‘Interview With the Vampire’: Ben Daniels on That Bloody Season 2 Finale
When we shot the majority of the plays in Episode 2, I had already been working on ‘Madea’ on the West End for three months. I finished on a Sunday and on Wednesday or Thursday I shot that whole sequence. So I was already ready when Levan [the director of Episode 2, Levan Akin] said: “Do it like a theater performance. We will take care of everything.” They filmed everything wide with four cameras, so we didn’t know when we were on and when we weren’t. You just had to get on with it. It was brutal and he shot it brilliantly.
In episode 7, just before Claudia dies, while she’s standing on that stage used to be like you’re doing a play. We shot that courtroom scene in 15-minute chunks. They were crazy. A lot of the time there were no cameras on stage with us. They were on cranes, so they would sweep in and out, or it would just be Emma [the director of Episode 7, Emma Freeman] shooting, doing all the close coverage first so you get these fresh performances right away, not after three days or something. Then all the cameras went away, so you never saw them again. It became like a play.
Is it difficult as an actor to play an actor with a… different talent level?
Poor old Francis. Yeah, he never reached the dizzying heights he’d like to have. He’s a big old show pony, isn’t he? In short, I was like a magpie, watching everything from Vincent Price in “Theatre of Blood” – well, Vincent Price in a lot of things, actually – to my cat. I watched my cat playing with mice, and I thought, you know what? I’m going to steal a piece of it.
Ever wanted to play a vampire?
Yes, absolutely. I love horror. That’s what I live for. I grew up with Christopher Lee as Dracula and William Marshall as Prince Mamuwalde in “Blacula”. Very debonair, theatrical, that rich voice. I’ve been watching those vampires for as long as I can remember.
I’ve always loved horror. Kids who are outsiders often do that. Growing up as a queer kid, these villains, like the vampires, are often the way people treat gay people. It’s always there, that strange coding. In those old James Whale movies, it’s there. It’s written in them.
More than any other writer, Anne Rice identified the tragedy in the monstrosity of the vampire. They are immortal, but the people they love can still die, and that experience literally stays with them forever.
