Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe, or simply the Immortal Universe, is an American media franchise and shared universe centered on the 2020s AMC television series adaptations of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles and Lives of the Mayfair Witches supernatural horror novel series. The books, which originated with the 1976 novel “Interview with the Vampire”, follow vampires and witches in the ancient and modern world. The franchise includes several television series: Interview with the Vampire, Mayfair Witches, Talamasca: The Secret Order, The Vampire Lestat & The Queen of the Damned, with other projects in development. Some sources treat “Interview with The Vampire”, “The Vampire Lestat” & “The Queen of the Damned” as a single series, while others treat them as individual related works. For instance, AMC+ lists them as separate series. But Wikipedia treats them as a single series. Honestly, I fall somewhere in the middle. The first 2 seasons feel like a complete work; a brilliant adaptation of “Interview with the Vampire”. Season 3 feels like an adaptation of “The Vampire Lestat”, but much like the book it is based on, it ends with a cliffhanger, making “The Queen of the Damned” feel like the actual ending of that novel / season. Did I just make that even more confusing? I guess it doesn’t matter. lol
The books that make up this shared universe are as follows:
01 The Mummy or Ramses the Damned (1989)*
02 Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra (2017)*
03 Ramses the Damned: The Reign of Osiris (2022)*
*Though often considered separate, this trilogy (set in 1914) is at least related to the Vampire Chronicles and shares the same continuity. The character Ramses is mentioned in “The Vampire Lestat” as an ancient vampire and is later revealed to not have been a vampire in “The Queen of the Damned”, but something else altogether.
04 Interview with the Vampire (1976)
05 The Vampire Lestat (1985)
06 The Queen of the Damned (1988)
07 The Witching Hour (1990)
08 The Tale of the Body Thief (1992)
09 Lasher (1993)
10 Taltos (1994)
11 Memnoch the Devil (1995)
12 Pandora (1998)
13 The Vampire Armand (1998)
14 Vittorio the Vampire (1999)
15 Merrick (2000)
16 Blood and Gold (2001)
17 Black wood Farm (2002)
18 Blood Canticle (2003)
19 Prince Lestat (2014)
20 Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (2016)
21 Blood Communion: A Tale of Prince Lestat (2018)
Other Anne Rice novels (“Cry To Heaven”, “Servant of the Bones”, etc) touch on subjects that seem almost related to this shared universe and might be considered to be part of the greater whole, but only the above novels cross reference one another.
Per Wikipedia: “Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire”, or simply “Interview with the Vampire”, is an American gothic horror television series created by Rolin Jones for AMC, based on The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice, named after the first book. Starring Jacob Anderson as Louis de Pointe du Lac and Sam Reid as Lestat de Lioncourt, it portrays the vampire Louis’ recount of his past and tumultuous relationship with the vampire Lestat, as well as the fallout of its unauthorized publication.
The series embraces the queer elements of Rice’s work, which are only insinuated in the 1994 film adaptation, and deals with themes such as subjectivity, race, and abuse. It is the first series set in the Immortal Universe, a shared universe based on Rice’s novels. A series order was made in June 2021, after AMC Networks purchased the rights to intellectual property encompassing 18 of Rice’s novels in 2020.
The series premiered on October 2, 2022, with two seasons covering the events of the novel.
I would note that the series is an adaptation. It is not a carbon copy. But it remains true to the spirt of the novels, and while it interprets the novel in new ways, part of that includes a metatextual commentary on previous adaptations and the inclusion of elements which were not featured in the first novel, but introduced in later volumes. In my opinion, this adaptation is brilliant, bold and exciting, faithful to the spirit in which the books were written but free from the constraints of a timid version which is more beholden to the text of the source material. I also hold it as superior to the film adaptation, which is itself, quite good.
Within the series, most of the modern interview scenes take place over 11 days in 2022. The book that Daniel publishes based on the interview is released in 2023.
Interview with the Vampire: Part I
S01E01 In Throes of Increasing Wonder
S01E02 After the Phantoms of Your Former Self
S01E03 IS My Very Nature That of a Devil
S01E04 The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood with All a Child’s Demanding
S01E05 A Vile Hunger for Your Hammering Heart
S01E06 Like Angels Put in Hell by God
S01E07 The Thing Lay Still
Elements related to the Talamasca begin to appear in this season, which are then seeded throughout “Interview with the Vampire” & “Mayfair Witches”. For instance, Talamasca agent Raglan James (Justin Kirk) is introduced. He’s an adaptation of a character from Anne Rice’s “The Tale of the Body Thief”, the official fourth entry in her Vampire Chronicles.
Interview with the Vampire: Part II
S02E01 What Can the Damned Really Say to the Damned
S02E02 And That’s the End of It. There’s Nothing Else.
S02E03 Do You Know What It Means to Be Loved by Death
S02E04 No Pain
S02E05 I Want You More Than Anything in the World
S02E06 Don’t Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape
S02E07 Like the Light by Which God Made the World Before He Made Light
S02E08 I Could Not Prevent It
“Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches”, or simply “Mayfair Witches”, is an American supernatural horror thriller drama television series created by Esta Spalding and Michelle Ashford, based on the novel trilogy Lives of the Mayfair Witches by Anne Rice, which is made up of the novels “The Witching Hour” (1990), “Lasher” (1993) & “Taltos” (1994) – with later crossover novels in The Vampire Chronicles.
I’ve had a much harder time getting into this series as I feel it is a subpar adaptation of what I view as Anne Rice’s magnum opus: “The Witching Hour”, which is a sprawling work, densely populated with a wide assortment of richly drawn characters and histories, covering 13 generations of witches in its 965 pages. The series on the other hand, does what it can, some of which is satisfactory, while other elements are deeply disappointing to this fan. Adaptations often combine multiple characters who don’t have much to do individually, but collectively make for a more interesting character and a simplified story. A good example of that would be Liv Tyler’s Arwen in “The Lord of the Rings” film trilogy. Arwen has very little to do in the novels but in the film they combined her with several other elvish characters (Glorfindel & Lúthien), giving her more of a presence in the films. But in this Anne Rice Adaptation, they combine the characters of Aaron Lightner & Michael Curry into a wholly new character, Tongayi Charisa’s Ciprien Grieve. The problem with that is that both Aaron and especially Michael, have large roles to play in the novels – they aren’t cameos or characters we don’t get to know in the books – they are central to the plot and I adore them as they are. Watching the series, it felt as if the adaptation had murdered the characters (both of whom I love) in favor of a new one. I also feel like the performance of Alexandra Daddario as Rowan Fielding, the central character of the series, is disappointingly drab, and that the spirit Lasher, played by Jack Huston, feels far less mysterious, seductive or dangerous. Essentially the adaptation takes a complicated work and oversimplifies it, to its detriment. YMMV.
However, in fairness, I’ve only seen the first few episodes and that was a few years ago. And I intend to give it another shot in the near future. Perhaps my opinion will change? At the very least I’ll go into it knowing what to expect. And I’ve heard from friends who had similar reactions to the series that Season 2 is a vast improvement over Season 1.
Mayfair Witches – Season 1:
S01E01 The Witching Hour
S01E02 The Dark Place
S01E03 Second Line
S01E04 Curiouser and Curiouser
S01E05 The Thrall
S01E06 Transference
S01E07 Tessa
S01E08 What Rough Beast
Mayfair Witches Season 2 ends around 2023 (and features references to the publication of Interview with the Vampire). Gabriel Freilich guest stars as the vampire Felix, reprising his role from the second season of Interview with the Vampire.
Mayfair Witches – Season 2:
S02E01 Lasher
S02E02 Ten of Swords
S02E03 Cover the Mirrors
S02E04 Double Helix
S02E05 Julien’s Victrola
S02E06 Michaelmas
S02E07 A Tangled Web
S02E08 The Innocents
Mayfair Witches – Season 3:
Coming in 2027
Talamasca: The Secret Order
I watched all of this series. I felt it was mixed bag. I liked it better than “Mayfair Witches” but far less than “Interview with the Vampire”. The series is possibly best described as uneven, but it also doesn’t have much time to find its feet. It does have its moments and the season ends in a place where I was looking forward to more, but the series was cancelled soon after.
The Talamasca has previously been featured in both “Interview with the Vampire” & “Mayfair Witches”. The in-universe book “Interview with the Vampire” has been published at this point and is discussed, but the in-universe book “The Vampire Lestat” has not – seemingly setting this before that story. The first book’s author, Daniel Malloy (Eric Bogosian), appears in this series, as does Talamasca Agent Raglan James (Justin Kirk). I’ve read that one of Lestat’s songs can be heard briefly in one of the later episodes, suggesting that this series overlaps with events in that series, which would make sense, but I also didn’t notice the music myself. Perhaps I’ll give the whole universe a rewatch someday.
S01E01 We Watch. And We Are Always There.
S01E02 A Wilderness of Mirrors
S01E03 The Task at Hand
S01E04 Wet Work
S01E05 The Puzzle Palace
S01E06 The 752
I’ve seen all of this as well. Like “Interview with the Vampire” before it, this is an inspired adaptation, which often elevates the material to new heights, but it also sometimes veers so far off the track with its bold choices that it feels as though the series might not recover, but in the end, the series works more often than it doesn’t, and even when it comes close to not working, it is because of the experimental nature of the production, which I feel that Anne Rice would have approved of. She herself viewed the novel “The Vampire Lestat” as a failure of a story (despite the positive reviews), but she also felt that it was brave storytelling and that her failures were more interesting than the successes that others had, due to that bravery – which is something that I agree with and have also used in consideration of other pieces of art over the decades. That’s what this feels like. And in that it feels very much like Anne Rice’s novel.
The series is told in flashback, with at least some of the framing story for The Vampire Lestat is set in 2025. The Talamasca is set in 2025, overlapping a bit with The Vampire Lestat.
The Vampire Lestat (Part 1):
S01E01 Detroit
S01E02 Toledo
S01E03 Toronto
S01E04 The Devil’s Road
S01E05 New York
S01E06 Montreal
S01E07 The Failures
The Queen of the Damned (Part 2):
This has been ordered to series but likely won’t arrive before 2028.
Additionally, The Vampire Chronicles have previously been adapted as two unrelated films, which may still be of interest to fans.
Interview with the Vampire (1994)
The film adapts the novel of the same name, with a few minor elements from later entries. The film was intended to be the first of a series, but it failed to meet expectations and the series was cancelled.
The Queen of the Damned (2002)
The film adapts portions of “The Vampire Lestat” & “The Queen of the Damned”.
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