Vampires, as a concept, should not work. They are dead. They are allergic to weather. Their entire dating strategy is "what if I bit you." And yet — somehow, Anne Rice took this nonsense, draped it in frilly eighteenth-century shirts (a look Jonny Lee Jr. has, to his eternal credit, brought to this very podcast), and produced one of the most genuinely seductive pieces of pulp fiction of the twentieth century. This week, Jonny returns to walk Mandy through the entire blood-soaked architecture of Interview with the Vampire — the 1994 film, the AMC series, and the lore that Anne Rice constructed to power both.Along the way: Cher was almost cast as Louis (yes, that Cher; yes, in a corset; no, it would not have worked). Tom Cruise was, by Anne Rice's own admission, the wrong man for Lestat — right up until he opened his mouth on screen and became the only possible man for Lestat. Brad Pitt may have been miserable filming this and you can, if you squint, kind of tell. Kirsten Dunst, age eleven, delivered a performance so calibrated that they auditioned a thousand other children and quietly admitted defeat. And Anne Rice herself wrote Claudia — a five-year-old trapped in eternal childhood — because her own five-year-old daughter had died of leukemia, which recontextualizes the entire story so violently that you may need to sit down.Also covered: why blood drinking, in the Anne Rice cosmology, is better than sex (the vampires are the most sex-positive characters in 1990s cinema); why the second half of the movie kind of falls apart the moment Antonio Banderas shows up to monologue at everyone; why the AMC series is gayer than the movie which is gayer than the books which are already pretty gay; and the fact that one of the most cinematic shots in nineties film involves a child vampire worrying about getting blood on her pink satin shoes. Welcome back to nerd-dom.GUEST SPOTLIGHT
Jonny Lee Jr. is one of Make Me a Nerd's original guests and a self-described "very well-rounded nerd" — a designation he has now earned across episodes on Zelda, Sailor Moon, and the present descent into Anne Rice's vampire universe. He is an actor and singer with the rare ability to make you genuinely excited about a frilly eighteenth-century shirt, and he has read every single Vampire Chronicles novel, which is the kind of qualification you cannot fake.
Links & ReferencesPast Make Me a Nerd Episodes Referenced

Film & Television
Discussed in depth

Interview with the Vampire (1994, dir. Neil Jordan)
Interview with the Vampire (AMC series, 2022–present)
Byzantium (2012, dir. Neil Jordan) — the Saoirse Ronan vampire film Jonny was trying to remember on air
Queen of the Damned (2002)

Referenced in passing

Books

Stage

Lestat (musical, Broadway 2006) — music by Elton John, lyrics by Bernie Taupin
Nine (musical) — the 2003 Broadway revival, dir. David Leveaux, starred Antonio Banderas and Jane Krakowski

People
Creators

Anne Rice (1941–2021)
Stan Rice — Anne Rice's husband, the real-world basis for Lestat
Christopher Rice — Anne and Stan's son
Neil Jordan

1994 film cast

Tom Cruise
Brad Pitt
Kirsten Dunst
Antonio Banderas
Stephen Rea
Thandiwe Newton — credited in 1994 as "Thandie Newton"
Christian Slater
Evan Rachel Wood — the other actress considered for Claudia

AMC series cast

Sam Reid