How ‘Interview With the Vampire’ Created the Théâtre des Vampires

The new season of “Interview With the Vampire” offers plenty of immortal pleasures for the patient fans of AMC’s Anne Rice adaptation. But for production designer Mara LaPere-Schloop, Season 2 also fulfilled the artistic promise that first attracted her to the project — the Théâtre des Vampires.

“Living in New Orleans, it was really an exciting exercise to think about how we could tell that story and showcase the city in Season 1,” LaPere-Schloop tells Variety. “But more than anything, I really wanted to sink my teeth into this theater and the coven.”

The theater, which made its debut in Episode 2, is among the most beloved parts of Rice’s 1976 novel, the latter half of which finds Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Claudia (Delainey Hayles) joining a coven that lives in plain sight in Paris as a grotesque theater troupe. The series updates the period from Rice’s 1800s to the 1940s, with the coven performing blood-splattering shows to the morbid delight of a desensitized post-World War II audience.

But it required a space that was an unapologetically and insatiably indulgent oasis for the campy and predatory coven. LaPere-Schloop and showrunner Rolin Jones knew it needed to be gritty, but entrancing. “Gothic in tone, but not necessarily in a historic way,” she says. “More of a turn-of-the-century industrial space with gothic fingerprints on it.”

They found it in an old factory in Prague, one of the many European locations scouted for Season 2. 

“There were these multi-level platforms and raw brick. It just had this eerie undertone, which, you know, is perfect,” she says, who sketched out the set before they even officially signed on. “The concept was that the coven had moved from their original theater, and they had dragged along some of their props and some of their set pieces they had used.”

The season’s Prague-based set designer Hélène Maroutian visited her native France to purchase pieces that spoke directly to the history of theater, from its origins to post-World War II. LaPere-Schloop also made sure to incorporate Rice’s descriptions of the murals painted on the ceilings of the coven’s subterranean green room.

“I wanted to capture some of those immersive feelings that Louis was feeling in the novel, so we took those same paintings and manipulated them into theater backdrops as though they are part of theater performances the coven has done in the past,” she says.

But it had to be grander than subtle details and mindful nods. The theater space had to dazzle and shock its audience in equal measure. One of LaPere-Schloop’s favorite touches are the imposing sacrilegious statues that flank the stage, which were carved from wood by the show’s Prague-based artisans. 

“We thought maybe at some point they pillaged some statues from a church,” LaPere-Schloop says. “So we have these shrouded figures at the front of the stage, one is holding a skull and the other is holding a baby by its leg.” 

In the bowels of the backstage, LaPere-Schloop’s team also personalized all the vanities for each coven member, based on biographies provided to each department by the writers, to flesh out their personalities, even in the periphery of scenes.

But perhaps the biggest mid-century upgrade the series adds to Rice’s creation is the projection animation used in the coven’s performances. The early cinema expressionism style was inspired by and created in partnership with the London-based theater troupe 1927. If viewers watch closely, the projections will chart the passage of time as Louis and Claudia fall deeper under the spell of the coven.

“The projections kind of start monochromatic and then, as time passes, we start to see color bleed in,” LaPere-Schloop says. “It is just so wonderful to work with people who are excited about putting this much detail into the show.”

“Interview With the Vampire” airs every Sunday on AMC and AMC+