Interview with Anne Rice

This interview we had with Anne Rice in 2014 originally ran in Fortean Times, and was held on occasion of the publication of Prince Lestat, and the 20th anniversary of the movie of Interview with the Vampire.

In 2003 Blood Canticle was published as the final volume of the Vampire Chronicles. What made you return to the vampires?
After an absence of ten years, I found I had a fresh take on the characters and their ongoing story, new ideas, etc. I started to reread the Chronicles and I was soon bubbling over with new things to write. In retrospect I think the long absence from the characters was an excellent idea. I could not have written a book like Prince Lestat in 2003.

You’re planning for Prince Lestat to be the first in a new vampire series – how will it differ from the Chronicles?
I don’t focus much on how the new books will be different except to say that my interest now is on the whole tribe of the Undead in the modern age, on how Lestat and others are meeting challenges in the “now.” I don’t see myself as mining the series for more back story memoir books right now.

Do you feel that you resolved the questions that arose in the Vampire Chronicles about man’s relationship with the supernatural?
That question will never have any real resolution. Humanity will always struggle with its relationship to evidence of the supernatural. It is the nature of the human condition to Iive with cosmic uncertainty.

I’ve read your Christ the Lord books, and feel that they succeeded in giving a human dimension to Jesus, while also portraying the struggles of someone destined for great things. What are your feelings now regarding belief versus religion?
I took on a special challenge with the Christ the Lord novels: to make the Jesus of Scripture and Tradition real to a reading audience, without watering down anything. I wanted to present Jesus as God and Man, Divine and human, living in a world where an angel had come to his mother to announce his conception, a world in which shepherds did see angels singing at the hour of his birth. —- The books were embraced widely by Catholics, Protestants and people of all denominations and I was very pleased. I did NOT ever set out to write a book about a modern, redacted, revised Jesus. It was always an effort devoted to Jesus Christ of the Christian faith.

We always ask our Fortean Times interviewees this question: have you ever seen a ghost or had what you would regard as a paranormal experience?
Do you believe that such things happen? No, I’ve never seen a ghost or had a supernatural experience. But research has led me to believe that we have an immense body of testimony as to the “reality” of ghosts. We have accounts from all eras, and from all parts of the world as to credible individuals who claim to have seen ghosts. I do not know whether ghosts exist or not. I suspect they do.

Do you believe vampirism exists in the broader sense, not opera capes and fangs, but, for example, in the form of people who drain others of energy? Is this part of what readers relate to in the concept of the vampire?
I’m in love with the vampire of fiction and film. I believe the vampire is a metaphor for the outsider in us, the predatory, the being who realizes he must destroy in order to prosper. I see that as much more interesting than any comparison of the vampire with those who drain others. But I can understand that some might want to speak of individuals in our society as energy vampires, yes.

Are there any other areas of the metaphysical that you are interested in, or would still like to explore through your fiction? For example, it struck me that while you lived in New Orleans for much of your life and many of your books are steeped in “Southern Gothic”, voodoo beliefs have only appeared marginally.
My research never turned up a whole lot that was interesting about Voodoo in Louisiana. Now Voodoo in Haiti is an entirely different topic, but that has never been my focus. I am more interested in werewolves, vampires, witches, and the glorious “monsters” of fiction the world over.

What was your relationship with the horror genre before the Vampire Chronicles? Were any books or films particularly influential? And what are you enjoying in the genre today?
I have always loved ghost stories, and had read many by the great English ghost story writers, Algenon Blackwood, M.J. James and others. And I loved atmospheric black and white horror films made before I was born. Dracula’s Daughter, a moody and some times beautiful vampire film with Gloria Holden from the 1930’s enchanted me when I was a young child. When I wrote my first vampire novel, the subject was not mainstream and I do not think we had had any great films involving it in a very long time.

What inspired you to create your particular band of vampire? Aside Dracula’s Daughter being of influence, but how about Dark Shadows for instance, where the vampire was also the protagonist and the tragic/sympathetic character?
Dracula’s Daughter fixed the idea in my mind of the vampire as a tragic, doomed aristocrat, a being of exalted sensibility whose immortality had been procured at a terrible price. That was the primary influence on my interest in the vampire. When I set out to explore the whole idea in Interview with the Vampire, I went by instinct and didn’t hesitate to make up my own cosmology. You could say Hollywood was the chief influence, in that Hollywood had brought to America the influence of Bram Stoker and Sheridan Le Fanu.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Neil Jordan’s adaptation of Interview with the Vampire. How do you feel about the film, looking back, and are there more screen versions of your books on the horizon?
I felt at the time I saw the film that it was destined to become a classic. I was awed and grateful. Neil Jordan is a genius, a unique director of extraordinary talent and singularity of vision; and David Geffen who produced the film lavished upon it immense dedication and love. It was a film that did not hesitate to go to extremes, to be transgressive, and it was amazingly faithful to the books. Amazingly so. It was faithful to the script I’d written, as well, though Neil made many changes of his own. Neil’s recent series The Borgias is perhaps the finest thing I have ever seen on television. He made the film, Interview with the Vampire into art. Clearly the film is embraced and loved and after twenty years is as fresh and beautiful as when it was made. With talk of new film adaptations, article after article around the world references Neil’s great film with clips, pix etc from it. And I’m not surprised. As I said I’m grateful. I do think the film is on its way to classic status. New people discover it and embrace it all the time.

Since we last saw Lestat, a vampire media empire has risen around Twilight, True Blood etc. Does that change your approach, or Lestat’s fictional landscape?
No. I have found the Twilight and True Blood worlds interesting but they have nothing really to do with my approach. I honor the imagination of Stephenie Meyer and Charlaine Harris but they approach the vampire in a different way from the way I approach it. They tend to domesticate the blood drinker, explore him as the guy next door, the guy you meet in high school in biology class, the guy you run into at the neighborhood tavern. My focus has always been on the vampire as hero, as great tragic figure, transcending time and life, a larger than life being who pays a ghastly price for his immortality and powers.

And how do you feel about how your vampires have gone on to influence others? For instance, I’d argue that Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula is more Anne Rice than Bram Stoker.
I must leave this judgment or assessment to others. It’s not appropriate for me to try to do this. If I have influenced the genre, if I significantly popularized it, or inspired others, I’m grateful for that, very grateful. In the beginning with my first vampire novel, I was certainly very much alone. Many scoffed at the very idea of a serious novel about vampires. I suppose I feel vindicated in that vampires have now gone mainstream, and many writers are mining the rich concept of the vampire for new books, TV series, and films. But again, my role in all this is something for critics and critical historians to figure out. I can’t figure it out. I’m too close to it all.

Why do you think horror and the supernatural are still so compelling to us culturally? And what is the place of vampires in our imagination and cultural identity?
There are three answers. First off, horror and the supernatural have always been compelling to audiences, in one form or another, because we as a species have so many cosmic questions. Second, horror and the supernatural in our literature and films today are associated with good and dramatic storytelling, and people crave this very much and always have. Third, the vampire is, as I mentioned before, a powerful metaphor for the outsider in all of us, the predator in all of us, the monster in all of us, and he hold a powerful glamor for us because we identify with him, and glory in his powers. He (or she) is the most beautiful and seductive of all paranormal heroes or heroines; he’s the monster to whom you can talk, with whom you can reason, and with whom you can fall in love.

And finally, what do you hope to be remembered for as an author?
I’d love to be remembered for the scope of my work, for my many prose experiments, and my relentless drive to tackle supernatural topics, and erotic topics, my fearlessness in taking on the controversial and the transgressive. To put it much more simply, I’d love to be remembered for writing books that people love.

Anne Rice, 4 October 1941 – 11 December 2021.