‘Interview with a Vampire’ Recap: Episode 2.2 – ‘Do You Know What it Means to be Loved by Death?’

This recap contains some spoilers.

Interview with a Vampire series 2 continues as Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Claudia (Delainey Hayles) arrive in Paris and gain the attention of the Paris coven headed up by the mysterious Armand (Assad Zaman).

When we last left Louis and Claudia they were fleeing their disastrous trip to Hungary and Romania searching for old world vampires, having found only misery, rot and madness. Over the strains of composer Daniel Hart’s beautiful piece “The Whole World Was Ready to Return” Louis fervently pledged his devotion to Claudia, promising that it was them against the world. (The line “As long as you walk the Earth I’ll never take the fire” is agonising in retrospect). Just Claudia and Louis together forever.  Father/daughter, brother and sister. “You and me. Me and you” (and the apparition of his brutally murdered lover, Lestat (Sam Reid), looking at his husband and daughter with astonishing fondness). 

Meanwhile, in the present day, having failed to stop the interview on repeated occasions, Armand decides that the best way to get the interview back on track is to go on the record with Daniel (Eric Bogosian). Gee I wonder why Armand is so keen to stop Louis’s interview with a Pulitzer prize winning investigative journalist? I’m sure he just has the very best of intentions protecting his boyfriend’s emotional wellbeing.

As the episode starts, Armand and Louis are cosied up together on the sofa. They are the epitome of the smug pretentious couple you end up sitting next to at an interminable dinner party you never wanted to attend in the first place. The ones who tell you all about how they ski in Aspen, wax lyrical about their wine cellar, Cross-fit, the latest art exhibition they attended, their purebred labradoodle Snookie, and their darling children Portia and Tristram; and look at you with abject pity when you tell them you can’t ski and don’t have children. Armand and Louis are just emanating smug married, super judgey, nouveau riche vibes. 

Thank god then for Daniel who, as always, remains resolutely unmoved by the ancient vampires in front of him who could murder him in a heartbeat. Armand is so gleeful when he gets to tell Daniel that he and Louis have been together for 77 years “47 more than he was with Lestat” (the “ Take that Lestat” isn’t spoken, but may as well be).  Daniel’s unimpressed reply? “Keep selling it”.

Louis and Claudia have arrived in Paris and it’s lovely to see their joy at settling into a new life with Claudia becoming an enthusiastic pickpocket, and Louis taking up photography. The pair are unaware their every move is being tracked by the Paris coven who are deeply unimpressed that they haven’t announced their arrival. 

In a charming scene in a restaurant, Claudia (looking beautiful in the first of a series of fine Parisian fits – a red herringbone outfit) asks Louis who he is outside of her and Lestat. Louis evades her questioning because, well, he doesn’t have an answer. Who is Louis truly at heart? The brother of a man who fell from the sky. The son of a woman who never accepted him. The husband of a man who loved him with a fierce passion and a toxic madness. The father of an eternal child who is rapidly outgrowing him. Louis doesn’t know who he is – not yet. Even at the end of the series, Louis is still trying to find an answer to Claudia’s question. 

In the present day Daniel pours vinegar on Louis’ rose tinted memories of their early months in Paris while Armand keeps looking at him like he’s prime rib and it’s dinner time. Louis repeatedly tries to provoke Daniel by plucking memories of his ex-wife Alice from his head. Daniel is unconcerned with their derailing tactics, but seems remarkably perturbed at Armand perkily admitting that he and Louis drained a number of the young men that Louis photographed, for sport. They’re cold blooded killers Daniel – do you keep forgetting that?

Then we have our first meet cute of the episode as Claudia meets seamstress Madeline (Roxane Duran). Madeline is introduced in a power cut, bathed in the golden light of a candle (The episode is skillfully directed by Levan Akin who has directed 6 episodes of the series including the series 2 finale). It’s a somewhat terse first meeting. Madeline sees Claudia as a child trying to play dress up and dismisses her. Claudia, her pride hurt (she is after all in her 40’s at this point), is fierce and determined to have the pink dress in the shop’s window, purchasing it with stolen funds and demanding Madeline tailor it for her. A rocky beginning.

Then we immediately switch to our second meet cute as Armand finally meets Louis, (while Louis is out cruising in a public park no less).  Jacob Anderson is frankly obscenely handsome in this scene. Armand looks like the sweetest little sparkle-muffin. A totally harmless, gentle soul playing dress up in his daddy’s clothes with his natty suit and his fancy hat. Assad Zaman’s ability to look completely disarming is quite something. Louis and Armand tell Daniel that Armand’s opening gambit was to tell Louis “I will never harm you” with Armand silkily informing Daniel “And I never have”. 

Oh Louis. Louis, Louis, Louis. Frying pan/fire. Just because he’s not dropping you from a great height because you won’t tell him you love him doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the capacity to hurt you. Still, you have to admire Louis’s sexual magnetism. The man has men hurling themselves at his feet. Lestat bought a house in New Orleans after merely glimpsing Saint Louis in the street and Armand is pledging eternal fealty 10 seconds after meeting him. Go Louis. 

Then it’s finally time for Louis and Claudia to meet the Paris coven at the Theatre des Vampires (and if you can read that phrase without hearing Matt Berry’s voice then you are a stronger person than I). In the 1994 film, the theatre was quite slick.  Here the Theatre des Vampires is creaking at the seams – a run down, tawdry affair with a motley audience (including two grotesque cackling vampires in the front row). 

We are introduced to Santiago  (the wonderful Ben Daniels sporting bottle blonde hair) – the coven’s principal actor. The play starts off campy with Santiago hamming it up, but things take quite the turn in the final Act when a terrified woman runs on stage begging the audience for help. It’s a cold and cruel scene as she pleads for her life while Santiago (horrifically chilling) subdues her before she is ripped apart, screaming in agony, by the company of hungry vampires. Louis (who was married to the ultimate theatrical diva for 30 years) hilariously hates the play and looks unimpressed throughout. Claudia however, is completely enthralled. Well, she is her father’s daughter. 

After the play Claudia and Louis meet the company. It’s a cleverly constructed scene (this episode was written by Jonathan Ceniceroz and Shane Munson), which is adorable on first watch and agonising on re-watch. Claudia and Louis are so excited and nervous to finally meet other vampires. Armand gets to be the haughty, pretentious theatre director showing off his new friends and the coven pretend to be furious that Claudia and Louis didn’t announce themselves on arrival in Paris.  It’s a sweet interlude in which Claudia and Louis fumble rather badly by failing to have prepared an answer to the most obvious question they would be asked – who their maker is. Instead they steal the tale of Lestat’s turning by Magnus and tell a tall tale about “Bruce” who threw himself into the fire shortly after making them. As lies go, it wouldn’t have convinced a toddler. Louis barely has time to breathe after that calamity before being presented with a portrait of the founder of this miserably cruel theatre that massacres humans for entertainment – Lestat de Lioncourt.

This leads to one of the best scenes in the entire series as the present day Daniel Molloy savagely mocks this revelation by telling an unamused Louis and Armand that their life story is a cheap telenovela. His mockery turns into unabashed delight once Louis tells him that Lestat and Armand were together for a time “He tasted like vermouth and annihilation”. Eric Bogosian’s ecstatic line delivery of “You both fucked Lestat” is one for the ages. Of course whether Armand was indeed with Lestat remains to be seen. He is a slippery little devil.

Louis then decides to try and work out whether Lestat is actually dead by visiting the law firm Lestat kept on retainer. Why Louis? My sweet, confused little pumpkin. What are you trying to achieve? You know Lestat isn’t dead Louis. Your subconscious has made it very clear that he’s not dead. Louis may have (very reluctantly) slit Lestat’s throat to ensure Claudia’s freedom, but he still did everything to ensure that Lestat remained very much not dead, including putting him in a trunk that locked from the inside and sending him to a place with a bottomless rat buffet. After awkwardly fumbling through an explanation of who he is to Lestat (a friend, a business partner – totally not his husband, no Sir) he is handed a letter that Lestat has written. One which hallucination Lestat, aka Dreamstat, very thoughtfully shows up to read out loud.

Interview with the Vampire is a gothic romance but even by the standards of that genre Lestat’s letter is full on swoon worthy. It’s a stunningly beautiful declaration of love performed wonderfully by Sam Reid in his only scene in the episode. Reader, I sobbed my heart out. Side note, in this scene (and only this scene) Lestat’s hair is blown out and flat ironed. Was Sam Reid having a hair disaster that day or does Louis just like dressing up Dreamstat like a cute Ken doll in different outfits and hairstyles?

AMC has a night market dedicated to Interview with the Vampire, which contains a replica of Lestat’s portrait, and did have a full size coffin for sale (which someone on Reddit has bought – girl drop the pictures), but no replicas of Lestat’s letter? No recreations of Louis’s photos? AMC, why do you hate money? Stop letting the work experience kid fresh off a heavy weekend on ketamine design your t-shirts and start giving us merch we actually want!

Wonder when Lestat wrote that letter though? For ultimate mess I like to imagine he wrote it when he knew Louis and Claudia were scheming to kill him. “Let treachery eat away at them from within.” It feels very Lestat to leave an emotionally devastating declaration of love that would completely gut a guilt-ridden Louis while also giving him the comfort of knowing that he was truly, truly loved. 

Daniel responds to Lestat’s letter far too glibly, joking that Armand is the “great rebound of Louis’s life”. It’s a clunky misstep for Daniel who has otherwise handled interviewing a depressive, murderous, supernatural creature remarkably well, but Louis’s reaction is startlingly vicious as he starts ripping into Daniel’s memories of Alice and his failed attempt at asking her to marry him in Paris. It’s a horrible scene with a shaking Daniel looking lost and distressed. There’s so much going on in this brief sequence and it’s far from clear if Daniel’s memories are about Alice or Armand or both (why would Daniel feel more comfortable holding a woman’s hand in Paris? He can do that anywhere without fear). 

It’s a useful reminder that Louis is not a fluffy little angel and you infantilise him at your peril. Louis is a former pimp and a capitalist king whose response to hooking up with a guy with unlimited cash and poor impulse control was to buy the fancy whites’ only brothel rather than using Lestat’s money to improve the lot of the people in Storyville. This is a man who was introduced holding a knife to his brother’s throat and who grabbed his own daughter by the throat (the very thing he attacked Lestat for) when she suggested he burn Lestat. None of our messy vampire queens are good people. 

We end on a further meet cute as Armand and Louis get to know each other against the backdrop of a brutal vampire massacre. Armand in his sexy little sunglasses at night just dripping swag. It’s been wonderful to see the overwhelming thirst directed at Assad Zaman by parts of the fandom, especially when it is still sadly rare to see South Asian men in this sort of a romantic lead role in Western media. Louis seems delighted by the flirtation, even if he should be running screaming at the fact that Armand very clearly sees through him and knows about Lestat. What will those little scamps get up to next?

Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire Season 2 + Box set are on Blu-ray, DVD and digital now.