‘Interview With the Vampire’: Jacob Anderson Had to Hold Real Rats for the Show
AMC’s new adaptation of Interview with the Vampire is thrilling and extremely realistic. The series, based on Anne Rice’s novel, centers on Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson), a young man who is turned into a vampire by his blood-sucking lover, Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid).
The series has quite a bit of blood and gore, and Anderson explained that he even had to hold real rats for one particular sequence.
Louis in AMC’s ‘Interview With the Vampire’ is very different from the book
Though the series is based on the acclaimed novel by Anne Rice, the Louis fans meet in the TV series is very different from the one in the book. Rice’s novel opens in the 18th century, and Louis is a white plantation owner. However, showrunner Rolin Jones said he was not interested in telling a plantation story in 2022.
Instead, Anderson was cast as Louis, and the series opens in 1910 in the red-light district of New Orleans, where Louis is a thriving businessman from an affluent Black family. Louis’s experiences during the Jim Crow era in America affect how he moves as a vampire.
Jacob Anderson had to hold real rats for the show
Thus far in Interview With the Vampire, Louis is struggling with his new life as a vampire. For a time, he even tried to stop drinking from humans and instead turned his blood lust toward rats and cats. Most disgustingly, Anderson had to hold real rats when acting out those particular scenes.
“I did hold real rats at various points, but Tami Lane and Howard Berger [of the makeup department] had these little rat dolls,” he told Vulture. “They’re like dog toys, so that you could bite into them or squash them. They’ve got really intricately punched-in hairs. They’re like little beanbags, hacky sacks, hacky rats, hacky-sack rats. I’m biting into them whenever you see me biting into a rat. They’ve got really detailed faces and tails, but the VFX team has CGI-ed movement in the tail and in the face. I had something practical to bite into, but the hair gets stuck in your teeth. It gets stuck behind the fangs. You have blood as well in there. I was swilling water to get fake blood and rat hair out of my mouth for days afterward.”
The whole thing looks incredible on screen, but it honestly sounds horrifying to film. Holding the cats and the baby seemed like a much more pleasant experience altogether.
Portraying Grey Worm on ‘Game of Thrones’ prepared Jacob Anderson for ‘Interview With the Vampire’
Though Grey Worm was a beloved character in Game of Thrones, Anderson has much more to do as the lead in Interview With the Vampire. Though the characters are worlds away from one another and have different motivations and perspectives on the future, Anderson says his role on GoT helped him prepare to step into Louis’ shoes.
“I might not have been able to play Louis if I hadn’t first played Grey Worm,” he told The New York Post. “You have to learn how to be comfortable in silence, do things with your eyes, and not rely on dialogue all the time. Even though Louis is talking a lot on the show, as we go deeper into the season, he does more without saying very much.”
Thankfully, this is only the beginning for Louis; AMC has already renewed Interview With the Vampire for Season 2.
