When author Anne Rice's thoughts turned to the casting of her screenplay based on her cult novel of the same name, River was her first choice to play the part of the Lestat, the vampire. Although director, Neil Jordan agreed with this decision, they were overruled by the studio executives who wanted Tom Cruise for the role instead. River was then re-cast as the journalist and interviewer, Malloy.

Tom Cruise as Lestat and Brad Pitt as Louis in "Interview With The Vampire".

River would show no disappointment with this decision, but did seem to lack any great enthusiasm for the project in general. "I don't like vampires all that much," he said. "It's good they cast me as the interviewer in the sense that I can be pessimistic." After being somewhat surprised by the content of the script, River went on to say, "It's weird when you see erotic stuff back-to-back with blood and stuff. I'm sure in the realm of vampires, it's very sexy."

Most of the movie's shooting had been completed by October 1993. All that remained were the few scenes involving the interviewer that would then be inserted at various points throughout the film. Production was put on hold for a few weeks whilst River finished working on Dark Blood.

The terrible events of the end of that month meant that River would never film those segments. However, there would still be a place for him in the closing credits:-

"When I first heard about it," said Christian Slater, "after getting over the initial shock, I thought, oh God, who are they going to get?" When Slater himself was recast in the role he would donate of all his fee earned from this movie to River's favorite causes and charities. "That's the only way I could have done it," he said later.

That feeling of benevolence was not felt by all. The movie's insurers would soon take out a law suit against the Phoenix estate stating that River had lied during his medical examination with regard to the use of narcotics.

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