The Untold Truth Of Interview With The Vampire

In the 21st century, you can't flip through three TV channels without coming across a vampire; back in the '90s, however, things were very different. 

By the mid-90s, the vampire genre was scraping the bottom of its barrel, somewhere between pirates and Westerns. It had been decades since Dracula became a cinematic icon, and it would be many years until "True Blood," "The Vampire Diaries," "Twilight" and others would make bloodsucking cool again. But then a trifecta came to pass, one featuring a hit film (1992's "Bram Stoker's Dracula"), a critically-acclaimed film (1993's "Cronos"), and arguably the most eagerly-anticipated film of its year (1994's "Interview With the Vampire"). Of course, much of the progress these films made was undone by Eddie Murphy's 1995 bomb "Vampire in Brooklyn," but that's a story for a different article.

The fact of the matter is, good fang fests were hard to come by. Which is why, when "Interview with the Vampire" was optioned and Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt attached to a script by author Anne Rice herself, it seemed like a delicious prospect. Add in "The Crying Game" director Neil Jordan and a sumptuous, decadent couple hours was assured. 

But things rarely turn out the way the world expects. From casting spats to rewrites and miserable actors, "Interview" barely made it to the screen at all. In the end, the film was indeed a hit, and as it approaches a milestone 30th anniversary, it is still so fondly remembered that it seems like the perfect time to look back on the film's top-secret details — some unsettling enough to make Lestat himself flash a pointy grin.

Back in 1994, it was big news that Anne Rice was vehemently opposed to Tom Cruise portraying her beloved Lestat de Lioncourt. But the story of how Cruise did it anyway is one of Hollywood's more bizarre tales. 

Rice originally sold the film rights to "Interview" back in the '70s. At the time, she had visions of Rutger Hauer or, somehow, John Travolta in the title role. Things can move exceptionally slowly in Tinseltown, however. By the time an adaptation finally got off the ground, both actors were considered too mature for the part. 

Rice was far more interested in '90s possibilities like Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich and Tom Actual Hanks for the part. When the studio went with Cruise against her advice, Rice made her feelings known. To anyone who would listen. 

Here's how she described Cruise's casting to the L.A. Times: "[Cruise] is no more my vampire Lestat than Edward G. Robinson is Rhett Butler." 

She even went so far as to ask that Cruise and Brad Pitt just switch roles. But as Rice explained to Movieline in 1994, "They just don't listen to me." 

Brad Pitt made no secret of the fact that he found the entire "Interview" experience deeply unsettling. 

Years later, when an Entertainment Weekly reporter said he looked miserable during the shoot, he replied: "I am miserable. Six months in the f***ing dark, contact lenses, makeup ... London was dead of winter. We're shooting in Pinewood. There's no windows in there." 

In 2011, he once again looked back on the experience with something less than enthusiasm. "You go to work in the dark. You go to this cauldron, this mausoleum, and then you come out and it's dark. One day, it broke me." 

Having been pushed to his darkness/contacts/gravity boots limit, the star took decisive action. He told EW, "I called David Geffen, who was a producer. I said, 'I can't do this anymore. I can't do it. How much will it take to get me out?'

The actor went on, "[Geffen] goes, very calmly, 'Forty million dollars.'" So whether he liked it or not, Pitt stuck it out until the bitter end. And while he may have referred to the film as "the shoot from hell," he would add that it was "worth every minute of it. We got a great movie out of it."

As we all know, Tom Cruise is famous for many, many things. But being tall is definitely not one of them. As his success shows, though, height is no indicator of talent. Unless that is, you're playing a vampire that is six feet tall. 

Since Pitt is 5'11" and Cruise is 5'7," the production team came up with some ingenious ways to balance out that not-so-subtle height discrepancy.

The simplest solution, it seems, was to put heels on Cruise's shoes. But as "Drag Race" had yet to be invented, having the star totter around in five inch heels just wouldn't have worked. 

Which meant that other solutions — and a shorter heel — were necessary. So Cruise occasionally stood on specially-constructed platforms in scenes with Pitt. But then, production also came up with a third option.  

They dug ditches, and Pitt stood in them while acting out scenes opposite Cruise. So, imagine one iconic Hollywood legend wearing platform shoes and the other standing in a ditch, and them both trying to act out impossibly dramatic moments while wearing fake pointy teeth and ponytails, and you have some idea of what was going on behind the scenes of "Vampire" on a daily basis. When you consider such things, it's amazing the film turned out as good as it did.

Back in 1994, "Interview" was an envelope-pushing film. As it turns out, Rice wanted to push it even further.

During the movie's development, Rice and her editor, Vicki Wilson, hit on a radical plot twist: What if Louis was actually, say, Louise?

The pitch went something like this: Louis was in fact a woman dressed as a man, essentially a transvestite. Back in the dark ages, the film would explain, women couldn't own or run a business. So, to keep the plantation, she had taken on the persona and role of a man. Other than that small detail, Wilson told Movieline, "It was exactly the same as 'Interview with the Vampire'." 

Who did Rice and Wilson have pegged for the newly-tweaked main role? None other than Cherilyn Sarkisian herself, Cher.

Given that the "Vampire Chronicles" TV show is about to be a reality, and the times we live in would seem to be more welcoming of such a twist, perhaps a gender swap of the character could still happen. 

To an army of loyal fans over the last several decades, the notion of kissing Brad Pitt might sound like a moment for life's highlight reel. But although Dunst's character Claudia looked like a ten-year-old girl, she was supposed to be nearly 40 years old — even though in real life, Dunst obviously was the former. 

As it turned out, there needed to be a kissing scene between Dunst and Pitt — who at the time was 29. In 2013, she explained her repugnance to Bullet magazine. 

"It was just a peck," Dunst reasoned. "I remember Brad would watch lots of 'Real World' episodes. He had this long hair. He was just a hippie-ish cool dude. Everyone at the time was like, 'you're so lucky you kissed Brad Pitt,' but I thought it was disgusting. I didn't kiss anyone else until I was 16, I think. I was a late bloomer."

Some might assume this section title refers to his acting — but in actuality, there was a robotic element to Tom Cruise's performance. 

During Claudia's first attempt to rid herself of Lestat, she clumsily slashes his throat. He then proceeds to bleed excessively and, for some reason, melt. If you were assuming these were physical effects, you'd be partially right. None of it was CGI'd. But what you saw was also not Tom Cruise rolling around and melting during that scene.

The movie's $70 million budget included money for an animatronic Tom Cruise. It was built to have realistic-looking masks placed on it, sculpted to look like his face and melted at will. All these years later, if you want to play Stan Winston yourself, you're just one transaction away from your own Lestat latex mask — which would allow you to recreate the actor's grisly demise at your leisure.