REVIEW: ‘Interview With the Vampire,’ Episode 4 — “The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood with All a Child’s Demanding”

Interview With the Vampire has proven to be one of the strongest shows on television and one of the best that AMC has released. Showcasing how you can adapt a story with love and reverence by also changing elements of it, I’ve been blown away. And in Interview With The Vampire Episode 4, “The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood with All a Child’s Demanding,” this continues. Because of its blood and romance, and of course its look at morality and choice, this series has me captivated. Last episode ended with Claudia (Bailey Bass) making her entrance, and in this episode, she’s come into focus.

The strength of Interview With the Vampire continues to be the weight of every relationship formed within it. Like any new parents, Claudia reveals parts of Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat (Sam Reid) that only a daughter can. Acting as a family unit, there are light moments. Ones filled with laughter and love, and then a sharp twist that reminds the audience, and well Louis, that they are in fact monsters. Their domestic bliss and a happy family are wonderful, specifically because they have pulled out every stop in ensuring that the language around them is as a family, fathers, and their daughter.

It’s lyrical, the way that Claudia’s narration moves the audience and Daniel (Eric Bogosian) through the story in Interview With The Vampire Episode 4. In the same way that showrunners have sought to expand Louis’s agency and autonomy, so they have done with Claudia as well. To that end though, the way that the series has highlighted her relationship with each vampire dad showcases the different parts of who she is, as much as she acts as a mirror to Louis and Lestat.

While I was unsure of aging up Claudia, Bailey Bass delivers a performance filled with innocence and wonder that when coupled with her brutality nails exactly who the character is supposed to be. Additioanlly, like changing Louis’s race, changing Claudia’s age serves the story wonderfully. At her current age, the showrunners capture the innocence of young life while having her just be old enough to ache from her liminality in a cruel way.

She has the joy of a child skipping through her house and disobeying her dads, but she also has the longing of a woman as she waits for her crush to drive past their townhouse. She can be seen as a woman, but she will never be a woman, even through intimacy. Couple in the racism she faces from the white women of New Orleans and the cops, there is almost justice in her feeding, well, until there isn’t.

The emotion that builds through just this one episode is palatable. For one, despite Louis not recounting Claudia’s life himself, the way he has kept her diaries preserved shows the deep love he had for his daughter that went beyond the guilt he felt. There is a deep love that runs throughout this episode and because of that, there is also deep loneliness too. Claudia has the humanity that comes with her bloodlust.

Without the impulse control that is necessary she is walled off from loving anyone but her fathers. This helps put her building resentment for Lestat into perspective. It’s stunning. Loneliness as a consequence of lack of restraint rears its head in Interview With The Vampire Episode and Claudia stops being a child.

Interview With The Vampire Episode 4 is a stunning reflection on family and love, and the pain that runs through Anne Rice’s vampires like lifeblood. When Louis makes his entrance in this episode, it ends with beauty and fatherhood but also the eruptive despair of grief. I keep saying that Interview With The Vampire is stunning, and I can’t overstate that. It continues with Claudia’s introduction.

Interview With The Vampire Episode 4 is available now on AMC+ with new episodes premiering on AMC and AMC+ every Sunday.