Interview With the Vampire: Sam Reid Says Lestat Will Never Get Over Claudia's Fate

Sam Reid breaks down how Claudia's fate impacts Lestat - and him.

By Nicole Drum

Lestat returned — in the flesh, not as a hallucination or ghost as he'd appeared all season to date — this week on Interview With the Vampire, but the return of the fan favorite vampire wasn't exactly a pleasant one. This week's episode, "I Could Not Prevent It", saw Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Claudia (Delainey Hayles) stand trial for their crimes against him and, according to Lestat actor Sam Reid, the outcome of the trial is something that will haunt Lestat forever.

Warning: spoilers for this week's episode of Interview With the Vampire, "I Could Not Prevent It", beyond this point.

In this week's episode, after a show trial — one that is scripted and presented as a play at the Theatre des Vampires — Louis and Claudia, along with Madeline (Roxane Duran) are found guilty of violating several of the Great Laws. But while Louis is sentenced to "banishment", Claudia and Madeline are sentenced to death. In her final moments, however, Claudia looks to Lestat, with her maker being the last thing she sees. Speaking to ScreenRant, Reid said that not only was saying goodbye to Hayles, who picked up the role of Claudia for Season 2, difficult, but he doesn't think that he or Lestat will ever get past Claudia's death.

"Delainey's so fantastic, and Claudia is such a brilliant character,' Reid said. "I don't think Lestat's ever really going to get over the fact that she dies — nor am I."

He added, "I think we laid that track down very early. We always knew this is how it was going to go from Season 1, but it's devastating, and it's something he's never going to get over. And yet, there is no world in which he's going to let Louis die. There's no reality in which Louis is going to die. It is not possible."

What Is Interview with the Vampire Season 2 About?

You can read AMC's official description of the second season of Interview With the Vampire here: "The interview continues in season two. In the year 2022, the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (Anderson) recounts his life story to journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian). Picking up from the bloody events in New Orleans in 1940 when Louis and teen fledgling Claudia (Hayles) conspired to kill the Vampire Lestat de Lioncourt (Reid), Louis tells of his adventures in Europe, a quest to discover Old World Vampires and the Theatre Des Vampires in Paris, with Claudia. It is in Paris that Louis first meets the Vampire Armand (Assad Zaman). Their courtship and love affair will prove to have devastating consequences both in the past and in the future, and Molloy will probe to get to the truths buried within the memories."

Showrunner Rolin Jones Already Knows What Book He'd Take on Next

While Interview With the Vampire has not yet officially been renewed for a third season, there is more to the story from here and showrunner Rolin Jones says he already knows which of Rice's novels he'd take on next: he'd continue the story with The Vampire Lestat.

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"There's no green light. I can't talk about it," Jones said, noting AMC has not yet renewed Interview With the Vampire (via Collider). "I can only talk about this: The next book I would do would be The Vampire Lestat. I have no idea who makes the decisions about why things are titled what they are. I think it's called The Vampire Lestat. That's what I think it's called, so that's what I would like to make. We're already pulling from other books. We've pulled from The Vampire Lestat. We've pulled from The Queen of the Damned. We've pulled from The Vampire Armand. We've pulled a little bit or at least some seeds from The Body Thief. There's some stuff from Prince Lestat. We've read them. We're building this things as if they're all one giant thing."

Interview With the Vampire airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.

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