What the TV Version of ‘Interview With the Vampire’ Does Better Than the Books

AMC’s adaptation of Interview With the Vampire is the TV series that Anne Rice super-nerds such as myself have been waiting our entire lives for. The second season has delved into the Paris sections of the first book, expanding upon details that the Neil Jordan film condensed, and to great effect. While the series has made several major changes to the source material, most notably with its central characters, it has retained the essence of Rice’s world. Yet it’s in these divergences from the novels, books that I practically know by heart, where the show has truly flourished. In a couple of notable ways, the show has actually improved upon the books. Case in point: Daniel Molloy.

Daniel is the one who conducts the eponymous interview. In the show, he initially met Louis du Point du Lac in San Francisco of the 1970s and sought him out as an interesting subject for a possible article. Now it’s the 2020s and Daniel is older, saltier, and has returned to Louis’ life to help him tell the ‘real’ story he never shared the first time around. The truth is debatable and has multiple perspectives, not just for Louis and Daniel but Armand, Louis’ companion and keeper who seems hesitant to let the real story come to light.

In the Vampire Chronicles, Daniel often feels like an afterthought, especially in later books (and that’s when he bothers to appear.) He’s left unnamed in the first book, being only the blank-slate interviewer to whom Louis can tell his story. In The Queen of the Damned, he’s reintroduced and given a full identity, that of a human who desperately wants to become a vampire. He’s young, naïve, and hopelessly eager to embrace the life that Louis told him was a living nightmare. To make this happen, he has sought out Armand, a former devil-worshipping wannabe Lestat who looks to be forever a 15-year-old boy. He and Daniel fall in love in the obsessive, all-consuming manner that befits Rice’s vampires, but Armand won’t give Daniel what he desires the most. As he tells his paramour, every vampire ends up hating their maker and he cannot allow Daniel to turn against him like that. It makes sense for Armand given his own tumultuous relationship with his maker Marius, which is explored in later novels. Their relationship is toxic, even by the standards of romances in this series, as Armand spent years pursuing Daniel before holding out on him the gift he wants more than life itself.

Really, Daniel functions as a cautionary tale in that book, a way for Rice to delve into the unbearable trap of the dark gift: no matter how much you love someone, you’ll never truly forgive them for killing you, even if you asked for it. So, once she’d completed that arc, Daniel was basically shunted to the side. He wanders alone off-page for a while to get away from Armand, who gets his own novel and more chances to be a whiny brat (we love him, really.) When we see him again, he’s essentially catatonic and spends his days building model cities. Sure, okay. Is this a way to show the most tragic possibility for a human who becomes a vampire and isn’t prepared for it? Louis wasn’t prepared for it and he still got to be an actual person. Even in the later novels, Daniel is basically ignored, as though Rice forgot him or felt no need to develop him beyond his initial purpose. It’s especially disappointing because there are moments where it would have made sense for Daniel to be part of the story and he simply isn’t, such as the ending of The Vampire Armand where Armand gets some new companions in the form of a couple of kids. Ew, and also why? Poor Daniel just couldn’t catch a break. The series ends in Blood Communion and Daniel gets a brief aside, the series’ equivalent of ‘he died on the way back to his home planet.’

But the Daniel of the TV series? He is a very different beast. For one thing, he has zero interest in becoming a vampire. This is not a life he craves because he’s already lived a full human life full of mistakes and pleasures that a family. If it intrigues him in any way, it’s in a purely journalistic manner. His experiences, those he remembers and those that stick in his mind like a scab, have stripped away any allure to immortality. Can you blame him? Aside from being attacked and manipulated by Louis and Armand, he’s had to deal with their petty relationship dramas and clashing narratives for too long. Watching his total cynicism at their attempts to spin the ultimate love story is truly hilarious.

Adaptations of Rice’s novels are at their best when they understand the intense earnestness of her books. Her stories are lascivious and passionately philosophical, full of characters who wax lyrical about their dramatic lives and existential woe. Making Daniel the pessimist who is practically allergic to this could have made the TV series totally unbearable. The last thing this story needed was a Ryan Reynolds-esque wisecrack-spewing outsider to allow the audience the chance to laugh at the intrinsically ludicrous qualities of these characters. Yet he’s not like that. He’s a welcome dash of vinegar into the cocktail, sure, but his pushback to Louis never punctures the seriousness of the narrative. We’re allowed to laugh but that’s because we’ve embraced the story, and Daniel’s interjections are a way for everyone, on- and off-screen, to confront the unreliability of what we’re being told. Daniel’s a cynic, sure, but he’s also just a damn good journalist.

That’s another great addition to the series: having Daniel be great at his job. He’s introduced in the very first episode as a legend in his field, someone with decades of experience who’s covered practically every major world event of the past forty-something years. He knows the right questions to ask but also the best way to needle at both Louis and Armand. The various novels of the Vampire Chronicles are essentially a collection of memoirs of the many vampires of this world and their stories overlap and occasionally contradict one another. Having Daniel be the guy who has to keep track of the incongruities is a savvy way to adapt the malleable truth of the series. Imagine him interviewing Lestat or Marius.

Holding it all together is Eric Bogosian, who is clearly having a blast playing this over-your-nonsense Daniel. Ageing the character up was a smart move (although we also have to shout out Luke Brandon Field, the actor playing the younger Daniel, who looks eerily like Bogosian.) He’s known what it’s like to age, to get older and weaker but gain the wisdom that can only come with having experienced many a f*ck-up. In the show, Louis and Armand try to mess around with Daniel by prying into his brain and mocking his regrets, mostly with his failed marriages. You can see the hurt on Daniel’s face but also the steeliness. Yeah, he screwed up. But it was still his life, not theirs. They can’t take that away from him.

It remains to be seen if the TV series will develop the Daniel/Armand relationship of the novels. Frankly, I would love to see how they make it happen with such radically different versions of these characters (seriously, Armand is competently evil here? Scary!) That Daniel would be so much more than another moral for vampiric lore. He’s already on a far more even playing field with the undead than he ever was in the novels. That’s a power play worth delving into, especially as AMC set up a wider Immortal Universe (Daniel dealing with the Talamasca, anyone?) The possibilities for Daniel feel far grander here than he was ever able to reach in the books.