SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from “And That’s the End of It. There’s Nothing Else,” the Part II finale of “Interview With the Vampire,” now streaming on AMC+.
“We held each other’s hands, and we just fucking jumped.”
That’s how Jacob Anderson says he and Sam Reid prepared for the climactic reunion between Louis and Lestat in Season 2 finale of AMC’s “Interview With the Vampire.”
“I feel really proud of that scene, but that’s honestly what it was like to shoot,” Anderson tells Variety. “It was a nightmare, and then it felt like a bit of magic for one hour of that 14-hour day.”
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The scene is, quite literally, decades in the making for the estranged vampires, who have not spoken in the 77 years since Louis sentenced Lestat to his own personal hell –– to live forever knowing Louis is loving someone else. When they meet again, it’s in the middle of a hurricane in New Orleans, inside a dilapidated house that’s barely holding itself together against the raging winds outside. A destitute Lestat isn’t doing much better inside, until Louis comes bearing the last thing he expected –– gratitude. What changed Louis’ mind? We will get there.
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In lieu of a real hurricane, the production approximated the chaotic conditions on set, while Reid and Anderson delivered perhaps the most consequential heart to heart of the series so far, which is based on Anne Rice’s novels. It is also bound to have major implications for what’s ahead after AMC greenlit Season 3 this week.
“It’s weird to shoot a scene like that with guys holding leaf blowers that are going off in the background, and people are shaking the set,” Reid says, laughing. Anderson notes there was also a real blizzard happening just outside the set in Prague, where Season 2 was largely shot.
“That day was mad,” he says. “We could kind of hear each other, but with the leaf blowers and things banging on the windows, the conditions were less than perfect. But I will give myself and Sam props to say that, for a multitude of reasons, it was a big day. And the actual body of the scene, we only got to do it twice each.”
In those two takes, they each express more than a century of grief, regret, love, hate and any other emotion a vampire might find in the expanse of eternity. “It seemed right that two vampires could carry on that moment of forgiveness and contrition in the midst of history and life, and nature plowing right through them,” says series creator Rolin Jones, who wrote the finale.
The hurricane of this turbulent couple was appropriately foreshadowed last week by Claudia (Delainey Hayles), the vampire daughter they always put in the middle. “One more round in the stormy romance of you two,” she laments, as she and Louis are put on trial by the vengeful Théâtre des Vampires coven in front of a live audience for attempting to kill their maker Lestat, who served as the star witness. But only Claudia and her companion Madeleine (Roxane Duran) meet the sun for the crime, a horrific fate that Lestat watches unfold.
While Hayles is not in the finale, she worked with Reid to make sure that last look of a child pleading for their father burrowed deep into Lestat. “It was the sheer pain of it taking over and she was looking to the next person in the room that she trusts in a way, which is weird to say because she hates him so much,” Hayles says. “But out of everyone in the room, I think she trusts him the most.”
Being the recipient of Claudia’s final gaze is seared into Lestat’s mind forever, and he tells Louis he has become a prisoner to it.
“That is a huge impetus for this character, because he will forever be haunted by the guilt of Claudia’s death,” Reid says. “He will forever carry that shame. You don’t want him to come to terms with it either, or have closure on it like Louis does. It is one of those things that is going to continue to send him insane.”
As this is happening, Louis has been entombed in a coffin of stones and left to starve after he says Armand mind-controlled the bloodthirsty audience to sentence him to banishment rather than death. EVentually, he is freed by Armand and wastes no time burning down the theater with its nocturnal troupe inside, before decapitating their arrogant leader, Santiago (Ben Daniels). He then finds Lestat taking refuge in the Paris home of his maker, Magnus. As punishment for taking part in Claudia’s death, Louis kisses Armand right in front of Lestat, branding him with yet another soul-crushing visual.
But the 70-year union between Louis and Armand that follows wasn’t marked by marital bliss either. Anderson says Louis never truly forgives Armand for turning him and Claudia in to the coven to be put on trial, even if Armand saved him. “From that point on, Louis and Armand’s relationship is largely sustained as a spiteful act to punish Lestat,” he says. “There has to be a nugget of something, some affection or sense of safety or trust, to keep it alive. But there is always going to be that element of Louis saying, ‘I’m holding you here because I’m mad at you and I’m mad at him. You have to be there when I fall, or when I fuck up. You have to catch me.’”
With only spite to hold them together, it’s no wonder they implode when the final bombshell is dropped by Louis’ interviewer, Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), in present-day Dubai: Courtesy of the shadowy Talamasca organization, Molloy presents proof that not only did Lestat save Louis’ life in the trial, but Armand took credit for the act of mercy after rehearsing and directing the play that intended to kill Louis and Claudia for the pleasure of an audience.
Reid was privy to the show’s twist on Louis’ true savior, but he also wasn’t surprised. “I don’t think there is any world where Lestat would let Louis die,” he says.
Thus, we arrive at the big reunion, when a more self-assured Louis seeks out a completely emaciated Lestat, who is feeding on rats and barely clinging to sanity as he plays a piano made of driftwood. He thanks Lestat for saving him, and for the “dark gift” of immortality that Louis has long treated as a curse. Through bloody tears, they admit fault in hurting each other, and mourn the death of Claudia. The scene ends with the two embracing as the walls of Lestat’s fragile existence literally cave in on them. But Jones cautions their tumultuous love story won’t be completely resolved by a little thing like honesty.
“You can’t really wrap up Claudia’s death and everything that has happened in a bow,” he says. “It is just the beginning of figuring out a way forward for both of them.”
After Molloy’s book is published –– and he is made a vampire by a vengeful Armand –– Louis becomes the target of vampires everywhere for exposing their existence. In the final scene, instead of hiding from these threats, he calls out to them with his address and a declaration: “I own the night.”
Anderson says the true meaning of that final line, in his eyes, is something he will keep to himself. But he was clear about what he didn’t want it to be, and says he and Jones even reworked it during filming.
“I was concerned this final moment for Louis was going to be about violence, like an invitation,” he says. “I wanted it to be about peace and a collection of himself. He has found some kind of quiet in himself. That’s why he could tune into those voices. I wanted it to feel like an inhale and an exhale for Louis.”
Hayles has a more enthusiastic read of it: “It was so gangsta!”
Across two seasons, the series has exhausted the pages of Rice’s first “Vampire Chronicles” novel to answer one question: Why did Louis want to do an interview in the first place? In the show’s series premiere, he tells Molloy it is about “truth and reconciliation.” Ultimately, though, Jones says Louis was in search of something they referred to as “vampire grace.”
Anderson says Louis’ embrace of that grace can be seen in the two artifacts prominently displayed in his Zen garden in the final shot –– Claudia’s final dress and a portrait of his brother Paul, whose suicide opened the series.
“I feel content with where he is,” Anderson says. “It felt like a closing of a chapter. This is the end of what began in 1910 and a really satisfying place to leave him now. If you were to never see Louis again, I feel really proud of him.”
But of course, it won’t be the last time Louis is seen: AMC confirms he, Molloy, Armand and others will join Lestat for Season 3.
Rice’s sprawling “Vampire Chronicles” series spans 13 books packed with dense origin stories and wild new character developments, which Jones says he hopes to mine over as many as six or seven seasons. (The series also serves as the mothership for AMC’s Immortal Universe, which includes more Rice adaptations with “Mayfair Witches” and a recently ordered Talamasca series.)
But in Season 3, Lestat’s dissatisfaction with Molloy’s portrayal of him in his book will lead him on a path of rediscovery and a new life as a rock star, a story inspired by Rice’s second novel, “The Vampire Lestat.”
“The big difference moving forward is Lestat will be front and center telling the story, so it should feel like this show has been taken hostage by Lestat,” Jones says. “Aesthetically, it is going to feel different. It is not going to feel like two old guys in a room trying to figure out what brought them together. It is going to be over the shoulder of Lestat de Lioncourt, of whom you have probably seen about an 80%-accurate version of who he is — on fire and reckless. So it should be fun and dangerous.”
Eagle-eyed fans might spot their glimpse at Lestat’s evolving musical tastes in his tragic New Orleans abode, where Jones says to look closely for a demolished grand piano that shows “the music coming out of him made him so violent that he smashed it.” Imagine what he will do with a guitar!
For everyone else, what does a Lestat-dominated story mean? For Louis, Jones says the two-week interview with Molloy has irrevocably changed him. “If you put a shot of the opening shot in Episode 1 of the first season, which we match at the end of Season 2, and you put them next to each other, he will look like Abe Lincoln. That is a wise vampire who has lived pretty hard in 14 days.”
For the formerly hard-partying Molloy, who Jones says treats being a vampire like being on rumspringa, might find common ground with this new Lestat. “The sex, drugs and rock n’ roll part of Eric is a fun place to play,” he says.
Armand, on the other hand, can only go up from here. “We wanted to let his betrayal of Louis be huge because hopefully we are writing six and seven seasons of this, and it gives us time to let Armand have more dimensions.”
But for fans hungry to see what’s in store for Season 3, look no further than Season 2’s third episode and the flashbacks of Lestat absolutely basking in the spotlight on the stage.
“For me going forward, I saw everything I needed to as I watched him move on stage as The Harlequin,” Jones says. “We have really only scratched the surface of the gifts Sam has as a performer.”
