With reveals resembling Mad Males, Breaking Dangerous, and Higher Name Saul underneath its belt, AMC has made itself a community the place creatives can carry their imaginative and prescient to life as they see match. Interview With the Vampire is a shining addition to this class of artwork made for the sake of constructing it (it additionally has Breaking Dangerous and Higher Name Saul‘s Mark Johnson as govt producer). The Southern Gothic drama is a reminder of how good it feels to see the unimpeded creative course of given first precedence. And Jacob Anderson‘s commanding efficiency because the titular vampire is among the important attracts. The Sport of Thrones alum takes a deep dive into Interview With the Vampire Season 2 within the video interview above forward of the beginning of Emmy nominations voting.
Put apart all style bias and take into account the human story on the core of this story. Primarily based on the enduring 1976 Anne Rice novel, the e book that popularized the humanized vampire in fashionable popular culture, Interview With the Vampire Season 2 sees Louis de Pointe du Lac (Anderson) persevering with the excavation of his recollections in his interview with investigative journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian). After discovering he had repressed the reality a couple of painful reminiscence from the tip of his time in New Orleans within the Season 1 finale, Louis is set to resurface the rest he might have been burying for many years within the second installment. It’s an exhaustive psychological marathon of not solely inspecting your ideas however why you assume that approach. Merely put, it’s remedy. However it’s remedy in a gothic horror setting, so the exhumed recollections and existential questions they increase are darkish and confronting. And the best way this sequence — helmed by playwright Rolin Jones — navigates this darkness has made Interview With the Vampire considered one of TV’s top-rated dramas since its 2022 debut.
Vampirism is an ideal fictional framework for the exploration of a thoughts. It serves as a metaphor for a way time passes however trauma nonetheless festers if left unaddressed. Time might heal all bodily wounds, however the psychological toll stays, and people we love most frequently endure the results of our failures to evolve. On this story, there’s the added menace of somebody with the ability to change your recollections completely, blocking your capability to maneuver on even in case you wished to. However as Anderson describes, Louis is on a private journey of contrition on prime of his seek for the reality about why his vampire daughter, Claudia (Bailey Bass in Season 1, Delainey Hayles in Season 2), was murdered.
“All of it’s the aftermath of her demise,” Anderson tells TV Insider. “All of it in Dubai, every part within the current, she’s echoing by it.”
The one proof of Claudia’s POV are her intensive diaries monitoring her too-short immortal life. It was in these pages that she chronicled the interior turmoil of being become a vampire at age 14 with no say within the matter by her vampire fathers, Louis and Lestat (Sam Reid). By means of her diaries, Louis learns intimately precisely how he failed his youngster all through her upbringing. He grapples with this whereas concurrently making an attempt to decipher a nagging feeling that there’s one thing he doesn’t know concerning the day she was killed.
“That’s the toughest a part of it actually, for Louis, is to study who he was by Claudia,” Anderson says. “He learn these diaries when he was in a really completely different place and doubtless within the grips of a type of hubris, like, ‘They took her from me. I’ve been wronged.’ And now, all through Season 2, he’s in a state of, ‘Hold on, this was me. I did this. I wronged her. I damage one third of my coronary heart.’”
(L-R) Delainey Hayles, Eric Bogosian, Assad Zaman, Sam Reid, and Jacob Anderson (Maarten de Boer)
Louis betrayed Claudia when refusing to totally kill Lestat by burning his physique within the Season 1 finale, driving a wedge between the 2 as they looked for extra vampires within the second season. They lastly discovered a horde of them in post-World Warfare II Paris, however the Théâtres des Vampires coven — based by Lestat and Armand (Assad Zaman) centuries prior — introduced demise to their household simply as they did to the human patrons of their rundown theater. The coven (led by Ben Daniels, who’s wickedly scrumptious because the evil Santiago) wished Louis and Claudia useless, they usually used their tried homicide of Lestat because the excuse to kill them.
Louis was saved from burning within the coven’s sham trial however was as a substitute buried alive in a coffin filled with rocks and saved within the partitions of the theater’s basement to starve to demise. Claudia and her lover, Madeleine (Roxane Duran), had been turned to mud within the afternoon solar above him. Lestat was the trial’s prime witness, however the willingness of his participation on this lethal manufacturing is up for debate (and can doubtless be addressed in Season 3, which begins filming this summer season and can debut in 2026). The Season 2 finale revealed the bombshell that it was Lestat who saved Louis within the trial, not Armand, the supposed second love of Louis’ life. Louis and Armand’s total romance after Paris is predicated on this “seismic lie,” as Daniel known as it, a lie that Armand took nice pains to hide for almost 80 years.
Anderson has the toughest job of any lead actor on TV. He’s tasked with creating two completely different characters: the Louis we see in flashbacks, who’s feeling the entire preliminary affect of the defining moments of his life, and 2022 Dubai Louis, who is simply simply beginning to course of a lifetime of hardships. Each timelines are relentless with Louis’ emotional calls for. Guilt, disgrace, worry, betrayal, and most of all grief are the areas Anderson should continually occupy, and he will get no breaks. Transient moments of contentment and bliss are intercut all through this devastating “odyssey of recollection” in each single episode. Regardless of taking part in supernatural creatures, there’s little or no high-intensity motion on this sequence. The present is extra interested by upturning each stone of the twisted minds of its deeply sophisticated characters. Pair that with deliciously poetic writing that makes an attempt to fulfill the extent of Rice’s descriptive prose, and you’ve got a theatrical feast by which an actor can luxuriate. And Anderson does that in spades.
Taking part in Louis requires Anderson to carry area for contradictory ideas and emotions always. Louis fears that Lestat may have survived the homicide try, and he fears that he may actually be useless. He’s terrified that Lestat will need revenge towards him and Claudia, and he’s terrified that he’ll by no means see him once more. He fears him, and he loves him. These are deeply sophisticated issues to carry for somebody who as soon as bodily abused you. The writers aren’t interested by delivering an ethical judgment on the existence of those conflicting truths; they’re intrigued by asking what they make somebody do and why. What’s it prefer to should occupy that headspace for months on finish throughout filming?
“It’s what’s so enjoyable about engaged on this present,” Anderson shares. “You might be requested to carry 10 issues in your thoughts directly, plus this stunning writing that you simply don’t need to f**okay up. It’s actually difficult, however to be utterly trustworthy, that’s type of what my mind is like anyway. I do have one million issues in my mind continually going, and by some means engaged on this present helps me to focus it into Louis. I can simply take into consideration him and take into consideration what he’s holding. In some methods it’s essentially the most troublesome factor and essentially the most calming and cathartic factor about engaged on the present.”
The toughest a part of taking part in Louis these previous two seasons has been “every part about Claudia,” Anderson admits. “I actually fell in love with Delainey, and so seeing her Claudia going by what she went by, I simply discovered it actually troublesome. And I’m a mother or father. That additionally comes into it.” The ultimate scene of Season 2, when Louis sends a telepathic message to the vampires all over the world who’re enraged by the publication of Daniel’s memoir and its outing of the vampire existence, was “the toughest scene in the entire two seasons,” Anderson reveals.
“I didn’t get by that lots of these takes,” Anderson says of the finale’s highly effective closing shot that’s only a closeup of his face. It serves as a bookend for Louis’ model of occasions and a direct parallel to his very first shot of the sequence. View the frames facet by facet and also you see two utterly completely different individuals. This “I personal the night time” second couldn’t be a menace of violence, Anderson says.
“Louis has discovered such a degree of peace and has reconnected with Paul [Louis’ late brother] and with Claudia and has taken accountability. I simply didn’t need that second to be violent,” Anderson explains. “I didn’t need it to be about Louis changing into a badass. It needed to be about him for the primary time in his existence, accepting himself. And I discovered that actually emotional.”
Will probably be a marvel to see how this new Louis will manifest in Interview With the Vampire Season 3.
Interview With the Vampire, Seasons 1 & 2 Out there Now, AMC+, Season 3 Premiere, 2026, AMC