How The Vampire Lestat Pulled Off That ‘Funny and Horrific’ Seance

[The following contains spoilers for The Vampire Lestat Episode 6, “Montreal.”]

In the fifth episode of Interview with the Vampire‘s second season, Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Armand (Assad Zaman) have a blowout argument about their doomed relationship, the culmination of years of built-up resentment. Among the issues Armand dredges up is the way Louis used Claudia (Delainey Hayles) despite idolizing her memory, summarizing the amorphous convenience of Louis’ relationship with her in one perfectly succinct barb: “My daughter was my sister was my throw pillow.” One of the final shots of the season is of the yellow dress Claudia died in, hanging on a wall in Louis’ Dubai penthouse, right next to a portrait of his brother, Paul (Steven G. Norfleet).

The first five episodes of The Vampire Lestat revolve largely around, of course, Lestat (Sam Reid). But Louis’ journey is just as crucial to how the story unfolds, which is why Lestat includes it in his “Failures” tapes that frame the season. Still hobbled by his guilt and grief over Claudia’s death decades ago, Louis falls into an uncomfortable dynamic with a waitress named Regina (also played by Hayles) who happens to look like Claudia. He pays Regina, and in exchange, she pretends to be Claudia to help Louis relive some important moments from their time together. It becomes such a heightened experience for Louis that he can no longer tell the difference between Claudia and Regina, begging Lestat to help him confirm if their daughter has actually returned.

“So much of this season for Louis has been about trying to make her tangible again,” Anderson told TV Guide. “To go back to the yellow dress on the wall, it’s like — these things that you can see, and you touch, and you can feel, and are objective, and are her.” Louis, after all, was pulled off stage before Claudia was killed at the infamous Théâtre des Vampires trial, when he was sent away to be buried alive thanks to Lestat’s interference. “I think it’s always stuck in Louis’ craw that he didn’t witness her death. That’s probably why he romanticizes that moment. He hates how ugly it all was.”

If the appearance of Regina wasn’t shocking enough, The Vampire Lestat had another Claudia-related trick up its sleeve. The sixth episode of the season brings Lestat back to where the season started — his home in Montreal — as he prepares for the concert he plans to put on for his fellow vampires. But Louis is there with him this time, and the two dance around defining where their relationship currently stands as they bounce around the city, meeting up with Daniel (Eric Bogosian) for an enigmatic dinner, crossing paths with Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle) at Lestat’s rehearsal. It all culminates in, of all things, a seance hosted by the witch Merrick Mayfair (Sarah Afful), whom Lestat has flown in from New Orleans to summon the spirit of Claudia. It’s a bad idea, Louis repeatedly cautions. But the curiosity, and their shared desire to see Claudia again, overpowers all reason.

“Even though it was horrendous, [Lestat] got the chance to sort of see [Claudia] disappear,” Reid said. “He had the Irish version of the wake where he saw the dead body, he saw the ashes on the floor. He was able to let it go, not fully, but Louis never got that opportunity. He wants Louis to be able to say goodbye.” What they get from her spirit, though, isn’t quite what they anticipated. Ahead of the episode’s premiere, Reid, Anderson, Hayles, and creator Rolin Jones spoke to TV Guide about all that went into crafting that show-stopping seance.

Two vampires on a bench.

One of the earliest things Reid and Anderson were told about the season was that it was always building to getting Lestat and Louis back together, but the shape of their reunion went through many different stages before it became the version on our TVs. Anderson came in with a pitch that the entire episode should be Louis and Lestat on a bench talking. Another idea was to film the episode in one continuous take, following the pair as they made their way through Montreal. Ultimately, the writers landed on the decision to spend the first section of the episode following them as they ambled around the city. 

But the episode’s centerpiece is, of course, the seance. Since the end of Season 2 of Interview with the Vampire, Jones had been toying with the idea that the particulars Claudia’s death didn’t play out the way Louis claimed. The showrunner referenced two specific moments as jumping-off points for his doubts: Louis’ claim that he heard Claudia calling for him while fighting with Armand in San Francisco, and Louis reaching out for Claudia while being pulled off stage after the trial.

“It always just kind of stuck me,” Jones said. He added that he and executive producer Hannah Moscovitch were also fixated on Louis keeping Claudia’s dress in his Dubai penthouse, a moment previously framed as an act of grace. “We were just sort of looking at each other and going, ‘Nope. Nope. Not quite,'” he said. “And so we built a lot to bring [Louis and Lestat] back together, and put them on concurrent journeys, and that seemed like the scene to get everybody in.”

Enter Merrick.

While the Mayfair witches are briefly mentioned in the Interview with the Vampire pilot, Sarah Afful’s Merrick is the first witch to cross over into the vampiric world. Her arrival is preceded by hours of hand-wringing from a very anxious Louis: “I don’t like witches,” he tells Lestat early in the episode. “I don’t get on with ’em. You reached out to the worst kind of witch.” Lestat brushes off his concerns: “Merrick is different,” he insists. 

In order for the seance to unfold as powerfully as it does, Merrick — Lestat and Louis’ guide through their journey across the veil — had to make a memorable entrance. “Montreal” marks the character’s first on-screen appearance in AMC’s Anne Rice Immortal Universe, and Anderson and Hayles each separately mentioned how impressed they were by how immediately dialed in Afful’s performance was. “It’s definitely Merrick, but it’s also her own interpretation of Merrick,” Anderson said. “This is a show [that] really encourages you to just go for it, just do, bring all of your ideas. It doesn’t really benefit anybody to underplay anything. She came in and literally blew us away, just brought this character to life.”

Merrick summons Claudia using her yellow dress and her diary, and it doesn’t take long for Claudia to make herself known. The first time she comes through at the seance, she proves such an incandescent spirit that she forces Merrick to smash her face against the table, knocking one of her teeth out in the process. Lestat, who can be seen smiling at the brief flicker of Claudia’s unmistakable rage, even agrees to pay for a “high-presenting dentist,” and both he and Louis demand that Merrick bring Claudia back. Before Claudia manifests physically, she speaks to her fathers through the witch, whose eyes change color when Claudia takes over.

Among the uncanny elements of Afful’s performance is how swiftly she was able to channel Hayles-as-Claudia during filming. While Hayles and Afful ran through the scene in Hayles’ trailer, the real magic came about on set. According to Hayles, the two were able to “bounce off each other’s energy.” After arriving on set, Hayles spent three hours in the makeup chair, but a delay in filming allowed her to watch the beginning of the action from the sidelines before Claudia’s arrival. “This is dark,” she recalled thinking. She mentioned how thoroughly Afful embodied Claudia, highlighting the specific tilt of Merrick-as-Claudia’s head at Louis and Lestat. “She does this switch, and I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s Claudia,'” said Hayles.

Watching Hayles and Afful play off each other changed Anderson’s approach to the scene, with the actor likening his experience sitting in the chair to being part of an “immersive performance.” 

“I thought it was going to be a much more harrowing experience, much more wrenching experience for Louis,” Anderson said. “And then I was sort of like, ‘Oh, there is something kind of funny and horrific, and so shocking that it crosses back into being funny.’ You know? Something so shocking, there’s no rational way to respond.”

“Louis doesn’t really know her.”

The warning from Merrick about Claudia’s rage wasn’t enough to prepare Louis and Lestat for how ferociously angry she is when she comes face to face with them again. A despondent Louis tells her he hopes she found quiet in the afterlife; a disinterested Claudia bitterly asks if Louis has gotten back together with Lestat. His pitiful response (“I’m sorry” is all he can say) is her final straw, and she finally enters the scene in her own body, appearing before them as she did when she died — heels slashed and bloodied, wearing the yellow dress Madeleine (Roxane Duran) made her. She lays into Louis right away, speaking with her usual brutal eloquence when Louis attempts to spin his hanging her dress on his wall as a method of honoring her. “That’s what I want to be,” Claudia says mockingly. “Car fuel for your self-pity.”

When she first read the script, Hayles wasn’t surprised to learn just how furious Claudia was at Louis in particular. She even saw the scene as the first time Claudia’s gotten to be in control of the narrative. “We’ve never actually heard her speak properly,” Hayles pointed out. “She goes off on Louis in Season 2, she does have her moments, but it’s Louis’ perspective. Louis doesn’t really know her.” That becomes clear as Claudia rages on, refusing to let Louis off easy. She sees to it that there is absolutely no satisfaction to be gained from her return.

She also uses the opportunity to hit her parents with some hard truths, all of which shatter Louis. Among the bombshells is the revelation that Claudia, not Louis, was the source of the lie that Lestat threatened to rape her on the train in Interview with the Vampire Season 1, a claim that has notably haunted Lestat since this season’s premiere. She also asserts that she always liked Lestat best, since he “knew who he was,” kicking dirt on her bond with Louis by hammering home that it’s Lestat, not Louis, with whom she shares blood.

Even so, Hayles wondered whether the audience should be taking everything at face value. “Do I think that this seance is from Lestat’s perspective?” she mused. “Because she does not lay into him as much as she does with Louis.” She looked back on a moment from Episode 5, in which Claudia’s ghost appears to Lestat while he’s recording his album in the studio, sitting beside him at the piano as he writes a mournful ballad about their relationship. “If we go back to ‘Stained Glass Eyes,’ it was romanticized,” said Hayles. “She looked madly in love with his song. Is that really how that would go down? No. Is the seance how it’s going down? We don’t really know, but we do know that Claudia is mega, mega fuming.” It’s an important reminder: Everything we see on this show is filtered through the lens of whoever is currently in control of the narrative.

The return of Daddy Lou.

Much of the seance’s dialogue is steered by Claudia, who repeatedly stuns Lestat and Louis into silence with the force of her resentment. When Louis does attempt to speak, it’s to self-righteously address one of The Vampire Lestat‘s more controversial moments: his murder of Bruce (Damon Daunno), the vampire who sexually assaulted Claudia in Season 1 of Interview with the Vampire.

The thorniness of the moment is intentional, whether you choose to view it as a noble act of revenge on Claudia’s behalf or another way for Louis to assuage his own guilt. If you wrestle with your feelings on it, so do the actors; Hayles said she and Anderson have had “numerous” conversations about the subject. “[Louis] doesn’t mean harm, but he just doesn’t make the right decisions,” she said. “In a way, he thinks he’s giving her some form of justice, but it’s just because he has the pages, he needs the peace.”

Jones came to Anderson while the writers were working on the script, asking him what he thought Louis should say to Claudia during the seance. Anderson told him that whatever Louis ended up saying had to be “deeply inappropriate.” He continued, “It has to be something that is about him, so that there’s a real shift when they both realize that this has to be about her. This is her moment to vent.” However, when it came time to film, Anderson wasn’t entirely sure how to play it. “I don’t know if I should really be revealing this,” he laughed. “But I think one of the ugliest traits in a parent is, like, your kids don’t really owe you anything. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have moments where you’re like, ‘Do you know how much I do for you? Do you know how much of my life revolves around you?'” In the final version of the scene, he goes down the route of a scorned father, allowing “Daddy Lou” to jump out as Louis informs his daughter of her supposed ungratefulness.

Hayles believes that Claudia had a sense of what Louis would say before he said it, which leaves her even more unimpressed with him: “She’s like, “Why don’t you get it? Why do you not shut up?'” But there was nothing Louis could have said that would have elicited a kinder response. The inevitability is part of the tragedy. “He could say, ‘Oh, I love you, Claudia,’ or something, and it’d be like, ‘Babe, look at where we are.’ He could say anything and she would not want to hear it,” Hayles said. “It’s very sad, but it’s rageful, and I’m wondering if that’s sadder than just sadness.” 

“Yeah. We deserve each other.”

Claudia comes and goes like a hurricane. The room comes apart around her as she screams desperately for Madeleine, whom she continues to search fruitlessly for in the afterlife. She vanishes, through with the fathers who have failed her yet again. Even Lestat is unable to drum up a response beyond some vague stuttering. “Pretty much closes the door on that,” says Louis. “She spared us the ambiguity,” Lestat agrees.

Still, it’s worth remembering the pride on Lestat’s face at the beginning of the seance. Reid continues to view Claudia as Lestat’s only foil, the only other figure in this world who could “topple” him. “I think he’s enamored by her mastermind,” Reid said. Her wrath is part of her, and part of what makes Lestat marvel at her. “That is his creation, it’s his fledgling. He also has that rage in him. She is part of him.” As massively complicated as Lestat and Claudia’s relationship was, Reid sees Lestat’s affection for her as undeniable. “I think there’s that ignition in him that loves and is so proud of her, to see that kind of powerful torrent that she was,” he said. “She had been held in this sort of unspoken tragedy of her life, and actually, what wasn’t acknowledged is that she was super powerful, dominant, chaotic. She was a f—ing force that flew into their life and blew it all open.”

Anderson concurred: “My favorite thing that we talked about after that, regardless of what Claudia says, regardless of how angry she is — angry doesn’t quite touch it — but there’s a sense that even though they’ve been whacked, they’re like, ‘But that was her. We recognize that rage, and that is truly her.’ There’s a peace that comes from that.” It’s reminiscent of a line in Interview with the Vampire Season 2 from Dream Lestat, who looks upon an irate Claudia with fondness and remarks, “The wilderness that is our daughter.”

If that all seems a little too neat, it’s meant to be. Louis and Lestat take away from the seance what they need to get them through, and before long, they’re contemplating rekindling their relationship. Reid thought Lestat went into the event seeking closure for Louis but ended up finding it for himself as well. While Reid was quick to note, several times, that the seance was heartbreaking for Lestat, he also believes that Lestat was just happy to see his daughter again. “That was her,” Reid said. “And she did hate us for what we did to her, and put her through, because we were terrible parents. But we did it because they built out of a love for each other, and trying to reform their own relationship.” It’s not the first time the memory of Claudia has propelled Lestat and Louis back into each other’s arms; lest we forget the hurricane scene in Interview with the Vampire‘s Season 2 finale, which is referenced a few times in “Montreal.” As Claudia once said, it’s never actually been about her.

To Louis and Lestat, Reid said, Claudia functions as “a kind of spoke in the wheel of their life,” even in death. “And actually she came back and she said, ‘F— you, you destroyed my life, you ruined everything, and now I’m here in hell, and I still don’t have closure because I still don’t have Madeleine.'” That dressing-down from Claudia is, ultimately, the last push Lestat and Louis need to be on an even playing field once again. As Reid put it, “I think it’s horrendous, but it is the hugest piece of comeuppance that they can take that actually puts Louis and Lestat back on a level of [being] together, and being like, ‘Yeah. We deserve each other.'”

The seance is emblematic of this series as a whole: There continue to be multiple sides to every story. Anderson pointed out that even Lestat setting up the seance could be considered manipulative. “Maybe Lestat sees it as a gift, but I think it’s as much about him as it is about Louis. It can be all these things.”

“Rolin Jones once said to me, ‘This show does not stand up to reduction,'” Anderson said. “This is not a show that can be reduced to one idea. There’s like, ten happening at the same time.”

The Vampire Lestat airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC and streams Sundays on AMC+.