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Rewind the tape —Episode 7 highlights

One of our favorite outfits is...

…the suit that Claudia wears to their meeting with Anderson. This is the first —and so far only— time we see Claudia wear a suit. Combined with her hair, which she started to wear pulled up in episode six, and her grown woman’s purse, this is the closest she gets to shedding the facade of youth while in public —but, of course, Tom’s “little girl” reminds us that she can never fully access womanhood.  But she’s trying, and the suit symbolizes her new position in the family structure, the attempt to make herself into an equal: at the start of episode five she was still the daughter left home while her parents went to meet Anderson, now she not only attends the negotiations, but is an active participant, handing Tom the list that ends up defining his decision. The palettes of their outfits seem heavily symbolic too: Claudia, in beige, brown and red, stands apart from Louis and Lestat’s blue suits, but Louis keeps “a little shelf” for her, a touch of red in his tie that matches her crimson shirt.

What's a favorite look of yours? Claudia's high-waist pants and cape from the New Year party? One of their Mardi Gras outfits? Armand's unsubtly vampiric coat?

Reblog with your highlights, or make a new post with the tag #vampterview to join the conversation! And, if you're just getting caught up, learn all about our group rewatch here ►

#interesting women’s heels in the 30s were quite high #but Claudia never wears high heels

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“i have stored in my blood the memory of your voice” — Sonia Sanchez

#danlou propaganda committee is working overtime

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Hi!!!! They released more tickets for the 92NY event!!!!

AMC’s Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire Season 2: Advance Screening with Series Stars Jacob Anderson, Sam Reid, Assad Zaman, Additional Cast and Creators in Conversation / with Series Stars Jacob Anderson, Sam Reid, Assad Zaman, Additional Cast and Creators in Conversation - The 92nd Street Y, New York (92ny.org)

#vampterview

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Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist for The New York Times

“We discussed a lot about how we could flesh out the basic point that the triangle is not just two people after one, but the corners touch together all the time. You’re not jealous of your girlfriend or your boyfriend. You’re jealous because you’re not chosen by one and you’re losing the other.” — Luca Guadagnino, about ‘Challengers’ for The New York Times

#this should've happened to us

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rip claudia you would have loved dunking on lestat on the internet

#💀

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Rewind the tape —Episode 7 highlights

One of our favorite scenes is...

…the Armand reveal. The show has been guiding our attention towards Rashid since the beginning, but this long-foreshadowed twist doesn't lose its emotional payoff, managing to both confirm our suspicions and subvert our expectations —and add a hysterically funny note to an otherwise harrowing scene. Even for those who know nothing about Armand, learning the true identity of this ever-present figure completely reframes both the interview and Louis himself, who we now see is once again in a "small box" with a man who loves him.

What's a favorite scene of yours? Claudia roping Lestat into her con? The proposal to Tom?

Reblog with your highlights, or make a new post with the tag #vampterview to join the conversation! And, if you're just getting caught up, learn all about our group rewatch here ►

#so true

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Post-Season 1 IWTV Podcast Transcript

Special Guests: Assad Zaman, Rolin Jones and Mark Johnson

"Armand is someone who comes into Louis's life in the second half of IWTV, they meet in Paris and Armand is immediately like most people completely entrhalled by everything about Louis and what he stands for. He's changed from the person he was before he met Louis, which is a person who's a bit lost in the monotony of his life is the way I would describe it. -Assad Zaman

[intro chit chat with Assad]

Assad: Armand is someone who comes into Louis's life in the second half of IWTV, they meet in Paris and Armand is immediately like most people completely entrhalled by everything about Louis and what he stands for. He's changed from the person he was before he met Louis, which is a person who's a bit lost in the monotony of his life is the way I would describe it.

N: Its been 500 years its definitely been monotonous. [514] Ok yes 514. Ok we get it. You need some love in your life. Now did you know from the beginning like when you got the sides, were you told you were going to be playing Armand.

A: I think if I knew I was auditioning for Armand, I wouldn't be here. I think just the prospect the notion would send me over the edge and I would crumble. I got the audition, a couple scenes with Daniel Molloy, a character named Rashid, I know who this guy is he's highly efficient and he's got skills, very clear part to play in. I kind of went in and did those tapes fairly confidently. Then I got a recall and another scene added, with a bit more subtext. Rashid has a bit of a sting to him with his status. Then I got a third recall and Rolin asked to have a meeting with me on Zoom, give some notes... I was thinking why is he wasting his time talking to me about Rashid when he's got Louis and Lestat to worry about so I'm terrified I get onto Zoom with him and okay okay so basically Rashid is in disguise, he's not Rashid he's actually the vampire Armand and he proceeds to tell me all about Armand. I'm think just don't lose your cool. This has to be a secret and we don't want to leak it but we want to see a bit more from you. And I got off the call and I almost started crying.

N: So how much time did you get then? between that first audition to the recall? You have to go from a no nonsense assistant to I am a vampire king?

A: They gave me maybe 8 or 9 hrs between the call with Rolin and the next tape I sent over. And then I did another 4 rounds after that... it was a grueling process.

N: Once you get to set, everyone knows or its still a secret you're witholding?

A: Apart from the main cast, a lot of the crew didn't know.

N: Sit quiet in a corner and don't attention?

A: That' was my initial approach to Rashid before I knew he was Armand. All  he wants is to keep his job and not get killed.

N: Now while you're filming the first season, what convos did you have with Rolin about the plan for Armadn in the show?

A: We did discuss wth events in IWTV and where we're gonna see him in season 2, a lot of that is very important. Where Rolin has curiosity is when we look into Armand's past and where he came from, there's some obvious differences to me in what to explore and to see what we want to pick from it. His story.. its complex. He's messed up. He was messed up even before he became a vampire. The events that makes Armand have to be complex enough to see how he turned into  what he is. .... I was also very aware as an actor a duty to the story being told in this moment, it's Louis's story and him recounting it to Daniel, their story is very important as well. As much as Armand is sizzling in the background, I have to honor their story as well. We don't want the audience to draw too much attention to it right now cause it deviates from the story and the themes that are important to explore in the season.

N: When Rashid revealed himself, I screamed. It only works cause Rashid has so cleverly.. you almost forgot about him.. "love of his life"? Louis?? Not another old vampire and this one who can stand in the sun.

A: We hope that he hasnt made the same mistakes all over again.

N: Why is he pretending to be Rashid this whole time?

A: I think it's incredibly painful for the love of his life describing another love of his life. There is also curiosity with Daniel about why he's allowing this interview to happen.

N: And Rashid was there in that first interview so that whole thing makes sense.

A: We actually don't know what transpired in SF, cause he was not there in the book. How far did Louis get and what Armand had to do to stop him? That could also be why this interview is happening.

N: A little taste of what's to come in s2?

A: Theatrics, vespas and romance is in the air. We're in Paris. It's a gorgeous part of the Paris and the journey they take to get to Paris and the showdown that has to happen in Paris.

Highlights of Rolin Jones/Mark Johnson

N: How are you feeling about Season 2? Is there pressure? Is there a feeling that OK we did one and now we can really dig in?

R: Actually I'm just sort of being excited about Season 2 and not being scared out of my mind with it. The second half of iwtv, there's some lovely passages but there's a lot of people sitting around talking.

M: It's a whole new continent, but it's characters Rolin has already created. Im feeling quite confident and excited and abuzz about what we're going to do next season.

N: I'm very curious what attracted you to vampires and the world of AR.

M: I was not familiar with AR to begin with, my excitement has to do with what Rolin did with it for the pilot and thought this is extraordinary and I read AR and realized all of the treasures, of what Rolin took advantage of and what needed redressing.

N: Rolin, can you explain to me the process, you know, how did you pitch yourself as the showrunner of this?

R: I had an overall meeting with them about a list of things I wanted to do and as I was leaving they said we forgot to mention our boss bought the Anne Rice books, I stopped and I put everything and I said we're gonna take another 45 min for the meeting. By the time I left, I knew that's what I was going to do. They put me thru the gauntlet to prove if I was a guy. It wasn't just about whats a good poilot or first season it's what does this look like 8 seasons from now.... I was really excited cause I wanted to do something grand and big. I had some of my theater pals create a visual world.

N: Let's talk about Louis being black. I feel as though we are in this age of adaptation or reboots if there will be a gender or race swap and that's the extent of it. It felt as though you making this change meant you got more story, you were able to mine that fact for more story points and a new dynamic. These two men are famously white... and I'm wondering about the choice to do that and what it was to execute that.

R: I came around to his ethnicity a sort of interesting way which is through Lestat. There's a famous rewrite of Lestat in book 2, he's sort of an aggressively different character than what he was in book 1 and that's the Lestat she carried on for the rest of time. So that's our Lestat. So we tried to take the given circumstances and put him back in this time period, so he had a super emo relationship wtih this guy with Nicki, then he had uhhh  a very excitable relationship with his mother as his second companion choice (we'll get into that in season 3 y'all), and then I was like lets give him a legitimate a third attempt at figuring how to be with somebody for the rest of his life and how to not repeat your mistakes. And I started from there so it had to be someone with some money cause he had to be with his own folks and I thought he wanted someone who could fight back and who could be a challenge and would force him to restrain himself. And nobody at AMC was interested in 7 seasons of the regretful plantation owner, so we made Louis come from a lineage that did have a plantation and did own slaves. And the second thing was aesthetic if you take away the ruffle shirts and all the swampy goodness and you wanted to make this new, whats the new hot time and birth of jazz seemed right on. And there was a spot when a black man could get in on some business and have some morally gray thing that owning a plantation would. It all clicked into place pretty quickly. ... and the other thing is you're trying to build as much inherent conflict, enough not to burn thru in a season you want 7-8 years of conflict and distress and vulnerability in both of them. I wanted to load Louis with as many contradictions and things unsettled as possible.

N: How did you decide when to deviate from Anne's books? Were there rules in what you could invent ?

R: There were a couple caveats make it here and now, make it grand and big but we said she wrote a very transgerssive book in 1973 and tried to put her in the room in 2021 making a TV show... there's no point in making it if you're going to make a roughshot of it. You're constantly revisiting the book. That's when you're in draft, in after produciton draft, dropping in as much Anne as we could. We were going to write the heightened language thats in the novel. 

N: Can you tell me about how you found Jacob and Sam?

R: Obviously 9 billion people auditioned. It was very clear something very dynamic was happening when they got in the Zoom. For Jacob, there's this genuine warmth, kindness, for a character who's going to make a number of questionable choices, how do you make you want to love him? .

...

N: Did you always know the season was going to end with the reveal of Armand and the "murder" of Lestat?

R: Very early on, we were talking about making this thing in the writers room and pre-production. A lot had to do with lumber and covid. We were wrting scripts for the entire book and we got a lovely call from AMC "is there enough in this story to stay in new orleans this whole season?" So what we ended up doing, we made the first 4 into the first 7. We did that 50 days before we shot our first day.. it was a lot. And it was to the benefit of the show, we made a better product. We were not going to be able to do Europe in the same beautiful detailed way we were doing New Orleans. What was originally 8 episodes is now a 15 episode book. Was that the ending of my season 1? Not originally but it became the ending.

M: Now it's hard to imagine how we were going to pack all that into one season.

N: There's such a movement to that finale.

R: For me, that kind of episode. It's one for the people, the one for everyone else. you're doing twists and turns like a thriller. My favorite scene is the one that stops the action, the balcony scene...

N: Thinking this is all from Louis's memory.

R: Memory is a huge part of the show. We are only 7 episodes into a 15 episode story.

Audience Q: How sympathetic do you think Lestat is? Obviously this man has some major flaws like the whole next book is a whole lot of backpeddaling like he's not so bad he's not so bad. How sympathetic do you think he really is?

R: The more you spend time with it. I find Lestat wildly sympathetic. and the way it's built... You're not gonna see Lestat speaking for himself until season 3. Its a big deal right? You go ahead and have someone else tell the world about you from their POV. Who had the most traumatic entrance into the world of vampires? It's Lestat. You have no idea the baggage going into North America. We are playing with POV. Stick with Lestat, he's got a lot of pain.

Q: Why is Louis truly doing the interview? He says I wanna redo, but yet he's doing the same thing, he's dodging, cagey. Why did you bring this man to Dubai to do this?

R: It is absolutely THE question. IF you wanna know what we're still digging out, it's the why of it. There's a reason why this is the second interview. The first interview is very important. Something signifcant life altering happened in 1973 but they weren't the right people to do back then. There's a lot if meat on Louis's side, Daniel's side and most important Armand's side.. who's become the most fascinating character of season 2. There's a lot in Dubai left to be revealed.

Q: Do we think we've seen the end of Lestat and Louis's sexcapades?

R: So it's AMC, we are trying to sliding as much under the door as we possibly can. We are interested in the whole thing - the sex sure, the love story, the psychological torment, we are trying to write a love story that doesn't disappear after book 1. There's Armand coming..

N: Can we talk about what's to come? You're hinting this show can go on for many seasons, how long?

R: The real reason I wanted to do this show.. season 3. The Vampire Lestat. I really know how I wanna do The Vampire Lestat and I couldn't be more excited about it... and as goofy as body switching is, I think there's something in the tale of the body thief. QOTD... you gotta think on that one, how to do such a massive object, if you do it in one or two seasons.

#vampterview #rewind the tape

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#k-word

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Ocean Vuong, king of missing the point and invoking Palestine for self serving reason

#dude… #embarrassing

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Rewind the tape —an AMC IWTV group rewatch

Episode 7: ...The Thing Lay Still

In the time leading up to the second season, which premieres on May 12th, we’re hosting a group rewatch of season one! Today, Sunday, April 21st, we’re starting with Episode 7, …The Thing Lay Still.

You can watch with your friends or in your own time, and come talk about it in the #vampterview tag! We want to hear your thoughts, theories and burning questions, as well as your favorite moments, costumes and lines from the episode.

Come revisit the first season, and countdown the weeks to the second with us, here or on Twitter, using the tag #vampterview.

Click here to learn more about this dedicated tag ►

We’re kicking off discussion of the finale with a question:

The final scene of episode seven recontextualizes what we know about the events of present day Dubai as well as the aftermath of Mardi Gras, revealing that Louis is carefully curating Daniel’s experience of both. What do you believe motivates Louis’ need for control over Daniel’s perception of the story and the interview?

#so close to the end

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Rewind the Tape —Episode 6

Art of the episode

Just like we did for the pilot and for episodes two, three, four, and five, we took note of the art shown and mentioned in the 5th episode while we rewatched it.

Love's Coming-Of-Age: a series of papers on the relations of the sexes

Edward Carpenter, 1896

Carpenter was an English writer and philosopher, and an early activist for gay rights and prison reform. In the opening of the episode, Louis is shown to be reading his essay "Marriage, a retrospective" you can read this essay, as well as the rest of the book, in the Internet Archive, here.

The Poems of Emily Dickinson

First collected and published in 1890

Dickinson was an American poet who published only ten of her approximate 1800 poems during her life. Before her passing, Dickinson had asked her sister to burn her writings, and you can read more about how her sister Lavinia came to publish them instead, with major editions, in this LitHub piece

Pelléas et Mélisande

Claude Debussy & Maurice Maeterlinck, 1902

Referenced in Lestat's lyrics, this is an opera in five acts about a love triangle, which ends in tragedy for both its titular heroes, the mysterious Mélisande and her husband's younger brother, Pélleas. An interesting detail: after Pelléas and Mélisande's demise, they are survived by their daughter.

Three Peaches on a Stone Plinth

Adriaen Coorte, 1705

Coorte was a Dutch Golden Age painter of mostly small, intimate still lifes, and little is known of his life.

Still Life with Blue Vase and Mushrooms

Otto Scholderer, 1891

Scholderer was a German painter of portraits and still lifes, and was acquainted with another painter we've seen already, Manet.

Cumulus Clouds, East River

Robert Henri, 1901-1902

Henri was an American painter, first featured in episode one.

[All three identified by @diasdelfuego.]

After Lestat moves back into the house, new furniture, new decorations and new art appear all over, leaving little trace of the previous domestic violence (that is, except for the "reminders" that Claudia insists on keeping).

La Nausée

Jean-Paul Sartre, 1938

A recent release at the time of this scene, this novel by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre deals with an isolated and melancholy protagonist. [Identified by @saintarmand, here.]

Baby Strange

T. Rex, 1972

The song playing during Louis and Daniel's first meeting is by an English band, an early example of the glam rock genre.

If you spot or put a name to any other references, share via DM or in the reblogs, and let us know if you'd like us to add them with credit to the post!

Starting tonight, we will be rewatching and discussing the finale, ...The Thing Lay Still. We hope to see you there! And, if you're just getting caught up, learn all about our group rewatch here ►

#vampterview

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daily reminder that boycotting is not a moral stance but a political strategy, so the whole “there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism” argument is not the gotcha you think it is

you can refer to BDS if you’d like a list of companies to focus your efforts on. you can refer to this website if you’d like to become more conscientious about what you’re buying and check for brands/products to avoid.

*please note that i am a palestinian who has been boycotting my entire life. do not try to explain to me in the tags or reblogs or replies what a targeted boycott is or complain about giving up your comfort for something that you (incorrectly) believe does not make an impact. being quiet is free. exercise your right to remain silent today.

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couldn't find the painting behind louis yet but i found these two!!

#mother daughter.....

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personally i do think we should start calling santiago cunty. mother even. just look at him

#cunty blue eyeshadow

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same guy to me

#has anyone edited the instrumental version of PIMP to when they killed lestat

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"Saying this off anon cause I am not a coward + this a well-known fact about me (and by extension Lestat) at this point..."

LMAO this is what happens when you make a fictional character your entire personality.

#embarrassing

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"both are culpable" and "they're vampires" are always such huge dog whistles lol its like clockwork