‘Interview With the Vampire’ Stars Tease Louis, Lestat & Armand’s Complicated Relationships

Kelli Boyle February 6, 2024, 9:08 pm

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Everything changes in Interview With the Vampire Season 2. The central love story has shifted from Louis and Lestat to Louis and Armand, the season takes place in Europe instead of New Orleans, and Armand’s presence in Dubai will make waves in Louis and Daniel’s interview.

During the Television Critics Association (TCA) Winter 2024 press tour, AMC announced that Interview With the Vampire Season 2 will premiere on Sunday, May 12. During the show’s TCA panel, attended by executive producer Mark Johnson and stars Jacob Anderson (Louis), Sam Reid (Lestat), Assad Zaman (Armand), Eric Bogosian (Daniel), and Delainey Hayles (Claudia), journalists were given a glimpse into what’s to come in the new episodes this spring. The network also released a new teaser trailer (below) that shows Lestat’s haunting presence in Louis’s life.

When viewers last saw Louis and Lestat together in the Season 1 finale, Louis attempted to kill Lestat but couldn’t finish the job by burning his body. Grappling with this won’t be easy as Louis and Claudia venture out to find new vampires in Europe.

“Louis is carrying Lestat with him kind of literally,” Anderson tells TV Insider during the panel, “and in that is going to massively affect the beginning of the new relationship [with Armand].”

“Carrying your ex on your shoulder the whole time” isn’t a great foundation of a new romance, Anderson adds, sharing that life after Lestat “gives Louis a blindness to everything that Armand is — and isn’t.”

Given that Lestat’s fate was left up in the air last season (we know he survived on rats in the dump, but what happened next is a mystery), Reid can’t say much in the way of updates about the character in Season 2. But he tells TV Insider that “there’s a big difference between Louis and Lestat” this season, later adding, “Lestat is potentially more Louis than he is himself in Season 2.”

Who are you without your past? #InterviewWithTheVampire premieres May 12 on AMC and AMC+. pic.twitter.com/mjo3t6VARe

— Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe (@Immortal_AMC) February 7, 2024

In the 2022 timeline in Season 2, Louis continues to recount his life story to journalist Daniel Molloy (Bogosian). Picking up from the bloody events in New Orleans in 1940 when Louis and teen fledgling Claudia (Hayles) conspired to kill the Vampire Lestat de Lioncourt (Reid), Louis tells of his adventures in Europe, a quest to discover Old World Vampires and the Théâtre des Vampires in Paris, with Claudia. In Paris, Louis first meets the vampire Armand (Zaman). Their courtship and love affair will prove to have devastating consequences both in the past and in the future, and Daniel will probe to get to the truths buried within the memories.

'IWTV' Season 2 Photos: Louis & Claudia at the Théâtres des Vampires & More

Zaman looks forward to fans seeing the Dubai interview.

“An element that I think is always good with any adaptation is to go, OK, what can we do to elevate it? Why are we putting it on screen in this way?” he tells us. “Having Armand in the room in Dubai in this version opens up the other books [in The Vampire Chronicles series] quicker for an audience who hasn’t read them. We’re not throwing all of Anne Rice‘s work on the screen. We’re planting the seeds. I think it was planting in Season 1, and here in Season 2 we get to watch those seeds grow and also plant more seeds for the future, which is really exciting.”

Previous teaser trailers revealed Armand and Lestat’s history, which dates back to before Lestat ever met Louis. Lestat is a founding member of the Théâtres des Vampires, Armand’s Parisian theater that is home to a coven of bloodthirsty vampires (including Ben Daniels as Santiago). Their time together could be a sticking point in Season 2 as Louis combs through decades worth of memories that have long been buried.

Interview With the Vampire, Season 2 Premieres Sunday, May 12, AMC and AMC+