Interview With a Vampire star Jacob Anderson recently dished on the show’s sex scenes and the importance of even toxic queer representation.

Despite the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, the AMC series is one of the rare shows that’s been allowed to continue filming, meaning production for season two is well underway. In conversation with Digital Spy, Anderson teased that they’re just “weeks away” from wrapping up, and that the next season continues to stick closely to the book.

In season one, we already learned that that meant the relationship between Anderson’s Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) is as homoerotic as it was always interpreted to be in Anne Rice’s original novel.

And to many, that’s been refreshing. Not just because it provides more queer representation on screen, but because it signals that our graduation from the days of LGBTQ+ characters being portrayed as evil, irredeemable, and/or doomed to feeling like all LGBTQ+ representation has to be flawless and kind and handled with the utmost care has moved on to a new phase, where queer characters are allowed to be just as messy and toxic as straight ones.

“Something that can get misunderstood about representation is that all representation has to be good representation,” Anderson said. “It’s important actually that we don’t show a queer couple as a monolith or a Black character as a monolithic thing.”

He added that the relationship between Louis and Lestat is, of course, “quite unhealthy, but they are so feverishly, manically in love with each other… [Showrunner] Rolin Jones has been saying since the beginning that it’s a gothic romance. That’s what this show is, but just centered around a toxic couple in a really toxic relationship.”

Just as Interview With a Vampire hasn’t shied away from the messiness of their relationship, it also hasn’t shied away from sex. Though Anderson admitted he doesn’t like to talk about sex scenes because he feels it takes something away from what’s portrayed on screen, he did admit that “the reality of it is so boring.”

“There’s a scene in episode six, where Louis and Lestat are having sex and Louis is speaking to Claudia, but there’s this hydraulic thing that’s lifting underneath me,” he recalled. “It’s like Lestat is lifting Louis up. So there’s always something really technical happening.”

An exact premiere date for season two has yet to be announced, although expectations are it will air sometime in mid-2024.