Warning: This article contains spoilers for Interview with the Vampire Season 2 finale: “And it’s over. There is nothing else. »
It took him 77 years, but Louis (Jacob Anderson) finally got his groove back at the end of Interview with a Vampire season 2. And he didn’t get there alone.
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The intense and emotional finale spanned nearly 100 years, as Louis and Armand (Assad Zaman) finished telling their story to Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), but the reporter used evidence given to him by the Talamasca to prove that Armand had been lying to Louis since the clan’s trial in Paris. Louis believed that Armand saved him from death, but Daniel revealed that Armand had actually run the entire trial and that it was Lestat (Sam Reid) who saved Louis instead. For 77 years, Armand built their entire relationship on a lie. Louis furiously attacked Armand for the betrayal and ordered him to leave.
Now armed with the truth, Louis traveled to New Orleans to finally reunite with Lestat. The two tearfully opened up about Claudia’s (Delaney Hayles) death and Louis’ suicide attempt, and Louis thanked Lestat for giving him the dark gift. The vampires continued to talk as the camera panned back, but viewers couldn’t hear what they were saying. However, the embrace they shared as a hurricane raged outside spoke volumes.
The finale then jumped back in time: Daniel published his “fictional memoir” Interview with the Vampireeven though Louis didn’t want it, and the book was publicly ridiculed by humans and privately angered all the vampires. It is revealed that Daniel was also turned into a vampire by Armand after Louis left them alone, but Louis and Daniel had not heard from Armand since then. The season ended with Louis challenging all the vampires angry at him for exposing their lifestyle to come to him.
Suffice it to say, a lot happened in the Season 2 finale. But Reid’s favorite part of this emotional episode was Louis and Lestat’s long-awaited reunion. “I just thought it was beautiful,” he said Weekly Entertainment. “It was such a fantastic way to end the season. There’s a lot of loose ends, there’s some things you really want to find out, but there’s also a very, very satisfying conclusion. It’s this beautiful journey of Louis accepting himself and finding his feet and accepting the dark gift. And also Lestat now accessing his humanity a little bit as well.
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When Louis reunites with Lestat in New Orleans, it’s a far cry from what fans have seen throughout the series. He lives in a rundown house, pretends to play the piano on a piece of wood while using Siri to play music, and tells Louis he’s “going on tour” but needs about 50 years additional practice before. This may come as a shock to viewers who haven’t read Anne Rice’s books, but Reid was excited to finally get to play this version of Lestat.
“He’s definitely not in a good situation,” Reid said. “He’s probably in one of the worst situations he’s ever been in, but at least he found Louis.” They’re not back together, but at least they’re talking to each other. I know what he did during that time. We can’t always play, so it’s complex, but it’s very well put together. »
Reid wanted to go even further with Lestat’s physical appearance in the finale, but showrunner Rolin Jones had to hold him back. “I always wanted to have the scars, the emaciated, special-effects makeup, and the slimy skin,” the actor says. “I wanted to be a full-fledged ghoul, basically. And Rolin, rightly, I guess, said, “No, it’s a psychological thing. You’re hurt, but it’s a psychological injury. It’s whatever you want it to be, but it’s is on your mind.” »
While Reid doesn’t want to go into too much detail about what Lestat has done since the trial to bring about such a drastic change, he does reveal that Lestat has been “forced to deal with himself more.”
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“Claudia is a huge loss, and Louis and Lestat, for about a century, will never be able to spend that much time together without talking about Claudia,” Reid said. “They can’t. That reunion scene, they only really get to talk for three minutes before they immediately talk about Claudia, and there’s so much to process there. And she haunts both of them at different times. I think maybe Lestat would probably walk quite comfortably in the sun the way Louis does, but this Lestat won’t die, he’ll just get a tan.
AMC has officially renewed Interview with the Vampire for season 3, and the series will then adapt Rice’s second book, The vampire Lestat“We’re following the order of the books,” Reid confirms. The new season will focus on Lestat, who resents his portrayal in Molloy’s book and, determined to set the record straight, becomes a rock star.
“Sam has worked really hard for two years as a supporting actor, and I think Jacob is really excited to do the same for him and put Sam front and center,” Jones said. THIS“We’ve only scratched the surface with Sam, who is an incredible actor.”
The showrunner knows it was “infuriating” for Reid to constantly play other characters’ perceptions of Lestat rather than the character himself, but that eventually ended. “We gave him an objective scene, the New Orleans scene,” Jones explains. “At that point, it’s nobody’s point of view. The camera is over there looking at both of them, so there you have it, fans. One scene so far of the real Lestat.”
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But that scene, and the way Season 2 ends, went through a lot of changes before making it to the screen. First and foremost because the showrunner had originally planned for the first book to be adapted in a single season. Then, due to budget issues, among other reasons, the first book was split into two seasons. Then, the showrunner wanted Louis and Lestat’s reunion to take place during Hurricane Katrina, but the timeline didn’t fit. Additionally, certain aspects of the scene would never be “acceptable” by AMC.
“This meeting is extremely nihilistic, so we wanted to do something different,” he says. “The idea of setting this up during a storm, we thought about it a little bit. King Lear “Where the storm happens inside and the storm happens outside. It’s the idea that their relationship has been like a hurricane, and they find this moment of forgiveness and calm and quiet in the middle of a hurricane, and that seemed like the way forward.”
It was important for Jones to anchor the finale with the reunion of Louis and Lestat. “It’s very clear in the later books that this is not a relationship that is abandoned,” Jones says. “It’s actually a very central relationship, so how can you go back and start that journey again? We’re just starting to see a glimmer of forgiveness and accountability in that last scene between the two of them.”
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“But we didn’t see them end up together as a couple,” Jones adds. “They reconciled and, in the novel, it’s quite dark, their separation. We did the opposite, which is we started to set up the journey that led to them ending up together, maybe eight seasons later. We just wanted some sort of catharsis. We wanted to deserve this hug and these discreet words that none of us know. I don’t even know what they said to each other. »
Jones reveals that they actually turned off Anderson and Reid’s microphones on set while Louis and Lestat finished their conversation. “The whispers that are happening, there are two people on earth that know what was said there, and that’s Sam and Jacob,” Jones says.
Reid was honored to see how the showrunner literally wrote this moment into the script. “No one knows what Louis and Lestat are really saying to each other (except us), which is, I think, the crux of what’s happening in this show,” Reid says. “It’s all about point of view. It’s all about perspective. It’s all about who’s saying what about the other. And now we’ve given these characters back their voices, and now these characters know what they’re saying and thinking about each other after all of this, but it’s just for them. They’re taking it back to themselves and no one will ever know. Not even Rolin knows.”
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Jones felt he owed it to the actors to give them that intimate moment. “The work that they’ve done for these characters, the knowledge that they have and everything that we’ve put them through, it’s like they’ve earned a gift,” the showrunner says. “They have a really strong friendship that comes from this show, and all these fans have really loved not only the characters but the friendship that’s developed off-screen. So it was a meta celebration of the work that they’ve done for two seasons.”
Will Reid ever reveal what he and Anderson said to each other? “Of course not,” the actor says with a smile. “I’m sure people who do that kind of oral reading can probably get on board with it.”
“I’m sure someone will try to crack the code, but I hope they don’t,” Jones says. “I hope that’s where the public is respectful of that.”
But as for the season finale, when Daniel reveals he was turned into a vampire by Armand, Jones teases that there’s a lot more to come from this storyline. “We’re a creator and we’re a beginner,” he says. “We would be really, really bad playwrights if they were never in scenes together again. We just needed to set the stage for a lot of new writing for Louis, and I think this triggers him. There’s some new writing to do for this character.”