Though Rice spent much of her adult life in California, where Christopher was born and raised, her upbringing in New Orleans greatly influenced her work and her trajectory as an LGBTQ advocate.īorn Howard Allen Frances O’Brien in 1941, Rice was raised in New Orleans by Irish Catholic parents (her father was named Howard). Early life in New Orleans and leaving Christianity But I did not love him one drop less,” she said. I was worried, as anyone would be, that Chris would face obstacles and prejudices. There is still a lot of consciousness-raising that has to be done - but not with us. And there’s still an enormous amount of fear in America. “People respond in very different ways to what being gay means. The Advocate ran a cover story about Christopher in 2000, in which he said he thought his mother took his coming out harder than his father did, because of what he perceived as her having a stronger desire, relative to his father’s, to have grandchildren someday.įor her part, Rice said that she was “shocked” by the revelation, because she “thought he was straight,” and that she worried about him having to face difficulties due to homophobia, but said his coming out didn’t diminish her love for him. She then said, “I’ve always been very much a champion of gay rights, and art produced by gay people.” In an interview with The Daily Beast in 2017, Rice said she was “very honored” that people thought “Interview With the Vampire” - which was adapted into a film in 1994 starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt and is currently in development as a TV series - was a gay allegory. François Duhamel / Sygma via Getty Images Kirsten Dunst, Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in "Interview With the Vampire," 1994.
In a 2012 interview, she called Louis and Lestat the “first vampire same-sex parents.” And she later said that Claudia was likely unconsciously inspired by her daughter, while she and Stan were the inspirations for her vampire fathers. The domestic plotline and erotic dialogue made the novel ripe for queer readings, which Rice would confirm over the years. And he relates how the two took in a young child, Claudia, while living in New Orleans and proceeded to parent her over decades as she remained physically frozen in time.
Louis tells a young reporter, whom he meets in a dark San Francisco bar, about immortal life alongside his sinister and seductive maker, Lestat. The novel centers on vampires Louis and Lestat.
While the book failed to impress critics, it became an immediate commercial success, in large part because of its popularity among gay readers.
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