‘The Vampire Lestat’ Proved How Important Lestat’s Relationship With One Character Really Was

Throughout Interview With the Vampire season 1 and 2, Louis de Pointe du Lac’s (Jacob Anderson) relationship with Claudia (Delainey Hayles) was made clear. In The Vampire Lestat, we’re seeing where the differences in her relationship with Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) lie.

In the first two seasons, Claudia and Lestat had a tenuous relationship. Partly because of Louis’ relationship with Lestat. But we watched a lot of that story unfold through Louis’ perspective. What we did get of Claudia’s came from her diary and is just as subjective. Imagine your teenage diary being taken as the cold hard truth! It is complicated at best.

So now we’re getting glimpses of Lestat’s side of their story. For the most part, he doesn’t negate what Louis said in his interview with Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian). If anything, he’s mad that Louis told Daniel secrets about himself. And the thing he’s the most upset about is the insinuation that he would threaten to sexually assault Claudia on the train when he himself knows what that pain is.

But the show is doing something fascinating with The Vampire Lestat and Lestat’s memory of Claudia. Especially when Louis drags him into this fantasy he’s living with Regina (Hayles) at the diner.

“And she had a heart murmur you don’t.”

Lestat leaves the bubble of his recording studio because Louis asked him to. But while he’s mad at him for not calling after he was shot at, Lestat does what “Thomas Pitt” asks of him. He goes into the diner to prove once and for all that Regina is not their Claudia come back to them.

While Louis has been dealing with his grief over Claudia for decades, Lestat had to watch it happen. He makes many jabs throughout the season to those responsible for Paris. His anger towards Armand (Assad Zaman) is still there and he even mentions that Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle) brought Sam (Christopher Geary) into the studio to torment him.

He is constantly being reminded of what happened to Claudia and so Louis forcing him to confront this Fake Claudia doesn’t help matters. But Lestat’s grief isn’t as nostalgic as Louis’. He has a rage in him about it and seeing Regina react to him forces Lestat to reveal parts of Claudia to her as a way pushing back. He tells her that she had a hip injury Claudia never did and that Claudia had a heart murmur that Regina doesn’t.

It’s meant to quickly point out the differences between the two women but instead, it shows what details Lestat kept to his heart about his daughter. He never forgot those instances. And even watching Regina walk he could see what made her different. Something that Louis couldn’t because he wanted to so badly believe she was back.

Grief, similarities, and their family

Lestat and Claudia are more similar than they’d like to admit. Which is maybe why she would rather connect herself with Louis than the man she saw herself in. Or vice versa with Lestat and his treatement of Claudia. But the two are incredibly loyal and hot headed and share a tortured past that make them more similar than that of their relationships with Louis.

The song “Stained Glass Eyes” that Lestat sings about Claudia does a lot of work in telling how he really feels about Claudia and what happened in Paris. His grief isn’t as laid out as Louis’. Much of Louis’ interview centered around the love that he had for their daughter. Lestat isn’t as open with his emotions. So what we do get in The Vampire Lestat centers around the songs he’ll write to talk about the harder moments. Like Claudia’s death.

This episode proved a lot about how Lestat feels about losing Claudia. It hurts him just as it does Louis but Lestat doesn’t want to share that pain with anyone. So he tells Louis that it isn’t her, that her eyes are not the same, and to not see her again. And to call him the next time someone tries to kill him.

But it really is a beautiful exploration of grief in both of these men. They both lost Claudia but how they choose to grieve her is different and unique to them and it is gorgeously done on both Interview With the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat.

(featured image: AMC)

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