“For me, there was nothing to do, just sit and watch,” the Hollywood star admitted feeling very uncomfortable during the filming of this film that he did not abandon because it would have cost him 40 million dollars.
At 57 years old, he continues to be one of the most important stars of the film industry today. It delivers one big hit and then another comes along, but Brad Pitt wasn't always comfortable enough playing roles. There was one in particular that he never finished closing because the script promised a lot for his character but he got very little, so much so that he even got bored and seriously thought about the possibility of giving up on the film.
By 1994, Pitt was no stranger to the industry. Although he did not reach the star level that other actors had, he already had films such as Johnny Suede and Thelma & Louise in his filmography. Interview with the Vampire, based on the successful novel by Anne Rice, hit theaters in November of that year; Pitt shared credits with Tom Cruise, Christian Slater, Kirsten Dunst, and Antonio Banderas. The reviews were decent and the movie was a hit at the box office, everything seemed great. But, deep down, her protagonist had not had a good time during filming.
“I was disappointed in Interview with the Vampire. Because, in the book, he was a guy trying to figure out who he was, if he was a god or if he was the devil. The film focused more on Lestat's antics, which were done very well, but my character ended up being dragged from place to place and set up for sensational moments. And it became more whiny than a real search. “That frustrated me,” the actor commented to Rolling Stone.
Basically, his complaints lie in the twist that was given to his character. For Pitt, it was Lestat, played by Tom Cruise, who took the lead in the film thanks to the script: “In the book, this guy [Louis] asks himself: 'Who am I?', which probably applied to myself at that time. In the novel, Louis is a guy who goes in search of discovery. And meanwhile, he has this Lestat character who fascinates him and whom he hates. They took the best aspects of Lestat and made them the pulse of the film, something good and enjoyable, but for me, there was nothing to do but sit and watch.”
The situation was depressing for the actor, whose desperation led him to consider an overly drastic measure: resign from Interview with the Vampire. He told this to David Geffen, his producer: “I told him, 'David, I can't do this anymore. I can not do it. How much will it cost me to get out?' Then he told me, very calmly, 'forty million dollars.' And I responded: 'OK, thank you.' That took away my anxiety. I was like 'I've got to man up and get over this, and that's what I'm going to do,'” he added.
However, it was not just the narrative of the story that complicated his stay on the project. The filming conditions also influenced his annoyance. Being a story about vampires, mythology indicated that they had to act in the dark most of the time. The nighttime filming went on for too long, and it was added to the list of things that bothered Brad Pitt.
“It was a difficult shoot. I finished Legends of Passion and went straight to that. First of all, everything was dark. In New Orleans we filmed for three months in the dark, we filmed every night. There's a scene at the beginning of the movie that takes place during the day, and that's it. The rest was in darkness. And that really started to get into my psyche,” he concluded.
