Canadian creators tease season two of ‘Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire’

The Toronto-born producer of “Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire” saysfans of the TV series who were sent reeling by a provocative finale will likely have to wait about a year for answers. 

Adam O’Byrne says cameras are expected to roll for season two from April to August next year, and that timeline makes it unlikely the show will return in October – the month that season one appeared on AMC and its streamer AMC+.

“My guess is we won’t make that window,” O’Byrne says from Los Angeles, expecting a later 2023 or early 2024 premiere. “That is an AMC call.”

Most of the shoot will be in Prague, which will stand for Paris, and there are “very limited” plans to also film in Paris and New Orleans: “Two or three actors tops, and maybe a week in both places,” he says.

Season one ended halfway through Rice’s 1976 book about a white New Orleans plantation owner who becomes a vampire in 1791. 

The AMC version reimagines Louis as a gay Black man who falls headlong into a toxic love affair with a powerful white French vampire in 1910. It also adds a modern-day storyline set in 2022 Dubai.

The next eight episodes pick up where things left off at the beginning of 1940, with Louis and his vampire daughter Claudia heading to Europe to learn about their origins, says Ottawa-born screenwriter Hannah Moscovitch. 

“The first half of the book is all setup. And then the second half is all payoff,” promises Moscovitch, who wrote one episode in the first season and is tapped for one-and-a-half in season two.

Here’s what we know about what’s next for “Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire.” The following contains spoilers for season one:

MORE VAMPIRES: Rice’s supernatural universe is set to expand as Louis and Claudia, played by Jacob Anderson and Bailey Bass, meet several immortals. 

O’Byrne says that includes actor Assad Zaman’s vampire Armand, who made a dramatic appearance in Dubai in the season one finale, and others at the Théâtre des Vampires in Paris.  

“We’re going to get introduced to the vampire Santiago, who is a bit of a malefactor,” says O’Byrne.

The show will also add Claudia’s companion Madeleine, says O’Byrne. There’ll be some tweaks but O’Byrne doesn’t expect her age, gender or race to differ from the book: “As written, Madeleine is Madeleine.”

In the book, Madeleine is a white maternal figure to a five-year-old white Claudia, who has been reimagined as a Black 14-year-old for the show. 

“Her relationship with Claudia is going to be appropriately complicated in the way that it is a real interesting relationship in the book,” says O’Byrne. 

“We’ve got some great stuff that I think will heighten the Madeleine character and make her particularly compelling given the time period that we’re looking at.”

A LOOK BACK: The finale raised questions about everything Louis has told his mortal interviewer Daniel Molloy.

“All of it will be revisited,” says Moscovitch, adding that includes the horrific assault of episode five and Louis’ role in Lestat’s attempted murder in episode seven.

“But I want to be careful to say that Louis will never be not believable as a victim,” she says.

The events presented in season one were largely Louis’s perspective, save for elements from Claudia’s diaries.

“There might be things that cause Louis to re-evaluate his own memories. And then there might also be some opportunities for some perspectives of other characters,” says O’Byrne.

O’Byrne says that could eventually include Lestat, who “hasn’t had his moment to say what went down.”

“As the series goes on, certainly a little bit in season two and then if we get beyond that, we’ll start to get more perspectives on events.”

THE LOVE OF LOUIS’ LIFE: “We’re going to get a lot more Armand, obviously,” says O’Byrne.

“And his relationship with Louis will certainly be a focus (and) of how he came to be – as Louis describes him in the finale – the love of his life.”

Much in the way the show’s version of Lestat was also informed by Rice’s second book, “The Vampire Lestat,” Moscovitch says the show’s Armand is shaped by incarnations seen in later novels, including book six’s “The Vampire Armand.”

O’Byrne promises that Louis’ first love, Lestat, will also figure prominently next season, even though “he has been knocked down a peg.”

“There will be plenty of (actor) Sam Reid to make everyone happy.”

DUPLICITY IN DUBAI: The interview in 2022 Dubai initially seemed little more than a framing device for dramatic flashbacks to 1900s New Orleans but that all flipped in a finale twist that cast doubt on nearly everything shared about the past and present.

The real reason journalist Molloy was brought to Dubai will become clearer, promises O’Byrne.

“Why Armand is doing what he’s doing and the dynamics between the two of them – meaning Louis and Armand and then also frankly, Armand and Molloy – are things that will be heavily explored in season two,” he says.

Louis’ interview with Molloy will end with the next eight episodes, he adds, even though any future seasons that follow would still be referred to as an “Interview With the Vampire.” 

“In the season three that (showrunner) Rolin (Jones) has in his head, I think there will be some kind of Lestat perspective, let’s put it that way. Whether that’s sitting down to have an interview or some other device to show the world through his eyes.”

LOUIS’ FUTURE: If the TV series continues beyond the first book and adheres to The Vampire Chronicles storyline, Louis would be relegated to the sidelines as Lestat takes centre stage.

O’Byrne says creators are aware of fan fears that the currentBlack-led story is positioned to serve a white hero’s arc. 

Assuming more seasons come, he says Louis will remain “a force in the show, in some way or another going forward.”

“The way we have envisioned the show from a racially diverse perspective is something that will continue to be a priority for us,” says O’Byrne.

“Part of that would be trying to keep Louis involved beyond the way he just dips in-and-out of the canon (after) the first book.”

Issues around race were prominent in season one and will continue in season two as Louis and Claudia explore Europe, says O’Byrne, teasing that it will touch on “France’s colonial past.”
 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 21, 2022.

Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press