#rolin put me in the writers room

[casually-slips-into-coma]

sorry im still talking about this,, but the armand twist in the finale wouldve packed a waaayyyy bigger punch if it was revealed he orchestrated claudias murder and also louis’ salvation. if he planned to kill claudia out of some fucked up love he had for louis that wouldve been a DEVASTATING plot point. it would have been so delicious to see louis have to come to terms with the fact that armand killed claudia for him. like thats so fucking horrifying but thats also why im watching this show. i want to be horrified

it also is completely in line with what we’ve seen of armand. it wouldve been a fire parallel to what happened in the 70s with daniel, where armand went fucking crazy and possessive and hurt/tortured an innocent because of louis (im not blaming louis for what armand did to daniel u know what i mean by that). his whole thing is that he’s someone so so desperate for love that he’s willing to do anything to keep it for himself including killing the love of his life’s daughter, including torturing a random guy for a week straight, including manipulating memories

the reveal shouldve just been that armand directed the play and he was behind it the whole time and that he was the reason claudia died. can u imagine??? a scene of louis and armand in dubai directly after the twist is revealed to louis????? where armand is trying desperately to explain how he killed louis’ daughter as an act of love for him??????? and that louis just wouldnt understand and thats why hes been lying to him the whole time?? that would’ve been amazing jacob and assad wouldve ate so bad

it just seems like the writers were like armand is the villain👎👎👎 and lestat is the hero👍👍👍 when one of the huge messages of the show is that they are ALL monsters

[canonicallysoulmates]

Some highlights from an interview Jacob recently did:

When asked what fans can expect from s2: "If you can believe it, it's a lot darker than the book" x

Darker than the book?! We're not surviving s2.

"Rolin [Jones], very gracefully let me and Sam have meetings with the writers room in between seasons and they asked a few questions about what we thought" x

I absolutely love that they got to speak with the writers and share their input on some things because both Jacob and Sam have shown not only how much they love and care about their characters but also how well they understand them, and how much thought they put into how they portray them.

"On season one and season two we always refer back to the books." x

About portraying Louis and people's reaction to the first season: "I'm just really glad that people accepted me. I'm sure everybody didn't but the people that did I feel really grateful, and I'm glad that I did the character justice. But also that like I really love Louis. I really love this character. I would be dissapointed if he wasn't executed with justice. That sounds like he was going to be sentenced to death that's not what I mean, but particularly our version of Louis I really care about him. I really care about getting it as right as I possibly can." x

He also says he's a very offline person but I hope he knows how much we love him and his amazing portrayal of Louis ❣️

On working with Sam on s2: "Yeah, I have to be careful about how I answer this question. All I'll say is that after we finished shooting me and Sam have been in constant contact anyway, and we did all the press together as well. We're just friends so like we're chatting anyway. So whenever we're working together on s2- if we're working together on s2."

I don't believe that "if" for a second 😂

"Me and Sam had a bit of rehearsal at the beginning, we'd go for walks around New Orleans. We'd walk for hours just around the city and we'd just chat and get to know each other."

For hours?! That's so cute.

Full interview

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hello! I was listening to some old interviews for iwtv season 1 and I was quite surprised by Bailey saying a couple times how the show plays with the question of who the real villain is, and the audience will sort of be left thinking who the bad guy really is…which is find quite interesting because certainly those questions are there if you go looking for them, all the vampires are doing highly immoral things by human standards afterall but the narrative of the last few episodes on the surface seems very cut and dry to me. The show paints Lestat unquestionably as as the villain who our protagonists Claudia and Louis must overcome despite his lingering love and all that, there’s depth there of course but lestat’s perspective isn’t obviously centred because it’s Louis story. It’s curious what the actors on set filming the scenes interpret differently from the final product because to me the writers didn’t frame the last episode that way at all. It reminded me in ep5 how the cast mentioned that while filming it there were differing thoughts on set about what the scene was about, how much is determined in the editing room, because imagine how different the tone of ep 7 would have been if lestat’s balcony monologue had been cut like they almost did.

Jacob put it very much on point, imho, when he said that IWTV is a "beautiful rant about an ex".

Which is exactly what the first half of the book IWTV is as well. The show painted that "villain" portrait very clearly (mind you, they're all monsters and none of them are the "good guy"), but since we already have been told all will be revisited, and both Sam and Jacob joking about not knowing what exactly is the truth.... well.

They knew exactly what they were doing in this show, and with season 1 and what they showed us and how.

The last episode is a bit different already (which is exactly why Rolin fought so hard to get that monologue in imho), because... it is when the longing starts to seep in, when the tale starts to fall apart. (And yes, without it would have been vastly different)

The teaser shows that so clearly already, too, just the few scenes we got showed us a vastly different situation in Dubai, and a yearning Louis in Paris.

So yeah, it is a shame we could not see more of the "decisions" (mayyyybeeee we haven't gotten a lot of BTS stuff on the DVD because maybe they don't want to give too much away?! (Just a theory)), but I think with the revisiting "looming"... we might still get to see some of that.

Because some things... they must have filmed already (like "murder night" for example?!), don't you think?^^

We'll see.

[pynkhues]

Speaking of Sam's tiny ankle agenda, this is ridiculously specific but as a horror media enthusiast, I must say I hope they fully lean into the horror aspect in the Magnus scenes in s3 and have him properly haunt Lestat before capturing and turning him. I'm talking about Magnus blinking in/out of the frame like a ghost, dragging Lestat by his tiny ankle at night like the Demon toying with Regan in the Exorcist, mind-controlling other people to make Lestat feel even more paranoid and crazy. Dread and paranoia is honestly my fav part of horror and TVL gives sooo much potential. Plus I just think Sam would be having so much fun lol

It was actually one of the things that really struck me in re-reading that part of TVL in writing Ungodly Hour, but Magnus literally does stalk him for months. The book's pretty clear that Lestat gets on stage the first time in the summer, first sees Magnus sometime at the end of the summer, and then keeps seeing him in flashes and glimpses until Magnus abducts him and at that point it's snowing. And man, there's even horror before the turning sequence, because the abduction scene where Lestat's taken from his bed with Nicki + the snowy rooftop scene that immediately follows are genuinely scenes of pretty abject horror even before we get to Magnus' tower at all.

I kind of touched on it in my Byronic Hero post, but there's a real difference between genre conventions of terror and horror in gothic literature and they're often gendered with terror being considered female gothic and horror male gothic. What's interesting (and I genuinely think is pretty masterful in Anne's writing) is the way she shifts between the rising terror towards the end of the Lelio Rising part of the book and The Legacy of Magnus part until it shifts very suddenly and dynamically into full-blown horror. It's honestly a pretty brilliant use of genre conventions, and a real showcase of Anne's talent of a writer.

It's so obviously something Rolin's been drawn to, or at least compelled by, given how often he's brought it up in press for the first two seasons, and so I'm really curious as to how he envisions it. Given what he's said already, I can't really see them not going all in, and even putting the turning sequence aside, I think there's so much room for what you're talking about. Like, his face appearing like a disembodied mask in the audience at Lestat's shows is terrifying, and even the stuff afterwards of Magnus having chosen and laid out an outfit for Lestat after he's assaulted Lestat and then burned himself alive in front of him is like, the best, most insidious sort of gothic terror dressed up as something borderline romantic, which to me, just amplifies the horror of it all.

I don't think they're going to do a 1:1 adaptation of the book at all either (especially given they've already changed a few things around, particularly the timeline), and I'm really curious as to what that actually means.

[murfpersonalblog]

You definitely did your job right, Rolin, cuz wtf. Yes, 2x5 was a tour de force of acting & writing, bravo bravo. But 2x7 keeps me up at night, istg. 👌 That Trial pisses me right off, and I'm disgusted by how accurate 2x2 was about the audience being COMPLICIT, cuz this rancid fandom's been proving Santiago right every dang day.

And some of that IMO is the writing's fault, where things aren't messy for the sake of drama & good tv, but are messy as part of the strike's fallout. I truly hope they've been taking fans' feedback & critiques to heart, cuz people are running around with all kinds of conclusions & assumptions about 2x7 and 2x8 that y'all need to address in S3.

I'm glad he's aware that some of the writing makes no effing sense.

I never liked using memory is the monster as a crutch for plot holes & retcons, but I commend Rolin for the clever things he did do despite the strikes & budget/production issues, to still stick the landing in S2. We'll have to see where S3 takes it, but i do have faith that if anyone can pull it off, Rolin can.

"Everybody in the [writer's] room relives their worst fight with someone they shouldn’t have been in love with but wanted to be." I love this. Cuz people wanna act like this show isn't a deliberately literal mirror of IRL relationships, and the monsters within us that make us say "ugly words." That's GOTHIC literature 101. It's not subtle at all. The absence of metaphor is so striking.

You pissed off EVERYONE--me included--and I love you for it, RJ. Is this the best vampire show I've ever seen? Not quite--Bram Stoker's Dracula is near & dear to my heart; and Castlevania S1 was a revelation. But this is HANDS DOWN the best fantasy book adaption I've seen since Lord of the Rings. IWTV's way better than Game of Thrones (I hear House of the Dragon is mid AF, which I expected). This is "harder to swallow" cuz it puts the onus on lazy AF viewers to not turn their brains off & put in actual legwork to look things up themselves. (Plus there's Bipoc leads, which also grates racists. I guarantee that S3 will have a very different reception since Lestat's the lead.)

Yaaaas~! SUFFER!

AMC should 100% release the full footage of the plays on their website or on Youtube or SOMETHING, wtf!? I thought the plays were so cool! WEIRD, ofc, but so cool!

STFU, Rolin--you should ABSOLUTELY do Forrest Gump, LOL. XD Y'all had Sartre eavesdropping on Loumand, and Lestat ghostwriting for Jelly Roll Martin, and Tom Anderson thirsting after Louis--PLEASE keep going, you sicko, yaaas~!

It's so sad that Rolin keeps repeating this, that he thought AMC would cancel them. WTF is going on over there? Y'all spent all this money buying AR's estate--RJ also often talks about their budget issues--just to cancel it? WHY? And why TF has it taken y'all so long to get on other streaming platforms like Netflix? The business moves & marketing has been dog trash since Day One, and it boggles my mind. But thank god AMC's going forward with it--they'd be dumb AF to let this diamond slip through their fingers, just cuz it's not doing HotD numbers.

This makes me feel most insane of all. ROBBED, I tell you!

[idontwikeit]

Now I'm even more mad about ghostat. I'm sure AMC was always going to renew for their silly mcu ass attempt so why interfere and overrule the showrunner to put more of him when we could have used that for more Claudia or Loumand dynamics. There were other ways to illustrate Louis having a breakdown

again I don’t mind having dreamstat he does grow on me but i am opposed to having him in scenes that are truly unnecessary. I have no idea if and how much amc interfere in the writers room but i think rolin is one of the immortal universe showrunner with the new deal? so probably make sense he would work that in, I’m not familiar with the show business so i don’t want to point at amc as some sole scapegoat here, who knows who are behind the decision making. but i will blame amc marketing since it’s glaringly obvious they failed

[sofipitch]

I'm kind of scratching my head about what they want to do with Claudia and her storyline this season. I've been ok with ageing her up and Bailey is a phenomenal actress. She's mesmerizing. But even her capacity to captivate my attention couldn't stop me from seriously questioning her character arc.

The whole idea of Claudia (in the books) was that she was an adult stuck in a small child's body, unable to live "a normal adult life". Unable to be her own independent, free person. Always needing somebody to care for her and to help her with the aspects of her life that intersected the human world. She was doomed to be dependent on one of her parents forever. And she realized that. She realized that Louis would be the only one who would bend to her will, who wil go where she wants, who will do what she asks. She loved him I have no doubt, but she also knew he was the "weak link".

That's not what I saw in this episode. They had Claudia learn how to drive , they had her go to college, they had her living alone for 7 years. She did so more or less successfully (cause they showed she wasn't as careful with her killings like L&L), but she managed just fine for 7 years. She returned home out of loneliness (in her diary) and because of the SA. Which brings me to the other point of contention. I'm disgusted that they aged Claudia just to write a rape scene in her narrative! to make her tough!!

Where is the dependance on her parents? Where is the vital need for an adult to help her navigate her life? Where is the feeling that she couldn't live in that house anymore because Lestat was the autocrat controlling everything and it was either her or Lestat? Cause if she didn't like living there, show Claudia could just leave. Where are the manipulations regarding Louis? Where is the selfishness mixed with the rightful desire for independence?

Because show Claudia, as they have portrayed her, is just a reckless girl who can't control her killings, who came home to save her dad/older brother from the evil sadistic bastard that is her other parent. Her motivations are nearly selfless. After what show Lestat did, she's 100% right to want to take Louis from him and run to the other corner of the earth. Let alone kill him after that brutal beating. There is no ambiguity left. I can't see show Claudia as a manipulative little monster desperate for love. I see a younf vampire who can't control her powers but who wants to save her loved ones.

Yeah I 100% agree, I was willing to suspend disbelief about Claudia. Like Charlie thought she was still 14 so maybe that would still create road blocks to running away. Like can a 14 year old get a hotel room? Where does she put her coffin? Did she have to buy a new one? She doesn't know you can bury yourself in the earth so she COULD have been still lost and dependent bc of looking like a child but yeah they threw that away without a second thought.

And the thing is, in the books, Claudia maybe only indirectly dies because she ran away. But it's NEVER framed as "her fault she should have listened to Lestat". Armand killing her is something that both her dads take on as their own guilt. Claudia's death is always loustat's failure. The way Rolin Jones framed the SA it could be seen as a stand in for Claudia's death in a way, that "runs away -> gets hurt" but he clearly blamed her with his phrasing and that to me is disgusting and vile.

I agree that Bailey is awesome as Claudia, it's the writer's who dropped the ball and couldn't be normal about writing a female character. Her backstory is she was abused, she is never actually loved by one of her adopted fathers, she can't find romantic love, she runs away from home and is assulted, she watches her father/brother violently abused. The story they gave Claudia is just one of nonstop pain and I think the writers should sit down and evaluate why. And why the pains that she suffered in the books I guess "weren't dramatic enough". But Claudia is the gender dysphoria character and they basically stripped that one away big time for "child of abuse character"

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hi! Feel free not to answer this ask because I know the discourse topic of lestat’s cheating is most definitely a dead horse at this point in the fandom but I wanted to send you some thoughts. I’ve been seeing some of the new viewers from Max who’ve now watched the show simply labelling and dismissing lestat as The Cheater which does sadden me a bit to see how the nuance of loustat’s relationship (from a book fan pov) has been reduced to that because of those particular choices by the writers. I don’t mean to be too negative and I think the nuance IS there in the show, I like so much of what the writers did, but did something like excessively circling back to lestat’s infidelity overshadows too much of the actual core reasons for the families inevitable doom in NOLA? Because I understand how new viewers not picking up some of the other layers to it. In the book the stuff with Antoine is certainly there but that’s at the end of 60 years together as opposed to in the show where it’s like 25 or so years on and off cheating out of 30 years together, it does change things. Do you think that writing choice was the right one in the show or does it depend on if they revisit it in the future? It’s hard as a book fan for me personally to make that call because in the books the relationships are far more fluid, ambiguous, between the lines and all that, so what was and wasn’t infidelity throughout the chronicles just isn’t ever the main concern, there are allusions to jealousy but never betrayal quite like in the show, but the show is doing it’s own thing and maybe this is how iwtv lestat would act in a more monogamous traditional relationship with Louis in this time period, it’s hard to call.

Thanks x

Hey!

(I get you, still....^^)

It is weird (to me), that the focus Louis put on Lestat's cheating... works so well.

Because yes, within the tale Antoinette serves as the "reason". The reason Louis is so destroyed, the reason he is depressed, the reason why Claudia is mad. The reason why Louis is suffering so bitterly.

Convenient, isn't it. :)

Because they were threatened. Louis has a hard time with the right of passage. Louis also has a hard time killing (and an eating disorder), and a hard time with the lack of intimacy coming from the lack of libido. Louis chokes on his own hypocrisy, and the choices he made. His guilt. Louis has bouts of depression. Louis withholds, to punish.

Of course the cheating doesn't help, how could it.

But Louis very skillfully directs the focus of the tale ("Let the tale seduce you") to that aspect of the relationship, and the impact it (undoubtedly) had.

But... others have pointed it out, too (recently saw a post on Twitter, reposted by @neilcfreak there iirc??) that Antoinette... does not quite fit with the tale. Her hairstyle, her clothes. That she doesn't age (until she's turned). The finger thing. And also: the cross-dressing (and a likely resemblance to Gabrielle, I would imagine)

Personally I think the whole Antoinette arc is not yet through.

Maybe she'll be the one accusing them on the stage in Paris. It's certainly possible, and then it would be a heightening of that arc, in a sense.

And maybe... you know I wouldn't put it past Rolin and the writers to go more book canon there and let her show up in Dubai. Because we know already that they're taking from "Prince Lestat". And we know that the tale was not as it was told, at least not completely. We know already that they want to revisit everything and that it will "change how we saw season 1".

On this note:

(I‘m blocked by them but got recc'ed and sent that post 🤷🏽‍♀️):

And that is indeed very interesting - but not just because it fits Louis.

Because Louis does not need to eavesdrop here imho, he is literally in the same room.

But… outside Antoine(tte) is.

Antoine. Subject of the novel. Antoine(tte), tasked to eavesdrop on Louis and Claudia, to keep an eye on them, to follow them. Isolated from them, too.

In the book Antoine is quite soft and somewhat remote, very much intellectually driven and by music, melancholic and socially isolated, something that must have happened to Antoinette as well while she waited those 20 years(?) for Lestat to turn her.

Yet he felt ugly, loathsome, unfit to live, existing from moment to moment like an addict. He gravitated to the crippled, the diseased, the bohemian, and the downtrodden when he wanted an evening of conversation, just a little cerebral companionship. It kept him from weeping. It kept him from killing too brutally and indiscriminately. He slept in graveyards when he could find a large and secret crypt, or in cons in cellars, and now and then almost trapped by the sun he dug straight down into the moist Mother Earth, uttering a prayer that he would die there. [...] Antoine would have gone out west to see Lestat on the stage. But he was still struggling with the simplest difficulties of life in the late twentieth century when the massacres began.

I think that book is another meta commentary on the truth bleeding through and a direct reference to Antoine. Maybe these books are Louis' subconscious, depending on whether he changed that memory/tale himself... or not.

And so... I can totally see the show take Antoine's characterization and return from "Prince Lestat" to be honest.

((Imagine if she's the "interior designer".^^))

We'll see.

But as with all the things about this show I don't think it can be fully analyzed yet. We simply do not have the full picture yet. And so... I'm not 100% sure we are that far from book canon, actually. In fact, I think we may be much closer in some aspects than previously thought.

But we'll see. Season 2 will tell :)

The cheating definitely seems to be what people get worked up most though, which is exactly why the focus is where it is I think...

Look at my right hand, not at my left.

Let the tale... seduce you.

In the pages of the first book, published long ago, he found himself, nameless, “the musician,” with not so much as a physical description except that he’d been a “boy,” a mere footnote to the life and adventures of his maker as told by the vampire Louis, that one whom Lestat had so loved, and feared to anger. “Let him get used to the idea, Antoine, and then I’ll bring you over. I can’t ... I can’t lose them, Louis and Claudia.” [...]

“He was my friend, Lestat,” Antoine confessed. “He told me about his lover, Nicolas, who had been a violinist. He said he couldn’t speak his heart to his little family, to Louis or Claudia, that they would laugh at him. So he spoke his heart only to me.” [...] “But I have to go,” Antoine said. He burst into tears. He wrapped his arms tight around himself and rocked back and forth on the edge of the bed. His long black hair fell down over his face. “I have to get back to Lestat. I have to. And if anyone can help me nd him, it’s Louis, isn’t it?” [...] Let me in, I beg you, let me in. Louis, let me in. Made by Lestat, never having had a chance to know you, never meant to harm you or Claudia, those long-ago times, forgive me, let me in. Benji, my guiding light, let me in. Benji, my consolation in unending darkness, let me in. Armand, I beg you, find a place in your heart for me, let me in.

And Louis lets him in.

Now, I can obviously be wrong^^.

But... I just cannot shake the suspicion that this arc is far from over. 🤷🏽‍♀️