What To Know
- Delainey Hayles discusses Claudia’s tragic fate in The Vampire Lestat Season 3, revealing her soul is trapped in a lonely afterlife since her murder in Season 2.
- Hayles and costar Jacob Anderson express interest in a potential spinoff focused on Claudia.
- Interview With the Vampire has been renewed for a fourth season titled Queen of the Damned.
The Vampire Lestat, a.k.a. Interview With the Vampire Season 3, revealed what happened to Claudia’s (Delainey Hayles) soul after she was murdered in Season 2 alongside her lover, Madeleine (Roxane Duran). It wasn’t a pleasant update.
The ghost of the teenager-turned-immortal has been stuck in some kind of hell ever since 1940s Paris, cursed to walk the afterlife alone with the injuries from her murder still fresh. While Hayles told us that she loves the tragedy of Claudia, she admits that she wants to know more about this afterlife she’s trapped in. We want to know: Is Claudia stuck there forever, or was breaking that ring drawn by Merrick Mayfair (Sarah Afful) in the séance a sign that she could break out of eternal imprisonment? Is there a final death after this afterlife when a soul can pass on? And if so, is that what happened to Madeleine? Can the immortal companions ever be reunited?
Hayles played two roles in Season 3, Claudia and human lookalike Regina. The latter was still alive as of the finale, but it’s not clear if Hayles will be back in the fourth season or in what capacity. But Hayles and Jacob Anderson, whom we interviewed together for The Vampire Lestat finale, agreed that they’re interested in a Claudia spinoff set in hell.
Larry Horricks / AMC
Louis (Anderson) and Lestat (Sam Reid) summoned Claudia’s ghost with the help of the witch Merrick in The Vampire Lestat Episode 6. She returned in the yellow dress she died in, made by Madeleine. The enraged Claudia revealed that she’s been walking around hell completely alone for the 70+ years since she and Madeleine were killed in the Théâtres des Vampires trial, and she can’t find Madeleine anywhere.
“I kind of like how tragic she is, so I feel like part of me is like, ‘Yeah, she is stuck forever,’” Hayles told us. “But then also part of me is like, ‘No, she deserves not to be. She deserves to find Madeleine and she deserves to get a second shot.’ Was it a third shot now? Second shot at life. I just like how tragic she is. Yeah, it’s brutal, but I enjoy it. Is that weird? I don’t know. I enjoy it.”
“But she should find Madeleine,” Hayles added. “That’s another dying wish that she would just want.”
In Season 2 Episode 7, Claudia’s dying wish was for a trial audience member to remove his hat so she could see everyone’s face in the crowd. With their faces memorized, she promised to find a way to haunt every single person in the theater from the afterlife. And even if there wasn’t an afterlife, she was still going to find a way.
“I want to say here, I would watch the f**k out of a spinoff where Claudia is traversing hell in search of Madeleine,” Anderson added.
“Tearing everything up,” Hayles replied.
“Sign me up,” Anderson responded.
@tvinsider Where is Claudia? #TheVampireLestat star Delainey Hayles shares where she thinks her #InterviewWithTheVampire ♬ original sound – TV Insider
Hayles previously told us that she imagined Claudia’s hell to look like the episode of SpongeBob SquarePants where SpongeBob is trying to deliver a pizza.
“Somebody told me that I mixed my episodes up,” Hayles laughed when this came up in our finale interview. She explained to the confused but entertained Anderson, “I got it wrong. It was ‘Rock Bottom,’ and then ‘Krusty Krab Pizza’ was a different episode.”
In our Episode 6 discussion, Hayles said she envisioned Claudia spending all of her time in that desolate landscape “just walking.”
“Nobody’s around her. She’s screaming [for] Madeleine,” Hayles said. “It’s so sad, but again one of the reasons I really, really love Claudia is just because she is a tragic character. That’s what she is and that’s how she is and that’s what her life has boiled down to. But at the end of the day, she’ll give it a good fight.”
Interview With the Vampire was renewed for Season 4 on July 24, a few days after The Vampire Lestat finale.
Season 4 will be titled Queen of the Damned, and showrunner Rolin Jones told TV Insider that it’s essentially part two of the story told in Season 3. Executive producer Hannah Moscovitch is taking over as showrunner in Season 4, which will see Sheila Atim return as Akasha, the mother of all vampires.
Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned, Premiere, TBA, AMC
Interview With the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat, Streaming Now, AMC+