Created by Rolin Jones 
1.06 “Like Angels Put in Hell by God” & 1.07 “The Thing Lay Still”
Written by Coline Abert (1.06) & Rolin Jones & Ben Philippe (1.07)
Directed by Levan Akin (1.06) & Alexis Ostrander (1.07)
Starring Jacob Anderson, Sam Reid, Bailey Bass, and Eric Bogosian
All episodes now streaming on AMC+

by Emily Maesar, Associate Editor, TVJawn

(The following is part of a larger interview about the entire first season of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire series, airing on Sundays in October and November of 2022. You can decide if that first part is true or not, though.)

Emily Maesar: I’m going to scream. 

MovieJawn: In a good way, or a bad way?

EM: You better be joking.

MJ: (laughs) I see. 

EM: No, but really. It’s been a week since I watched the finale, as we’re talking, and I sometimes will stop whatever I’m doing to just hoot and holler about the way that Rolin Jones and company finished out the season.

MJ: Okay, but let’s circle back. You have this terrible piece of domestic abuse in episode 1.05, right? What’s the fallout from that?

EM: Brutal. But also soft and kind. It’s Lestat getting thrown out of their lives. It’s him trying time and time again to come back in, being rebuffed by Claudia (loudly) and Louis (silently). 

MJ: I can only assume he makes it back in, though, knowing what we know about the story?

EM: That would be a fair assessment. But god, the way they do it. You know that at some point they’ll come back together. They have to, if the rest of the story is going to play out even a little bit like the novel. But the song? It’s a perfect, mean, messy touch that breaks the levee that Louis tried to build between them. It’s this beautiful gesture that is soured, on purpose, by Lestat including the voice of his lover on it. At some point in his battle to get back to Louis and Claudia’s life, he knows that the only way to break through to Louis is to make him angry. He has to do something so fucking outragous, that Louis would swim the Mississipi River to yell at him because it was faster. And that in that confrontation, there was the possibility of getting back together.

MJ: Which they do?

EM: Which they certainly do. And with that coming back together is the laying out of new ground rules. Things to protect Claudia and Louis from Lestat, things that put him in the defensive position, and things that would hold him accountable for his actions and the harm they’ve caused—like killing Antoinette (the aforementioned singer that Lestat was having an affair with). We also get to hear some of Lestat’s backstory, as Claudia enforces the stipulation that he can’t lie to them anymore.

And I would say that this episode, in particular, is really where Sam Reid gets to shine as Lestat. He’s tragic in all the right moments, giving Lestat some needed humanity when he’d been stripping himself of it for the last few episodes. But he’s also an absolute shithead prick in moments that are cunning and have a macabre sense of humor. 

MJ: You’ve mentioned before that the show is funny.

EM: So funny. Like, I’m sorry. Lestat coming onto the train that Claudia is riding on, holding the decapitated head of the conductor… doing a stupid little voice and a silly little hop? Comedy genius. There’s nothing in the world funnier, but it’s also so understandable that Claudia would come home and you’d understand exactly why she plans for Lestat’s murder. 

MJ: That’s where they ended the season, right?

EM: Basically.

MJ: Basically?

EM: (smiles) I realize I haven’t mentioned one of my favorite additions to the modern day interview stuff: Rashid (Assad Zaman). He’s in every episode, and there’s been some wild fan speculation about who he is. He’s supposedly a human servant of Louis’s. We see him getting bitten during meals, he brings Daniel everything he needs, and he speaks of Louis in a way that’s reminiscent of vampire familiars. 

MJ: I’m gonna assume we find out none of that’s true.

EM: Vampire Chronicle fans have been guessing since the first or second episode that the Dubai apartment that we spend all of the modern day interview parts of the show in is actually Armand’s. Like, maybe Armand was hiding Louis from Lestat—since we know Lestat’s not dead and the future after that is a bit wonky.

So, imagine my surprise when we actually get flashbacks to the first interview (well, to the meeting) and fucking Rashid is there with Louis when Daniel first meets him. It’s the final moment of episode 1.06, as Louis tells Daniel of how he and Claudia decided to kill Lestat. But Daniel’s fallen asleep (again, very funny), and Daniel dreams of that first encounter. 

MJ: I imagine there’s a sense of uncertainty of the truth because of it being a dream, then?

EM: Bingo. It’s a supreme ending to the episode and the ultimate lead into the finale. Which, by the way, is a feast for the eyes. As the trio aims to leave New Orleans because their unaging nature is truly being noticed, they decide to throw a huge Mardi Gras party. There they will select people to tempt into eternal life, which is just their code for absolutely draining and killing some of the most annoying people in the city. Iconic!

MJ: And the murder?

EM: It’s a wild thing. Because Lestat knows, but Claudia can beat him at chess, no matter how much he hates it. And she certainly wins this game, when Louis ends up slitting Lestat’s throat with the very sword-as-a-walking-stick that drew Lestat to him in the first place. It’s poetry—it’s rhymes. 

MJ: That’s something.

EM: It really is! And then, we’re pulled to the modern day because Daniel? Good ol’ Daniel Malloy has questions! And god bless him. He has questions about state that Lestat was left in (they don’t burn him, instead they leave him for the trash collector where he’ll be put in the dump with rats). He has questions about how Rashid is able to withstand being drained, when the other men Louis drinks from are weakened deeply after. And he has questions about his memories… and Louis’s.

Which is, of course, when my absolutely favorite, completely batshit reveal happens. Those fans who thought that maybe Rashid was actually everybody’s favorite little ancient psycho, the vampire Armand? They were proven very correct. And here’s where I must say that I have always been an Armand girlie. So, imagine me watching this episode. I was positively hootin’ and hollarin’.

MJ: (laughs) That feels like an understatement, knowing you.

EM: Your brutal honesty is noted. 

For real, though. This is one of my favorite reveals in any show. And not just because I’m deeply invested in the source material and the character being revealed. I think it’s done so well and I can’t remember if I actually said this, or not, but I actually find the modern day stuff to be the most interesting. At least, from an adaptive narrative point of view. Obviously, making Daniel older and having the other interview in the ‘70s happen in canon means a lot for where the story is in the present tense. And it continues to be the most surprising of any part of the story at large.

Rolin Jones mentioned that he wanted that final shots of the finale to be reminiscent of the final moments of The Graduate, and they absolutely nailed that. Something is deeply wrong about Armand and Louis’s relationship. And it’s not just because Vampire Chronicle fans have a notion of Armand, in general, but also because we have a notion about Armand’s relationships with Lestat, Louis, and even our darling interviewer.

MJ: Thank god they already got a second season, then?

EM: Truly. I’ve never been so happy to know that information immediately in my life. And with everything racing through my head between the way the bookshelves are suspended from the ceiling (notable since Armand has the gift of flight, but Louis does not), how Armand is canonically involved in Claudia’s death, and the way that man is going to eat Daniel up and spit him out a vampire and even more queer than he possibly remembers himself to be… I’m just gonna keep screaming.