I have to say I’ve never gotten a race casting suggestion quite like this before! So this is a first ^_________^ It’s especially appropriate to answer it on MLK Jr. day here in the U.S., when we reflect on the progress we’ve made and how far we still need to go in pursuit of an equal society for all. 

EDIT: @firelight-fading had given us The Vampire Chronicles Facebook Interview **Recap**(5/4/17) in which we got this info:

• Some characters may change where “ethnicity is flexible” 
• Anne and Chris agree that POC being casted are important and will be considered in casting. The Millennial vamps (older gang) will most likely be largely POC.

• Marius was played by a black man in the musical and Anne thought he did a great job. Marius can be any ethnicity so long as he’s half Roman. She’d prefer to have Marius as blue eyes and blonde haired like Lestat but it’s “not imperative for him”.

• Anne and Chris to be inclusive, but will always focus more on how fine the actor is. Talent is needed to get the role, not just looks.

TL;DR #1:

You might be right about Daniel’s race not being explicitly stated in canon, and if it were up to me, I would be open to considering a POC to be cast as Daniel, or other characters. Any adaptation provides a chance to improve on canon the way fanfic/fanart do 😉

TL;DR #2:

However, casting Daniel as a POC may introduce racial considerations that AR & Co. are not capable of addressing well, especially during the mortal!Daniel/Armand time period (1975-85), a decade in the U.S. when interracial relationships were still somewhat taboo. Since we have our fair share of racial issues now, too, whether

AR & Co.

shift the Modern Era to now, or leave it 1975-85, racial issues would still need to be addressed.

[^Everyone loves John Boyega and he would cost a bazillion dollars to cast in anything now, but I saw him in the movie “Attack the Block” years ago in which he’s more like Daniel to me, and I think he was great in that, dealing with packs of

weird

roving aliens, and I think he’d do well with

weird roving

vampires! So yes, as a casting suggestion, Boyega would be my first POC choice for Daniel.]

BTW @shomacsalami had posted a suggestion for an R&B musical of Vampire Chronicles you might be interested in:

• Usher as Lestat
• Drake as Louis
• Willow Smith as Claudia
• Elle Varner as Armand  
• Trey Songz as Marius
• The Weeknd as Nicolas de Lenfent
• Kelly Rowland as Bianca Solderini
• Miguel as Daniel Molloy
• Nicki Minaj as Akasha
• Ciara as Pandora
• Janelle Monae as Maharet
• Rihanna as Madeleine (my addition ^u^)

An adaptation is a director/showrunner’s vision for the canon material. It’s like an official fanwork. Some changes to canon in an adaptation are for the better, but “better” is subjective, of course. We tend to consider the opinion as objective when the majority agrees on the change being “better.”

• Claudia was aged up by about 6 years for movie!IWTV, bc they couldn’t find a child close to the canon age who could act better than Kirsten. For that role, I think the performance was more important than the canon-compliance, and her being closer to achieving physical maturity made her more tragic ;A;
• Armand was aged up and physically very different, the director may have wanted him to be more convincing as Armand-the-oldest-living-vampire-in-the-world to audiences who had not read the books. Many fans of the books STILL DO NOT LIKE this change.
• Claudia’s Story was an official VC graphic novel, since by nature it was from Claudia’s POV, some of the narrative from IWTV was altered or removed entirely. Was it for the better? I felt like we got a better understanding of Claudia’s character, so maybe it was, but for me, it relies on and coexists with IWTV, it’s a slightly different story.
• Movie!QOTD changed many things from canon, including making Akasha visibly a POC, even though she is described in canon as being white from age and *handwaves* AR’s vampire physiological reasons. I think many ppl would agree with me that that change was definitely for the better, but many of the other changes in that movie? Not as good, but some ppl love that movie and/or consider it nostalgic. 

So could a POC Daniel be good for the adaptation? I can’t pick a side so I’ll say: Possibly!

Hit the jump for more, cut for length.

1) You’re right that we don’t have much diversity in canon 😛 This casting could add a new dimension to the Armand/Daniel ship that wasn’t there before. According to Wiki:

Interracial marriage in the United States has been fully legal in all U.S. states since the 1967 Supreme Court decision that deemed anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional, with many states choosing to legalize interracial marriage at much earlier dates.

Daniel meeting Armand in 1975 would mean that interracial marriage had been fully legal for less than a decade. From 1975-85, their “courtship,” I think it was a time when interracial relationships were still somewhat taboo in society, at least in the U.S., and it still is taboo in some places in the U.S. and around the world. So that would need to be carefully addressed. Or they could change the time period to be more current, but I would say that we have different race issues now that would need to be addressed, no less pressing than in 1985. 

2) Anne, Bryan*, Chris**, & Co. may not be equipped to handle racial issues very well. Anne has gotten criticism from fans, at least from what I’ve seen here on tumblr, that when she writes POC she “fetishizes” them. I haven’t fully accepted that term itself, but I can agree that AR often writes POC in a way that treats their superficial qualities as being overly sexy and appealing. I think she tries to address – but may not quite grasp – the deeper racial issues that could be addressed, but writing about POC issues is also something I am not well-educated about, so I wouldn’t know how to improve her writing of this subject matter.

Here’s an example of how she describes her POC characters, this is Davis, a black vampire in QOTD:

Davis was a black Dead guy and one damned good-looking black Dead guy, as Baby Jenks saw it. His skin had a gold glow to it, the Dead glow which in the case of white Dead guys made them look like they were standing in a fluorescent light all the time. Davis had beautiful eyelashes too, just damn near unbelievably long and thick, and he decked himself out in all the gold he could find. He stole the gold rings and watches and chains and things off the victims.

Choosing a race for a character whose race might appear open-ended in canon to make them Good Representation, could pose the risk of Bad Representation.

*I don’t know the American Gods series and I haven’t watched the adaptation, or heard reviews about the casting of a POC person specifically, so I don’t know if that’s a sign that it was a widely-agreed upon successful change to the canon material.

**Similarly, I haven’t read any of Chris’s books so idk if he even has POC in them.