The Big Picture

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff talks with the cast and showrunner of
Interview with the Vampire
at SDCC 2024.
Sam Reid, Delainey Hayles, Assad Zaman, and Rolin Jones discuss challenging scenes, character relationships, and the fan reaction to Season 2.
Jones also breaks down how he crafted that unforgettable Louis and Lestat reunion scene in the Season 2 finale.

It’s a bloody tale as old as time. Season 2 of Interview with the Vampire brings back two tragic vampire lovers from different worlds — one clinging to his former humanity and the other embracing his monstrosity.

Based on Anne Rice’s 1976 novel, the story is a blend of ambition and calamity, following a love story that once seemed promising but feels doomed from the start. With its fresh, modern retelling transporting audiences to Dubai 2022 and switching between the present and various historical periods, the show has gained a following for its innovative approach while staying true to the core of the original story.

With Season 2 of Interview with the Vampirestill fresh in fans’ minds, Perri Nemiroff chatted with the series showrunner and executive producer Rolin Jones and stars Sam Reid, Delainey Hayles, and Assad Zaman at the Collider interview studio at San Diego Comic-Con 2024. Check out our interview with the team in the video above, or you can read the full conversation in transcript form below.

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

PERRI NEMIROFF:Now that we can talk Season 2 spoilers, which scene did you think was going to be the most difficult for you to pull off, and ultimately, was it, or did a different one catch you by surprise?

ROLIN JONES: The entirety of Episode 7. It’s not supposed to work. It’s a play; it’s not supposed to work cinematically. I think it was just great terror right from the beginning when we conceived of it, “Are we gonna be able to pull it off?” That was the thing that was terrifying for me.

DELAINEY HAYLES: I was gonna say [Episode] 7, as well, but I’m gonna say Episode 4—Baby Lulu. It was interesting for me because I was enjoying it, but I had to remember that Claudia didn’t enjoy it. There were lots of elements involved in it and a couple of rehearsals. To see it come together, it was better than I expected it to be. I’m very happy with that Lulu performance.

SAM REID: I was going to say Episode 7, but I’ll say instead, Dream Lestat—the dream ghost version that we had. I wasn’t totally sold on his presence. [Laughs] I was worried he was going to be annoying. But as we slowly worked through it, I ended up having a real soft spot for that version of Lestat and that kind of sweet, dopey, innocent, naive character. I really enjoyed him in the end.

ASSAD ZAMAN: I think all the French scenes.

HAYLES: Your French is beautiful.

JONES: You don’t speak a lick of it either, right?

ZAMAN: No, nothing! And I was really, really terrified. But in the end, I enjoyed them more than some of the other scenes. For some reason, I felt more like Armand in French. Something about the language is so beautiful and kind of sensual. It helped me, especially in Episode 6 with Madeleine. That’s one of my favorite scenes that we worked on.

Delainey Hayles Collaborated with Sam Reid for Claudia’s Last Look in ‘Interview with the Vampire’
Image via AMC

I’ll get into some specifics now. Delainey, I was reading in another interview that you and Sam worked hard together to make sure that Claudia’s last look really meant something and still reverberated throughout the show. Can you talk us through the conversations you had and how it impacted the performance?

HAYLES: I had a lot of conversations with Emma [Freeman] because I knew what it was, but I was always hesitant about my idea of it. Then we had a conversation with you, [Sam], and Hannah [Moscovitch]. You wanted the last look to be like, “Dad, help me,” and I was like, “Okay, got it.” I was playing with how to show that and how I thought it was, and then we met in the middle. After I did some takes, Hannah would come up to me and say, “Yeah, let’s keep doing that,” and I’d be like, “Okay, yeah, good.” It was about experimenting.

Assad and Sam, I’m curious to hear how your answers to this will differ. What do you think attracts your character to Louis most? What particular quality makes him the one and no one else?

REID: Gosh, being a vampire is hard. Picking somebody who you feel is gonna be able to stand the test of time and be a good vampire, especially someone who you believe is gonna be capable of killing every single day and not disappearing or lighting themselves on fire—Lestat saw that in Louis in the beginning. Louis is a fighter, and he saw so much potential. He’s also desperately in love with [Louis], with his humanity and his struggle. Turns out, that’s not really what Louis wanted. It took them the better part of a century for Louis to discover his true vampiric self and for Lestat to realize there’s more humanity in him than he realized. I think that’s why they’re a good match. I think they’re kind of soul mates for that reason, because they can learn so much from each other and become better monsters.

Becoming better monsters, I like that.

ZAMAN: [Laughs] I think that’s also very, very different to Armand’s attraction because there’s something really astute about Lestat. Seeing a future like that and the potential is something that Armand didn’t have. I think Armand sees Louis as a vessel for how he can change Armand, and how he can enrich Armand’s life, rather than seeing Louis as his own person and what he’s bringing and giving to the world. That’s the tragedy of the romance between them. It’s just all about himself.

The Lestat/Louis Reunion Scene Wasn’t Working — Here’s How Rolin Jones Fixed It
Image via AMC

One particular scene that I could do hours and hours of interview questions on is the reunion at the end of the season. Rolin, I was reading that your first draft of that scene felt unsatisfying. Can you tell me why it felt that way to you and what you wound up doing to change that?

JONES: It was a gun to my head. We had a strike, and we had to chuck out scripts really, really quickly. You’re also saving it, right? I know that scene, from the beginning when we took this on, would eventually happen. Three years later, we’re shooting it. Generally speaking, I had Lestat’s track okay. There were some additions I ended up making. When we were finally allowed to come back and start rewriting, I got on the phone with both of them to talk about the scene because it was clear. We were all looking at it, going, “This is not working.” It seems so obvious and dumb and so blatant right now, but the scene needed to be about forgiveness and contrition, and it wasn’t coming out of Louis’ mouth the way it should have. I have two really lovely actors who guided me that way, and we got there together.

I have one specific writing question for you. What compelled you to script the final moment of that scene, “Jacob Anderson as Louis says something to Sam Reid as Lestat that only they will know?” I know you won’t tell us what was said in that moment, but why did you know scripting it that way was best?

JONES: Making a TV show and doing art with the same people for a chunk of your life, like three years, you’re forced family, and then it does begin to feel like family. You have this intimate relationship on a page with these characters and then you have the people themselves. It was very clear after three years, they had earned a slice of pie that no one else should know about and that was just theirs.

‘Interview with the Vampire’ Season 3 Is in the Works

Can you give us a timeline for when you might go into production on Season 3? Or perhaps when you hope to release it?

JONES: We’re working. We’re in work.

I’ll take what I can get in these situations!

JONES: I carry it with me everywhere I go. I sleep with it. I do other things with it.

The fans appreciate it big time.

‘Interview With the Vampire’ Cast Responds to Fan Love
“It doesn’t escape me what the story is that we’re telling.”
Image via AMC

One of the greatest joys of watching a show that touches so many people is when you come to an event like Comic-Con and you talk about what was meaningful to you and how different people can relate to different characters. For each of you, can you pinpoint a specific fan response to Season 2 that really struck a chord with you and let it sink in how special your work is in the show and how much it means to people?

ZAMAN: I immediately thought of meeting Rei for the first time on set. That’s when it first hit me how special this was going to be. That was the first time I’d met someone who was a lover of the books and a fan of the show. That’s when it hit me.

REID: We were shooting the scenes from the 1700s that day, and Rei had come all the way from America. She was there in Prague. I got to introduce her to Joseph Potter, who was playing Nicky, and nobody knew that that character was coming up in the scenes. It was an amazing thing. They’ve been so inspirational to us, seeing those videos, and the screaming. You do really feel like we’re not making a show just for us, we’re making it for these people who have lived with these books and lived with these characters. It’s very humbling. We just want to do it right for them. You just want to do it right.

HAYLES: For me, it was when we did the premiere and we did 92NY, a panel there, and there was a fan who was waiting outside, and she had found a replica of Claudia’s hat in Murder Mansion, the little side burrow. It was the exact same. The texture was the same, everything was the same, the weight was the same, and she was like, “I searched forever for it.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s really lovely.” Basically, she DMed me, and then she was like, “I’m not used to seeing people that look like me reflected in this world.” It actually sucks saying this because it’s 2024, but we’ve been given this space, and it doesn’t escape me what the story is that we’re telling. I’m just happy to be a part of it. Her message was really sweet, and it made me think a lot about everything that I’m doing here.

Image via Comic-Con

JONES: You get a little nervous to answer this question because there are so many people who are quote-unquote super fans or really, really into this. I am a notorious Luddite, and I’m not on the internet a lot, so I know [gorrei_vc], “no context Lestat,” and Black Girl Talks Fangs. Jacob Anderson sent me one of these reaction videos to, like, a 30-second commercial that AMC had cut, and this young woman in Colorado talked about this 30-second commercial and broke it down for like an hour and 20 minutes. It’s like dada! It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Her name is Autumn Brown. She’s a super weirdo, and very sincere and totally dedicated, and that moved me a great deal. It just entertained me. I was also worried for her, too.

You can watch Interview with the Vampire Seasons 1 and 2 on AMC.

Watch on AMC