Interview with the Vampire ended its second season, concluding the events of Anne Rice’s first novel. In the series finale, the conductor of the titular interview, Daniel Molloy, (Eric Bogosian) publishes the interviews as a book and goes on a press tour. During a stop on an Atlanta news show, the host mocks his book, and laments how this once respected journalist was now “a Bigfoot hunter, tracing the bloodline of Jesus.”
This was, of course, a jest at The Da Vinci Code, and the conspiracies that proliferated after the book’s success. However, it might mean more, as Jesus is actually a character in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. And in a potential future season, we could see the Vampire Lestat drink the blood of Christ. We don’t mean metaphorically in a church either. We mean the actual blood of Jesus, some two thousand years ago.
The Vampire Lestat Meets Jesus in Memnoch the Devil
The event in question occurs in Anne Rice’s fifth vampire novel, 1995’s Memnoch the Devil. This book came out at the peak of Lestat-mania, right after the release of the 1994 feature film Interview with the Vampire. In fact, the VHS rental of Interview had a video message from Rice promoting Memnoch the Devil. The novel was a huge bestseller in hardcover, but was a departure from the period vampire melodrama of earlier books. Instead, it focused on religious themes. Vampire Chronicles fans still remain divided on it.
After the world-shaking events of book three, The Queen of the Damned, and having his body highjacked in book four, The Tale of the Body Thief, Lestat is at his most powerful. A being who claims to be Satan approaches Lestat in New Orleans. Only, he hates that name, and much prefers the name Memnoch, the Devil. He wants the “Brat Prince” Lestat at his side, thinking he’d make a perfect lieutenant in his ideological battle against God, and takes him on a trip through history. Memnoch then displays all the religious atrocities done in God’s name.
Lestat Was at the Crucifixion (Or Was He?)
At one point, Lestat actually encounters Jesus at the crucifixion. Jesus offers Lestat his blood, which he consumes. Lestat emerges into the present day with the Veil of Veronica, proof of his religious experience. The Vampire Armand became so moved by this, he immolated in the sun in front of a crowd as “proof” of the miracle (Don’t worry, he gets better, and he even gets his own book). By the end of the novel, however, Lestat isn’t sure if what he experienced was real or not. He suspects it was. Lestat loses his marbles at this point and becomes catatonic for the better part of a decade. Several novels in subsequent years focused on other vampires in the series.
Could we ever get to this controversial moment in Rice’s story? Memnoch the Devil is book five in the series, and Interview with the Vampire showrunner Rolin Jones has recently said recently he’d love to get to potentially eight seasons. If each book constitutes two seasons of television, then seasons seven and eight could adapt Memnoch the Devil. Perhaps by that point, the world will be ready to see Sam Reid’s Lestat meet a fictional Jesus of Nazareth.
