This weekend, season three of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire premieres. In case you missed the first two seasons, this show is a lush, unhinged retelling of Anne Rice’s famous book series. The titular interview has been taking place in a penthouse in Dubai, and now the resulting book has been published. Meanwhile, for reasons, the Vampire Lestat has decided to become a rock god.

I’ll be honest, Lestat’s turn as a rock star is where the books sort of lost me, but I trust this show to make it magnificent, and the early reviews are universally amazing. Honestly, can’t wait.

But, this week I wanted to talk about the premiere event that AMC held in NYC at which Lestat and his band performed live.

Yes, you read that right. In front of a packed crowd at the Beacon Theatre, Sam Reid — the actor who plays Lestat — took the stage in character.

I’ve been trying to think if there’s ever been this sort of commitment to the bit before — a crossover between a fictional performance and the real world. Obviously most actors don’t necessarily possess the same skills as their characters — they’re acting. Connor Storrie is from Texas and cannot actually play ice hockey.

The closest I could think of was the Tree Hill Ravens (the basketball team from teen drama One Tree Hill). The cast of that show regularly attend a charity basketball game, sort of “in character”.

But proximity to aging teen heartthrobs is not nearly the same as being in the audience as part of the Beautiful Unwell — blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction.

I was thinking about it when I was reading this great interview with Martha Wells, the author of the Murderbot Diaries. If you haven’t read those books (and you should), they centre around “a bargain basement SecUnit designed to kill who — after it hacks its governor module — names itself Murderbot and spends much of its time watching trashy television, including a melodramatic program called The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.”

When the books were adapted for television, we got to see excerpts from this show, gloriously overacted by a stellar cast chewing the scenery for all they’re worth.

I love the idea of these stories-within-a-story taking on a life of their own. Like Inspector Spacetime, the Dr Who parody that lived inside the tv show Community, which real fans now cosplay as.

It reminds me of Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On novels, a YA series about teens attending a magical school, which spun out of her novel Fangirl — a book about a girl writing fanfiction about the Carry On characters. She got to write the fake books her fictional character was writing fanfic about! It makes me so happy.

The interview with Wells also harks back to the pandemic fake-show-fandom Ships of the Northern Fleet.

Enthusiasts banded together to create a subreddit, a Discord server and a wiki with over 300 entries. They’ve also produced fan art, songs and a “Ships” tabletop game. There’s knockoff merchandise out there, too, though fans can buy “real” merch from Mr. Nicol; he donates all his earnings from those sales to the Trevor Project.

Which, of course, always makes me think of Goncharov, the tumblr meme about a Scorsese-directed movie that never existed, but now has more lore than most of his actual films. His daughter asked him about it, here was his response.

Anyway — all of this is extremely my jam. Goncharov's impossible filmography and Sanctuary Moon's melodrama and the 300-entry wiki for a show that never aired. Fans — through sheer collective will — sometimes pull something into existence that wasn't there before. Of course Sam Reid on stage is a marketing stunt, but I think it’s also an acknowledgment that the boundary between the story and the audience is permeable. And that vampires have great cheekbones.

more good stuff

• i am a diehard nerd for behind-the-scenes anything and this video about how a live NBA game is filmed blew me away:

• if you’re not already struggling with your to-read pile, bookmark this list of the most iconic speculative fiction books of the 21st century.

• i used to use Pinterest as an example of really thoughtful and inclusive software development, so it sucks to learn that gen ai has basically made it unusable.

• this Friday/Thursday I get to do something extremely cool - chat to bestie Mike Monteiro about his new book. We’re doing this to suit the timezones in my part of the world, so get amongst.

finally, in my lego city

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