TV Review: "Interview with the Vampire": "No Pain” and “I Want You More Than Anything in the World" (S2, Eps. 3 & 4)
Pain and love take center stage in the third and fourth episodes of season two of "Interview with the Vampire," as Claudia and Louis find themselves on very different paths.
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I’m a bit behind when it comes to my episode reviews of this season of Interview with the Vampire, so I’ll be doing two episodes for this week’s entry, “No Pain” and “I Want You More Than Anything in the World.”
“No Pain” is notable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it shows us what happened when the disruptive Brat Prince Lestat showed up in Paris and totally disrupted the coven that Armand had established. This has always been one of my favorite sequences in the novels, and it’s fabulous to see it brought so memorably to life on-screen. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Sam Reid simply is Lestat, and it’s quite fascinating and delicious to watch him cast his spell on Armand, who has already started to feel the despair and ennui that so often afflicts vampires of great age. There’s also palpable chemistry between Reid and Assad Zaman, who continues to astonish as Armand. It’s also quite striking to see Lestat be at someone else’s mercy, since Armand knows so much more about the Dark Gift than he does, and of course it’s a genuine pleasure to see Nicky brought memorably (if briefly) to life.
As she has since the season began, Delainey Hayles continues to astonish as Claudia. She brings out so much of what makes this character one of the most tragic and poignant that Rice ever created. This version of the child might be as young as her child version, but there is something just as horrifying about the thought of being forever trapped in the body of an adolescent, condemned to a reality in which one’s body can never match one’s mind and its maturity. I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt a thrill of horror at seeing the poor young vampire condemned to perform as a child in the grotesqueries of the theatre.
Jacob Anderson, likewise, continues to imbue Louis with the tortured soul that we have all come to know and love from Anne Rice’s novels. You can feel his growing love for Armand, even as he can’t quite manage to shake the shade of Lestat that follows him wherever he goes. One can’t help but think that, when it comes right down to it, they were the ones that were always meant for one another and that, no matter how much Louis seems to share with Armand–and I can’t deny that I find their chemistry quite alluring at times–Lestat is never far away. While it seems Louis might have finally been able to banish Lestat’s ghost, engendering one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the series thus far, I think we all know that the Brat Prince is never going to stay away for very long.
For me, the most powerful moment is the one in which Armand takes Louis on a tour of the Louvre, where he shows him a painting done by his master, Marius de Romanus and, as he gazes at this image of himself, he recounts his own troubled and traumatic history. Much of this is drawn from Rice’s books–including both The Vampire Lestat and The Vampire Armand–and it’s really quite exciting to see it brought to life on-screen. What really sells it, however, is Zaman’s performance. There are so many feelings and emotions roiling beneath Armand’s gaze as his mind’s eye drifts, recalling his past and the pain it contains, particularly since we learn that Marius used prostituted him out before giving him the Dark Gift and that, subsequently, he had to endure the loss of his maker. It was exciting to hear the name Marius spoken aloud (hopefully suggesting the ancient vampire will make an appearance in the series), even if Armand’s memories of him are necessarily complicated.
At the same time, however, there is still much to Armand that lies outside our grasp as viewers, but what is clear is that he has his own motivations for what he does. Moreover, as the fraught nature of his relationship with Louis in the present reveals, he hasn’t been entirely honest with his consort about many things. One can see why this has such a profound impact on Louis, who has already endured so much heartbreak even if, it bears repeating, much of this is self-inflicted. He’s already lost so much, and to find out that he might not not be able to trust either his own memories or even Armand seems as if it might be too much.
For me, though, Ben Daniels continues to be the highlight of this season. Santiago has always been one of the most unsettling vampires in the entirety of The Vampire Chronicles, precisely because he is such an ambiguous menace to both Louis and Claudia. Daniels eats in every scene in which he appears, and it’s a sinful delight to watch him toy with both of our heroes. Interview excels at showing us the way in which power works among the undead, leaving us as thrillingly unsettled as our vampiric protagonists.
And speaking of Daniels…how can you not love Daniel Molloy? While his cynicism and relentless bitchiness might rub some people the wrong way, I think that he’s a key reason why this series works as well as it does. If you’re familiar with Anne Rice’s work, you’ll know that it can sometimes get a little caught up in its own excesses, and this is also true of its adaptations (I love Interview the film, obviously, but it is just as prone to flights of melodramatic fancy as its source material). This version of Daniel keeps the story grounded and, just as importantly, he has a key part to play in the events to come.
What I particularly appreciated about these two episodes was how deftly they managed to move the plot forward while also building the tension. We know, of course, that Claudia isn’t going to make it to the present–and as book-readers know, her fate is particularly horrible–but the show keeps us on the edge of our seats anyway, never quite sure what’s going to happen or when the final shoe is going to drop. Likewise, we can’t help but feel uneasy as we see the rift between Claudia and Louis growing ever wider. There are also quite a few hints that things in the present are more complicated than they might at first appear, particularly when it comes to the vampires and their intentions for the human population.
This season just keeps getting better and better, and I can’t wait to see what happens next!