Summary

• Season 2 of Interview with the Vampire focuses more on journalist Daniel Molloy's memory gaps and the vampire Armand's complex history.
• The series also follows Louis and Claudia as they come across the Théâtre des Vampires in 1927.
• Actors Eric Bogosian and Assad Zaman hint at the hidden truths of the season, and how it explores themes of love, betrayal, and the impact of their actions.

AMC's hit series Interview With The Vampire, which kicked off the Immortal Universe franchise that now includes Mayfair Witches, is back for season 2 on May 12. Season 1. While the players remain largely the same, their respective roles in the game have changed somewhat. Season 1 revealed Louis de Pointe du Lac to be an unreliable narrator despite the story being told from his perspective, and the finale unmasked his companion "Rashid" as the vampire Armand (Assan Zaman), who is currently Louis' paramour.

Both Louis and Armand have a history with their human interviewer Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), but Daniel is unaware of the full extent of their interactions — something he hopes to remedy as soon as possible. Given that it is an ongoing series, there is a lot more room to explore the complexities of Daniel's relationship to vampirism and Armand's connection to Lestat than there was in the 1994 Interview With The Vampire movie. As the seasons progress, fans can expect the characters and stories to be pulled from later books in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles series as well.

Screen Rant interviewed Bogosian and Zaman about the mysteries surrounding Daniel's antagonism towards Armand in Interview With The Vampire, the exploration of Armand's relationships with Louis and Lestat in season 2, and the duo's favorite upcoming episode.

Dissecting Armand’s Complicated Relationships In Interview With The Vampire

Screen Rant: By the time of the titular interview, Louis and Armand have been together for 77 years. What sets this relationship apart from their respective ones with Lestat? Because it seems very complicated, to say the least.

Assad Zaman: I think because Armand is a common denominator in both relationships, he would like to think that both relationships are very different. But maybe they're more similar than he wishes because he is the common denominator, and he brings with him all the baggage of his life and his experiences and his trauma and the things he needs and wants from the start.

Lestat and Louis aren't so different, but he gets them in very different ways, and then he loses them in very different ways. The relationship is complicated, as you said, very complicated. And we get to see how complicated it is throughout the show.

We get to see the Théâtre des Vampires a lot, Asad. And speaking to Sam earlier, Lestat was not pleased with how you were running the coven. Can you talk about Armand's approach?

Assad Zaman: We get a glimpse of Armand and Lestat's history in episode 3. And at that point in time when Armand meets Lestat, he's the leader of the Children of Darkness. They are not a theater company yet; they are a group of ghoulish vampires living a life of squalor and hunting in shame, as he says. Their existence is nothing, and suddenly Armand sees this vampire full of life and joy and almost complete freedom to be who he is. I think that fascinates him, but he doesn't understand what it is.

Then when Lestat interacts with our coven and dismantles 200 years of their law and life, he's left with nothing. Lestat picks him up and cares for him and introduces this other way of existing, and I think Armand embraces that because it saves him from this darkness that he's been in and also brings in some of the coven members as well. That's when the theater was born.

We take it into the 1920s, '30s, and '40s, where we meet him again and Lestat's not in the picture anymore, although his physical picture's still there and there's this reverence and respect for the founder. But things have got stale. I think Armand is very aware of that, and I think the theater is very aware of that. In many ways, what happened with the Children of Darkness started to sort of circle back around and happen again. It speaks to the cyclical nature of society and life and civilization crumbling and falling and then rising again. You think it's different this time, but no, we make the same mistakes. We get stale, we get bored, we find we need something different again.

Daniel Molloy Gets To The Bottom Of His Trauma In Season 2

Speaking of that baggage, Daniel is less than pleased by the Armand reveal last season and very snarky about his participation in the interview. Book readers know that there is more than meets the eye here, but what can you tell us about Daniel's feelings towards Armand and his place in the story right now?

Eric Bogosian: From the beginning of the second season? First of all, he tricked me, so I don't like him. But on a professional level, the story has just broken open to a much bigger story, and I am like a hunting dog that has instincts. I can't help myself; I have to get the story; I have to find it. Whatever I was brought to Dubai to do in the first place, clearly it's a new deal, new thing; let's go find it.

Then here we are, and the two of them come traipsing in, holding hands being all sweet and everything, and they're going to tell me the truth. Well, the minute they start telling me that they're going to tell me the truth, I'm suspicious. Because not only are they not truth-tellers, but why are they serving it up this way and what are they up to? That becomes yet another layer that I have to understand.

Then there's the headaches and flashbacks and so forth. Even if I don't know it consciously, I'm becoming aware that there are even deeper things that have to be explored here, so it just continues to be more and more complex. And through all of this is tremendous animosity toward Armand, not necessarily always knowing why. I mean, I can have my reasons. The guy tricked me; I make fun of him. I talk about the real Rashid and the fake Rashid and all that stuff. But there's also [the fact that] he was traumatized by these guys. There's no other way to explain it - that's trauma, and he forgot about it. It was wiped from his memory.

Not to make this all confessional and everything, but I had trauma in my life that I completely forgot about for about 12 years, and it was still affecting the way I was interacting with people. And you don't know, it's like a hidden part of you. It's like having a computer virus that's doing something extra all the time. So, now he's starting to sense this, and it's there operating. There are a couple of real peeks in the storytelling all the way to the very end. One of them is that, "I lived a whole life, wrecked a couple of marriages and all kinds of things happened. And it all goes back to this." And that's intense. I do think that, rather than suddenly becoming a new person, he just embraces it. "I've got to get to the bottom of this, no matter what. If it kills me, I have to get to the bottom of this."

As we proceed through the story, more and more little bits and pieces come to him, either by him figuring it out or by talking to Louis or coming from the T-word, Talamasca.

Watch Out For Interview With The Vampire Season 2, Episode 5

Which was your favorite episode to film in season 2? Or which was the most meaningful episode for you?

Eric Bogosian: Well, without question, for me it had to be 5. Episode 5 was unlike anything I've filmed before in anything. And it is such an odd thing because there's all the great stuff that I get to do with Jacob, but then I get to watch Luke [Brandon Field] doing the other part, and he's doing all this hard work on my character that I get the benefit of after he's almost gotten killed just for me.

But there's also writing in episode 5, myself aside, and it's the scene that they have together. I think that writing is amazing in those scenes. Your big speech? That's such an amazing speech. It makes me cry watching it.

Assad Zaman: Yeah, I think I would say 5 as well. It is just so different, and it's hard to forget. I mean, the rest of the season is so well-crafted that you can watch it all the way through; there's no formula. Seasons of shows can become episodic, so there's always a formula of start, middle, and end. You kind of start seeing it, even if they are very well-crafted and different each time.

But here, each episode has a start, middle, and end that also springboards and different things happen. You can watch it all as a whole, except episode 5 you can take out and see it as its own thing. It really is such a shift in tone, but also still does honor the tone that the whole series has been riding on.

We're in this claustrophobic moment, and also a moment that has been talked about in season 1 and is in the air, and everyone's been wondering about this interaction; this first interview. What happened? When we finally get to see it, I think the writers have really nailed it.

About Interview With The Vampire Season 2

The interview continues in season 2. In the year 2022, the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) recounts his life story to journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian). Picking up from the bloody events in New Orleans in 1940 when Louis and teen fledgling Claudia (Delainey Hayles) conspired to kill the Vampire Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), Louis tells of his adventures in Europe, a quest to discover Old World Vampires and the Theatre Des Vampires in Paris, with Claudia. It is in Paris that Louis first meets the Vampire Armand (Assad Zaman). Their courtship and love affair will prove to have devastating consequences both in the past and in the future, and Molloy will probe to get to the truths buried within the memories.

Check out our other Interview With The Vampire chat with Jacob Anderson, Sam Reid & Delainey Hayles here.

Interview With The Vampire season 2 premieres March 12 at 9/8c on AMC and AMC+.

Source: Screen Rant Plus