[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Interview With the Vampire Season 2 Episode 5, “Don’t Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape.” It also contains discussion of suicide and domestic violence.]
Interview With the Vampire has revealed its version of the San Francisco interview. Louis and Daniel’s 1973 meeting serves as the setting for Anne Rice‘s original novel, but the AMC series changed the premise by setting its main interview in Dubai in 2022, 49 years after the first try went awry.
Eric Bogosian‘s Daniel Molloy has been experiencing memory flashes to that fateful encounter throughout Season 2, ones that have made him distrust Armand (Assad Zaman) more and more. But it’s what he and Louis (Jacob Anderson) didn’t remember that are the most revealing and tragic developments. TV Insider connected with the stars and creator of the episode, the first episode filmed for Season 2, to discuss how it was made and how it changes the course of the season.
Luke Brandon Field returned as young Daniel in the episode. He, Anderson, and Zaman had the gargantuan task of filming this episode first. This was done in order to give new cast member Delainey Hayles time to prepare after Bailey Bass‘ sudden exit from the series. “We were going to shoot [Episode] 5 and [Episode] 1 always together,” showrunner Rolin Jones tells TV Insider. “We were going to start with 1, and we had to get some time for Delainey to get into it, so we flopped them.”
They filmed the episode over about two weeks and shot the scenes in order of appearance to help ease in the actors, but there was no easing in for Zaman. Anderson and Field’s first scene was simply walking into the apartment. Zaman’s, on the other hand, was the fight with Louis when Armand says, “Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat!” Both of these were on day one of Season 2 filming, according to Field and Jones. “We threw him in the fire,” Jones says of Zaman. “He did well. He did really well.” Imagine being pushed off a cliff to find out if you can fly.
Larry Horricks / AMC
“It was terrifying,” Zaman tells us. Jones broke the news two weeks before they started, but Zaman was more prepared than he thought for his first real day as Armand. “What I didn’t realize until I got to set on the first day was … so much of the prep had happened while I was in Season 1 in New Orleans. A lot of it was starting to ruminate in me in that year between Season 1 and Season 2, because I was consuming Anne Rice every day. Once we got there and started filming, it all came together quite nicely.”
“Now I’m really grateful that we did start with that,” Zaman continues. “For Jacob and I to start basically in the middle of a 77-year relationship with this huge argument was like a crash course into our dynamics. That was the first time we’d ever really bounced off each other. We were figuring each other out in that moment. It helped later on when we met each other again in Paris in that first encounter.”
Jones and director Craig Zisk created a theatrical feel on set to help the trio, who have all done theater before, feel like they were on familiar ground.
“Rolin basically said just treat it like an off-Broadway play,” Field shares. “‘Just go for it. Anything you guys need, you are supported.’ We felt that immediately. [We] really immersed [ourselves] into it, and we didn’t rehearse it. Some scenes we read before, but it very much felt organic and real and natural and my gosh, did we go on a journey?” He adds, “The atmosphere was electric at all times.”
Daniel was one of over one hundred men Louis lured home to screw and drain, all of whom lived with addiction. But he was the only one Louis let live. What started out as a flirtatious, drug-fueled interview that raked Lestat (Sam Reid) across the coals spiraled into devastation. As Anderson tells us, “Episode 5 is never a great episode for Louis.” (This is in reference to Season 1’s fifth episode, when Lestat physically abused Louis.)
The episode switches between San Francisco and Dubai, where older…
