How Rolin Jones Solved the ‘Weird Lestat Problem’ on ‘Interview with the Vampire’: Plus Details on Claudia’s Recasting, Ben Daniels as Santiago, and More

Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire on AMC isn’t just an adaptation of her first novel in the Vampire Chronicles. It’s an adaptation of the entire book series.

So when creator Rolin Jones took on the project, he had to have a plan not only first the first season, but for several. 

During the ATX Television Festival, I participated in a roundtable interview with creator Rolin Jones, executive producer Mark Johnson, and actor Assad Zaman to talk about Interview with the Vampire Season 2, the challenges of adapting the full book series, recasting Claudia, and more. (Read the first part of the conversation about Assad’s transition to the role of Armand and his first scene filming as that character here.)

On the challenges of adapting Anne Rice’s entire book series:

While Assad was originally brought in to audition for the role of “Rashid,” he found out late in the audition process that he’d be playing the Vampire Armand. Jones said that Assad was “battle-tested” for the role. “He had to do a lot of Armand auditioning in Season 1 to prepare, so we knew that he could do it,” Jones explained. 

“We did the same thing with — there’s a character Nicky who came in [Season 2 Episode 3] — we’ve done the same thing with him. He’s got maybe a scene, he’s got a couple lines of dialogue. We put him through a battle to get this,” Jones said. “Wrote a bunch of stuff already for that part to make sure he could do battle with Sam Reid.”

Jones noted this was one of the challenges of the show, bringing in actors to play characters who would eventually be much more significant down the line, considering the fact that they’re adapting the entire book series.

“We’re really cannibalizing the first book. There’ll still be some little drippings that we haven’t touched, and then we get to dig into the others,” Jones said.

“AMC made me go through a real gauntlet before they gave me the gig. They said, ‘What is this?’ Not only ‘What does the pilot look like; what does season 1 look like?’ [but] ‘What does Season 7 look like?” Jones continued. “I made all the writers read the first three books if they were going to walk into Season 1.”

“I keep saying that Rolin’s Interview with the Vampire is so much closer to the book than the movie, which is ironic because Anne Rice wrote the screenplay to the movie,” Johnson added. “I’ve never been involved in an adaptation where the screenwriter has had such respect for the material and with that still understands what to keep and what not to keep.”

“We also have the advantage that she didn’t have, too. We have books that she wrote after the movie we know the whole thing, so it’s going to plot itself slightly differently,” Jones said.

Jones also recalled when he realized how he’d use the present time in Dubai to tell the story, particularly when it comes to Lestat and incorporating all of the books.

“It’s mostly this weird Lestat problem. It was like, here’s Lestat in Book 1, here’s Lestat in Book 2. These are very wildly different characters,” Jones said. “And so reading the second time, I started to notice when Louis was hyperarticulate about every sense and sound and feeling for certain scenes, and then there’d be these other scenes where he’d be like, ‘Oh, I can’t really tell you about that. I don’t really want to remember.'”

“That’s what opened it up,” Jones continued. “And this whole ‘memory is a monster’ thing was like, ‘Oh, now I know what the hell Dubai is all about.’ And that was sort of the big. ‘Oh, that’s the show!'”

Re-casting Claudia for Season 2:

Of course, another challenge in the second season was the re-casting of a key character: Claudia. The character of Claudia was originally played by Bailey Bass in Season 1, but then exited the series ahead of Season 2.

For that reason, the filming order of Season 2 changed a bit, which is why Assad’s first scene filming as Armand was a scene in Interview with the Vampire Season 2 Episode 5.

“We have a lot of talent in our casting department,” Jones said. “Kate Rhodes James is the person who found Delainey [Hayles]. We had — I forget exactly the timeline — we were three weeks out, and we were auditioning a week and a half out before our first day of shooting, which is, again, why we flipped it, and we went back to Episode 5 first.”

Jones said there were four actors who were all fantastic, but once Delainey Hayles walked in, the decision was easy.

“This totally this old soul dropped down into our laps,” Jones continued. “Wait until you see her thirty years from now. Are you kidding me? This actor dropped in, and we got her first?! It’s incredible. And just one of the most spectacular humans you’ll ever meet.”

If the transition between Bailey Bass’s Claudia and Delainey Hayles’s Claudia felt seamless to you at the beginning of Interview with the Vampire Season 2, there’s a reason for that.  

“We definitely started rigging that first episode to make sure there would be no doubt by the end of that. So there were some adjustments made,” Jones said.

“That first episode is very Claudia-heavy,” Johnson added. 

All of that was intentional, including how we watched Claudia claw herself out of the ground and didn’t hear her speak for quite some time.  

Casting Ben Daniels as Santiago:

Interview with the Vampire Season 2 also introduces the character of Santiago, played by Ben Daniels. Jones had worked with Santiago before on The Exorcist, and he had him in mind to join the show from the beginning.

“I had two actors for this show that I knew who I wanted before we wrote a word of it, and they were both on the board before casting went in. And it was Eric Bogosian for Malloy, and it was Ben Daniels for Santiago,” Jones said.

“I literally told everybody, ‘This is the actor you’re writing for, so go watch everything.’ And we had to work around his Lord of the Rings schedule to make it work, but we did it.”

When Mark Johnson knew the show would be special:

Mark Johnson said there was more than one moment when he knew the show would be special, but there was one that stands out most.

“I had that moment lots of times on this, but the first time is when I read his very first draft of 101,” Johnson said. “I had just signed on to spearhead the Anne Rice world for AMC, and I thought, What have I gotten myself into?’ And I got [Rolin’s] first draft, which was so extraordinary, I just thought, ‘It’s up to us to foul this up. This is so, so good.'” 

“If you knew me better, I don’t always say this: I’m so incredibly proud of this show,” Johnson added.

Check out all of our coverage of the ATX Television Festival right here. There’s still more to come!

Interview with the Vampire airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.

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