"'Game of Thrones' never really felt like a big deal to me," says Jacob Anderson.

 

       The (gray) worm has turned: how the quietest star in Westeros achieved more remarkable feats

Jacob Anderson went through six rounds of auditions because he was that committed to landing the role of Louis De Pointe Du Lac in the upcoming TV series Interview With the Vampire. Anderson has previously asserted that there were eight rounds, but he laughs now and admits that he might have "overstated that." Regardless of the precise figure, it highlights the close bond he has with Louis, a brash brothel proprietor navigating 1910s New Orleans whose life is turned upside down when he encounters the alluring French vampire Lestat De Lioncourt (Sam Reid). It should come as no surprise to learn that Louis soon follows him to the dark side.

In Game of Thrones, Anderson—who portrayed Daenerys Targaryen's dependable advisor Grey Worm—does not think twice to refer to the troubled, code-shifting Louis as his “most significant role” to date. That's quite an accomplishment considering that Anderson has also established a successful recording career as singer-songwriter Raleigh Ritchie, a stage name he created based on two characters from Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums, and for which Stormzy provides support.

He claims, "I kept getting this feeling in my chest as I was reading the pilot—a kind of excited feeling [but also] a sort of scared feeling." And I believe that, in order to leave the "woo-woo" area, it was most likely because I could identify with Louis and I truly connected to this story. Anderson adds slyly, "Aside from the people-eating, I'd say Louis and myself are pretty similar," trying not to come across as overly serious.

"I think my most important role is in Interview With The Vampire."

From the outset, Anderson comes across as warm and considerate. He's speaking over Zoom from Prague, where season two of Interview resumed filming in September after a 10-week break due to the actors' strike. Under its "interim agreement waiver," the SAG-AFTRA union has permitted performers to return to several hundred independent productions, including this one. It makes sense that Anderson expresses gratitude for returning. He acknowledges that he is not a method actor and correctly points out that he cannot spend his free time "being Louis all the time" since "that would really freak out my daughter!" Actress Aisling Loftus from A Discovery of Witches was the woman he married in 2018; the couple welcomed their first child two years later.

It must be exhausting enough to be Louis on camera. The series, which is based on Anne Rice's seminal 1976 novel Interview With the Vampire, is more comprehensive than the Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt-starring 1994 film adaptation, in part because it incorporates material from Rice's later works. When we first see Anderson's Louis, he's residing in opulent splendor in modern-day Dubai and is fervently hoping to tell cynical journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) about his life story. With the help of this clever framing technique that is taken from Rice's book, we are able to go back in time to Louis' vampire beginnings in New Orleans, where the coolly cunning Lestat courted and trained him.

Additionally, because creator Rolin Jones has deftly adjusted Rice's historical drama to make it more pertinent in 2023, the TV series is bolder and more outlandish. Here, the intense homoerotic charge of Rice's work is highlighted, whereas the film avoided depicting the core relationship as blatantly sexual. A visually stunning sex scene featuring Louis, Lestat, and prostitute Lily (Najah Bradley) sets the tone for the first episode. Regarding the sexual attraction between the two vampires, Anderson remarks, "I feel like there kind of isn't a story without it." "I believe that the movie has some influence on the notion that Rice's book only has a 'queer subtext.'"

Anderson refers to this Interview With The Vampire's "color conscious" approach as another advantage. While Louis is a white plantation owner in Rice's novel, the television adaptation recasts him as the leader of a wealthy Black family negotiating in New Orleans during the earliest years of the Jazz Age. With stunning gothic production values, the show vividly recreates this hedonistic, intoxicating era. If Louis wasn't Black, Anderson claims, "it wouldn't feel true to the demographic of New Orleans at that time."

At the same time, Louis gains intriguing new dimensions as a result of his racial transformation. Anderson claims that it "just feels really true" because despite Louis's physical strength, racism in 1910s New Orleans still affects him. This is an additional reason why Louis, who is attempting to conceal his sexual orientation from society at large and coping with a deep loss, never seems to feel at ease in his own flesh. "He can buy a club, he can play poker [with other businessmen], but it won't change how bigoted people see him," Anderson says.

The relationship Louis has with Lestat, a confident and dapper Frenchman, is similarly influenced by the color of his skin. Lestat is "much freer than Louis in quite a literal, social sense, but Lestat doesn't understand the privileges and entitlement he has," according to Anderson. "And now that I think about it, not many television programs take that slant on interracial relationships."

Despite moving from Bristol to London in 2007 to pursue a music career, Anderson has been accumulating cinematic credits ever since. However, he admits that a few years ago, he "wouldn't have had the confidence to play Louis." He appears to be torn between being honest and defending his personal space when asked why. "To be really honest, I kind of thought that playing this [role] would be like a total freak out," he admits. "I find it challenging to discuss the similarities between Louis and myself in too much detail, but there are moments in this show where I'm not sure I can go there without becoming too much of a hybrid of Louis and myself."

Louis' existential uncertainties appear to hit a nerve, or even a chord. Anderson goes on, "He views himself as a monster because of the decisions he's made, his guilt, and the things he's suppressed." Like I mentioned before, I can't really relate to the vampire aspect of it, but every day I am struck with acute awareness of my humanity and fallibility. I definitely should feel guilty and ashamed about some of the things I genuinely feel guilty and ashamed about. I attend treatment, which is how we vary from one another. Daniel plays Louis' therapist in our musical.

When it comes to his acting career, which started with guest stints on TV shows like Casualty, Doctors, and Skins, as well as supporting parts in British movies like Chatroom (2010) and Demons Never Die (2011), Anderson is equally humble. He says that he has been "booked and busy" since he was seventeen, but then he says something unexpected: "I feel like I've been trying to escape performance for twenty years, weirdly." NME suggests that not very successfully. In response, Anderson says, "I wanted to write and direct." "I really didn't want to be looked at, so I didn't want to act. All I wanted to do was write music. And in the end, I kind of went the other way.

"I didn't want to do any of it, but I did the exact opposite."

Laughing at his own rather ironic professional path, Anderson goes on to say that acting and music both satisfy his basic need for self-expression. He claims, "I write every word of my songs; it's like I'm driving out demons." And when it came to acting, I usually wouldn't take on a project unless I had a strong personal connection to it. I don't go to many auditions because I'm not motivated to work. Rather, acting serves as a therapeutic "outlet" in many cases. He says, "I had a lot of energy that I didn't necessarily know what to do with, but I was also quite an insular child." And performing releases that energy. It wears it out.

As a result of years spent attempting to balance these two artistic endeavors, Anderson acknowledges that he hasn't always been "very present" in his playing career. The latter saw a sharp rise in 2013 after he was chosen to play Grey Worm on Game of Thrones; despite playing the character for six seasons, he still "hasn't settled into" the role. "The experience of creating that show was very dissimilar from how viewers viewed and processed it," he claims. "We made the show feel quite small, so even though it was such a big deal, it never really felt that way to me."

The majority of Anderson's sequences included a "close-knit" cast of performers that included Conleth Hill (Varys), Emilia Clarke (Daenerys), Nathalie Emmanuel (Missandei), and Peter Dinklage (Tyrion). It wasn't until he saw the last episodes of Game of Thrones, which included numerous performers with whom he had very few scene sharing credits, that he realized the epic magnitude of the show.

During his third season on the program, he went full Raleigh Ritchie and dropped his first album, "You're A Man Now, Boy," an impactful mix of alt-R&B and an incredible song he wrote with Stormzy, called "Keep It Simple." In return, Anderson joined the rapper on stage at Glastonbury in 2019 for his critically acclaimed 2017 debut single "Gang Signs & Prayer," which includes the moving hit "Don't Cry For Me." "He possesses a classic sense of artistic ability – observing his creations and the releases he makes, they resemble those of Elton or Bowie," exclaims Anderson. "He has such a sense of proper musicality that it allows him to create for eternity."

2020 saw the release of Raleigh Ritchie's second album, "Andy," a thoughtful and reflective record named for his grandfather. Anderson was able to devote more time to music following the pandemic. Acting as Louis is, he claims, "too dense" to inspire many songs these days, but he has started "a bit of noodling." He believes it might take some time until a distinct theme emerges because both of his previous LPs developed naturally after he spent "a very long time mucking around." "Andy" was supposed to be a "unity-themed" record featuring a different artist on each track, but in the end, it felt "even more personal" than his debut record and had no features.

He muses, "So who knows what this third thing is going to be?" "I think I'll write about parenting, but it might end up being about Prague." With a loud laugh, he reminds us that Anderson has managed to distance himself from Louis De Pointe Du Lac.

Tonight at 9 p.m. on BBC Two, "Interview With The Vampire" makes its premiere; the entire series is currently accessible on BBC iPlayer.