Interview With the Vampire Showrunner Teases Season 2 That is "Wildly Loyal" to Book

AMC's Interview With the Vampire ended its first season on Sunday night and while the series has from the very first episode featured some major changes from Anne Rice's iconic book, "The Thing Lay Still" deviated further from the novel both as Claudia (Bailey Bass) and Louis (Jacob Anderson) moved forward with their plan to kill their maker, Lestat (Sam Reid), and in a surprising revelation in Daniel's (Eric Bogosian) modern-day interview. But even with these major shifts from the novel, series showrunner Rolin Jones promises that the second season of Interview With the Vampire will be "wildly loyal" to the book — but will also do some things driven by later books in the Vampire Chronicles series as well.

Warning: spoilers for the Season 1 finale of Interview With the Vampire, "The Thing Lay Still", beyond this point.

The season finale saw Claudia and Louis carry out their plan to kill Lestat during a grand Mardi Gras celebration, but while the attempt to kill Lestat is something that fans of the books knew was coming, there was a major detail that changed. In the books Claudia handled the entire affair, from planning to actual execution but in the series, it's Louis who slices Lestat's throat and bleeds the vampire out. Later, in the present, there's another major change when Rashid (Assad Zaman) reveals himself to be not Louis' loyal servant but instead the 500-year-old vampire Armand and the so-called love of Louis' life.

While both twists have some roots in the novel in that Lestat is bled out and Armand is a major character following Lestat's supposed death, the show's handling of things is very different. Despite this, Jones told Variety that the next season will be very loyal to the book, even as some elements draw from later books in Rice's Vampire Chronicles, much the way Season 1 did.

"Going forward, we are going to do things that are wildly loyal, and really try to squeeze out every beautiful piece of prose in that second half of the book — and we are going to do some other things that the book didn't do, mostly based on where the books go from here," Jones said. "Books 2, 3, and 6 really inform all the decisions we made in Season 1, and a lot of the decisions we are making in Season 2."

As for what Jones means by "wildly loyal," that may be a bit different than what diehard fans of the novel expect. In many respects, the series is less an adaptation and more a reimagination of the book that just so happens to sometimes lift lines directly from the prose. Still, Jones also promises that the second season will get into the story of Armand and Louis, especially given how Season 1 left things.

"That story is owed, and it's one we will tell," Jones said.

Episodes of Interview With the Vampire are now streaming on AMC+. The series has already been renewed for a second season.