Stuart Townsend and Aaliyah in QUEEN OF THE DAMNED
© 2002 Warner Bros.

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The Vampire... Stuart? Part Two

The film's chief strength is its strong visuals, something director Michael Rymer brought to the screen in an attempt to make Queen of the Damned a very slick, modern experience. One of the most distinctive scenes is one featuring Lestat and his mentor Marius (Vincent Perez) sitting beneath a billboard advertising Letstat's band above Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Townsend notes with a smile that in fact, "We did the billboard scene not on Sunset Boulevard, but at four in the morning in a chocolate factory outside of Melbourne [Australia] in front of this green screen. It's kind of mad."

After a

Stuart Townsend is the vampire Lestat in QUEEN OF THE DAMNED.

© 2002 Warner Bros.

"I did two weeks of post dubbing. I had to dub the entire movie. Which was really rough."

His entire part?

"Every line was pretty much dubbed," he groans. "Everyone had to do it, but I had to do more of it than everyone. It was a nightmare, because it's a compromise. You go in there and sometimes you go, 'God, I did a shit job and now I can do better.' But I'd worked so hard, I was happy with what I'd done. Suddenly six months later I'm in Hollywood and I'm like, 'I got to remember all of this again and try to emote standing in this room with speakers.' Strange. I think 90 percent is re-dubbed in the studio." He laughs again at the memory. "Somebody forgot to fire the sound man."

Not that he didn't have a good time overall. One of his favorite bits was a gripping scene in which Lestat crawls up a wall and across the ceiling before dropping onto two horrified groupies below.

"That was

Stuart Townsend and Aaliyah in QUEEN OF THE DAMNED

© 2002 Warner Bros.

Overshadowing The Queen of the Damned is the untimely death of Aaliyah, whose plane crashed a few months after principal shooting was completed. She was 22.

"She was amazing," Townsend says, his voice growing lower. "As journalists, you probably never heard a bad word about her, and that's the way it goes. She's really just fun. She'd come on set and she'd be giggling in between takes." But when the director called action "she nailed it every time. Really dedicated. She was going to do everything, you know? We spent a month together just doing pre-production with wire work and voice lessons and going over certain movements, and she was on such a roll."

And what was the behind-the-scenes behavior of an overnight pop star who'd had hit records, worldwide fame and a budding film career by the time she'd hit 20?

"She came

QUEEN OF THE DAMNED

© 2002 Warner Bros.

The tone lightens when the memorable love scene between Townsend and Aaliyah set in a rose-pedaled bath scene is mentioned.

"Yeah, you have no idea," he says with a wicked smile before adding, "it's funny when you have a bath in front of a hundred people. It was fun, though, and that's a pretty good scene."

Back in the day, say 1994, writer Anne Rice was very vocal about her displeasure in the casting of Cruise in Interview With a Vampire. This time around the producers of Queen of the Damned wisely kept the author in the loop and routinely sent her script revisions. Townsend recalls his own meeting with the reputed iron lady, who is said to be something of a recluse who seldom leaves her gothic mansion in New Orleans.

"She'd read a New Yorker review of me in a play, and it was really good and she was really happy," Townsend says. "I went to New Orleans, went to her house, spent six hours chatting away, got the guided tour of this incredible house. But after I was in there 10 minutes, she gave me Queen of the Damned and The Witching Hour and they were like [inscribed], 'To Stuart blah, blah,' and I was like, 'Great.' And then she says, 'The Witching Hour, you're on page 46.' And I picked it up and on page 46 it said, 'The Life of Stuart Townsend.' And I was like, 'Wow, that's really amazing -- you put me as a character in your new book.' And she said, 'No, I wrote this 11 years ago.' After that I was walking around New Orleans watching my back," Townsend adds with an easy laugh.