[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Interview With the Vampire Season 2 Episode 4, “I Want You More Than Anything in the World.”]
Dream-stat is no more. Louis (Jacob Anderson) cast away the hallucination of Lestat (Sam Reid) in Interview With the Vampire Season 2 Episode 4. Anderson tells TV Insider this was Louis giving himself closure he’s needed since leaving New Orleans, but what happens immediately after is a concerning sign that Louis has “devolved,” as the actor previously described to us ahead of the season’s debut.
The best Dream-stat scenes of the season came in Episode 4 when Louis is alone with his thoughts. Louis complains about his photography woes to the maroon suit-clad Lestat who’s happy to hear Louis vent on and on, encouraging him to get out his feelings with sweet lines like, “Tell me, mon cher.” After Louis and Claudia’s (Delainey Hayles) awful fight, Lestat gives Louis an empathetic look and says, “The wilderness that is our daughter.”
Anderson says these are “some really lovely scenes” shared with his co-star, ones he was relieved were created. “I love Dream-stat,” Anderson says. “I was like, ‘Oh! I’m still going to get to work with Sam.” He notes the final Louis and Dream-stat scene as a standout.
“I really love the scene on the bench in Episode 4 between them,” the Game of Thrones alum says. In it, Louis breaks the news that it’s over to Dream-stat as lovingly as he can. After dressing Lestat in outfits tied to major moments in their relationship throughout Season 2 so far, Louis chooses his favorite of Lestat’s suits, the maroon set, for this final moment. Dream-stat reveals he had Louis’ initials embroidered into the ticket pocket of his jacket so that his name would always rest over his heart. Since this was Louis’ memory of Lestat, Louis must have known that fact. The suit choice makes all the more sense with that in mind.
Anderson calls this Louis and Lestat’s moment of closure. “The breakup, that’s a conversation that never got to happen.” The actor adds that the tender Dream-stat scenes are what Louis and Lestat were like in their good moments during their decades together, the side Louis wouldn’t let us see when retelling his life story to Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian).
Larry Horricks / AMC
“The thing that I love about Dream-stat is that it’s Louis’ idealized version. It’s the version of Lestat, or of their relationship that you never got to see really in Season 1. It’s the quieter side of their relationship,” Anderson explains. “They’re hanging out! They’re best friends. It’s a narcissistic version of that because he’s also a manifestation of Louis’ own feelings about things. But I think there is also quite a big element of friendship, companionship. It’s something that Louis missed. Lestat did see him. Lestat knows him probably better than anyone.”
Louis tells Armand (Assad Zaman) he loves him in Episode 4 and Armand reciprocates, and Louis has Claudia as his family, and yet Louis feels a lack of true companionship in his life in Paris. Does Louis feel there’s something missing in his relationship with Armand that wasn’t missing with Lestat? Anderson says, “Yeah.”
“I think Louis just can’t let go. He can’t let go of that side of him,” he elaborates. “His relationship with Lestat is so tied into his vampiric existence. I’m not sure it was ever going to be a clean transition.”
As Armand learned in the Dubai interview in Episode 4, Lestat was a looming presence throughout the entire origin of their romance. “I find it funny that Louis and Armand never have a moment alone really, apart from when they meet,” Anderson shares with a laugh. “It’s telling. I think Louis does have trepidation about Armand. There’s something just buzzing in the back of his mind.”
That buzzing might be Louis’ trust issues after decades of emotional tumult with Lestat, but Anderson says that Armand may be untrustworthy at the same time. Moving forward, viewers will see how Louis continues to be unsure about their relationship even decades later in Dubai. This makes Armand extremely insecure. What else is holding Louis back from knowing what he wants out of love? “I think the same thing that’s always holding Louis back,” Anderson says, “which is himself.”
“It’s possible that he has reason to be suspicious or to just feel like there’s just something not right,” with Armand, Anderson continues. “I think he also got into that relationship knowing that there was an edge to Armand, but he kind of just chose to focus on the sides of him that were gentle and sweet and seemingly the opposite of any of the relationships that he’s had so far.”
Louis’ struggles to connect with the two major loves of his life are a sign of his inner turmoil, says Anderson. “Louis self-sabotages all the time because he’s not comfortable with who he actually is. I think being a vampire is actually what Louis always was supposed to be,” he says. “It feels like there’s a relationship between Louis’ vampiric nature and the way he was before he became a vampire. And that’s something that he finds very difficult to accept.”
“His journey in Season 2 is really reckoning with himself,” he goes on. “Imagine you go on a journey of self-discovery and what you find is that you were the problem. What you discover is that you’re kind of everything that you dislike about other people. I think that’s a very hard thing to find about yourself, and he does.”
Immediately after breaking up with Dream-stat, Louis takes the reins of his relationship with Armand by establishing a dom-sub relationship. In the AMC aftershow for the episode, Anderson says Louis has in a way become the Lestat of this pairing. Louis may have taken a step forward by saying goodbye to the fake Lestat, but did he learn anything from his presence?
Interview With the Vampire, Sundays, 9/8c, AMC, Streaming Sundays on AMC+