There are shows you watch, and then there are shows you can’t help but surrender yourself to. AMC’s Interview with the Vampire is the latter: a Gothic fever dream of blood, passion, and doomed romance that sinks its teeth in and never lets go. Amid the polished noise of awards’ season prestige dramas and riotous comedies, this series dares to be decadent. It’s dark, a little twisted, and dripping with an intimate kind of macabre. But beneath its fangs lies something Emmy-worthy: a story told with brutally beautiful (and sometimes hilariously campy) writing, devastatingly vampiric and too-human performances, and so much care that every frame feels like a love letter to grief, desire, and the monsters we can be.
A Bold Reimagining of Anne Rice’s Legacy
AMC’s Interview with the Vampire is an adaptation of Anne Rice’s iconic 1976 novel. Though the story was previously brought to the screen in the equally iconic 1994 film starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Kirsten Dunst, the television series not only delivers everything longtime fans could hope for, but it elevates the material to bold, necessary new heights. In 2020, AMC Networks acquired the rights to eighteen of Rice’s works, including the entirety of The Vampire Chronicles (of which Interview is the first installment), and entrusted playwright and television writer Rolin Jones with the task of bringing this vampiric mythology to life. What he and his team have crafted across two seasons is nothing short of a Dark Gift. The intentional changes made from page to screen aren’t just justified; they’re essential. They add a richness, a beauty, and a terror that even the source material couldn’t fully explore. It’s still Rice’s world, but it breathes, bleeds, and burns in thrilling new ways.
That bold reimagining doesn’t just pay off but reaches its peak in Season 2. Set in 1940s Paris, the show moves beyond the humid shadows of New Orleans into a colder, more theatrical landscape, both literally and emotionally. Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson), tormented by guilt, searches for meaning in the ruins of post-war Europe, while Claudia, now played with biting intelligence and aching vulnerability by Delainey Hayles, fights for the autonomy she was denied in her undead childhood. Their dynamic, built on quiet resentment and a desperate need to reconnect, grows more complicated with their arrival in Paris and their introduction to the Théâtre des Vampires: a glittering cabaret of predators posing as artists, led by the enigmatic and calculating Armand (Assad Zaman). The writing in Season 2 is sharper than all their fangs combined. It’s cutting, it’s poetic, and it’s laced with constant bitterness and yearning. Sam Reid haunts this season as the volatile and magnetic Lestat de Lioncourt, seen mostly in splintered hallucinations and visions. He’s a ghost who won’t stay dead, because Louis can’t, or won’t, imagine a world without him.
Visually, the season is breathtaking, thanks to the work of production designers Mara LePere-Schloop and Kimberley Zaharko, and the incomparable costume designs of Carol Cutshall. The direction feels operatic, lofted by Daniel Hart’s score which seeps into every shot like blood into silk. This is a season about memory, manipulation, and the hunger for absolution — and it is, without a doubt, one of the most daring and artistically accomplished works on television today.
A Demand for Recognition
Interview with the Vampire has submitted in twenty-four categories for consideration at this year’s Emmys. Though Season 1 received the same level of critical acclaim as Season 2, it was entirely shut out in 2023. The show’s 2024 return, however, has only solidified its spot as a deserved contender in this awards’ season. Season 2 has earned a 98% Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, two Critics Choice Award nominations (Best Drama Series and Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for Sam Reid), and dominated the 2024 “Best Of” lists across major outlets. And while the show deserves recognition across the board, no nomination would be more fitting, or more overdue, than for Jacob Anderson.
As Louis de Pointe du Lac, Anderson delivers a performance that is restrained and explosive, aching and consoled, devastating and exquisite. Louis’ story spans three time periods, two continents, and immortal lifetimes, and Anderson carries it all with a delicate, simmering intensity that makes the monstrous feel tender and the tender terrifying. He paints Louis’ grief with masterful refinement, each emotion raw, haunting, and impossible to ignore. Every look, every word, every flicker of collapse or control is calibrated with precision.
Through Anderson’s Louis, the show invites us to confront what makes it truly horrific, and it’s not because of the blood. It’s horrific for the truths it exposes. This series understands that real terror isn’t always what lurks in the dark; sometimes, it’s what lingers in the heart. It’s the horror of needing to be loved, of watching time hollow you out, of trying to survive forever with a grief that doesn’t heal. Interview with the Vampire gives us its monsters in shades of agony, contrition, and desire. They’re not sanitized or forgiven, but they are fully seen. Their beauty doesn’t soften the blow, but centers it in the soul of those watching. Emmy conversations shouldn’t just include this series, but they should revolve around it. After all, it isn’t just horror — it is art wrapped in love and ruin.