Two Goths and a Coffin

“I want you more than anything in the world” Recap and Review: Spoilers Ahead

As we approach the mid-season of Interview with the Vampire’s second season, the emotions and tensions are ramping up, and this fourth episode sets up the conflicts for the rest of this story in a way that is masterful and deeply unsettling. We begin by watching Claudia (Delainey Hayles) perform in a humiliating and violent play called “My Baby Loves Windows” alongside coven members Celeste (Suzanne Andrade) and Estelle (Esme Appleton). The performance is profoundly uncomfortable to watch; the uncanny quality that all of the Théâtre des Vampires’ plays have combined with the clear threat of the narrative and racially charged characterization of Claudia’s character, Baby Lulu, is very difficult to watch, and it becomes immediately obvious why Claudia grows tired of the role she’s been assigned. Watching an auditorium of theater-goers dressed in Baby Lulu costumes as Armand (Assad Zaman) in Dubai calls the play “an unmitigated hit” immediately brings to mind Daniel Molloy’s (Eric Bogosian) comments from the first season about Claudia being “a fucking goldmine. The girl who moves a million books.” And while Louis said in the fifth episode of the last season that he would not see her exploited, it seems that she already was back in 1946. 

This whole episode sees Claudia at odds with the other vampires in her life. After a string of lackluster performances, coven leader Armand berates Claudia in front of the rest of the theater players as a distant Louis (Jacob Anderson) looks on as Claudia is ordered to wear her Baby Lulu costume on and offstage until she regains her enthusiasm for the role. While this humiliating punishment is being laid upon her, she looks to Louis for help, and in response he shrugs apathetically and resumes reading his book. Later, Claudia reveals in a conversation with Santiago (Ben Daniels) that Celeste and Estelle mentally insult her during their performances and even later in an altercation with Armand, she confesses that she hasn’t formed any friendships with the other coven members despite being inducted a year and a half ago. 

This loneliness and isolation leads her to spend more time with the dressmaker, Madeleine (Roxane Duran). The two strike up a faux-antagonistic rapport, making witty jabs at each other while clearly enjoying the banter. Madeleine treats Claudia like an adult, never mincing her words or censoring herself around her and it becomes evident that Claudia craves a space without expectations, where she’s not a doll or a daughter but an independent woman in her own right. Duran and Hayles have excellent chemistry. The scene where Claudia runs into Madeleine while handing out flyers for the theater is fun to watch as these two play off of each other effortlessly. 

Conversely, Jacob Anderson and Assad Zaman do an amazing job of portraying a couple at odds. It seems that Claudia is a point upon which Louis and Armand do not see eye to eye as they disagree on how affected Claudia was by having to perform the same degrading performance over and over for five hundred nights. They interject into each other’s sentences, not to reaffirm the other like they did in episode 2 but to contradict instead. Their previously united front crumbles again when Louis learns that photographs from established artists have been mixed in with his own work, an act that leaves him embarrassed in front of Daniel and simmering with anger at Armand, who denies responsibility for any alleged tampering. There’s a constant simmering undercurrent of resentment from both parties that gradually grows and grows until it leads to Louis and Armand having a full-blown yelling match in their bedroom that can be heard, albeit a bit muffled, in the living room where Daniel is trying to piece together his fragmented memories of San Francisco. 

This disunity is echoed in Louis and Armand’s Paris storyline as well, starting when they disagree on their relationship status in front of the theater troupe. Armand oscillates between displays of his ancient vampiric power and quiet fragility throughout this episode, and the audience can feel his careful control over the coven slipping. Louis, meanwhile, attempts to maintain a cool, detached, casual air to his feelings for Armand, clearly wary of committing to another relationship with a powerful older vampire after how disastrously his last one ended. In Louis’ bedroom, the two have an almost absurdly human conversation where Armand essentially asks Louis what they are? If they aren’t companions, then how does Louis see them? It’s a question that is left unanswered until near the end of the episode when Louis and Armand have their conversation on a park bench, after Louis dismisses the mental apparition of Lestat (Sam Reid) he’s been carrying around through this season, and he tells Armand that despite the danger he’s going to stay with him in Paris.

Louis’ decision to commit is heavily influenced by what I consider to be a stand out scene in the series. Armand takes Louis to the Louvre, using his vampiric powers to freeze the guards and have a private tour. At the beginning of the scene, Louis is understandably apprehensive, especially considering that this romantic gesture follows Armand lashing out at the coven during an outing, and Louis finds the parallels with Lestat’s past behavior to be unignorable. However, the apprehension begins to fall away when Armand turns a grand gesture into a far more intimate one, as he brings Louis to a painting of him back when he was a human done by an artistic peer of his maker, Marius de Romanus. Zaman’s acting in this scene is so incredible to watch as he shows the cracks in the stoic coven leader persona Armand has crafted in order to play the role that was thrust upon him. The stunning choice to have Armand begin this story in the third person shows how he keeps his past at arm’s length, almost referring to the past versions of himself, Arun and Amadeo, as completely different people. Louis watches in quiet sympathy as Louis’ vision of Lestat rankles with annoyance next to him, representing the part of Louis that wants to retain his former skepticism’s frustration with how Louis is deeply affected by Armand’s story and his vulnerability. Towards the end of the scene, Armand says, “who am I, Louis? Am I my history that I’ve endured? Am I the job I do not want?” This echoes a line earlier in their museum excursion, Louis asked Armand who he is and it seems that Armand’s response here is that he doesn’t know and he’s hoping Louis will tell him.

This question, who am I, is one that’s been rattling around the narrative since the second episode of the season when Claudia asks Louis who he would be if he hadn’t met her or Lestat. Louis has been trying to find his answer, and in this episode, we see that he’s decided he wants the answer to be an artist, specifically a photographer. The only problem? He’s not particularly good at it. Or he’s not as good as he would like to be considering he’s only been at it for two years but the result is the same, he feels horribly inadequate. Louis and the art dealer, Alois (Christos Lawton), look at a beautiful photograph by Gordon Parks, Washington, D.C. Young boy standing in the doorway of his home on Seaton Road in the northwest section. His leg was cut off by a streetcar while he was playing in the street, while Louis is trying to present his own work for exhibition and is told point blank that he has the eye of an art collector but not of an artist. Like the boy in the photograph, Louis is outside of a world he desperately wants to interact with but is no longer able to participate. 

Meanwhile, the coven is falling apart. Armand’s illusion of control has been completely shattered after sparing Louis at the end of the previous episode and Santiago is exploiting the newfound lack of confidence in their maître to make his own grab for power. When Armand is punishing Claudia’s lack of enthusiasm, Santiago seizes the moment to turn the scrutiny onto Armand and his relationship with Louis. This moment and the underhanded conversation in the “wet room” show him manipulating Claudia even as he contributes to her continued isolation from the coven and gaining information to throw her and Louis under the bus regarding the truth about their maker, something Santiago has been keen to do since he first met them. He takes an unambiguously mutinous turn when he breaks into Louis and Claudia’s apartment and finds the book where she wrote Lestat’s last words in his own blood. The best Iago to walk the York Royal, indeed. 

Unstable is the word I would use to describe everything in this episode, and I mean that in the best way. Louis and Claudia have a fight about how they both feel they’ve been abandoned, Claudia throwing Louis’ promise of “you and me” back at him in her anger and Louis telling her to “sit in [her] choice” before they both storm out into the night. Louis and Armand meet, and Louis gives Armand advice on how to handle his wayward coven so they can stay together, calling Armand by his birth name, Arun, to acknowledge and honor the vulnerability shown to him earlier that same night and alleviate him of the role forced upon him by the Children of Darkness. In the present day, Louis is furious at Armand, believing he might have put famous photographs in Louis’ personal work to coddle him or appeal to his ego, while Armand continues to deny any tampering. Daniel has been destabilized as well this episode, as the previously small flashes of memories from the first interview plague him constantly and make it difficult for him to focus. 

After Louis and Armand retire for the evening and the sound of their fighting bleeds through the penthouse, Daniel looks closer at the files the Talamasca agent, Raglan James (Justin Kirk), gave him last episode and finds himself in Armand’s files walking into Louis’ apartment on Divisadero and then being lead out in an unconscious state by Armand and a seemingly burned Louis. The episode ends with Daniel listening to an enhanced version of the tape we heard in the pilot episode where he’s attacked by Louis but it continues a bit longer before the episode abruptly ends.

“I want you more than anything in the world” ramped up the tension and the emotional stakes while taking time to allow every character to have a moment that fleshes out their psyche. The episode is a slow burn and yet constantly feels like a pot about to boil over at any minute. The magic worked by the writers, actors, and directors has me sitting on the edge of my seat, eagerly asking what happens next as these messy relationships promise to get even messier.