***Season 1 Spoilers Ahead***
Nearly two years have passed since being welcomed into The Immortal Universe. Constructed by Howard Allen Frances O’Brien who for these scribings was affectionately known as Anne Rice. Her Vampire Chronicles debuted in 1976 with Interview with the Vampire, its contents set the stage for the journey we are to embark on. A redo from the 1994 film starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and eleven-year-old Kirsten Dunst. Yet this series would grant the Rice family a greater desired influence on the shaping of the tale.
Romantic and gothic while delivering terror filled complications of life only heightened by preternatural senses. The task set before us -to come to know Louis de Pointe du Lac. The illustrious and ever talented Jacob Anderson breathes new life into the title role of a wary yet enchanting vampire. Haunted with a great despair that is so palpable you can’t help but to root for him against your own peril. The character now a Black Creole man having lived in 1910 Louisiana while balancing all the accoutrements of the era for someone of couleur. Through his conversations with who was once and still is very much a boy in his eyes, Daniel Molloy portrayed by veteran actor, Eric Bogosian is the gruff and somewhat jaded interviewer.
Molloy now an older and ill man reluctantly returns to continue the interview he began many years prior. His memories of what occurred the first time muddled in his brain. But he wants to leave a cushion for his daughters and perhaps ex-wives when he meets his demise. Parkinsons making his lifelong career as a journalist harder to manage, he travels in first class to Dubai after receiving a second invitation he’d never again expected.
Perspective pushes pride to the side for man and vampire alike to strike up the talks once more. But Daniel has caveats that he be allowed to dive deeper in the directions previously uninspected. Louis tentatively agrees, believing his new patience and desire for delivering his life would provide an authentic cautionary tale as much as shielding memory would give.
The interview begins once more with the introduction of then, thirty-two year old Louis de Pointe du Lac, successor to his fathers failings as a colored plantation owner. Months away from losing it all, Louis shifts to where fast money lays, desire. The eldest son responsible for his family’s trust spent five years building their wealth back. In the red-light district then known as Storyville, he catered to wantings for liquor, drugs and of course sex that crossed color lines set by Jim Crow laws. Sporting houses on Liberty Street by night hid the opulence of the family’s home in the day.
A judgmental mother, Florence accepts the dirty money to keep her standing in society. A delightful sister, Grace engaged to be married to Levi still adores her brother. While Paul, the younger brother, is rattled with mental health issues unaddressed for shame and fear of it worsening. Louis wonders if his brother’s behavior is truly from illness or if the religious trappings have overwhelmed him bleeding out for all to witness. But he choses to ignore it mostly leaving the task to his mother and sister while he revels in the seedy underbelly of New Orleans.
His stature in the community elevated but the color of his skin remains a barrier to the respect Mr. Pointe du Lac deserved to possess. Dealings with businessmen that would use his labor and cast him aside with meager portions of their earnings infuriated him. But he’d all too well become accustomed to the degrading subservience required to not find oneself swinging from a tree. Many would say he’d done well to even be allowed in the room at all. But the pressures of juggling it all grew wariness when combined with his need to hide another part of himself, his sexuality.
With all this occurring, Louis was unknowingly the object of conquest. A slow seduction evolving in strides of an expert hunter. A Frenchman comes to town irritating and beguiling with his level of decadence and charm. Lestat de Lioncourt is a tough role to fill but Sam Reid does so seemingly smoothly, swapping for many the past imaginings of the Brat Prince to his likeness. A vampire had begun his own path towards escaping loneliness.
Tragedy continues to strike Louis’ life when his beloved brother Paul commits suicide the morning after their sister Grace’s wedding. The dance the brothers shared the night before was maybe the last grasp on sanity the younger could unearth before he stepped off the roof to his demise. The despair from his brother sudden death, being shunned by his mother and all of his other troubles crashed on Louis spiraling till he sought refuge in the church with confession. But this was not to be when the walls shook, fires blazed, and he witnessed the swift and gruesome murders of the clergymen by none other than his friend and lover Lestat. The proclamation of understanding, reverence, and love persuaded Louis away from his sorrow and into the arms of his soon to become Maker. He’d make the choice. Accepting the dark gift and becoming a vampire.
Their honeymoon period combined with the new birth into vampirism. At first satisfying with its power and beauty until the same questions of human life begin to nag. Louis’ need to cling to his human past and the disrespects he endured serve to compound his feelings of ineptitude when Lestat is dissatisfied his humanity hasn’t switched off. The trappings of being a fledgling in this new position still confine Louis in the olds ways. Lestat, a white male vampire even with his empathy can’t fully consider the greater patience necessary to contain oneself when racism is an added ingredient. Also, his unwillingness to provide answers only helps to thrust the lovers further apart.
Into their own flights of fancy, the couple divide with their endeavors. Lestat weaponizing jealousy to protect his vulnerability. While Louis tries to find a greater meaning and sets his own dietary boundaries. A past shame no longer holds, and he partakes in a tryst with a soldier off to war. But the human world he’s still involved in brings mayhem that once again reminds him of his former “place”. His vengeful actions bring forth consequences for Black people in Storyville. Louis seeks to right one wrong and hears a cry for help.
Aged up from the five-year-old little girl in the novel, Claudia enters played by relative newcomer Bailey Bass in season one. When a marriage is in trouble, the last thing it needs is an addition. But that’s just what Louis and Lestat charge headfirst into with the girl who would’ve died not for being rescued. The Dark Gift is bestowed on her through altruism mostly on Lestat’s part. His need to keep his love has him grant the wish. Louis, overjoyed by his ability to make something right, doesn’t think on the long term issues a child vampire will present. A girl that will never grow, blossom or mature physically all while her mind and intellect do is halted from the rights of passage adults often take for granted. The hormonal tempers prove to eventually drive the couple apart once more.
Claudia, realizing herself a balm lashes out at her pseudo father and uncle. The answers she also needs are not there for her either. Lestat, once entranced with her savage ways, doesn’t like to be challenged. Louis trapped in the center tries to placate them both but Claudia does what children do when not given explanations, she leaves home to seek them out herself. There she finds what parents often unskillfully warn kids of- a predator.
Heartbreaking pain is inflicted on their daughter causing her to return home. Claudia’s plan- to abscond with the better parent sets Lestat into a violent rage. His hidden Cloud gift enacted with horrifying results displayed in the shambles of Louis’ broken body, dropped from the heavens back to earth. Lestat’s wrath culminates when he feels abandoned and that his love is not reciprocated. His strength permitted him to continue his overbearing, dominate and manipulative streak to explode into full blown abuse. With Lestat rightfully banished, Claudia cares for her loving parent. Her uncle continues over the years to try and make amends, lavishing gifts until he realizes the only thing that will break through. His truth.
His making was not by choice in the 1700’s. Not a gift at all. A brutal vampire stole him from his bed, tossing him into a dungeon filled with others that resembled him. Feeding off him for untold time while trapped with varying degrees of his own death visible for him to witness. Lestat was no doubt was transported back to the days of his own father and brothers assaulting and mocking him. Thrown out into the world as a fledgling to make his way when his maker left him with money and leapt into a fire. Claudia can see the softening of Louis. A tenuous truce is enacted, and the trio spend years tiptoeing around one another. Lestat claims to have finally rid himself of his outside fancy with Antionette while he won’t allow Claudia to depart again.
The stage is set for the youngest and most cunning vampire to free herself and the now considered brother with her. Louis, tortured by his unyielding devotion in what he knows is an abusive situation agrees. But the only way forward either can see is to- Kill Lestat.
Claudia, knowing that abundance and arrogance are the ultimate downfall for her maker sets a trap. Of course, knowing Lestat is swift to see ahead, she doubles her plan. Using Louis’ wavering to disarm Lestat while feeding him information that she knew would make its way to their target in some means. And she was correct, when Antoinette arrives for the afterparty. Trying to turn the tables when the deck was already stacked against them, Lestat falls ill. Purging the poisoned blood he just gouged from the man that insulted him. A funny turn when the same man had disrespected Louis for decades and he never saw fit to remove him then. Yet he’d tore into him now that escape was the original plan. He’d just assumed Antionette would replace Claudia and Louis would succumb to his will.
Woozy, Lestat gives into his fate. Either his strength was truly depleted or perhaps lessened from heartbreak. He bids Louis ado before his lover heart wrenchingly slits his throat. Bleeding him out wouldn’t be enough, he needed to go into the fire like the human bodies and Antoinette’s but Louis resists. Rolled in a carpet and set out like trash, Lestat’s husk of a body ends up in the city dump. Louis and Claudia depart for a separate planned escape but the lingering presence of their maker may continue to loom over the duo.
Throughout the whole process of capturing these recorded dialogues, Daniel Molloy doesn’t seem to try and remain aloof. But certain moments suck him in and his opinions whether hostile or not, are shared. When he does so he notices Louis’ companion, Rashid becomes increasingly distressed by him doing so. Assad Zaman depicts Rashid with a careful balance of duality that hides right before our eyes.
Daniel starts to piece together a picture of why these servants would be in service to a vampire. A temperamental vampire at that. But Rashid’s maneuvering catches his eye the most when a foggy memory throws Daniel off. Yet he pushes on ensconced with the autobiography until Louis sentimental description of the ending of Lestat doesn’t make sense.
Molloy pushes further wanting an answer not realizing the dangers he easily provokes. A danger he vaguely remembers encountering on their first meeting in San Francisco. Rashid saved him once before. But how could he have been there? Daniel watched the man walk in the sun. But he also saw him unfazed by Louis feasting on his slight frame and walk away easily unlike a man that had sixty pounds on him.
Then Rashid’s feet lifted from the ground and he floated up to the bookshelf procuring a manuscript. With his contacts now removed, his eyes glowed in an orangey tone. The 500 year old vampire was now immune to the suns rays and he floated to Louis’ side. Their fingers intertwined and our storyteller makes an announcement that we are left to reckon with. Because all that we’ve known of Louis’ affections whether unspoken or not, he’d always been engrossed with his maker, Lestat. But now he proclaims Rashid or rather the vampire Armand to be the love of his life.
The Lestat chapter of Louis life seemed to be coming to a close but this revelation conjures new questions. Not just of the creator’s fate but of Claudia’s. How and when did this love affair between Louis and Armand come to be? And how had it managed to last this long?
Our hopes are that all of these questions are answers in Season 2 of Interview with the Vampire while leaving more intrigue for the future of The Immortal Universe. Tune into AMC starting Sunday, May 12th for the thrilling, spine tingling, romantic and melancholy journey to discover whether other vampires exist.
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