‘Interview With the Vampire’ on Netflix: Season 1’s 12 Sexiest Moments, Ranked
[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Interview With the Vampire Season 1.]
Congratulations to everyone who is about to experience AMC‘s Interview With the Vampire for the very first time. Season 1 of the acclaimed drama dropped on Netflix on Monday, August 19, among a collection of 12 other AMC shows that are worth a binge, and we have a feeling it won’t be too long before the good word about this spectacular, once-in-a-lifetime kind of show spreads and brings in the massive audience it deserves.
Interview With the Vampire has been called the “best show that no one’s watching” since it came out in 2022. TV Insider isn’t part of that “no one,” though. We’ve been obsessed since day one. (Did you know the fandom’s celebrity name for the stars, “Jam Reiderson,” came from one of our interviews?) To all the newcomers, welcome. You’re about to experience one of the best stories TV currently has to offer (the story will continue in Season 3 when they adapt The Vampire Lestat novel). It’s a true symphony of excellence from start to finish, including career-best work from all of its stars.
If you love the 1994 film, don’t expect to see an exact recreation. Showrunner Rolin Jones made narrative changes that better serve the book’s story and offer a captivating new approach while maintaining the essence of the beloved Anne Rice novel, like changing the time period and making Louis a black Creole man instead of a white plantation owner. Most importantly, it finally puts Louis and Lestat’s love story front and center like it is in Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles series.
Interview With the Vampire Season 1 follows the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) as he recounts his life story in his second interview with journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian). Their first interview in 1973 didn’t go so well (it’s depicted in Season 2, streaming on AMC+), and Louis wants a do-over so he can make sense of his prolonged existence. Helping him tell the tale in 2022 Dubai is his enigmatic assistant Rashid (Assad Zaman), who’s always close by keeping a watchful eye.
The story of how Louis became a vampire, and the unbelievable events that followed, are told through flashbacks to his life in 1910s New Orleans and track his passionate love story with the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid, the best Lestat — I’m not sorry, Tom Cruise and Stuart Townsend), his maker and immortal companion. Their vampire family grows when teen vamp daughter Claudia (Bailey Bass in Season 1, Delainey Hayles in Season 2) is brought into the mix.
TV lovers have often complained of a lack of real heat and chemistry onscreen in recent years. Interview With the Vampire saw that drought and said, “I can fix that.” If you think Bridgerton has the best chemistry between costars, you thought wrong. That title belongs to Anderson and Reid, who will convince you they’re the TV chemistry supremes before the end credits roll on the very first (and very explicit) episode, directed by the great Alan Taylor.
For the longtime lovers of the series, and the newcomers curious to know what steamy moments are ahead, we’ve ranked the sexiest moments from Season 1 (and protected some major spoilers in the process — longtime fans, you’ll know what we’re hiding when you see it). Sit back, relax, and let the tale seduce you.
Interview With the Vampire, Seasons 1 & 2 Available Now, AMC+, Season 1 Streaming on Netflix
12. Louis meets Daniel in San Francisco (Episode 6)
A vampire and a journalist walk into a bar… This memory from 1973 came to 2022 Daniel in a dream and showed how electric the energy between their younger selves was that night. Louis is completely suave as he flirts with young Daniel (Luke Brandon Field) at the San Fran gay bar Polynesian Mary’s. The writer starts off apprehensive about the handsome stranger but eventually lets his fascination wash over him. Louis agrees to an interview, and the rest becomes history in Season 2 Episode 5.
11. Louis and Lestat's first encounter (Episode 1)
Louis had a lot of complaints about this moment in 2022, but there’s no denying the instant chemistry between him and Lestat in this moment. Lestat controls the sexiness of this scene with his constant flirting with both Louis and Lily (Najah Bradley). The fact that Lestat was calling Louis his destiny within mere minutes of meeting? I’m not ashamed to say that would work on me. And it worked on “St. Louis,” too.
10. Domestic bliss (Episode 4)
This moment went by in a flash, but it was alarmingly sexy in its little amount of screen time. Episode 4 tells the story from Claudia’s perspective, gifting us some of Louis and Lestat’s sweetest relationship moments, like when Lestat sneaks into Louis’ coffin while trying not to disturb their daughter. In this quick frame, Lestat checks out his lover as they climb into their coffins. Lestat didn’t have to stand so close to Louis here, but he wanted to — and he wanted Louis to notice. He does, and the flirtatious looks shared are good enough to eat.
9. "Bad Daddy" (Episode 3)
Lestat was trying to make Louis jealous enough to act out by seducing the singer Antoinette Brown (Maura Grace Athari) in front of him in their home, which wasn’t cute. But pouring champagne on her chest and calling himself a “bad daddy,” and the look on his face while doing it? That was hot.
8. Louis and Lestat makeup sex (Episode 6)
The fact that Claudia was interrupting telepathically in Louis’ mind in this moment puts it farther down the ranking because of the alarming lack of boundaries between the father and daughter. But when she’s not intruding, this is another delicious turn in the sheets for Louis and Lestat. The only other moment in the show where this pair literally levitates during a moment of blissed-out passion can’t be excluded from this ranking. (More on that first flight below.)
7. "I'll let you reload" (Episode 3)
Yes, this murder was hot as hell. In a rare embrace of his vampiric self, Louis made the racist Alderman Fenwick’s (John DiMaggio) final moments horrific, the best moment coming when Fenwick shoots Louis, who remains unmoved as he calmly replies, “I’ll let you reload.” All you can say while watching is, damn.
6. Louis accepts the dark gift (Episode 1)
The pilot episode concludes with Louis becoming a vampire on the altar of his church by being drained of his own blood and replenishing himself with Lestat’s. In the books, Rice’s vampires have sex by drinking each other’s blood. The show let’s them do both, but that doesn’t make the moments when the bloodsuckers feed on each other any less erotic.
5. Louis and Lestat's look before their last dance (Episode 7)
I feel like I’m interrupting a private moment every time I watch this entire last dance at the Mardi Gras ball scene, but it’s these looks before Louis and Lestat take to the dance floor that are the hottest. The all-consuming heat the immortal lovers feel for each other comes out in full blazing glory in this moment. They planned a human feast for later, but each of them knows who the real meal is.
4. Louis drinks Rashid's blood in front of Daniel (Episode 5)
This moment was categorically insane. It was tantamount to having sex right in front of Daniel, made only crazier by the fact that Rashid made direct eye contact with the journalist whenever his eyes weren’t rolling back in his head. The way Season 2 recontextualizes this moment makes it even crazier, but you can tell without knowing what happens in the second season that this act was sexually charged and boldly voyeuristic. You’d think Daniel would insist they get a room or, at the very least, look away, and yet…
3. Louis and Lestat's reunion in Antoinette's bedroom (Episode 6)
After several years of no contact, Louis gives into his desires and reunites with Lestat, who brutally betrayed him in Episode 5. Lestat spends these years making desperate attempts to apologize and get Louis back, only getting a rise out of him when he has his human lover, Antoinette, sing vocals on a love song he wrote for Louis. Enraged and turned on, Louis swims the Mississippi River to get to Antoinette’s house, where she and Lestat are actively hooking up. Louis kicks down the door and throws her out of her own home so he and Lestat can have hate sex in her bed — another categorically insane moment (compliment).
2. The moment after "un petit coup" (Episode 1)
Aka “the little drink,” aka the amount of Louis’ blood Lestat drank to keep him fit but not kill his lover during their first sexual encounter. Lestat was so overcome by passion while taking his first drink of Louis’ blood, he made them levitate off the floor. It was the moment of breathless, silent intimacy that followed that capped off the entire entrancing scene.
1. The first bite (Episode 1)
I could do another ranking of the sexiest moments from this scene alone, but even then this moment would still come in at No. 1. The foreplay with Lily features enough hot moments as it is, like when Louis and Lestat undress without breaking eye contact as Lily does her thing. Their ménage à trois ends quickly after Lestat uses his abilities to put her to sleep so they can be alone. Louis and Lestat’s first kiss is the “oh my god, I can’t believe they’re really doing this” moment of the series, the moment that confirms the romance will be the main storyline at last. That kiss had been brewing for months, and the men had clearly long been in love with each other by then.
Louis knew Lestat had unexplainable abilities, one of them telepathy used to get inside his “pretty head,” but the moment Lestat sinks his teeth into Louis’ neck for the first time is just unbeatable. Seconds before “the little drink,” Lestat embraced Louis from behind as they soaked each other in no holds-barred. The tiny detail of Louis desperately holding onto Lestat’s fingers before they’re wrapped around his neck is something out of a vampire lover’s fever dream, and them lifting off the floor as Lestat drinks is the second “oh my god, they’re really doing this” moment. The idea of being consumed completely is what’s so hot about vampires. This scene epitomizes that feeling.
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