REVIEW: ‘Interview With The Vampire’ Season 2 Is Effortlessly Exceptional

Interview With The Vampire Season 1 was one of the best adaptations of a book, and more importantly, the best that Anne Rice’s work has looked in a visual medium. With changes made to Louis’ background, Claudia, and the time period in general, the series established itself as a masterclass in adapting for the current time while honoring the soul of an immortal work like Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. Now, in Interview With The Vampire Season 2, the series continues to paint a wickedly intimate portrayal of love, loss, and the malleable state of memory.

The series is helmed by executive producer Mark Johnson, creator and showrunner Rolin Jones, Mark Taylor, Christopher Rice, and the late Anne Rice. Picking up after the events of the first season, Interview With The Vampire Season 2 isn’t just about Louis’ story but also about Armand (Assad Zaman). In the year 2022, the Vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) recounts his life story to journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian). The vampire Armand is at his side, showing Daniel and the audience how he has shaped Louis’ memories.

But in the past, Interview With The Vampire Season 2 picks up from the bloody events in New Orleans in 1940 when Louis and teen fledgling Claudia (Delainey Hayles) conspired to kill the Vampire Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid). Louis tells of his adventures in Europe, a quest to discover Old World Vampires and the Theatre Des Vampires in Paris, with Claudia with Lestat’s violence behind them.

In Paris, the now-sibling vampires meet a coven for the first time. Louis becomes smitten with the Vampire Armand and creates cascading consequences. Once again in love, Louis has found a new home. At the same time, Claudia embraces the coven and, for the first time, feels pride in her vampirism.

But the Theatre Des Vampires troupe, led by the charismatically sexy Santiago, is only welcoming to a point. Ultimately, the laws of the vampire reign supreme, lording over Claudia and Louis as they hold the secret of killing their maker close to their chest, and Claudia tries to grow up in the eyes of those around her.

This story is told through Louis’ eyes, but by reading Claudia’s diaries. This means as the narrative inches closer to her death, the blank spots get larger. Louis begins to rely on Armand, his paramour, to fill in the gaps. In Interview With The Vampire Season 2, Louis is transformed. He is fierce and unrepentant of how he wants to live his life. While Lestat pulled the air out of the room around him, here, in Paris, Louis is stubborn. He is artistic. He is forming a life and a love affair on his own terms—effectively cutting away one connection and forming a new one.

But Louis doesn’t do this without Lestat’s ghost aching in his mind. The series smartly inserts Lestat into Louis’s story at his most vulnerable, romantic, and thoughtful moments. When he consoles Claudia and assures her that he will always be there for her, Lestat is sitting in front of him. As he opens up and advances his relationship with Armand, Lestat is right there whispering in his ear, taunting him. Lestat is ever present in Season 2, but he is never overused. Instead, he lives in Louis’ peripheral as the nagging trauma response to the world around him and the man, who, despite his violence, is someone Louis loved.

Sam Reid perfectly portrays Louis’s heartbreak in his Lestat. Still the trickster prince, he pushes Louis’ buttons in every way. Only Lestat is how Louis remembers him. In pain and dying at first, before taking a more corporeal and regal form as the series continues, Louis begins to accept his loss and the need to move on.

But Interview With The Vampire Season 2 never reduces Louis to only how he connects to Lestat. Instead, it embraces the complexity of falling in love again and repelling the past and the pain that can cause. The echoes that radiate, and how the small things the next person you fall for can resurface the one before him.

Louis and Armand are intimately written as two souls expanding and contracting together. Individually, Jacob Anderson as Louis and Assad Zaman as Armand are inspired castings. They both are gorgeous in the way that only Rice’s vampires can be, but their beauty doesn’t hide the roaring emotions that they let out. Their chemistry is sublime, and ultimately, it continues the series’ complex approach to love.

A mutual trust, a shared secret, but Armand’s control of the interview begins to erupt in the back half of the episode. Is he manipulative for personal gain? Is he manipulating his lover for his own good? The way that Armand plays the middle, always fierce but never stoic in his approach to Daniel or Louis, the depth of the interview itself is ambitious.

While the past is important, it’s not just about Paris, but also Louis’ life in 1973 and the first interview that Daniel was offered. More importantly, Daniel becomes more than just an unbiased journalist writing a story of the century. Instead, he becomes an active participant in it. Furious with the Armand bats him around and uncertain about the validity of Louis’ truth. “Then what?” The question that aches through the series remains, and Armand tells us.

The other foundational character in this interview is Claudia. Played by Delainey Hayles, a new addition to the cast in Interview With The Vampire Season 2 after Bailey Bass left the project, Claudia remains central. While last season showed Claudia’s ferocity as a vampire and vulnerability as a girl who will never grow, this second season deepens both points. Hayles had a tall task in taking on the role, and she delivered.

Claudia is strong because she has to be. While Louis has found another man to be in love with, she is left alone. She embraces the Theatre Des Vampires coven at first. Claudia works on their sets, earns herself a spot in their show, and ultimately joins them. But there is a sharp disconnect between the connection she is yearning for and the way that they treat her. While Santiago may open his arms to her and support her on the surface, there is constant manipulation that hangs over their interactions. Knowing the fate that the character is hurdling towards makes Claudia’s acceptance even more circumstantial.

That said, the series also expands on Claudia’s compassion, or whatever is left of it. She opens up to Louis for the first time about the assault she experienced when she ran away, and when she has the chance to save a woman in a similar situation, she takes it. Additionally, the series chooses to adapt Madeleine in a way that gives Claudia agency. Last season, we saw how Claudia was just like Lestat, and now, we see how she is just like Louis.

As a final note on the season, Molloy’s dedication to probing Louis for the truths buried within his memories thoughtfully expands his role. He is larger in this series, but he never takes over the series’ perspective. Instead, he works narratively to expand the story and push Louis farther than he has been throughout this entire process, enhanced by the trauma that Louis has to uncover again and again.

Two immortals expertly craft and stitch together storylines in the present and the past. At times, Louis will rewind the story and change a fuzzy detail, or the narration will switch to Armand’s voice. A codependence rears its head in the storytelling that pushes the series further than even the last.

If last season showcased the curse of vampirism, Interview With The Vampire Season 2 captures the bliss of it all. The compassion in the dark gift and the unbreakable tether it creates between those who share blood. There are moments of reverence and love. In fact, the series establishes that regardless of the ancient age or not, the tethers that form can be unbreakable. While the costumes, set designs, effects, and acting are the best that television offers, the story makes everything perfect. Yes, perfect.

Ultimately, Interview With The Vampire Season 2 is an intimate and heartbreaking look at love. The season once again captures the beauty and cruelty of the eternal connections that Anne Rice is known for, and it does it effortlessly. Every performance is exceptional, and every line delivery carries the weight it deserves. It is rare to find a series that adds to the material it is based on, but with the second season, Interview With The Vampire has done it again.

Interview With The Vampire Season 2 begins streaming weekly on AMC+ May 12, 2023.