“We start shooting again in the summer,” Eric Bogosian, who plays Daniel Molloy in Interview with the Vampire, volunteers as our afternoon conversationOpens in a new tab shifts to the series, which will soon begin work on its third season. “And then there’s the Talamasca show that’s going to come on before that. I don’t know when they’re releasing it. What’s weird about Interview with the Vampire or this whole Anne Rice universe is that you’ve got different auteurs working, creating their own ideas about what should be happening with this thing, and then they have one producer over the whole thing, Mark Johnson. But Rolin Jones, I mean, that has been some crazy shit working with Rolin. I, as a writer, as an off-Broadway kind of guy, which is where he started at The Atlantic with his plays, how he’s doing this, I don’t know. I mean, it’s a level of intensity. It is hard for me to even… Rolin is ready to go completely all kinds of places, and I don’t even know what’s happening to Daniel because I barely got a hint of it so far.” He grins with a hint of slyness, knowing we all want to know what that “barely there hint” entails and concludes, “I guess I’ll find out.”
Bogosian then points out that he has a whole stack of The Vampire Chronicles books sitting prominently, in center stage on the desk in his office, right next to us. I’d clocked them immediately when we sat down, and they seem to have a gravitational pull all their own. “I’ve read every one of the books.” Bogosian shares of diving into the literary world of Interview with the Vampire, “It’s hard for me to keep it all in my head because I’m aware of the depth and breadth of Anne Rice’s, just the vampire world, forget the other worlds I’ve tried, but it’s just too much for me to go everywhere. She’s so interesting because her sexual dynamics and her imagination dynamics are pretty deep. She is also writing about something that has been a big part of my sort of daily meditation for years now, which is death.”
Anne Rice’s universe has been a ripe playground full of many themes, and Bogosian feels the Interview with the Vampire series has done a wonderful job of keeping Rice’s vision and adapting it where necessary for our TV screens. He expounds. “She took this vampire thing and she made it, particularly in the beginning, it’s basically a meditation on death, or I shouldn’t say it’s basically a meditation on death, but there’s a lot of, it is a meditation on death, partially, as you know from her story, because her child died just before she started writing these books in the mid-seventies. And I think it’s very satisfying to be in that realm. I also think that Rolin has been, and Hannah [Moscovitch] have been, really respecting the Anne Rice imagination. It can’t all come into the show because, sometimes, she’s one of these great pop writers like Stephen King. She’s not always consistent in every single thing she thinks of.”
Bogosian rattles off a few critical examples from Interview with the Vampire that I know fandom has been talking about. “Do vampires get erections or don’t they? Well, it depends on which things you’ve read. Can they get drunk? Do they get drunk if they suck blood of somebody who has drunk a lot… I don’t know. So we have to live in our world, and we have to be consistent in our world.” And although your mileage may vary, we’re not too sad to see the way some of these questions have been answered in Interview with the Vampire. You know which one.
Probably, many Interview with the Vampire fans already know this, but it was Bogosian’s dream to play a vampire, and he was musing about it right when he got cast. He reminisces, “I was headed out to Chicago to visit my wife, who was directing a play in Chicago, which as it turned out, was by one of the writers of the show. But, I didn’t know that at the time. And on the plane, I was just sitting and thinking, ‘Shit, you’ve done a lot of stuff. What’s left?’ I said, ‘Well, the one thing I’ve always wanted is to be a vampire.’ And the next day, I got the call, which is so crazy. I mean, Frank Langella doing Dracula on Broadway was one of my favorite, favorite experiences. And later to become friendly with Frank, who’s truly from another universe, that was a really special experience.”
And ultimately, it’s not just vampires making the series exciting, but the fact that it’s really doing something as it brings all its different components to the table. Bogosian reveals what he loves to see Interview with the Vampire exploring, “There’s the power, there’s the sexual aspects, there’s immortality. All these things make it very, very, at least from me, the sensuousness of it, make it exciting. And Rolin has been very courageous, if you go to LA and you pitch and you say, ‘It’s going to be People of Color, it’s going to be gay.’ You could get gunned down, so you’ve got to give AMC credit. But they’re like, ‘We’re lucky to have you, go for it.’ And that all becomes very exciting to be part of that, especially when it works. And I think it works. I know that aspects of the show are violent, that maybe some people don’t like to watch that, but that’s just taste, I think.”
I completely agree, and bring up another aspect of representation that I’ve been thinking a lot about. And that’s the idea of seeing a romantic queer relationship between Armand and Present Day Daniel Molloy. We all love younger Daniel, of course, but there would be something that feels seminal if Eric Bogosian’s version of Daniel and Armand got together on-screen in Interview with the Vampire. Elder queer representation isn’t something that we see too much on our TV screens, because, of course, societal interjection. But it’s also not something we don’t see too much of in our lives because sadly the queer community lost so many queer men from a certain generation. A generation that Eric Bogosian is a part of.
I present the thought to him, and he’s interested in the concept of it, and to me, it feels like agrees with the sentiment, although he hadn’t thought about it before. But notes that, “Rolin is not asking me for my input. It’s such a complicated 3D-chess game that I think, I mean, if I’m really feeling strongly about something, I’ll throw it into the ring, but he’s in his own world. It’s like me talking to, I don’t know, the Great Oz or something.”
Still, Bogosian processes the thought and adds that given that his and Daniel Molloy’s lives have this weird resonance, it’s absolutely something to consider. He dives into how the series mirrors his own life, in a fashion, and muses on his own experiences with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. “But you’re absolutely right. I was transfixed by episode five, what Luke [Brandon Field] did as the young Daniel, and what was going on in that. And strangely, it paralleled my own life, which is also weird. I mean, Daniel is not an old guy in the books, and yet here we have this guy who’s kind of grumpy and old, and he’s been celebrated, but now nothing is really going on for him other than a masterclass. And that was sort of where I was at as we begin to work on the show. But if you go all the way back to the mid-seventies, I’m there too. That’s what’s weird about it, is that there wasn’t a door I didn’t walk through. There was nothing that scared me. I was fascinated by whatever was going on. My gay experiences were very limited, but it wasn’t like I wouldn’t do something.”
He pauses, and adds, in a deep consideration which reveals how, indeed, present he was in certain communities at a certain time, “Although there was one time I didn’t do something, which was, I didn’t go to the baths. We were on the verge of the AIDS thing, and it was beginning to percolate. We knew people who were very sick. But we didn’t know what it was yet. And it just seemed to me like the baths were, I mean, not the place to go. Not that I would go to the baths and lie down and have everybody fuck me up the ass. That wasn’t what I was thinking; I just wanted to see what was happening in there. And I didn’t do it. I chickened out at the last minute, but a lot of other places I went to.”
Returning to Interview with the Vampire, Bogosian continues, “So, Luke, studied me to play this part, which was crazy, without me knowing it. And those scenes start to bring up all these questions. And there’s also this thing when they go fishing in my mind, and I propose to my wife in Paris, and I get turned down. What about those? There are so many scenes. Then there’s the present-day relationship with Armand. There’s also this amazing moment, it kind of goes by pretty quickly, of Armand’s backstory, which is so deep. And so if you’ve read the books, there’s a lot to think about with what that represents, and then what you just brought up, which frankly I haven’t even thought of, the AIDS crisis in the story. But what would that do? What would that be?” The thought really seems to strike a chord with Bogosian.
We veer out of Interview with the Vampire and Daniel Molloy for a moment, deep into Bogosian’s lived experiences, but I think the weight of them help underscore exactly why seeing a relationship between Armand and Bogosian’s Daniel would be so impactful if it were to exist in the show, whether or not a conversation is had about its real-world weight, but just purely in its existence.
Bogosian notes, “When the pandemic happened and people were tearing their hair out of their heads, I was like, why is no one mentioning that this just happened 30 years ago? It already happened. Down in this neighborhood… I made a list. I’ve been working on this memoir, which will never be finished and won’t be published, but at some point, I made a list of everybody who was gone. And it was stunning. And one of the things I came to understand is that an artist isn’t just making art; an artist is also making their legacy. Some of these artists who were so brilliant at that time, they never got to the place where the flashpoint happens. Okay, so Keith Haring, it did happen for, but for every Keith Haring, there were five other guys who were very brilliant, and we didn’t get there. And not only do they not get their legacy, which I think is important to artists, but they also don’t become teachers to the next generation. And so it’s a continuity thing that didn’t happen, and the tragedy of it all was just stunning. To not have it brought up during the pandemic was like, what the fuck? I got very… I wasn’t militant, but I was part of a lot of actions and things that had to do with raising money and so forth. And eventually I would get up on stage if we were doing the benefits of it, and I would just start cursing out the president, and they stopped inviting me to those kind of more genteel fundraising things. I wasn’t a member of ACT UP, though they’d have been perfectly happy to have me start hitting people with a two-by-four. But I was involved. And like I say in my memoir, I mean, that loss, it’s a big part.” For me, the idea of the lost legacy Bogosian muses on, twined with the idea of somehow preserving parts of it and offering them forward, is exactly why the right kind of representation would really hit home here.
The conversation lapses into a larger discussion of art for a bit, which you can read in my larger interview pieceOpens in a new tab, but returns to Interview with the Vampire‘s Daniel Molloy in time. Bogosian shares a bit about the final scenes of Interview with the Vampire season two and what his final conversation with Louis meant to Daniel. For Bogosian, it was all about the relationship between the pair of vampires. He notes, “For me, it was all about Louis. I mean, Jacob [Anderson] and I had developed such a deep bond while we were doing the show that, and it was from the get-go, it was the strangest thing and very beautiful. I love him deeply. And of course, Assad [Zaman] is this incredible human being who is nothing like Armand. So we became very close. But I think that in those final scenes, I’m trying to really connect with Louis. That’s my main thing. What have you heard about anything? What’s Lestat doing? And what’s Armand doing? What’s anybody doing at this moment?” The implied addition being, “How are you doing?”
But it wasn’t a particularly easy Interview with the Vampire sequence for Bogosian, he adds, “Of course, that was a very weird scene because a lot of things had happened that I didn’t know particulars of, and all of a sudden I have a scene that I’m being thrown into, and I have two concerns. One, I have to go and hunt this guy down, which is happening already as I’m talking to Louis on the phone. You can’t really see it, but I’m watching my victim. And also, it was a very stressful evening because it was the second time that I had the lenses in, and I had the teeth in for the first time, and it was raining. It was just like, ‘I can’t see, the teeth keep breaking.’ I was in a bad mood, but I was trying. And we were trying to do something like that looks so simple: I’m walking, I’m talking, and then I stop, and I’m watching the guy. But the walking, talking, and getting to that spot was actually very complicated, and there were a lot of people in the background as well.”
The teeth and the nails, I have to say, sound intense. But there’s about to be a lot more of them in Interview with the Vampire season three. The cost of being a vampire. Speaking of season three, I ask Bogosian about a popular internet theory that’s popped up since the Interview with the Vampire season three teaser trailer released at San Diego Comic Con. In it, we see a forearm that seems to have a tattoo on it that claims “Armand told the Truth.” It’s been a popular rumor that it’s actually Daniel Molloy’s forearm and tattoo in that Interview with the Vampire season three teaser trailer. But, at least according to Bogosian, it’s not. He confirms, “No, it’s not Daniel’s.” And adds, “It’s a person holding a clapboard.” Well, internet, there you go.
Bogosian adds, “When we were shooting it, we didn’t even know that [the tattoo] was there. I only found about it later when somebody pointed it out on the internet. I didn’t even see it on the day, and I asked other people who were also there about it. I asked, ‘Did you see that, when it said Armand was right?’ And no one saw it. I don’t know if it was Mark Johnson, our producer, or somebody else’s arm. But we have this master puppeteer over us. It’s Rolin Jones who’s putting all these things together.”
Though the Interview with the Vampire trailer didn’t have a secret tease, Eric Bogosian does love the idea of Easter eggs and theories running amok in Interview with the Vampire. He notes, “There are all kinds of mysterious, interconnected things with all of this. Some of which, I’m waiting to pan out. I mean, I think it was in the third episode or the second episode of the very first season where there are these noises in the building, and I asked, ‘What is that?’ Someone actually pulled that the other day, and I’m looking at the painting by Marius, and I hear the sound. I go, ‘What is that sound?’ and I don’t know what’s going to happen with that sound. But I think Rolin has always had a master plan for everything in this show. I think some other shows will throw out all these Easter eggs in the beginning and then not even remember that they had ’em, or they’ll make it seem like they were, but they weren’t. And it’s all very interesting. It’s all part of TV, it’s a sort of puzzle or something that you’re trying to figure out. I know that the depth of the tapestry is very appealing to another generation.”
As we conclude our conversation, I tell Bogosian that if Armand and his Daniel get together in Interview with the Vampire season three, it’ll be my first real ship to ever kiss on-screen, so he has to tell Rolin Jones they have to do it for me. He laughs and comes out with the goods. “Well, I know we’ve certainly been… We would be shooting those scenes at the end, and Assad would just be like, ‘Wait till I get my hands on you.’ But I don’t know if he’s going to his hands on me or I’m getting my hands on him. I mean, this whole thing of the older Daniel, I’ve been sort of meditating on it more and more as we’re approaching shooting, and I’m like, ‘Here’s a guy who’s been sick for years. Maybe he just goes out and stands in front of a freight train to see what would happen, and you can’t get killed. Or what is the sexual thing going on with this guy? Or, anything, really. I mean, this all brings in these questions of immortality as well. If you knew everything that was going to happen forever, what would you do? And that is a big part of it, especially if the show brings in these older vampires who’ve been around forever. This is something that Rice is talking about a lot in the books. She says it very early on that over the generations, if suddenly, it’s like 200 years later and you’re with a lot of people who don’t look or feel like anything like the people you hung out with 200 years ago, maybe you go crazy and you throw yourself in the fire. And that’s a Lesat thing.”
Bogosian breaks off and chuckles to himself about Interview with the Vampire season three, “This is going to be such a wild year. I mean, Sam [Reid] is so insanely talented that I don’t even know where he’s going to go with this rock and roll thing. He’s already starting.” He grins at me with another sly smile. “But yeah, I will tell Rolin. And he doesn’t listen to me anyway, but I will tell him. And we’ll be finding out soon enough.”
We sure will. Interview with the VampireOpens in a new tab is now available to stream on AMC+, and season three will be come our way in 2026.
