[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Interview With the Vampire‘s Season 2 finale, “And That’s The End Of It. There’s Nothing Else.”]
Are you OK? Yeah, we get it.
If you’ve pulled yourselves together enough to click on this story, then give yourself a gold star. Because that Interview With the Vampire finale was just…good lord. Devastating. Cathartic. Infuriating. Beautiful. Invigorating. Game-changing. And thank God AMC renewed this one, because if this had been “the end of it,” it would have also been hella triggering. Like, fans would have rioted in a way that made Louis’s ambush on Santiago’s coven look like a harmless prank.
But now that it has aired, it can be revealed that Louis and Lestat weren’t the only ones in New Orleans during that hurricane: I was there, too.
Damian Holbrook
As it’s been reported, most of the second season filmed in Prague wearing Parisian cosplay. But on the night of December 8, 2023, the production came back to where it all started to shoot that scene outside of Loustat’s former home at 1132 Royal Street in New Orleans’ French Quarter. Being winter in the Crescent City, it was already moody, and the location being literally next door to the so-haunted LaLurie Mansion definitely added an ominous energy.
But to really capture the quiet-before-the-storm ambiance, it took about 120 crew members to keep the smoke machines fogging, the street blocked off from traffic… There was even one guy responsible for tossing cups and paper into frame to make it appear that the wind was blowing trash down the street.
Damian Holbrook
Standing to the side with one of the show’s tireless reps and Mark Johnson, who oversees Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe for AMC, we watched as Bobbie Lee Jr.’s tour guide delivered faulty information about “Monsieur Lesander Lioncourt…a known hoarder and infamous recluse” who lived there with “a local Creole hustler and his little child bride” to a crowd of patrons.
Over and over, as the scene was rehearsed and then shot from various angles, Jacob Anderson, New Orleans Saints baseball cap pulled low, playfully reacted to these fallacious comments as his Louis re-acclimated to the city he’d been away from for so long. In between takes, he happily stood there with the extras, engaging with the actors and crew members around him. After a season that had been stretched out for so long because of the actors and writers’ strikes, he was the picture of relaxed chill.
April McMillan
Which is startling, given everything he’d put into this season.
“What Jacob has given us this year is nothing short of amazing,” Johnson said at the time. “Everything we have asked of him, he’s delivered and more. Sam Reid, too. Wait until you see…” He trailed off, clearly not wanting to even hint at what we’d witness in the season finale. “It’s two of the greatest performances you can imagine.”
Damian Holbrook
A few shots later—several including Lestat’s “worrisome fledgling” catching Louis’ eye as he snags a rat for his maker—and production begins setting up for the actual storm. Before we left (it was late, y’all), Anderson shared a few details about Louis’ arc, raved about Delainey Hayles and Assad Zaman and expertly avoided revealing anything about what would actually air in the episode right after this street scene—no mention of the emotional power-lifting he and Reid did for Louis and Lestat’s reunion, the bloody tears, the forgiveness, Claudia’s indelible mark on both of them, not even a tease of Lestat using Siri!
Damian Holbrook
And of course, there was zero discussion of what the actors silently said to each other as the hurricane bore down on their now-decrepit former home. Even the bosses don’t know that tidbit.
“It’s written in the script…Louis walks over to Lestat, embraces him. The wind is roaring, rain is coming down hard and we hold in this embrace for a while,” showrunner Rolin Jones read to me over Zoom, months later as the finale loomed. “Then we pop back to create some distance and the sound department turns off the mics, but the cameras keep rolling. And Louis says something to Lestat that only Jacob Anderson knows, and Lestat nods and says something to Louis that only Sam Reid knows. Back and forth like that one more time and then they hold each other again as the hurricane battles and the entire house begins to quiver.”
“They worked so hard,” Jones continues. “They had killed themselves for two years, and it’s like, ‘You know these characters better than anyone, have a secret that no one ever has. Have something together.’ Let your Jamreiderson moment fly!”
AMC
As for what comes next, Jones and Johnson are already prepping for Lestat’s Rock Star era in Season 3.
“Most of the time right now, I’m just doing a lot of just [light] reading,” laughs Jones as he holds up several rocker memoirs, including Nikki Sixx’s Heroin Diaries. “I’m just trying to re-find myself, just reading because I just want to take a break from things…I just want some time to relax.”
Just don’t expect Lestat to be a hair-metal mess or really any kind of musical cliché. He is the Rule Breaker, after all. “We have a guy who has already established himself as having a certain kind of taste in music,” Jones offers. “Let’s just say, if there were any preparations for something like that, it would probably be me and [IWTV‘s composer] Daniel Hart talking two hours a day about what the sonic landscape would that be and experimenting. What I wouldn’t expect is that it sounds like one person’s album—that wouldn’t be Lestat. He has a lot of ways to express himself.”
“We’re going for timeless,” he continues. “So imagine that he’s sat in front of YouTube and sucked in about 80 years of popular music and said, ‘I’m going to tell you what good taste is going forward.’”
Classic Lestat.
Larry Horricks / AMC
And what about Louis? With Season 3 poised to retell The Vampire Lestat, readers know that the character isn’t a prominent in Anne Rice’s sequel. Fear not.
“I’m not putting Jacob Anderson in a corner,” promises Jones. “The next turn, center stage, is Lestat, but I don’t think we’re going to be pushing Louis to the side like he is in those books.” Nor will he be the tortured soul of the last two seasons, having now dared any vamps irate over his disclosures in Daniel’s book to come for him. “I don’t think Louis, as we leave him, is going to be this guy who is suffering as much. Actually, I think he’s maybe beginning his legitimate vampire experience there at the end.”
“The last line is Louis saying, ‘I own the night,’” adds Johnson. “That is not an exit line.”
Interview With the Vampire, Season 3, TBA, AMC (Streaming, AMC+)