25 Things You Didn’t Know About Interview With The Vampire
9. She Was So Convinced That She Genderflipped Louis And Lestat
She didn’t leave it at that, however. At one point in the adaptation’s long gestation, Rice and Phillips had considered rewriting the role of Louis to be female. The idea was that genderflipping one of the two central vampire characters would completely remove any homoeroticism in the narrative and so remove any hesitation on the part of producers and moneymen in getting the movie greenlit.
For a while, both Cher and Anjelica Huston were considered as hypothetical casting. However, there was debate over whether it would be better to flip Lestat or Louis - Rice was keener on Louis, but reportedly her editor, Vicki Wilson really wanted Anjelica Huston to play Lestat. She’d given the reworked background some thought, though:
...the whole idea was that Louis would be a transvestite woman. At that time in history, you could own your own plantation and run things if you were a man, you couldn't if you were a woman. It was the French law. So this was a woman who dressed like a man, and otherwise it was exactly the same as Interview With The Vampire.
The idea went nowhere, although Cher’s near involvement led to a song being recorded for the movie’s soundtrack called ‘Lovers Forever’ that was ultimately rejected and wound up on a Cher album nearly twenty years later.