"What would this savage writer in 1976 do if she were in this room right now?" — Rolin Jones, creator and showrunner for Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, speaking to the NYT

If you haven't seen the film adaptation for Queen of the Damned, you should see it once and only once. But be warned. Once bitten, you'll never be free of its curse.

At least that's what I believed. Then I saw the pilot for AMC's newest series: Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire.

She gave them infinite power, eternal life, and a daughter who would be forever young

"And then remember the movie Interview with the Vampire? When Tom Cruise fed 10-year-old Kirsten Dunst blood for the first time, and she looked up at his smooth, handsome face and said "I want some more…" Oh, Pool, picture me, a 10-year-old Kirsten Dunst…!" — Dopinder, Deadpool 2 (YouTube)

Back in the 90's, Neil Jordan knocked it out of the damn park with his adaptation of Interview with the Vampire. No one believed it could be done — especially once the casting decisions were announced.

But Tom Cruise won even Anne Rice's heart with his subversive portrayal of Lestat du Lioncourt, Brad Pitt was years ahead of falls from grace deeper than a mournful man from New Orleans, and Kirsten Dunst got her start by playing an immortal forever trapped in the body of a child.

And then…nothing. The vampires went back into hiding. Any report of a potential sequel got lost in the renewed fervor for the unproduced books of the Vampire Chronicles. Audiences yearned as desperately for one more taste of cinematic blood as surely as a vampire.

Once we got that taste in the adaptation for Queen of the Damned, we realized our mistake. What was in some sense glorious and wonderful would also haunt us like a curse that will never die. It's honestly a marvelously awful adaptation.

But do you remember the ending for Interview with the Vampire? Lestat wasn't dead after all. He came back for Daniel, the interviewer, to tell him the truth about what really happened.

And now thanks to AMC, Interview with the Vampire has risen from the smokey ashes of a beloved franchise. The Vampire Chronicles will live again as an ongoing television series that has been met with near-universal acclaim (off-site to NYT).

All of the quotes from critics about the explicitly queer romance — and queer sex! — between Louis and Lestat made me giddy. Aging up Claudia and moving the story forward several decades is smart. And the opening of the pilot cleverly honors both the original book and Neil Jordan's film while making way for a bold retelling.

I couldn't make it through the first episode.

What it got me to thinking about instead was the character of Claudia and one particular scene from Neil Jordan's movie.

Which one of you did it?

I remember this scene.

Claudia: Do you want me to be a doll forever?! [Takes out a pair of scissors and holds them to her hair] Louis: Claudia, don't! Claudia: Why not? Can't I change, like everybody else?! [Proceeds to cut off her hair then runs into her bedroom. Seconds later Claudia's screams are heard from within her room. Louis busts in to find Claudia in front of the mirror with a full head of curls] Claudia: Which one of you did it?! [pushes past Louis and confronts Lestat] Which one of you made me the way I am?!

I remember the awful grief that remained long after Claudia's death, as illustrated in Anne Rice's sequel Merrick, in which Louis begs the help of a witch so he might risk a rare opportunity to speak with Claudia's ghost and make his amends.

I remember the rage that filled the ghost who answered his summons.

I remember the rage that filled me, too, when I found out the prison in which my own makers had trapped me. They thought they were doing what was best. They thought they were helping me.

Be glad I made you what you are

"That morning I was not yet a vampire, and I saw my last sunrise. I remember it completely, and yet I can't recall any sunrise before it. I watched the whole magnificence of the dawn for the last time as if it were the first. And then I said farewell to sunlight, and set out to become what I became." — Louis

To give Louis a companion, Lestat saves a child from mortal death and turns her into an immortal vampire.

That child grows into an adult, but only in mind. Her body will forever remain that of a child. She will never know friendship. She will never know romance. She will never know love. Not beyond the familial love of the only two vampires she's ever met.

They are her queer family. Small but secure. Intact. Eternal.

For many years, she doesn't care. But then comes that first fateful, cataclysmic moment when she understands her body will never match the person inside.

Interview with the Transgender Vampire

She will never grow old. She will never get sick. She will never die.

And, as Claudia says, she will never grow up.

For Claudia, to be a vampire is not the state of damnation Louis or even Lestat fights against. For a person turned immortal as young as the original incarnation of Claudia, being a vampire is all she's ever known. They are the only terms of existence that feel familiar.

She is, like my youngest self, free from any signs that she is not like everyone else.

The moment she experiences dysphoria comes when she hopes to make a connection with people beyond her queer family. Anyone who likes her for her mind, her heart, her piano skills — inevitably comes crashing against the fact that no matter how old the sadistic soul inside, she is trapped in the body of a child.

They will never see her as the person she knows herself to be.

Are you a transgender vampire?

Claudia: You…fed on me. Louis: Yes. And he found me with you, and he cut his wrist and fed you from it, and you were a vampire and have been every night thereafter. Claudia: You both did it. Louis: I took your life… He gave you another one. Claudia: And here it is, and I hate you both.

I lived with the same rage as Claudia. She cut her hair, I grew mine out. She yearned to grow, I yearned to shrink.

The terror for so many of us is that our bodies, like hers, don't feel like they belong to us. We beg for a connection with others that our bodies seem to deny. We beg for a connection with ourselves that our mirrored reflection treats with equal disdain.

What brought me out of the despair that ultimately haunted Claudia to her final days is the possibility for the kind of hope she never had.

What brings me instead into hope are the subverted words of Lestat du Lioncourt.

I'm going to give you the choice I never had

"You are a vampire who never knew what life was until it ran out in a big gush over your lips." — Lestat

In the old days, at least for me, being trans felt like being a vampire.

For me, being trans felt like Claudia trapped as a child.

I hated that the very thing that made me queer also made me so different. The only thing that felt eternal was how wrong my body would always be.

Do you still want death…or is this enough?

In the real world, our queer community reaches for a different kind of vampire's blood. It's the same kind of blood our cisgender community reaches for. It's the treatment that helps all of us thrive.

The treatment, once you get beyond the red-slicked metaphor, is whatever counts for each person as gender-affirming therapy. Without it, life is as desperate as Claudia's when she understood she would never grow old.

But with it?

Ah, the world stays the same, and yet everything changes.

We are newborn queers, weeping at the eternal beauty of our lives.

Note: Curious what Anne Rice thought about trans people? Read My Friend, My First LGBTQ Ally, Anne Rice, Has Died by Phaylen Fairchild and the coverage of their correspondence by PinkNews

Further streaming

To see what life was like for a trans woman turned into a vampire post-transition, check out Bit (2020), in which a cis dude cast his lead with trans actress Nicole Amber Maines (Nia Nal/Dreamer on CW's Supergirl).

Rotten Tomatoes description: A transgender teenage girl fights to survive after she falls in with four queer feminist vampires.

In addition to Bit (PinkNews review), you may also remember the lead actress Nicole as the plaintiff in the landmark state Supreme Court case Doe v. Regional School Unit 26, in which the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the school district had violated the Human Rights Act. The MSJC prohibited the district from barring transgender students from using the bathroom consistent with their gender identity.

See also: 'BIT' The Stylish New Vampire Movie That Perfects Trans Representation by Harmony M. Colangelo

Further reading

Dead Collections is a novel by Isaac Fellman, a transmac author, featuring a story about a trans vampire.

NYT best-selling author Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue), says in her review for the NYT that the novel suggests fiction and love for trans people can both "be a mirror or a door or a crack in an egg, and in both, there's room for transformation and self-expansion."

Where to stream "Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire"

Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire is currently streaming on AMC.

AMC description: In the year 2022, the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac seeks to tell the story of his life, or afterlife, to renown journalist Daniel Molloy. Beginning in early 20th century New Orleans, Louis' story follows his relationship with the Vampire Lestat du Lioncourt and their formed family, including teen fledgling Claudia. Together, the vampire family endures immortality, in New Orleans and beyond.

• Watch the uncut first episode for free on Shudder courtesy of AMC+
• Interview With The Vampire Episode 1 and 2 Recap by James Somerton (YouTube)