Summary
Neil Jordan, the director of 1994’sInterview With The Vampire, looks back on Tom Cruise’s controversial casting 30 years after the movie was released. Playing the Lestat de Lioncourt, the vampiric sire of Brad Pitt’s Louis, Cruise’s casting was initially met with strong resistance from fans of Anne Rice’s 1974 book and even the author herself. Famously describing Jordan’s decision to cast Cruise as “so bizarre; it’s almost impossible to imagine how it’s going to work,”Rice would eventually backtrack on her earlier assertions once the movie was released and personally called the star to apologize for her comments.
Speaking withThe Guardian, Jordan reflects on his decision to have Cruise play Lestat. Suggesting the initial backlash must have been very difficult for the star,Jordan described Cruise as a great actorcapable of surprising audiences with his unexpected delivery. He also went as far as to call him the “last remaining film star.”Check out his comments below:
It must have been very difficult for him. The entire world said, ‘You are miscast.’ He’s a great actor. If he says he can do something, he will do it in a way that people will be shocked by. Tom has become the last remaining film star. It’s kind of strange.
Cruise’s Lestat Deserved A Second Outing
Audiences Almost Got A Very Different Interview With The Vampire Sequel
Where Rice would change her opinion and praise Jordan’sInterview With The Vampirefollowing its release, she would later disown its stand-alone sequel and implore her fans to “simply forget” that it existed.
WhileInterview With The Vampirelargely serves as the story of Lestat’s vampiric progeny, Louis de Pointe du Lac (Brad Pitt), the later books inRice’sVampire Chroniclesmostly focus on Lestatas their narrator and protagonist. Beginning with 1985’sThe Vampire Lestatand culminating in 2018’sBlood Communion: A Tale of Prince Lestat,Rice’s beloved Brat Prince was the undisputed protagonist of her later tales. Sadly, however, the only chance movie-going audiences have had to experience Lestat as the central figure was in 2002’s criticallymalignedQueen of the Damned.
Replacing Cruise with Stuart Townsend and drawing elements from Rice’s second and third books,Queen of the Damnedfell well shortof the critical and commercial acclaim of Jordan’s adaptation. Where Rice would change her opinion and praise Jordan’sInterview With The Vampirefollowing its release, she would later disown its stand-alone sequel and implore her fans to “simply forget” that it existed. What makes thesecondVampire Chroniclesmovieeven more disappointing is that audiences almost saw Cruise return to lead a very different sequel instead.
Earning $223.7 million against an original budget of $60 million, the financial success of Jordan’sInterview With The Vampirehad initially prompted him to begin development of a sequel based onThe Vampire Lestat.Sadly, however, that project would never eventuate, and viewers would be denied the opportunity to see him return to his roguish vampire noble. Had Jordan’s sequel come to fruition, the character’s legacy would likely have assumed a very different place in popular culture.
Interview with the Vampire
Cast
Based on Anne Rice’s 1976 novel, Interview with the Vampire tells the story of two vampires, Lestat and Louis, and their complicated relationship after Lestat turns Louis in 1791. Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt star as Lestat and Louis respectively, with a cast that includes Kirsten Dunst as Claudia, the two men’s young charge who Lestat also turns in an attempt to keep a disillusioned Louis from leaving. Christian Slayter rounds out the cast as Daniel Molloy, a reporter to who Louis tells his story in the mid-1990s.
