On a cool Wednesday morning, sunlight slipped through the curtains of a hotel suite in downtown New Orleans, where Christopher Rice was staying for the week.
Starting with the broad balcony overlooking high-rises and a blue sky, he gave a brief tour of the palatial suite before taking a seat at the dining table near a picture window. Black coffee kept arriving in thick-rimmed mugs while two plates of powdered beignets waited nearby. Rice appeared relaxed — dressed in a green knit polo and blue jeans, his brown hair gelled to the side.
It was one of his few idle days in the city he grew up in, after his television appearance that morning, before he would host a celebration at Orpheum Theatre on All Saints Day for his late mother Anne Rice, the New Orleans-born Gothic author best known for her 1976 novel “Interview with the Vampire.”…