Let the Tale Seduce You

Why aren't you watching AMC's 'Interview with the Vampire'?

Crying again

Why aren’t you watching AMC’s Interview with the Vampire? I’ve been telling you, across my various social media platforms and now-defunct podcast, to watch Interview with the Vampire for the past two years. Interview with the Vampire is the best-written and best-acted show on TV. I’d say it was also the best designed—both production and costumes—if not for The Gilded Age, but The Gilded Age isn’t airing right now, so I’ll add that as well!

The first season of IWTV updated Anne Rice’s ubiquitous novel with a new framing device, an additional interview on top of the original interview: Louis (Jacob Anderson, give him an Emmy immediately) had already told his story to now-aged journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian, king of my heart), now he wanted to update it in a state of the art Dubai penthouse with a bevy of assistants, one of whom would turn out to be the uber-powerful Armand (Assad Zaman).  Louis warned Daniel that his original recounting of his long, sad vampire life was not necessarily the whole truth, and admission that’s haunted and contextualized the show ever since: memory is fallible, even for immortals. The truth of the tale depends on the person telling it. How evil was Louis's lover and maker Lestat (inhumanly beautiful Sam Reid)? How troubled was their eternal child Claudia (Bailey Bass in season one, Delainey Hayles in season 2)? 

It’s especially appropriate to rehash this show’s most basic truth—that truth is subjective, and malleable—in light of Sunday’s episode, the penultimate episode of season two. Anyone with even a glancing memory of the 90s film knows that Claudia is doomed to die. That inevitability has loomed over IWTV’s two seasons, the fixed point every vampire can agree on, an even we’ve been hurtling towards for weeks. “I could not prevent it,” says Armand, an insistence that also serves as the episode’s title. Lestat has returned, and with the help of the scheming Théâtre des Vampires, now led by Spike wannabe Santiago (delicious Ben Daniels), is finally seeing justice for his attempted murder at the end of season one.

“It’s not a trial,” Claudia tells the audience, “It’s a stoning.” Claudia, Louis, and their new fledgling Madeleine (the excellent Roxane Duran, whom I wish we had more time with) have essentially already been convicted of their crimes by the other vampires, and they are forced to sit onstage, Achilles tendons cut and brains telepathically scrambled, and start in a play where they don’t know the lines, one which ends with their deaths.

The show's creators and writers made a powerful decision to devote this episode entirely to the trial, but it transcends past the theatre as Lestat spins his own version of familiar events. In his tale, complete with a fuck ass animated backing projection, familiar events are reordered around Lestat’s view of himself. He casts human Louis as the seducer and himself as a helpless vampire, powerless in the face of his aching immortal loneliness. We see a new version of Claudia’s turning in which Louis begged Lestat for an immortal child, while Lestat sagely cautioned against it. This new version of events hits differently on a show where Claudia and Louis are black: they are painted with overtly racialized language and animated caricatures as aggressive manipulators, unwanted foreigners with violence in their hearts and blood on their hands.  

The one moment where Lestat goes off script and admits his culpability is when the tale reaches his abuse of Louis, who he dropped from the sky and left broken for years. Sam Reid has never been more magnetic than in this episode, full of righteous anger and a pang of deep guilt he can barely look at, but one almost impossible to turn away from once he has. Still, his deviation isn’t enough to delay the inevitable. The trio are found guilty, with Claudia and Madeleine sentenced to death, and Louis banished to a coffin full of rocks in the theatre basement. 

Side note: Armand, you lying little bitch, trust: you will be dealt with. Period.

Hayles had a daunting task taking over as fan favorite Claudia, but she has proven herself to be a capable actor all season, bringing Claudia’s rage to the forefront. There is no denying that Claudia is Anne Rice’s most tragic character—Interview with the Vampire was written to process the death of Rice’s young daughter, how could she now be? For two seasons we have watched this character be beaten down time and time again, never chosen by anyone, unable to grow in a body and world that won’t let her. This season she finally finds a companion in Madeleine, and the real gut punch of this episode is that Madeleine, when offered the chance to live is she renounces Claudia, instead chooses her explicitly. “My coven is Claudia,” she says, and Claudia cradles her as they are exposed to the sun and turn to ash. Claudia sings the hellishly earwormy “I Don’t Like Windows When They’re Closed” as she dies, giving the vampires and humans around her—and us, watching at home—one final show of defiance as she dies. The last thing she sees is her maker Lestat, the man who turned and abused her, who told her again and again that she was unwanted, a mistake. I will never recover. 

There is not one other show on TV telling stories like this, written with such care and nuance. The acting on Interview with the Vampire…my god! Emmys for everyone! Even in this rather long blog post, I’ve barely scratched the surface of this episode, let alone this season. There is nothing bloodier, sexier, and ultimately more human on TV. What a joy to be able to tune in every Sunday.

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Some stray thoughts…

• Every time they mentioned Antoinette I wanted to scream. Yeah bitch I didn’t forget your ass, stay dead!

• Armand’s mask slipping in the present…oh honey you’ve got a big storm coming.

• Madeleine making me want to be a redhead again, she’s sick for that.

• Santiago getting upstaged again and again by Lestati…I know that’s right. You can’t compete where you can’t compare!

• In every story there is your version, my version, and the truth. I’m guessing Armand knows the truth and that we’ll get some of it in the season finale. For anyone who has read the books…is the Claudia science experiment happening? I just want more Claudia, even if (maybe especially if) it’s gross. And while we’re it it, Claudia’s ghost shows up in several of the books, let’s bring her back!

• I’m curious about how the season will end. The story of Interview with the Vampire the book is basically done. I’m pretty sure AMC has all of Anne Rice’s books optioned, so I’m guessing the show will switch focus next season to take on The Vampire Lestat or Queen of the Damned, with Sam Reid becoming our main character.