedicate an entire newspaper page just to praise Cruise in a big way for his acting.
Cruise really deserved it because he was supposed to be filming Interview with a Vampire anything but a bloody cakewalk have been. Cruise, Pitt and Banderas had to hang upside down from the ceiling before each shoot to make their veins more visible and also suffered from constantly working at night. So much so that Cruise asked his agent to release him from the project’s contractual obligation. Luckily without success.
However, it remains questionable whether this is also the reason why Cruise never dared to take on a similar role again. From the mid-90s he was almost only seen as an action hero like in Mission: Impossible or at least a typically cool playboy like in Vanilla Sky or Magnolia. We have to appreciate this one time all the more because it is refreshing camp Performance as Brad Pitt’s vampire partner.
Where can you watch Interview with a Vampire?
The Interview with a Vampire film adaptation can be streamed as a rental or purchase title on Amazon, Apple TV, Sky and Co. It is also available on MagentaTV, which is also the home of the current series adaptation Interview with the Vampire. In two seasons, the story of the first book has already been covered, which also roughly makes up the film – only with an interview in the present and some adaptive changes.
One of the best things about the series version, however, is the Australian actor Sam Reid, who gets much more out of the Lestat role than Tom Cruise did back then. A third season, which adapts the follow-up novel The Prince of Darkness, is already in the works.