Interview With the Vampire: Luke Brandon Field Talks Young Daniel Molloy and That Fateful Original Interview

Luke Brandon Field talks about the pivotal Season 2 episode of Interview With the Vampire

By Nicole Drum

This week's episode of Interview With the Vampire, "Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape", sees Daniel (Eric Bogosian) and Louis (Jacob Anderson) revisit the original 1973 interview to finally figure out what really happened — and Armand's (Assad Zaman) involvement. The episode is a major turning point, narratively, but with much of the story told in flashback, it also sees the return of Luke Brandon Field as young Daniel Molloy. Speaking with Comic Book about the episode, Field broke down how he worked to create the younger version of Bogosian's character and revealed that he Bogosian not only found they had a lot in common as actors, but similar inspiration for Daniel: Lou Reed.

Warning: Spoilers for this week's episode of Interview With the Vampire, "Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape" beyond this point.

"So, on Season 1, I think the day I flew out to New Orleans, I found out it was Eric who was going to play Daniel. The crazy thing is in the pandemic, I watched Talk Radio. I stumbled on it and I watched it and I thought it was fantastic. I was aware of Eric and had seen him in a bunch of other stuff, so when I found out it was him, I was like, 'Oh, the guy from Talk Radio. Okay, fantastic,'" Field said. "It was really great that we had breakfast the day before we started shooting because, you know, you kind of go into like this whole world and I've read Interview With the Vampire at school but like, I really have to work this out. So, Eric and I went for breakfast and went for a long walk in New Orleans and we just talked and we realized we had a lot in common. And I was fascinated by the world that he was in the 1970s in New York and we had a lot of interests the same so that was a good base. But as you say [young Daniel] is very different. There is this like young enthusiasm that young Molloy has versus the Daniel we see in present day. So, I think it was like also understanding Eric's experiences in the 1970s and listening to him and then formulating a Daniel character from that and the book and then my own experiences and understanding. I love the '70s and what was really helpful to me was I made a playlist of stuff I felt like Daniel would have been listening to at the time. He was a renegade and he's also very much on the beat and in the scene. I don't think he was listening to Peter Paul and Mary but you know, it's stuff that was coming out in '72, '72 that I think would have really piqued his interest, like the New York Dolls, stuff that at the time was groundbreaking… stuff coming out of Britain at the time. So, that also helped me formulate this also."

He continued, "There is also a common person that Eric and I thought of individually that we based, I can certainly say I based a part of Molloy on and that is Lou Reed. And even in terms of Daniel's costume, I had this picture of Lou from '70 to '73 when he's wearing a brown leather jacket, a very similar type of shirt so when I went to see Carol, when we were talking about different options, I was like 'this is the vibe I'm kind of thinking' of that gives me in terms of my physicality and mental space for Daniel, or confidence or swagger but yet an enthusiasm. Lou was always a difficult character, but I think that there's a big difference with Lou in the early '70s and Lou before he passed away and again, it's sort of a mirror."

Field also said that when it came to younger Daniel's thoughts entering the original interview, one can look back to Season 1 that explains why Daniel would embark on it — at least before it all goes from not quite a rom com, as he put it, but to something darker and more serious for the young reporter.

"I think there's a line in the first season which really helps, which is when Daniel says 'I'm interested in people in the cracks of society' though I think initially, when they're at the bar, it's like 'I've heard a lot of things in my time, but you know, I'm gonna run with it. I'm gonna run with it because you have things that I want. If something's gonna happen, so be it because you have something that I want,'" he said. "The intrigue is that you have this guy who says he's a vampire, okay fine. But this is 1973 so anything could be going on here. Maybe the dude's got a coffin, he sleeps in it or he reads Aleister Crowley and he practices the occult or something so why not, it's better than you know some schlub who's a finance guy. Let's give it a go. And I think you see it in Season 2, initially there's an excitement. It's kind of sweet actually between the two of them, when Louis started showing the fangs. There is a kind of like, lovely sweetness in this, I'm not going to say rom com but in this vibe between them and he's like, take the chance and it's working and then what happens afterwards. Never in a million years, I mean you wouldn't dream of being in a room with a vampire, let alone two of them, being chastised and beaten."

Even with the interview going well off the rails and Daniel finding himself in a precarious position when Armand gets involved, in the episode Daniel resists the older vampire's efforts to lull him into an "easeful death". For Field, there are two reasons Daniel is so determined to fight for his life

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"I think there are two reasons. One, I think Daniel knows he's got a really great thing. This is the most original, unique story of man ever in the 20th century and I think that he's found his magnum opus, his raison d'etre. 'I must tell this story so I have to fight for myself. I really have to get out of this because the world needs to hear this," Field said. "And one very important thing is he's ambitious, which we obviously see later down the line, but I think that's a big part of it. And I think the second thing, of course, he wants to be one of them. That's the main thing. He looks at it like, it's me, it's not him. I can be, I want to be immortal, I can be like you. I should be like you. I as put on this earth to tell the truth and to broadcast that. If I'm immortal I can do that for the rest of my life. It's about ambition, power and I think he's sort of taken with Louis as well. And that seems like my favorite thing and I know that Eric says that as well."

New episodes of Interview With the Vampire air Sundays on AMC.

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