Interview With the Vampire: Assad Zaman Teases “New Dynamic” After Season Finale Surprise (Exclusive)

Sunday night’s season finale of AMC’s Interview With the Vampire came with some major developments. The episode saw Claudia (Bailey Bass) and Louis (Jacob Anderson) enact their plan to murder Lestat (Sam Reid) and free themselves from his tyranny as well as saw a surprising explanation for why Rashid (Assad Zaman) was there in the 1970s when Daniel (Eric Bogosian) first met Louis. That revelation marks a major turning point in the Interview story and it’s one that Zaman tells ComicBook.com creates a new dynamic for the show’s second season.

Warning: spoilers for the Season 1 finale of Interview With the Vampire, “The Thing Lay Still” beyond this point.

After realizing, thanks to his dream, that Rashid was present the night that he met Louis back in the 1970s, Daniel is already on edge as he enters into the next session of interviews with Louis. Up to this point, Daniel had assumed that Rashid was human but it’s obvious that he’s questioning this. As the interview progresses and we get a very sanitized and tidy account of Lestat’s murder — complete with Claudia’s journal mysteriously missing several pages — Daniel finally has enough and pushes things. He challenges Louis’ honesty, and it prompts Rashid to reveal himself as not Rashid, but Armand, a 500-year-old vampire that Louis says is the “love of his life”.

While some fans had guessed that Rashid was actually Armand, the reveal was still stunning at the end of the episode — but for fans of Rice’s novel, this could be a major development for another reason. In the novel, Daniel and Armand have very significant interactions. Specifically, in the Vampire Chronicles series it’s Armand who gives Daniel the Dark Gift. While it’s not clear if that’s the direction the AMC series will take, Zaman said what comes next will definitely change things for the characters — especially since it seems like there may be more to explore with their history during that first interview.

“That’s a really, really good question,” Zaman said when asked about how Armand really feels about Daniel. “It is. I mean, look, we know this part of the story, this part of the way Rolin has structured our retelling of Interview with the Vampire is, this is new for all of us. This puts in a brand new dynamic because we know how Armand and Daniel met in the books. And this makes that initial interview something that is going to be very, very, very fascinating to revisit and will, I think, answer a lot of those questions. That’s kind of all I can really say.”

Zaman also opened up about taking on the iconic role of Armand, explaining that he didn’t know right away he was playing Rashid and while he doesn’t know how everything will play out, he’s in it for the discovery right along with fans.

“I was very terrified. I was very scared. I didn’t know. I didn’t know in my first couple of auditions who I was actually auditioning for, and I found out halfway through the process,” Zaman said. “So, I kind of understood where the audience might be when that reveal came up, because it was like, I was singing a zoom like this with Rolin when halfway through the audition process, going into the next bit of audition, but he was like, ‘Look, I want to have a little chat with you about Rashid.’ And in my head, I’m thinking, ‘Why does he want to… He’s got bigger characters to worry about. Why does he want to have a chat with me about Rashid?’ And then he sits, and he tells me about who Rashid is, and I’m sitting here clenching my seat going, ‘Just don’t lose your cool. Don’t lose your cool.’ So yeah. I’m under no illusion that this is a big undertaking and it’s going to be tough.”

He added, “And it’s difficult coming in now after kind of living under a rock and watching season one kind of flower and the response that it’s been having, which has been overwhelmingly positive and beautiful and I’m so, so pleased. But it’s difficult to really talk about because I have been playing Rashid to an extent. It’s amazing to be able to unleash Armand, but it’s still kind of… I still don’t know how it’s going to play out. It’s kind of going into the dark a little bit. I don’t want to preempt what it might be, and it’s going to be for all of us kind of a discovery, I think.”

Episodes of Interview With the Vampire are now streaming on AMC+. The series has already been renewed for a second season.

What did you think about the Armand reveal? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section.