#justice for claudia

[murfpersonalblog]

IWTV Musings - Tentative Timeline (Pt6b: 1300s - 1900s) - AMC Only (S1 - S2)

This timeline is to help me keep track of AMC's dates that Lestat & Armand slung around in S1 & S2. What irks me is that not only have these dates been changed from the book canon, but they also don't line up with what we know from the show itself. Unreliable narrators are all over this show, and contrary to popular opinion, Armand AND Lestat are no exception.

Pt4a (text) & Pt4b (graph) covered TVC's dates from 1700s-1800s

Pt5a (text) & Pt5b (graph) covered TVC’s dates from 1300s - 1600s.

Pt6a (text) & Pt6b (graph) tracks AMC’s S1 & S2 version of dates from 1300s - 1920s.

The full text breakdown is here:

If anyone's got different dates/theories, feel free to share, cuz AMC confuses the mess outta me with their swiss cheese chronology.

[mostofthingsmostofthetime]

Thanks to the power of tiktok edits, I've fallen down an Armand/Daniel rabbit hole & require fanfic recommendations.

I've already read -

. 5 Times Daniel Molloy Imagined Killing Marius de Romanus (+ 1 Time He Actually Did it) by platoapproved

. Different for vampires by Ariaste

. The dog days are over serise by Brontelover

. A haunting just for company by Valkyrisms

. A brick row house and two old men serise by hummingbeeoOo

. Caldera: Mise-en- Abime (Vol. 1) serise by irisbleufic

. Darkest little paradise by brightloveee

. Whatever remains must be the truth by maleikha

. Taste like a bad idea by foxrina66

All of which I highly recommend, but I need more!!!!!

I'm cool with cannon complient or 'what the hell is cannon' aus, but I would prefer Daniel to still be old & for it to be more bassed off the show then the books (though i don't mind if some details from the books are throw in).

The vampire gooba gang can be a little flirty with each other, but I don't want them to actually be a thorple (is that even a word?) So, like "experimentaion" is fine, but everyone needs to be clear where their hearts stand throughout (ie. Daniel with Armand & Lestat with Louie).

I would love austistic armand (regardless of if its relevant to the plot).

Happy Cludia, at least for a human au, would also greatly be appreciated (it's the least she deserves).

If Marius does show up. I want him to be hated. Like even if there might not be anything the characters can do to him physically (due to the difference in age & the great vampire laws bla bla). Naratively however? I want the author to never miss a chance to remind us what a loser that creep is. Even if Armand can't admit that what happened to him was wrong.

And Daniel & Louie's friendship. Coz, when they're written well, they're legitimately so cute & funny that it makes me almost wanna cry. Like they're just too old men stuck watching their peacock husbands try to out crazy each other & I am 100% here for it.

[s0u1-su3k3r]

Armand is not the father that stepped up, he’s the father that stepped down

[thoughtsandfiction]

I love him, but f*ck Louis de Pointe du Lac. F*ck his selfish guilt, his co-dependency, and especially fuck his consortium of vers tops!

Source: @interviewgifs on Twitter

[miscellaneousjay]

Yeeeaahhhhh, after seeing certain snippets of “Interview with the Vampire” the series and seeing and reading different analyses between here and TT, I can’t bring myself to watch it!!!! I’m all for my Black supernaturals’ rights and wrongs, but Claudia gets done dirty by everyone around her from the time she was a living child to the time of her death as a vampire. She deserved to become so much more and between being physically stuck in a young teen body, being forcefully tethered to her fathers, and going through all of this as a Black girl then woman with time, place, and history already not being kind to her, she was screwed from the beginning. I don’t wanna watch her suffer and then eventually be tortured to death. Like, sis was literally used, abused, and killed because she wanted her lick back for being used and abused! Like?! MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!!!!😭😭😭

[earlgreyandanime]

I know it probably won't happen because they'll be in Paris in season 2, and Bruce is in America, but at some point, I just want a scene of Louis holding down Bruce while Claudia castrates him. And then maybe they toss him into a fire or something. Can we have that, please?

[murfpersonalblog]

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

cant stop thinking about this

[thoughtsandfiction]

Maybe watching 7&8 together was a bad idea. I find myself mad on Claudia's behalf yet again. Yes, turning her was thee great sin. Louis should not have asked for it, Lestat shouldn't have damned her to keep Louis. We know this. The new version of it is especially harrowing, but it's not just that that makes her hate him. It's a big part of it, but it's not all there is. From her own recollections, he treated her horribly! That was her experience of him! From her own diaries! It wasn't just turning her! It's Charlie in the incinerator, it's "you are built like a bird because you are a mistake," It's "what did Charlie taste like, like the love you'll never know?" It's the train. It's the lies and the omissions. It's conspiring with Antoinette to kill her! I'm glad that the attempted murder gave him some clarity and he can go up for her in the middle of rehearsing her public execution (🙄) but no, I'm not gonna buy that as some indication of the great love he has always had for her. Where was the grand heart-wrenching apology for all that Claudia endured?!

She has been turned to ashes, and the grief of it will forever cripple them. Wonderful. But, in the case of Lestat, there seems to be this idea that the depths of that grief disproves what we have been told was her experience of him. That is, he has proven himself to be a more emotionally open, vulnerable creature than the insecure, petulant, abusive one in her diaries because he can shed tears for her now. This is the "real" Lestat. But I take Claudia's position on this, fuck these vampires and their redemptive hindsight.

They may be haunted, but they can hold each other in forgiveness and find understanding absolution in the others' eyes. They can come together and kiss away the blood of grief, but her anger keeps me from appreciating it. Her precise and sorrowful rage is what has stuck to my ribs. And the crazy thing is that I knew it was coming, but I was not ready for how this version would wreck me.

I'm gonna have to watch eps 8 again. I'm too Claudia rage brained for any of this right now. I can not join the transformation of their embrace. She will not let me.

[murfpersonalblog]

The Spoiler Cut: Outtakes from the Sam Reid Interview - Autumn Brown (7:09 - 9:47) 👀

[miscellaneousjay]

Happiness looks good on you, Claudia!🥹🫶🏾🫶🏾

[murfpersonalblog]

IWTV S2 Tentative Timeline (Pt2c) - Unreliable Narrators, Armand & the Trial

Thanks for the response to Pt2b, @usuallydeepalpaca-blog! I really want people to talk to me about the IWTV timelines, cuz this show is SO confusing! 😩😭

"I think if you create the timeline with info the show doesn't provide, i.e. Armand was involved from the start, then you're bound to get it wrong."

Absolutely. I fully expect that I got some stuff wrong, which is why I said it's a TENTATIVE Timeline.

I've in no way said it's THEE CORRECT™ timeline, cuz chile IDKWTF is going on. 😅 I openly say what confuses me, questions I have, and how I come to the conclusions that I draw. I'm being as transparent as possible to let y'all know that I DON'T know. 🤷 The show doesn't provide EVERYthing, so I'm just piecing things together in a way that makes an iota of sense to me, following the logic of what the show HAS provided. The only solid details we have are diehard IRL dates, that gave us a time range when certain events can/can't happen. AFAIK I'm working with the same set of details everyone else has, until AMC gives us more info in S3+. And unfortunately, the 2 biggest unknown variables are Lestat & Armand, and to what extent they were/weren't involved in the Trial that got Claudia killed & Louis buried alive.

"saying Armand messed with Louis' memories re: the trial is also something not supported by the show."

The show obvs. wants us to assume that Armand made Louis hallucinate Sam guarding him in the theatre box (thus painting Armand as a "captive" along with Louis & Claudeleine).

Even if Armand didn't use the Mind Gift on Louis, he lied at least twice:

lies by omission: letting Louis think a hallucination of Sam was real

lies to Louis' (& Daniel's) face: going along with the premise that he was Sam's "captive" & Armand sat there the whole time thinking of a way to rescue Louis

And we KNOW this is a lie, cuz Daniel calls it out explicitly, asking how Sam can be "in two places at once," allegedly "guarding" Armand, but ALSO helping to torture Louis in the Wet Room.

Armand never denied or contradicted Louis saying Sam was in either place. Maybe Louis really did misremember Sam being in the wet room--the ONLY one who can corroborate all this is SAM--whom Armand ALSO lies on, throwing Sam, Daniel & the Talamasca all under the bus by saying the script with his handwriting all over it was forged! No honor amongst thieves I guess! 🤣

(Eff Lestat's POV in S3--when is SAM gonna give HIS POV of the Trial?!)

So I'm operating on patterns of behavior, and the logic that if he's deliberately lying about one thing (a VERY BIG THING, actually), then what else is he lying about? How are you "atoning" for anything, when you're just heaping lies on top of gaslighting on top of manipulation?

Armand has used Louis' obvious confusion to his advantage, just going along with whatever will make him look better & more sympathetic. Which ofc, is the exact same thing he does with the "Banishment" lie. "They gave me a choice...I could not prevent it" is the truth and a lie all rolled into one incredibly manipulative cocktail, cuz if it was just a simple matter of Armand selling Claudia out to save Louis, that would be one thing--but Armand KNEW the script planned LOUIS' death the whole time. The "seismic lie" about "Banishment" effs up Armand's whole defense.

Cuz Sam already wrote the script in April 1949 (and I said this is confusing, cuz if it's the WHOLE script, then this implies Lestat's half was written by then, too, and NOT in September after the Eiffel Tower crime--which means he was ALREADY in Paris & working with the coven; inc. Armand (which would also explain WHY Armand took Louis to the library so much--perhaps anticipating that Loustat would feel e/o's presence if Louis was around the theatre too much? But that doesn't explain Claudia)--omfg I'm confused). Wtvr--we KNOW that at some point b/t April & September 1949, Armand made his edits & directed the entire production--from Santiago to Lestat to Tuan's projections--ALL of it. And we know Tuan's projections started being made in June/July 1949.

Armand KNEW Daniel had been given the OLD script from the archives, WITHOUT Armand's edits & directions, and LET Daniel AND Louis think that was the truth--

--same way he went behind Louis' back and removed extra pages from Claudia's diaries that would reveal MORE of his shenanigans--

--and the same way he lied about Nicki (& Gabrielle) in 2x3.

The show ALSO provides us with quotes like this:

And this:

And this:

Which in retrospect make Armand look even more insidious, esp. when we wonder to what extend Louis' been "driven to form new conclusions about myself" when he doesn't even KNOW himself; let alone WHAT memories he has that are real or false.

It's so effed up, and it makes me side-eye all the insistence that LOUIS is the one mostly at fault, when he's got literal double-hypnosis Brain Scramblies from WWDITS. 😭🤦

Ofc there are unknown-unknowns when dealing with unreliable narration. But there are also known-unknowns, too, that also make Armand sus.

Sure, Loumand was away at the library in July (IF that memory's even real, Mr. "I Had A Hunch")--but how on earth would Armand have NOT known that the coven was working on the Trial right under his nose for MONTHS prior & after July--Luchenbaum sewing new barrister costumes & wigs; Tuan painting projections & testing new lens/film tech; and Sam writing a new script (when we already KNOW Sam can't multitask when his "head's in a hat")?

July is only ONE month in over HALF A YEAR of Trial prep. Louis was never around the coven to know what was going on--but ARMAND was; it's where HE lives.

Whose POV was it that showed the whole coven passing around Claudia's diaries? Whose POV was it that revealed Santiago being called Maitre in every scene that ARMAND was also in?

Armand was in the park with Tuan when Tuan called Santiago Maitre; and Armand was in the theatre with Sam when Sam called Santiago Maitre--so this is clearly either Armand's POV telling on himself; or it's AMC screwing with us.

It's TRUE that Turning Madeleine was the straw that broke the camel's back, as Armand was like I can't keep THAT a secret from the coven, too (and ofc he couldn't--they're VAMPIRES; they'd FEEL a new vamp in their territory). But Loumand's problems PREDATE Madeleine; the same way Loustat's problems predate Claudia. I blame Les for not dealing with Lou's BS, just like I blame Armand, cuz THEY are the Coven Masters, NOT Lou--esp. cuz Armand had 14 other vamps in his coven he SHOULD be prioritizing over Lou. The same way Loustat's guilty of being bad fathers (which they BOTH admitted to), Armand's guilty of being a bad coven leader (which HE admitted to).

IMO, all this makes any & all discussion about Armand's trustworthiness difficult, when his "seismic lie" throws EVERYTHING else he's done into question. Esp. since the show ALSO provides us with the FACT that Armand knew from DAY ONE that Claudia lied about "Bruce"/Lestat; and that Louis was a terrible liar & terrible with the Mind Gift; and that he'd ALREADY planned on killing Louis in 2x3! Armand knew from the get-go that he couldn't do EFF ALL to keep Louis & Claudia out of danger, and TOLD Louis so.

"It also ignores that Louis softens his participation in certain things because he can't live with the guilt of his full participation, e.g. Claudia's turning, which he continued to lie to Claudia about even during the trial and only accepted the extent of his involvement in Dubai"

The Trial Timeline's purpose is to pinpoint when the preparations took place, NOT to hash out how bad of a father Louis was to Claudia. 🤨

And it certainly isn't meant to provide a timeline for the events in S1 wrt Claudia's Turning--we already know the dates for all of that, that she was made in 1917. I focus on the 1940s in S2, and the European dates, NOT the NOLA dates. LOUIS did not participate in the Trial's preparations, ARMAND & LESTAT did. My timeline has ZERO bearings on Louis' guilt for not warning her, etc.

But on the subject of Louis & Claudia, I've cussed Louis out for not telling Claudia about Armand b4 (x x), I don't ignore it at all. I fully understand & even agree with Armand being fed up with dealing with Louis' BS. But HE CHOSE not to kill Louis when he had the chance, and it's obvs that whatever arrangement they made when they had sex in 2x3/2x4 allowed Louis to TRUST that Armand would keep "the secret" & keep Louis & Claudia SAFE from the coven. (Which is a BOGUS claim for him to make, when Santiago'd ALREADY peeped that they were lying about Lestat & being from NOLA, but wtvr). I've called Louis a naive idiot 1000x for overestimating Armand, putting his life in Armand's incapable hands--just like he would AGAIN by trusting him about "Banishment;" and AGAIN by asking Armand to wipe his memories in SanFran (and LIE by omission about Les saying "I love you, Louis").

"Louis remembers the trial, he remembers what was said and what Lestat showed him."

HOW can Lestat have showed Louis ANY memories during the Trial (inc. the Ep4 revisit), when Makers/Fledglings CANNOT read each other's minds???????

I love this show so much, but I effing hate this show--they don't even give us an answer, Daniel just moves right past it, like wtf are we supposed to do with that, AMC? There's plot threads, vs plot HOLES. Louis' TOO unreliable, Armand's a shysty liar, white savior Lestat to the rescue~~~! "BANishMEnT~!" As if Lestat's any less impartial?

Esp. when at least SOME parts of the Ep4 Revisit were OBVIOUSLY Scripted lines written by the coven to implicate Louis in breaking the Great Laws that Lestat allegedly taught him AND Claudia to follow?

Like, Louis HATES himself, and is quick to blame himself for things beyond his control (a la Paul, a la the Ordinances; "Can we be forgiven if we do not forgive others ourselves?"); so if one is determined to see him bad faith then of course one can easily pounce on him Florence DPDL style / Santiago style, and blame him.

(Esp. since in 1x4 we literally SEE Louis admit to begging & emotionally baby-trapping Lestat into turning Claudia--the revisit in 2x7 is more (melo)dramatic & extended, sure, but it does NOT contradict Louis' account in S1. So I get REAL confused when people say he lied about 1x4 or wtvr.)

Louis invalidates his perspective cuz he KNOWS he's an unreliable narrator--he spends 2x1 sobbing about wanting to remember & "get every detail right"--and ARMAND is there constantly tryna STOP the interview; having directly contributed to his already deteriorated (& inherited?) mental illness, by bending Lou's trauma into "a Lestat shaped-effigy" with all that "I will not harm you" bullcrap.

TL;DR: We won't know for sure what the Trial timeline actually looks like, unless S3+ revisits it with more context.

But as things stand at the end of S2, NO, I don't trust Armand as far as I can throw him, cuz there are waaaay too many instances where he's deliberately lied & obfuscated & omitted in ways to deliberately confuse the narrative surrounding the Trial--that go beyond Louis' already confirmed trauma, PTSD, mental illness, repressed/faulty memory, and guilty conscious.

If y'all want a timeline of S1 events, those have already been made by other people in the fandom (this one is goated).

I wanted to know what was going on in S2; so I used every single date and IRL reference possible, and put them in chronological order in a way that makes sense based on how I TENTATIVELY understand things currently; NOT how AMC has confirmed yet--if they ever will.

If anyone has more relevant in-show references & IRL sources we can cite, to help make better sense of S2 than I did, let us all know!

[sentientsky]

daniel wake up. daniel my love the people online are making fun of me. look at this. i—yes i know you just woke up and i’m levitating over our bed in a quote unquote “ominous” way. just look. you see, they are taking this photograph of me and adding ridiculous captions. and look. daniel stop laughing please. do you honestly think that i, a five hundred year old immortal vampire, would be so easily swindled by an internet scammer? i have seen empires rise and fall. i’ve watched time, people, landscapes, all turn to dust around me. do they truly believe that i am so foolish as to—daniel you promised not to bring up the Credit Card Incident. nor the Social Security Number Incident. look at this one. daniel. daniel beloved this is serious i don’t even play minecraft that much anymore. i’ve branched out. it’s like you don’t even appreciate our tiny perfect life in the sims four. daniel. you hate our virtual child. our beautiful mr pickles the cat. is this what i have to put up with for the rest of our immortal lives? you laughing at me? daniel—

[murfpersonalblog]

IWTV S2 Musings - Tentative Timeline (Pt3b: 1940 - 1950) - ❗REVISIONS❗

These revisions took a minute, y'all, apologies.

HUGE thanks to @usuallydeepalpaca-blog and @alleyskywalker for working with me to make a (hopefully) more precise tentative timeline for S2 -- Pt 1 (1940 - 1948ish: x x) and Pt2 (1949: x x). There's so much unreliable narration from ALL these MCs, so things are very much STILL up in the air wrt chronology, that will likely only be resolved in S3 🙏 (AMC y'all got some explaining to do, cuz this ish REALLY don't make sense!!! 😩). So until then, this is still just a rough guestimate of when events took place in S2, cuz IDFK. 🤦

My actual detailed breakdown of these dates is posted here:

As always, feel free to point things out if y'all have extra context or different calculations--inquiring minds wanna know!

[murfpersonalblog]

"Say that ish about Claudia" for me.

[murfpersonalblog]

IWTV S2 Musings - Tentative Timeline (Pt1b: 1940 - 1949) [OLD VERSION]

[The revised version is HERE]

I've been struggling with this for a while, cuz this ish just don't make sense, AMC. (I fully expect S3 to gotcha/retcon/fix stuff, esp. since who knows what Armand's tinkered around with in Louis' head.) I split this timeline in 2 parts: Pt1 has everything from 2x1 - 2x6ish; and then ofc Pt2 will cover as much as I can understand from the Trial's shenanigans.

My actual detailed breakdown of these dates is posted here:

(I'm just one person tryna figure out wtf is going on, so if y'all have any insights, please share!)

[murfpersonalblog]

Sam Reid on the Betrayal at the Heart of Season Two of ‘Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire’ - Awards Buzz

Awards Buzz: First of all, I love the show, I know you have heard that a 100-thousand times. What I'm curious about is that Interview with the Vampire deals very much with recollection and memory and unreliable narrators and all of these things. I am suddenly very nervous now that I'm actually in your presence, but--

Sam Reid: No I'm nervous that we're together chatting--I'm in your presence, let's be nervous together!

AB: As an actor, how do you sort of deal with portraying that, portraying maybe somebody else's recollection of this character--does that play into your thinking? 

SR: Yeah, and we talk about it all the time. I think it's something that we all do, playing these roles: we sort of look at how the character is at a specific period of time. I mean, with Lestat specifically, yes he's often seen through the eyes of Louis, but I can't say that Louis got it all wrong. But there are definitely moments where we're going to push into the hyper-archvillain. And I think, also playing with Armand’s perspective and Armand letting him--Armand sort of seeing him a bit more as a kind of, like a romance novel cover kind of thing. And what that dynamic is. But you know, Assad does a very similar thing, where he's sort of playing multiple characters at multiple different times. And Jacob does the same thing, where you see them through different lenses at different periods of time. I think that's sort of the joy of what this show is, and what it gives us as actors is the opportunity to kind of really have very mercurial flexible roles that we can try different things, explore different things. This was quite a fun thing to keep returning back to, because you don't really ever feel set in stone. You feel like you can give a new era a go, which I suppose is the joy of playing an immortal character, I guess.

AB:  Do you--I mean, I mentioned your charm; that's such a big part of the character. Do you feel like that's maybe like hard for you sometimes to have to be this sort of looming presence that sort of exudes all these different, like--the gamut of human emotion?

SR: What do you mean by hard?

AB: Like, do you feel a lot of pressure to be able to--there's so many facets in in Season 2, he's playing a person who is a vampire who's playing--?

SR: Oh sure! Yeah, of course! And it's always challenging, that's why it's so fun. It is a really challenging show, and it's sort of under the premise of it being a genre vampire show, but I guess really we use the metaphor of a vampire to be a much larger conduit to have really intense conversations about humanity. So you are playing a bunch of different levels at all times, which makes it challenging. And Rolin Jones also is like extraordinary at layering the script and layering every scene with as many different things as possible. He has a kind of obsession about making sure that an audience is never going to be bored, and he really wants you to lock in when you watch. And when you have to kind of translate that on set, sometimes you're obviously speaking multiple languages, you're usually doing some kind of a stunt with a rig of some kind, or multiple dialogues between multiple characters--one happening telepathically, and one happening in present day. There's so many things that he layers onto it. But yeah, 💖💖 I guess in terms of like keeping the overall arc of Lestat alive, it's sort of important that we remain connected to the love story at the center of it, which is Louis and Lestat. And so that you feel attached to their separation, and their experiences previously and going forward. That you as an audience member continue to invest in these characters and their push and pull. 💖💖 So that's kind of complex, because we have to play those beats sometimes in random and turnabout ways, like a ghost or a vision or-- Yeah so it's always challenging, but challenges are fun!

AB: Well, I feel like maybe if your next role is going to be quote unquote straightforward then you're going to be like: I miss all of that! I think about that all the time with actors, like how do you go on to just play some regular guy?! 

SR: It’s really fun playing a supernatural, very intense vampire. It can be kind of exhausting too.

AB: And that brings me to my next question, which is, like: The physicality is so interesting, not just because he's, again, this very graceful sort of--he's obviously been alive for centuries, but like you also have the blood and all these scenes-- What is it like for you to sort of inhabit this skin of this being? 

SR: I don't really-- I think the costumes do so much work for us. I think what was kind of, what is fun and and probably not really thought about too much is that we're all--we all have accents on the show, so we've all sort of developed these sort of character skins. So when we start playing the game of the show with each other, the accents come on and the physicality appears, and everyone just sort of slips into it. And we just kind of play! Really, it sounds a bit silly, but it's just a big game, so the physicality is sort of always there, because they're like the costumes that we put on. I think you do a lot of thought about it, early, in the beginning, and then now as we go on it's sort of ingrained, and sometimes you have to work very hard to pull back some of the choices that you've made, because you don't want to get stuck in a rut. Like, I say, these are mercurial characters, and they are ever-evolving, and you want to make sure that you don't get them stuck in a particular era, which is sort of like, one of the joys of the character of Armand is that he's always looking for a way into the new century, you know what I mean? 

AB: So I'm sure you're already aware of this, but in doing my research to talk to you, I realized that fans are very upset at how long they've had to wait in-between seasons. 👀😅 And then I wondered what's that like for you as an actor? Do you like having--maybe because you've talked about how when you're shooting the show you have to shoot very quickly, but as you're sort of waiting, do you feel like having that time helps you prepare? Do you find it maybe difficult to kind of come in and out, and then also having a lot of time pass, and you have to come back and talk to me about it?

SR: I mean it's difficult talking about Season 2, honestly. Because we're moving into a new season, and so sometimes I have to remember what's happened, but it might feel like a very long time for audiences, but actually we're working the whole time in-between. Like, actually making it, because the difference is: when a show comes out, the show is being shot in that period of time, or written or developed or rehearsed, and then they've got to go into posts, and we spend a lot of time in posts. We spend a lot of time doing ADR, or doing sound recording or whatever it is that we have to bring into it. So it actually doesn't necessarily feel like we get a break. It feels actually like the show just keeps going continuously, and it becomes a lifestyle in a way. Because then we're also promoting it, which also does take up quite a lot of time as well. 

AB: But do you feel like, I mean, I guess when you look back on Season 2, what stands out to you, and what's your overarching takeaway, like if I was writing a book about your experience on Interview with the Vampire? 

SR: What's the thing that I would take away from Season 2? Um, I think one of the key elements--which hopefully does translate--is that Louis and Lestat really betrayed Claudia. Claudia is the most important person in their lives, and in my opinion the show really--because she's such an incredible figure, and to lose her like we lose her in this season should feel so devastating that it creates a world-shattering reverberation throughout the show, and throughout subsequent seasons. So hopefully, the way that Armand, Louis and Lestat have all interacted with Claudia, and the way that this character has been betrayed by all three of them at different stages--and then obviously Delainey Hayles' extraordinary portrayal of this character, who is so fundamentally tragic. 💔 Because there's this adult trapped in a child's body, which is an amazing amazing Anne Rice-ian creation, that you should feel and walk away from this season feeling totally connected to Claudia, and be yearning for her like the rest of these vampires are, for many years to come. 👏❤️

AB: well I have to be honest with you: At the end of Season 1, I kind of hated Lestat! 

SR: Yeah, you should!  👈🫵😤👏

AB: He was just so monstrous at times, that I really struggled with, like: what am I supposed to feel for this character?! But I felt in Season 2 that things were maybe a little, like, softer, and there were more facets to him that I got to learn, and I felt more of a pull. 🥺👉👈 And so I wondered like, for you again playing--like, how do you maybe relate to the more monstrous things? Do you find it hard for you at times to empathize with this?

SR: I think, because we are telling this sort of onion kind of story, where you're peeling away at the artifice, and the point of view, and how Louis is framing Lestat, you're sort of meant to kind of feel like he's just--you're meant to hate him, you know? But as you peel it away, and the things he can't escape, and the memories he’s trying to erase but he can't, you start to see that there was a bit more of a different dynamic to that relationship. So yeah, I mean, I guess it was sort of--sometimes when, early in Season 1, I remember, there's a scene where, um, it's after they have a huge kind of attack basically, and just before Lestat drops him from the sky, and we had this really complicated rig where I had to pull Jacob down the alley, and um--that day was really challenging, because I just couldn't work out how to pitch it. Because it felt so felt so wrong, I was like: I just don't really know what I'm doing! 😩 Like, I couldn't work it out, so it is hard. You kind of have to find the level of not making it so extreme that we just step out of the realm of an audience being able to connect and care about it; but you also have to make it sort of arch enough to feel the stakes of the scene. And the same thing with the Trial episode. There's elements of it which you know Rolin--the way he crafts things is: he wants the audience to feel the most that they can feel about any given moment. He always goes "Well let's go to the furthest we can! Let's not give them a little kind of tickle; let's give them a smack!" And sorry I've used that analogy, but anyway! And so the Trial was challenging, because he really wanted that feeling to come you; wanted you wanted you to feel like Lestat was coming in there for vengeance, for revenge, you know? And there was--there's more than that; it's more complicated than that, there's a lot more going on. But we had to play it for the initial reaction, the initial heat, and then we could slowly slip in more layers around it afterwards.

AB: I love what you said about sort of vampire lore being our conduit to sort of explore all these deeper human emotions, and I felt like that was my experience watching the show. I thought a lot about resentments or anger--all these emotions, and how I sort of have to sit with them. And here are these people that have been around a lot longer than I have, and they're sitting with all these deep emotions. So I wonder: have you sort of wrestled with this idea of like maybe, how playing this character has influenced you, and the way you think about these sort of larger overarching themes in your own life? 

SR: Um, I think I'm always informed by any character that you play, and any experience you have--whether it be your job or not. You're sort of informed by it, in general, I think. So yeah, I'm sure I'm subconsciously--somewhere, I'm learning from this experience. But more often than not, you have to bring your own experience to these things, and you have to sort of supplement it for the context that you're given in the script. So yeah, I mean you know, I think everybody hopefully--well not hopefully, but you know--it's an important experience in your life, to have your heart broken. And it's important, you know, you learn a lot from that. And it's an important experience in life, if people are lucky to have it, to actually fall in love. 💔 And that's important, so I think, to be able to play these things, you have to have lived those experiences, so that you know you can make it feel human; you can make it make sense, and you're not just living in, you know, big genre fantasy world. 

AB: Sam, I have to let you go, but I do want to give you the final word, if there's anything that I haven't asked you about that you wanted to mention last, if there's anything you can tell me about Season 3, to hold on to.

SR: What was what was the first part of your question? If there's just anything else I want to tell you about Season 3, is that yes, we're very close to filming it, and we'll be filming in Toronto. Daniel Hart is working feverishly away, and I'm really excited for everybody to see the work that he has done, because it is extraordinary! 

AB: Well, I wish you the best of luck, and have fun on Season 3, and hopefully we get to catch up again, but thank you so much for your time.