Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Interview with the Vampire’s Season 2 finale.

The Big Picture

Sam Reid discusses Lestat’s mindset during the trial and the complexity of the character in
Interview with the Vampire
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Lestat’s relationships with Louis and Claudia are portrayed as complex, filled with guilt, regret, and chaos.
There is potential for exploring the real Lestat in future seasons, as Reid believes the character has not yet been fully revealed.

The penultimate episode of Interview with the Vampire Season 2 may have left all of us in shambles, but it turns out the show wasn’t done putting us through the wringer, either. Although the titular interview in the present-day timeline appears to be winding down in Episode 8, “And That’s The End of It. There’s Nothing Else,” it turns out that veteran journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) has a few follow-up questions for the vampires Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) and Armand (Assad Zaman) — about Paris, in particular. There are important details to clarify regarding the fateful trial at the Théâtre des Vampires, which ultimately culminates in the deaths of Claudia (Delainey Hayles) and Madeleine (Roxane Duran).

The truth that gradually, heartbreakingly comes to light changes everything we thought we knew about what we’ve just been told. Louis discovers that Armand was not the one truly responsible for sparing him from death; rather, his sire and former lover, Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), managed to telepathically control the human audience long enough to ensure a sentence of banishment instead. Additionally, Armand was not as helpless to prevent events as he made it seem; he played a significant role in both writing and directing the trial-as-play from the beginning. When Louis is confronted by the undeniable proof of Armand’s involvement via an annotated script of the play, it’s evidence that Armand himself can’t deny, and there are significant consequences that follow — not just for the vampires’ long-time relationship, but the very fate of Molloy himself from that night onward.

Ahead of the finale’s premiere (and prior to the announcement that Interview with the Vampire had been renewed for a third season), Collider had the opportunity to speak with Reid about some of the biggest moments for his character across the final two episodes of Season 2. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, Reid reveals Lestat’s mindset going into the trial, whether we’re getting a glimpse into Lestat’s real feelings whenever he goes off-script, why Lestat will forever be haunted by the memory of Claudia in her final moments, if he’s ever played the real Lestat in the series to date, and more.

Interview with the Vampire Based on Anne Rice’s iconic novel, follow Louis de Pointe’s epic story of love, blood and the perils of immortality, as told to the journalist Daniel Molloy.Release Date 2022-00-00 Creator Rolin Jones Cast Sam Reid , Jacob Anderson , Eric Bogosian , Bailey Bass , Assad Zaman Seasons 2

COLLIDER: I’m still reeling after watching these last two episodes in very close succession, so I can only imagine what it was like to film it. In terms of Episode 7, it’s mostly set in the Paris timeline, which is confined to the theater. How many days of filming was that, and how often did you all try to run through it like it was actually a play, with really long takes?

SAM REID: Oh, well, Emma Freeman directed it — who I worked with, actually, on another show [The Newsreader], and, actually, Emma’s style is long takes. Emma likes to keep the flow of a scene, and I have done some really long takes with Emma in working with her for many years. This was probably some of the longest takes. I think I did, sometimes, 10-minute takes. It’s pretty exhausting, so at the end of the day, I’d be pretty tired, because doing it was crazy. We also had to stop halfway through that episode because of the strikes, so we had to come back and pick it up a couple of months later, which made it a bit of a minefield, to try and remember where you were. Luckily, I had done most of the major coverage before the strikes. Yeah, we did a lot of it in long, single takes.

Sam Reid Explains Lestat’s Mindset During the Trial
Image via AMC

Does Lestat show up with revenge on his mind, or want some form of retribution for what happened in New Orleans? At what point does he have the shift of, “Maybe this isn’t really what I want”?

REID: There’s two answers to that. One is the construct of the episode, which is exactly what you just described. He comes back for revenge, is here to destroy everyone and avenge his death — or his attempted murder — and the construct of the episode is that he looks at Louis, and then his mind is going to be changed. That is the layer upon the story that Louis and Armand are telling: Lestat is back for vengeance. The story that the episode tells, that you can tell, is that maybe Lestat’s mind is shifted once he looks at Louis.

But then, when you find out, you’ve got to remember that this is also a rehearsed play, so Lestat is speaking actual written lines. He comes out there, all of his lines are written. Sometimes, he knows that he is going to let the vampires know that he’s not going to stick to the book. That’s the script pretty early on. As soon as he opens his mouth, he’s saying a different line. He wants to keep them on their toes.

I don’t personally believe Lestat will ever find himself in a situation where he would let Louis die. I just don’t think it’s really realistic, but he’s also not a calculating character. He doesn’t think that far ahead. He’s much more impulsive. So yeah, it’s a mess. It’s a big mess, and I don’t think much of it was planned. Although he’s there, and he’s going to sit through these rehearsals, he’s going to do the play the way he wants to do it. There are specific things that I have thought of, but I don’t know if that ruins the episode.

It’s interesting that this is how the trial plays out, in this form, particularly for Lestat — who, as we see, admittedly in flashbacks that are told through Armand’s perspective, has experience on the stage. Do you feel like this is an opportunity that gets presented to him that is almost too good to resist? To have this all out in a very public, theatrical sort of way?

REID: I think that’s a structure that Armand would like to present — that Santiago presented Lestat with the opportunity to come back on stage, and it’s too good an opportunity for him to resist, to say no. But actually, they’re a pretty second-rate, dirty vampire theater, which Lestat doesn’t think much of. He definitely doesn’t think much of all those projections. He thinks they’re pretty trashy.

I think he can’t not be there. That’s the reason why he’s really there. But I don’t think Lestat has a good relationship with being on stage. The last time he was really on stage, he had a full-blown, contortionist, nervous breakdown, and this is the next time he’s on stage, probably on stage, and Louis is on trial, and Claudia is killed, and it’s very traumatic. That trial play is… I don’t think he’ll ever get over it. I don’t necessarily think it’s like, “Ah, I’m back on stage. This is my place.” Now, the thing that he loves performing, and theater, and being a performer, is tied very closely to really, really fucked up events. It’s interesting how that sets him up going forward.

The dialogue that the coven has Lestat reading paints Louis as more of the pursuer early in their relationship. It’s hard to imagine that this is something that Lestat would truly believe. It feels like, to a point, it’s a way to frame the audience’s mind against Louis. When Lestat goes off-script, are those the moments when we’re seeing what he really thinks about all this?

REID: It’s pretty complex, because the whole “come to me” thing is… there are layers, upon layers, upon layers. The vampires just sort of say that to each other — “come to me, come to me” — in their heads. I think Louis and Lestat did a bit of “come to me” to each other. Louis framing Lestat as this predatory figure that came into his life… I think they were in love with each other, and I don’t think Lestat was misguided in that, but we obviously saw a one-sided version of events in Season 1.

There’s a lot of personal information in that play, but I don’t really know where it came from. There are some things that are definitely created by the Vampire Sam, definitely some things that have been written by Armand. There were a couple of amendments that Lestat added just before he went on stage, and then there are points where he definitely goes off script. It’s kind of interesting to leave that up to the audience to debate, because it is, hopefully, an episode that you can watch a couple of times once you know the truth, and see what’s happening and where.

Sam Reid on Why Lestat Will Be “Forever Haunted” by Claudia
Image via AMC

In terms of Claudia, what is Lestat’s perspective on their relationship, especially in the aftermath of what plays out for her?

REID: He loves Claudia. I think he wishes he didn’t, because it’s very hard, because they’re so similar, Claudia and Lestat. He made her, and she carries so much of him in her, and he didn’t want them to go to Paris. He just didn’t want them to be here. It is probably his fault that he didn’t explain it to her, but he’s not really capable of sitting down and doing things sweetly. He’s a very chaotic individual. He’s a very chaotic vampire, so there’s a lot of guilt, a lot of shame, a lot of regret, and sometimes, when you regret something so much, you kind of lean into it, and you make everything worse, particularly when you think that that’s all your worth is. Being bad is being a nightmare, so you may as well be the nightmare for them. Look, he loves Claudia. He’ll be forever haunted by her death. He’ll never get over it, and that’s a wonderful thing for a character to have — the lack of closure over a really horrific event, and carrying that guilt through his life.

This is something I’ve been thinking about since the beginning of the show, but it seems that we really haven’t gotten to see the real Lestat. Season 1 is told from Louis’s point of view. In Season 2, he’s technically in Louis’s head, but also framed from Armand’s point of view. Even the trial is being told through Louis and Armand’s perspectives.

REID: Episode 8, I suppose, you’re now out of the narrative, and you’re in real-time. Louis goes to New Orleans and you see him, and so he’s told without any sort of subjective or narrative point-of-view framework there. But he’s not in a great state of mind. He’s not necessarily in his best form, but there he is. He’s a shell of himself. But yeah, sorry, you had a question.

Has there really been a point thus far, aside from the scene that you mention, where you’ve gotten to play the real Lestat — or is it more that in a potential Season 3, we’re going to get the real Lestat for the first time?

REID: It puts a lot of pressure on somebody, doesn’t it? When you’re like, “When are we going to get the real Lestat?” I don’t want to take away credit from Louis and say that he got everything wrong, because he’s trying to tell this story about years and years, starting in the ’70s and then again in the 2000s and 2020s. So I don’t want to be like, “He got it all wrong.” I think he got quite a few things right. But Lestat is probably a bit messier than we’ve seen. I think he’s brilliant, and there’s a lot of room to explore him. How we do that, I can’t tell you.

Interview with the Vampire Season 2 is available to stream on AMC+ in the U.S.

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