“I serve a god, and it is my honor to serve.” A young servant describes Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) in response to a probing question posed by journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) while waiting for du Lac to continue their Interview. So begins Episode 2 of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. Titled “... After the Phantoms of Your Former Self,” this episode delves into the earliest days of Louis’s transition from human to vampire.
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Du Lac flexes his power even down to the details of his Dubai home, where he’s brought Molloy for their re-do interview. Paintings by lost-to-history Renaissance artists and fifteen-course meals are tasty appetizers for the stories and culture he’s really there for: Louis. As they sit to dine together, their interview continues. Louis begins the story just where he left off at the end of Episode 1, after being transformed into a vampire in a church.
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“You don’t bite the blood, you suck it.”
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Lestat (Sam Reid) disposes of the priests in the church’s graveyard. Louis stumbles behind, moaning and retching with pain. Lestat, nonchalant, explains that his body is dying. As Lestat dumps one of the bodies into an opened mausoleum, Louis notices a small pool of blood that has dripped from one of the corpses onto the ground. He crawls toward it weakly with his tongue outstretched for another taste. Lestat stops him, explaining that drinking dead blood is one of the few ways to kill a vampire. Not long after, Louis suddenly bursts into laughter and the transformation is complete.
They drift from bar to bar, Lestat teaching Louis the art of the hunt. A virile sailor leading his friends in drunken revelry catches Louis’s eye. He desires the sailor with something that straddles hunger and lust, making explicit the eroticism between vampire and victim. Lestat insists on letting food come to them. It does, in the form of a traveling tractor salesman. Lestat teaches Louis the art of seduction by keeping the man talking.
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At the first opportunity, Louis devours the man despite his attempts to fight back. Afterward, Louis is overwhelmed by the guilt, shame, and fear of killing for the first time. In his desperation to run from his actions, Louis demands to go home. Lestat attempts to stop him but is thrown against a wall. Louis stumbles down the street, realizing a little too late the mistake he’d made — for every moment sunlight touches his skin, it burns him. When he happens upon a milkman, he quickly steals a bottle to pour over his head before running back to Lestat. The more mature vampire welcomes him back with open arms and an apology for not warning him sooner about their vulnerability to sunlight.
“It’s okay, you can be on top.”
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Safe from the sunlight, Louis follows Lestat to his bedroom. The room is sparsely furnished save for wardrobes and a coffin in the middle of the floor. Louis is resistant to the idea of spending any time in the coffin, but ultimately climbs in after a naked Lestat reassures him that the rest will heal his body.
As Louis learns to harness his power to read minds, he attends a family party. Louis practices his mind-reading abilities on his mother (Rae Dawn Chong), learning the depth of her rejection of him. When his sister Grace (Kalyne Coleman) jumps up to embrace him, the proximity of her body allows him to hear the beating of additional hearts. He admonishes his sister for not telling him about her pregnancy, but even she does not yet know that she is carrying twins.
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Beyond his family, Louis struggles to leave his business behind. When he attacks and feeds on the alderman’s lawyer for disrespecting him, he calls Lestat to help him dispose of the body. Lestat mocks Louis for his desire to continue the charade of a normal human life while putting it at risk by attacking someone so important at work. Louis argues back that Lestat doesn’t understand what it’s like for him — the unique ways that disrespect cuts like a knife as a queer, Black, Creole man.
Lestat’s bedroom is still sparsely furnished except for the addition of a second coffin. Both are resting when Lestat complains that he does not like to go to bed angry through the wood of the closed coffin. As he speaks, he lifts the lid of the coffin and waits for Louis to do the same. Lestat asks what he can do to make things up to Louis, and Louis asks him to buy him the Fair Play .
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“Did you eat the baby?”
Five years pass, mostly without Louis noticing. He has been away from his family for nearly all of that time. When he goes to see Grace, she has more kids, including a newborn in her arms. When one of the older children begins screaming, she hands Louis the baby. He holds the child with awkward curiosity until the sound and smell of his blood and aliveness is too overwhelming. Louis looks around for someone to help him resist the temptation of the child’s helplessness; his fangs — which only appear when his hunger is intensely aroused — come out despite himself.
At this moment, we return to the present day. Molloy, speaking for all of us, responds to this revelation with only one question. “Did you eat the baby?”
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Louis avoids the question, opting instead to discuss the diets of other vampires, those using the COVID-19 pandemic as a cover to feed and convert with abandon. As he speaks, another servant sits down next to Louis. The man offers Louis his neck and makes small talk with Molloy as he is drained and then released.
Back in the flashback, Grace returns to find the baby on the floor, abandoned. When Louis returns home, he tells Lestat about the guilt and shame he feels about nearly having eaten his nephew. Lestat reacts differently than Louis expects him to, reminding him of the inevitability of having to cut his family from his life. He reminds Louis that it is unlikely that he will be able to maintain a relationship with his family as they age, and he does not. Lestat reassures a devastated Louis that they are family now. “I’ve been neglectful of our romance,” Lestat admits and produces tickets to an Italian opera and two brand-new tuxedos.
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Trouble in Paradise
As dessert is delivered in the present day, Louis admits that he worshiped Lestat, that he would do anything for the privilege of more time with his creator in those early days. Louis is even thrilled to accompany Lestat to the opera despite the fact that he could only attend by posing as his valet.
Having been present when the opera was written and performed for the first time, Lestat is enraged by a subpar performance by the leading tenor. After the performance, Lestat pursues the tenor. He entices the man to their rooms, sitting the man in front of the piano and playing the opera as written, training the singer to perform the role correctly and shaming him mercilessly with every error. When the man has done all Lestat desired, Lestat slits his vocal cords with a single swipe of his fingernail.
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Louis watches Lestat’s behavior in horror, expressing his distaste for Lestat’s humiliating the performer before killing him. Lestat accuses him of being in denial about his vampiric nature even after six years. As a peace offering, Lestat offers to share the tenor with Louis. He is unable to say no, and the two vampires share the boy for hours.
The episode ends with present-day du Lac and Molloy at the dining table. Louis remarks that he never learned to be a killer. He explains that he eats one human meal per week to keep his hold on the “phantoms of his former self,” though most of it tastes like nothing. Molloy shares the first personal detail of his life, his story about their dessert, and stops recording the interview.
Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire airs each Sunday at 9 PM on AMC. Episodes are available a week in advance on AMC+.