Amadeo, The Vampire Armand - Anne Rice Character by Enethrin on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

The Interview of the Vampire series had me enraptured right until the very last scene of the first season. Just like in the 1994 movie, the vampire Armand was finally introduced as something wholly, wholly different than how he was presented in the books, portrayed by Assad Zaman.

I know Anne Rice had been very active on Facebook during the conception and development of the originally proposed movie series reboot and then the television series, so trust that the change had been guided by her, but I can't claim anything other than disappointment. For her involvement, however, I can forgive a Lestat much more masculine than Tom Cruise's 1994 presentation, knowing that - like Armand in the books - Anne Rice had a fascination with Dutch actor Rutger Hauer, and that Hauer had been a major inspiration for both the characters of Lestat and Mael at different ages. Along with her husband Stan, Lestat was explicitly inspired by Hauer's character of Eric Vonk from the 1973 Dutch movie Turks Fruit. Knowing that, it was fun to re-read the passages in Queen of the Damned where Armand gushed over Hauer, comparing the audacity of his character in Blade Runner to that of the brat prince Lestat.

I have a journal entry from 04 July 2000 about how the vampire Armand was my favourite character in literature, so I of course would have loved him presented as described: as a beautiful adolescent boy, 5’6, with auburn hair that could shift from waves to curls, striking large brown eyes, glowing white skin, and slender fingers. I did love Antonio Banderas' portrayal in the movie, though his presentation much better matched the book character of Santino than Armand.

Armand was born Andrei in Kievan Russia, before his kidnapping to be sold in the slave markets of Constantinople. He was bought and relocated to Venice to be an artist's apprentice, renamed Amadeo by his new master, the vampire Marius (my second favourite character of the series, so please don't feck him up as well). After receiving a mortal wound, Amadeo was turned into a vampire by Marius at age 17. Later, vampiric purists purged Marius' presence from Venice, killing Amadeo's mortal companions, and capturing Amadeo to torture him into renouncing Marius and the sensuous life they had lived together. The vampire Amadeo was reforged by the puritanical, God-fearing coven of Santino into Armand.

After a few days of sifting AI base images, applying different faces, working with colour effects, and playing with lighting, here is my best rendition of the vampire Armand as I imagined him. The outfit and setting is inspired by Daniel Molloy's description of Armand as he appeared to Daniel outside the Villa of the Mysteries as the sun was setting in Pompeii.

Created using a mix of old-school Stable Diffusion (sd-v1-5-fp16), FaceApp and Corel Painter.

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Since someone asked, below is a screenshot of Rutger Hauer from Turks Fruit (Turkish Delight in English), a weird-ass Dutch movie that is definitely NSFW.