‘Interview with the Vampire’ Season 1 Recap Before Season 2

The Big Picture

• Memory is a haunting monster that reveals surprising twists in the lives of Louis and Daniel in
  Interview with the Vampire
  Season 1.
• Season 1 also explores Louis’ journey into immortality and deep, complicated relationships with Lestat and Claudia.
• The shocking finale sets the stage for Season 2, unveiling secrets and introducing mysterious new characters.

“Memory is a monster.” The line, uttered by both Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) and Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) throughout Interview with the Vampire‘s first season, means that memory is ever-changing, horrifying, something that haunts us every day and every night. Occasionally, it seems as if it would be best for us not to remember certain aspects of our past. However, every now and then, we need to recall a thing or two. And, every now and then, it might even feel pleasurable to do so. For instance, it feels good to remember a great TV show’s first run as we get ourselves ready for a Season 2 that is fast approaching. Here’s a recap of everything you need to remember about Interview with the Vampire Season 1.

‘Interview with the Vampire’ Season 1 Starts with, Well, an Interview

The first season of Interview with the Vampire kicks off with journalist Daniel Molloy (Bogosian) receiving a box full of cassette tapes and a letter through the mail. Now old and suffering from Parkison’s disease, he’s invited by a vampire he once knew to redo an interview that he recorded more than 50 years in the past. Having also reached a standstill in his career and just dying to publish a new book, Molloy agrees to take a trip to Dubai, where he encounters a certain Louis de Pointe du Lac in a dimly-lit penthouse, surrounded by servants.

Unlike in Neil Jordan‘s film and in the Anne Rice novel that inspired it, in which Louis is a plantation owner in the 1800s, in the TV series he is a Black man who makes his fortune by running a string of brothels in the neighborhood of Storyville, New Orleans, in the early 20th century. Despite having a complicated relationship with his brother Paul (Steven G. Norfleet), who claims he can hear God’s voice in his head, Louis is close to his family and enjoys a somewhat respectable reputation around town. When he’s not working, he enjoys visiting a rival brothel by the name of Fair Play. It is during one of these nights of pleasure and revelry that Louis meets a man by the name of Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid).

Recently arrived from France, Lestat is a charming man with a magnetic personality and a true obsession with Louis. The two quickly strike up an intense relationship, first as rivals, then as friends, then, finally, as lovers. Louis starts taking Lestat to his family functions, which proves to be a problem when Paul senses that there is something off about this man. At first, Louis pays him no mind, believing this paranoia to be another symptom of his illness. It takes a tragedy for him to realize that Paul might have a point. You see, following their sister’s wedding, Paul takes his own life by jumping off the roof. And when Lestat shows up to disturb his brother’s funeral, Louis decides that he wants nothing more to do with him. Alas, it is too late. After a particularly intense conversation inside a burning church alongside two dead priests, Louis agrees to let Lestat turn him into a vampire.

Following the transformation, Lestat instructs Louis on the vampire ways, eager to make his lover a part of his world. However, Louis is not very good at being a vampire. First and foremost, he doesn’t like feeding on people and prefers to drink animal blood, even if it does taste like crap and makes him weak. Secondly, he insists on preserving his human connections, particularly with his family – something that becomes harder and harder as years go by without him aging a day. From the get-go, Louis’ relationship with Lestat is a fraught one, and not just because Louis isn’t necessarily thankful for his “gift.” Lestat is also an abusive lover, the kind of man who is manipulative and has an extramarital affair with a woman named Antoinette (Maura Grace Athari), but balks when Louis goes out with a former flame.

Still, by Lestat’s side, Louis grows as a businessman until segregation and Prohibition come knocking. Segregation comes first. As World War I rages on, a series of new regulations are put in place by white men that, thus far, Louis believed to be his allies. Chief among them is Alderman Fenwick (John DiMaggio), who offers to buy the Azalea, Louis’ greatest club, formerly known as the Fair Play, for 15% of its worth. Offended, Louis visits him and kills him before hanging his body outside City Hall, bowels hanging out in a Hannibal-like display.

This leads to a series of hate crimes in New Orleans, in which the Black people of the city have their homes and businesses burned down by the white populace. Guilt-tripping over the destruction that he believes to be his fault, Louis uses his telepathic vampire powers and hears the voice of a young girl pleading for help inside a house swallowed by flames. He runs inside, picks up the girl, and takes her to Lestat.

‘Interview with the Vampire’ Season 1 Introduces Us to Claudia

The girl is, of course, Claudia (Bailey Bass), everyone’s favorite child vampire. As she is transformed into a creature of the night in the past, in the present, Molloy is given a package full of journals containing her own accounts of her first years by Louis and Lestat’s side. Initially, 14-year-old Claudia is ecstatic to be a vampire, and, unlike Louis, she takes to it with an immense amount of ease. However, as time goes by, she begins to suffer with the realization that she will never physically mature and have a life of her own. Things seem like they’re about to get a little better when she meets a young man called Charlie (Xavier Mills) and falls deeply in love with him. It all starts sweetly enough until, one day, during a make-out session, Claudia drains him dry.

This, of course, breaks her little vampire heart, and she begins self-harming by exposing her skin to the sun and going on secret killing sprees. As the law comes knocking on Louis and Lestat’s door, wondering if they have something to do with the bodies that have been popping around, their already frail marriage collapses as they find themselves at a loss about what to do. Increasingly rebellious, Claudia reveals to Louis that Lestat is still having an affair with Antoinette and runs away from home.

Claudia doesn’t have an easy time on the road, though. As the Depression settles down in the US, she’s met with racism wherever she goes and is eventually — the show suggests — assaulted by a fellow vampire by the name of Bruce (Damon Daunno). Distraught, but having learned a lot about the existence of other vampires through her research in college libraries, she returns home, determined to convince Louis to go to Europe with her. The problem is that Lestat is not having it. As Claudia insists that Louis leave with her, Lestat beats him to a pulp and, having flown with him to the sky, drops him from that height back down to the ground.

It takes Louis years to fully get back on his feet. In the meantime, having been cast out of their home, Lestat does everything in his power to buy his way back into the family through presents. Eventually, Louis accepts him back in, but there are now certain rules in place. The most important of them is that now everyone must feed on humans and that Lestat must get rid of Antoinette. As he fails to do so, Claudia tries to leave once again, but Lestat violently forces her to stay.

Claudia and Louis Part Ways With Lestat in the ‘Interview with the Vampire’ Season 1 Finale

This is the final straw for an already enraged Claudia. Seeing both herself and Louis as slaves to Lestat, she makes up her mind to kill her oppressor, something to which Louis agrees. With Lestat having decided to move camp to Buenos Aires, Argentina, Claudia convinces him to throw a party before leaving New Orleans for good. And not just any party: a Mardi Gras ball, in which he shall reign as king. The plan is to invite a handful of people who covet their secret to immortality to a private room and then feast on their blood. Claudia, however, poisons one of the guests so that Lestat will be forced to drink the blood of the dead, something that can kill any vampire.

The plan works, at least to some extent: for a second, Lestat and a nearly turned Antoinette believe they have gotten the best of Claudia, but she is the one that has deceived them all by poisoning the least expected guest. However, the poison did not kill its initial victim right away, and thus Lestat was merely made sick. Now, according to Louis’ account, he killed Lestat by slitting his throat and dumping him in the trash. But Molloy is not so simply deceived. He soon realizes that a vampire cannot die out of hemorrhage. Slitting Lestat’s throat would merely leave him severely wounded. And, at the dump, with the rest of the trash, he could find himself enough mice to feed on until his full recovery. Molloy presses Louis on this matter, and Louis refuses to answer him properly. That’s when the show’s biggest revelation takes place.

One of Louis’ main servants in Dubai is a man named Rashid, whom Molloy one day remembers having met before, all those years back, when he first ran into the titular interviewed vampire at a bar. It turns out that Rashid is no mere servant, but an ancient vampire by the name of Armand who is now Louis’ longtime partner. Claiming that he will no longer stop Louis if he decides to kill Molloy, Armand’s big reveal wraps up the season, leaving us with a series of questions for Season 2 to answer. How exactly did he and Louis meet? What happened to young Claudia? And, perhaps most importantly, where on Earth is Lestat? Now that we remember everything that happened in Season 1, it’s time for us to get our well-deserved answers!

Interview with the Vampire is available to stream on AMC+ in the U.S. Season 2 will premiere May 12 on AMC and AMC+.

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