Claudia (Kirsten Dunst), Interview with the Vampire (plus Louis and Lestat!)
By popular request, the Vampire Claudia returns! I’ve made this character a few times before, but I’m most pleased with this version. I’ve always loved her blue dress, but now I feel I’ve improved enough sculpting hair that her bangs are closer to how I want them.
Claudia, Louis de Pointe du Lac, and Lestat de Lioncourt are available now for purchase at my Etsy shop. Just in time for Halloween! ♀️♂️♂️⚜️
For those unaware, Claudia was based on Anne Rice’s own daughter Michele, who died at five years old from leukemia. The resulting depression led to Anne Rice publishing her first of many gothic horror novels, starting with Interview with the Vampire, in 1976. While Claudia was based on Michele, so was Lestat on her husband Stan (originally intended to be named Lestan) and Louis on herself.
The 1976 novel is unfortunately the only entry in The Vampire Chronicles from Louis’ POV, which came from a place of her own personal trauma. Lestat was obviously a far more flamboyant, fun, fanciable character for her to focus on, but ultimately not as prone to exploring the existential crises and philosophical questioning present in her original novel.
One may also notice that the doll shop owner Madeleine’s backstory is that of a mother who lost a young daughter who likewise never got to grow up. Rice’s house in New Orleans was famously filled with antique dolls, which is imagery very much associated with Claudia.
For obvious reasons, a five year old was deemed unable to handle the demanding role of Claudia, which is that of a woman’s mind driven mad trapped in a child’s body (she’s actually over eighty years old by the end of her story), and so the role was aged up for a then eleven-year-old Kirsten Dunst. There was a nationwide search that included younger actresses, but Dunst was one of the few who could handle the part. She actually didn’t get to see the film until years later, either. The 1994 film also included her first kiss, which was with none other than Brad Pitt, though neither were enthused! Dunst also wore the blue dress when she attended Rice’s Memnoch Ball in 1995.
The biggest crime of the later books is how Anne Rice completely threw away what would’ve been far more profound for Louis (and of course, Claudia was dead) because of her rampant author’s pet blind spot. Ironically, Louis was her self-insert, while Lestat was her husband and Claudia was her dead daughter.
It’s like it never occurred to her that the “Human Nature” trope (see Clark in Superman II, Angel in Angel: the Series, Clark again in Smallville, the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who, Castiel in Supernatural, etc…) is so much more profound for the tragic inhuman character who actually desires most to be human, is at odds with their own species or wants to experience human belonging/family/love, rather than the one who would happily throw away that humanity they never really wanted (Lestat in The Tale of the Body Thief). Funnily enough, Brad Pitt’s Meet Joe Black is also this trope. Louis, not Lestat, is the character who belonged with this trope as it is in every other piece of fiction that uses it. Those medias understood it’s best used as a heartbreaking gut punch instead of a comedy romp. It’s something that hurts when it is cruelly snatched away or must be given up for the sake of a duty larger than oneself. The only Vampire Chronicles character who would prefer even more to be human than Louis because of the profound unhappiness in their physical form would be Claudia. It’s the thing they most have in common together.
Merrick was yet another time when these characters’ potential to continue on the center stage was woefully misused and under-realized in favor of endless new OCs and Lestat. Louis was written out of the starring role that put Anne Rice’s career on the map the second she and the fandom wrote him off as a liar, despite never being able to fully retcon out Lestat’s actions during Interview with the Vampire. There were certainly better uses for Claudia’s ghost than as a cruel manipulation that then never gets closure for her or Louis’ obviously continuing feelings for her. Given that he’s still not over her death more than a century later, it’s always the elephant in the room in regards to Louis in the present. It’s the storyline that keeps Louis frozen in time, unable to continue his own story beyond the 19th century except as a series of vignettes and observations by other characters. Merrick completely failed both Louis and Claudia. He’s as much of a ghost in the present story as she is.
Because of this, Louis’ story now will always be incomplete; a profoundly influential character used as little more than a prop in the background of other characters’ narration. And of course, Claudia’s tragedy was being incomplete from the start.
Characters like Angel and many copycats (not only vampire characters either–Russell T Davies has fully admitted Buffy and Angel’s influence on his Doctor Who revival and Torchwood spinoff, while the entire Fanged Four are Anne Rice’s archetypal lineup) would directly not exist without Louis. And yet, Angel got the center stage as the deeply-flawed inhuman protagonist with a “human soul” that Louis never got again. Louis is Anne Rice’s archetype (a massive influence on all inhuman creatures with human feelings ostracized from their own kinds, doomed to never belong to either world and the outsider looking in on a life they can never have) that has actually inspired more leads than Lestat ever did. Other media, in Interview with the Vampire’s image, knew that the flashier, funnier, cooler Lestat archetype (which was likewise influential, but rarely an initial lead) is instead an antagonistic, often villainous foil to a more serious, introspective character’s existential crisis and the greater philosophical and moral depth that this brings a story.
Anne Rice stumbled upon that when she wrote Interview with the Vampire, but seemingly didn’t understand it. Or perhaps it was easier for her to avoid her personal trauma by focusing instead on an object of fantasy and fancy.
Unfortunately, she denigrated Louis to make Lestat palatable as an antihero instead of a villain or even antivillain. He and his POV became inconvenient to the change in narrative and Lestat’s POV became rarely challenged, despite him being the more likely of the two to fit as the unreliable narrator with far more reasons to lie and make himself look better. His verifiable actions contradict lies like him only killing evildoers. Claudia being the most glaring refutation, but also the fact that Louis was targeted not because he was evil, but rather because he had wealth Lestat wanted. Louis was telling his story as a cautionary tale in which he wasn’t sugarcoating himself (quite the opposite–he’s the king of self-loathing) or anyone else, not a narcissistic ego trip disguised as a rebuttal.
The author’s retcon and fandom buying into the narrative of Louis as the unreliable narrator is a huge mistake and it goes a long way to explain the fall in quality of the later series. Louis should never have been consigned to the role of Antonio Salieri.
“It was Lestat beyond question, restored and intact as he hung in the doorway, his head thrust forward, his eyes bulging, as if he were drunk and needed the door jamb to keep him from plunging headlong into the room. His skin was a mass of scars, a hideous covering of injured flesh, as though every wrinkle of his ‘death’ had left its mark upon him. He was seared and marked as if by the random strokes of a hot poker, and his once clear gray eyes were shot with hemorrhaged vessels…”
Happy Birthday Lestat, I picked this up as something of a small gift for your Birthday during my recent stop in New Orleans. It spoke to me and seemed appropriately you. Yours, ~Louis (For @i-want-my-iwtv I’m so sorry!)
I hope this Christmas morning surprised you with all kinds of gifts and happy moments ☺️
One of things I have been looking forward to the most this Christmas was the @vcsecretgifts ! It’s my first time participating or even seeing anything like it in a fandom and I think it’s super thoughtful and amazing ❤️
I would like to thank the fabulous @wicked-felinaand@i-want-my-iwtv for putting it all together. You rock! As a token of appreciation, I have made you a silly little gift (please disregard the silliness of it lol), with a few edits using @0junemeatcleaver0 ’s face claims.
The event will be held at the Chateau De Lioncourt in Auvergne, France. Lestat has been informed that you cannot fly on your own so he has arranged a private jet to come pick you up. Louis had plates set up for you, but they forgot that actual food needs to go in them lol No worries though! Armand has a chef on call, cuz he read that that was a status symbol.
The models are: Matthew Clavane as Armand, Ton Huekels as Lestat, Gerhard Freidl as Marius, Gabriel Marques as Louis and Niclas Gills as Daniel. Credit to @0junemeatcleaver0 for finding these models, credit to Faceapp for making this possible.
THIS IS SO SWEET I’m so flattered we were invited to this wedding! ❤️❤️❤️ And I will not disregard the silliness, it would be a ridiculous event, I’m sure there would be a (heated) blood fountain AND a chocolate fountain (for the mortal guests), for one thing…
I’m sorry, all lovelies, to have vanished from this fandom. To say that the Vampire Chronicles didn’t have a place in my daily life would be an outright lie. I respect, and admire those of you who interact with the text and film on such a consistent basis, keeping these pillars standing. I’m not someone who could do that, who could live and breathe it any more than I already did without it being worn out. Maybe I am! But I’d rather not know, I’d rather not risk loving this monster any less or any differently than I have for the past decade.
I AM THE VAMPRIE LESTAT.
I am immortal, more or less. I am immortal. I am.
I…
I am the sum of my existence. I am the monument to each life I have devoured. Some have deserved it; judge, jury, executioner, I have always wanted to believe my own myth. I have forgotten the taste of communion. I have tasted God on the dying breaths of murderers and the holy offer bargains to hell. I have wept over the skull of Adam and I will, should none stop me, witness the death of the human race.
I am.
I am driving over cobble streets almost too slowly, the balance of the motorcycle disrupted by the terrain and the rain and I am stepping into a bar that used to be a smoky bar, but the mortals do not smoke indoors anymore. I used to sing my songs. I am singing my songs tonight—they do no know that I cover my songs—
The rock star Lestat, yet another singer vanished from the face of the earth in the demonic nineteen-eighties. Does it mean anything? Does someone still keep my records pristine and my books all tidy on a shelf? I don’t care. I am in the pages of every cheap airport paperback novel I have ever written, I am, we are, the coven of the articulate under a collective pen name more proud of the books we see with age, the proof that for all the centuries worth of history and confession we have grieved onto paper that even the days since doing so are numerous.
There are mortals who have lived their entire lives after we have committed our own to the page, and who have died many years since.
I will lower my teeth to the throat of a young man in a dress, hear him mutter we are the dead, and in less time than it takes for me to see if I have influenced his path, he is an old man, another artist dead on the evening news that we watch with such morbid fixation.
The walls of the bar are a different color. I remember this place in candlelight. I am going to live forever in a city that will be underwater before those living in it have reached the end of their own lives.
My secret santa gift for @iregreteverything19, who asked for Louis and Lestat slow dancing at a Christmas party together!
I imagine that Lestat really wanted to take Louis out for Christmas, but Louis didn’t really want to make a spectacle or be paid attention to or anything… so Lestat more or less took him by the hand and snuck into some big Christmas party where no one recognizes a certain former rock star. And everyone is already having fun and laughing, and it’s not loud like the clubs Lestat likes, it’s just a pleasant current of chatter and laughter and warm voices, and Louis recognizes that this was a gift for him after all.
