Anne Rice’s Lestat coming to television
“I TRY to write books without him, but I can’t get away from him. He’s the way I talk about what really matters to me, the indispensable ingredient.”
That is the prolifific author Anne Rice, telling Out magazine’s Brian Schaefer why she just can’t get away from her famous anti-hero, the vampire Lestat.
LESTAT was featured in all of Rice’s Vampire Chronicle books, as well as several fifilms (”Interview with the Vampire,” “Queen of the Damned”). Then Anne, whose work, even at its most vampiric and/or witchy was struck through with religious themes and philosophies, declared herself free of the dark side and went to Jesus. Sort of.
But somebody removed the stake from her heart and last year Ms. Rice returned Lestat in all his gory, brooding glory in “Prince Lestat.” Soon, she’ll have another neckbiter with “Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis.”
And if that’s not undead enough for you, Rice is now planning to bring her “Vampire Chronicles” to television. The rights to her works — previously held by Universal and Imagine Entertainment — are hers again, and she is hot to create a series around her beloved, always conflflicted characters — Lestat, Louis, Armand, etc.
Why not? The vampire genre seems as eternal as the immortals themselves. TV has been good to those who “don’t drink … wine.” (There was the long-running “Vampire Diaries” and its tasty spin-offff “The Originals.”)
During her hiatus from the supernatural, Anne Rice did enjoy HBO’s “True Blood” and she liked the “Twilight” movies “somewhat.” (I think Anne is being kind to that tepid series of vampy teenangst.) She says, “I didn’t think I was going to write about Lestat anymore, so I didn’t have to protect the purity of my imagination. I could just go to the theater, eat popcorn. It was a lot of fun.”
THINGS I discovered over the holidays.
On Amazon I fifinally caught up with Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie in the limited series “The Night Manager.” These are six episodes of high tension and high style, based on the John le Carre book. Superb! And now I see why Hiddleston was talked up as the new James Bond. That is likely not happening (Daniel Craig couldn’t say no to a salary that could feed a small country), but if it had, Mr. Hiddleston would have been a fifine 007.
Also I hope to see more of the beautiful, unabashedly statuesque Elizabeth Debicki, the object of Mr. Laurie’s and Mr. Hiddleston’s affffffffffffections in “The Night Manager.” She stands a shade over 6 foot, 2 inches in her stocking feet, and neither of her tall leading men minded looking up, just a little bit.
On Netflflix I came across another British crime series (there are millions of them) titled “Paranoid.” This starred Indira Varma as (of course) a messed up cop. The divine Polly Walker also appeared as the selfifish, hard-drinking, therapy-prone mother of Varma’s attractive partner, Robert Glenister. I checked this out because I like these actresses, and recalled they had both been in the late and still-much-lamented HBO series “Rome.” Miss Walker was terrifific — dissolute to the max. But the star, Miss Varma, although very good, was done in by the most absurdly written character she has likely ever portrayed — immature beyond all suspension of disbelief. I’d try this again, if a second season arrives, but for heaven’s sake, you writing guys, there’s “quirky” and then there’s let’s toss her offff a building. Indira deserves better.