Interview with the Vampire Director Reveals Scene He Regrets Cutting | Interview

(Photo Credit: Warner Bros.)

Interview with the Vampire director Neil Jordan spoke with ComingSoon’s Tyler Treese about the beloved film ahead of its 4K release. Jordan discussed working with Tom Cruise, the film’s deleted scene that he wishes wasn’t cut, and more. It’s out on 4K on September 22, 2026, with deleted scenes and new special features.

“In late 20th-century San Francisco, a 200-year-old vampire tells his story–of desire, love, yearning, grief, terror, ecstasy–to a young reporter, weaving the history that has come to be known as Interview with the Vampire,” says the official description.

Tyler Treese: Neil, congrats on Interview with the Vampire getting such a lovely 4K release. It looks fantastic, and the movie still holds up. Revisiting this, Tom Cruise’s Lestat is so electric, and you touch on this in the bonus feature, but him being shorter than Brad kind of adds to the dynamic of this pairing and his control. How was it working with Tom to really figure out how strong his performance could be without it being too much? Because I feel it’s a fine line, but he walks it brilliantly.

Neil Jordan: Well, I’ll tell you, if you give Tom a challenge, he’ll rise to it. That’s the first thing. And I saw when I met him, I saw that he could give an extraordinary performance or he could find the Lestat in himself. We can all find the Lestat in ourselves, you know what I mean?

But I think the scene in which he really found the character was the scene where he was trying to force Louis to drink the blood of that prostitute. And then when he puts her in a coffin and all that sort of stuff, that was one of the most difficult scenes in the whole film to shoot. But I could see Tom finding both a cruelty and a flamboyance to that character in that scene. And that’s what the character became, really. But it was great.

One of my favorite scenes in the film is the passage of time with Louis, seeing the movies in the theater. We start with Sunrise, we see Nosferatu, and even Superman. How was it kind of selecting the films for that sequence and using that as a way to kind of jump forward? I thought that was such a smart way to do a time skip.

Neil Jordan: You know, that wasn’t in the book. When they brought me the project, Anne Rice had written a script, and I kind of said to them, “Look, let me do my own pass on this,” which I did. That’s something that I kind of introduced.

I thought, what a lovely way to bookend his entire character. When he becomes a vampire, the night before he becomes a vampire, he sees the sunrise for the last time. And 200 years later, the only way he can see—I mean, it’s kind of a metaphor—the only way he can see sunrise is in the cinema.

The sunrise that he sees in Murnau’s Nosferatu is so obviously a painted background, isn’t it? So I was trawling through movies to find, “Oh, let’s find a real sunrise.” And the Superman thing was great. And the little bit of Gone with the Wind was great.

And I just thought it was a lovely idea that this vampire would sit in cinemas just to see the sunrise and go through about three decades of films in so doing. That’s what I thought.

There’s eight minutes of deleted scenes in this 4K release. There’s some great stuff. I love the scene where they visit the grave and Lestat’s like, “This is the source of all your grief and pain.” There’s also a really great conversation between Brad Pitt and Christian Slater about love. Were there any scenes that you shot that were particularly difficult to cut?

Neil Jordan: Well, they were all difficult to cut. But the one that puzzles me as to why it’s not in the movie is where he goes to confession and kills that priest. I mean, I’m saying, “Why on earth is that not in the finished film?” And after 30 years, I can’t work out why.

I spoke to the editor, Mick Audsley. We were trawling through stuff. We were trying to find our original cut, and it’s often difficult to do that. If you go through the Warner Brothers vaults to find out what you did before, because there are generally various cuts of a movie.

But we couldn’t track down the original cut because we had two previews. We had one where I showed a version of it that I knew was too long, and another where I’d done some cuts that I’d intended to do anyway. And I don’t know why that scene is not in the movie. I just love it.

But some of them then, Tom Cruise being shot in the hand and the sword going through him, I think what happened was it was a film where Louis is talking about how his life, once he becomes a vampire, he has to suffer too much. And that’s what drove Brad a bit nuts making the movie. He was kind of suffering his way through. He was telling the story of his life of suffering, in a way.

That’s the only reason I can think for some of the excisions, because we kind of had to—we felt that that theme was being expressed enough in what we’d shot. Do you understand what I mean?

I was so impressed by Kirsten Dunst. She’s so brilliant as Claudia. She’s just 11 at the time, but she has a real gravitas to her character, and she’s able to encapsulate so much with her performance. What stood out about just seeing her do such a great performance when she was so young? And obviously, she’s kept up the great work since.

Well, I mean, if you cast a child, you can be doing a terrible thing to a child. If you cast a kid in a movie, you know, and I read some articles about it. Sarah Polley was saying how it takes so long to escape that cloud of that choice.

When I saw Kirsten, we tested loads of kids, but when I tested Kirsten, I knew. I could tell immediately that she was going to be acting for the rest of her life. That’s one thing. Do you understand what I mean?

So I was dealing with an actress, albeit a child. So that kind of worry that one normally has in casting a child role wasn’t there.

Also, she was kind of an extraordinary actress. Even as a kid, there was a wisdom. She understood the process of acting so well. Let’s put it this way: there was a kind of wisdom to her, even though she was still a child. So that’s why she was so great in the film, I think.

We, as directors, have to be very careful about casting children, I think. And I’ve done it. I made a movie called The Butcher Boy, where I cast the young Eamonn Owens. It’s something that you should be very careful doing, I feel myself. You want to make sure that you’re introducing somebody to a world that they want to belong in.

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Thanks to Neil Jordan for taking the time to talk about Interview with the Vampire.

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