Interview with the Vampire – S03E05 – New York – Transcript

Interview with the Vampire
The Vampire Lestat
Season 3 – Episode 5
Episode title: New York
Original release date: July 5, 2026

Plot: In New York, Lestat and the band record his posthumous album under Gabriella’s supervision. Daniel meets with Armand, who tells him he has been a silent influence in his life for the past 52 years. Louis calls Lestat and begs him to tell him that he is hallucinating Regina’s resemblance to Claudia; although Lestat also sees it, he tells Louis that he is imagining things and that he shouldn’t see her anymore. The memories of Claudia triggered by the encounter inspire Lestat to record an emotional ballad, “Stained Glass Eyes,” which will be the basis of the revamped album. To deter the band from staying with him and ruining their lives, Lestat tells them of an incident in which he woke Akasha, the mother of all vampires, from her slumber.

* * *

Transcript

Note for Students & Writers: This transcript is archived here for educational purposes, critical analysis, and screenwriting study. All rights belong to the original creators.

Previously on “The Vampire Lestat”… Shall we do it?

Shall we scorch the mortal world?

Decimate it.

Together, for all eternity.

Claudia. I look like her.

You’re the only one watching me like I’m Netflix.

In a million guesses, you would not guess.

What happened to her?

You could have a different life.

[as Claudia] What now, Daddy Lou?

What about Greece? Hot springs.

Those Who Must Be Kept. What was that?

I have the blood of Akasha in me.

Sorry. What the fuck is Akasha?

Is there an evil older than you?

Your maker Marius. My maker is dead.

I’ve told you that already.

Was Dubai bullshit?

Me breaking you down.

You knew everything the whole time.

Loving Louis doesn’t shut it off.

It wasn’t my love for Louis.

Rest. Rest.

But it was love.

You’ve been reaching them. Yes.

They are lost and tired of enduring.

Your music speaks to them.

When’s he going to make an album?

When we are ready!

You are listening to “The Failures,”.

Album 41, Side B.

[“Big Bad Wolf” playing]

♪♪

My first coffin had the likeness of my maker carved into its lid, indecipherable Latin etched around the rim and, as I was an orphan vampire, my sleep within troubled.

[music stops]

Again.

I spent half of two decades in the silken embrace of a chestnut casket, purchased for my French Quarter town home, before it was hurled off a balcony during one of Mr. du Lac’s redirected moods.

Again.

What exactly are we going for here on, uh, take 17?

We are going for “again.”

OK.

I have slumbered in a variety of sarcophagi over the centuries.

But if I had to choose a favorite, it would be the 7,000-square-foot model

I endured in the fall of 2025, while I recorded my posthumously-produced album that Pitchfork would trash and for which the world shouts in feeble attempts to explain away clearly attributable devastation, “J’accuse.”

[laughs]

But I, Amel, digress.

Again.

Take 28.

The deranged Wegmans produce manager, Beau Riddley, provided me the Frenchest of exits.

And the good fortune of a second mass shooting with a higher body count occurring that same night made the faking of my death… -Sorry. Sorry. All the easier.

Again.

Yeah.

Take 46.

An amnesia fund was created.

And annual payments in perpetuity were issued to Jarda Klapek, a coroner, an obituary writer for the Czech broadsheet “Právo,”.

Dee, Daniel, Fareed, and two dozen other collaborators, including Christine Claire, who bought a retirement villa and wallpapered her basement sex dungeon with billable hour invoices.

[distortion wailing]

Again.

[laughter]

Take 61.

Fuck!

I would leave this coffin only once in four months.

I would butcher the band for bloom and marbling, fleece the muses of their animus, and stop at nothing until an album worthy of the long, lurid life of Lestat de Lioncourt burned into elegiac audio formats.

And when that was achieved, I would perform it once live in that now-infamous concert.

And, well… [chuckles]

We will come to that later.

But like Elvis or Andy Kaufman, rumors swirled of my survival.

So Sofia Gabriella de Lioncourt di Vece took over for Christine and whittled down my entourage to the essentials, which was her and the Vampire Sam Barclay, whom she hired as a producer for three reasons.

One, he had faked his death once before, so he could be trusted to maintain the rite.

Two, he knew the board well enough from his own recordings.

“Big Bad Wolf,” vocals, take one.

And three, she knew I hated him for his part in Paris.

And that would keep me lively.

Hoo!

♪

♪ I’m the big bad wolf ♪

[feedback whining] Badass!

Nice. And that’s take one.

Fabulous.

Moving on.

So straighten your tie, inflate your lips, be it facial or labial.

We are going to trace my self-taught musicianship back to its weird and haunting origins.

That’s right.

I am finally going to talk about the Queen.

[“All Fall Down”]

♪♪

♪ I’m the little killer ♪

♪ I’m the lonely one ♪

♪ I’m the chill creeping up your spine ♪

♪ Telling you to run ♪

♪ I’m a hanging shadow ♪

♪ I’m a lost love ♪

♪ I’m the past and the future ♪

♪ The last of the sutures, the cooing dove ♪

♪ We’re the rock and rollers ♪

♪ We’re the good time ♪

♪ We’re the heart pumping blood ♪

♪ We’re the face in the mud ♪

♪ We’re this stupid rhyme

♪ Bang, bang

♪ Bang, bang

♪ Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang ♪

♪ All fall down ♪

♪ Burn the ground ♪

♪ All fall down ♪

♪ Burn the

♪ Bang, bang

♪ Bang, bang ♪

♪ Bang, bang

♪ Bang, bang ♪

♪ Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang ♪

Again.

[“When I Call Out Your Name” playing]

♪♪

[music stops]

Hmm.

Your drum sounds like a drum.

That’s ’cause it’s a drum.

Mm-mm.

No.

The drums can’t sound like a drum.

OK. [laughs nervously]

What do you want it to sound like, then?

It has to sound like death approaching.

Oh, my God. Like life emerging.

Like… yeah, cool, like life and death.

Death, then life.

OK.

A mewling babe extracted from a mother’s womb.

[laughing] OK.

I, uh… I don’t play metaphorical drums.

Try.

I can do faster, or harder, or shuffle, fill, flam, buzz roll.

Like, a drum is a drum. A stick is a stick.

I don’t know what to tell you.

It’s ’cause she’s not a vampire.

It’s because her deepest wound is a man walking away mid-ceremony.

Wow. Cool.

Thank you, Yoko Mirren.

Guests at my deathbed, we are making an album about my life, which has been a three-century train wreck.

Your drums are my heart.

Oh.

Your guitar is my hunger.

Your bass, the night terrors that follow me to coffin.

[mysterious music]

What’s my guitar?

Yes, please interrupt my flow, Larry.

Your guitar… is my frailty.

Keep coloring inside the lines as you play, and I’ll knot a tempo mark to your life jacket.

Lar. Lar. Come on.

He didn’t mean it. [door slams]

We are here to pull the plug, hmm?

Have some reverence.

Kill me savagely.

Yep. Sure.

Sam, let’s jump to something else.

TC’s not ready.

I’m fi… I… Can I hear “When I Call Out Your Name,” vocal 12?

Copy that.

♪ Blue eyes

♪ Eyes of blue ♪

♪ Blue eyes ♪

♪ Eyes of blue

Blue as the sea, tinctures of violet, blond hair, blue eyes, eyes so blue, blue as the sea.

Fished him from the wilds of a paup… pauper’s grave.

Oh, loves his mother.

Loves, loves her.

[soft music]

Wanted to take care of her, as you said.

Well, he was there.

She was not.

Where am I?

Thank you for pulling me from the Earth.

Thank you for saving me from starvation.

Thank you for the warm blood shared.

Yes, you’re welcome.

She told me where you were, and there you were, and there I was.

I brought you back, and…

[whispering] Here we are.

Who are you?

I am Marius de Romanus.

I am the Keeper.

Oh, was the Keeper.

Now you are the Keeper.

Marius?

Oh, an echo.

Armand said that you were destroyed.

Well, he was wrong.

Rotten boy.

She likes music.

Come.

Touch.

They are mother and father to all of us.

And they must be kept.

This one.

Akasha.

The stone, it’s alive?

Very alive.

Very much alive.

That’s a very flattering offer.

Sadly, we were only planning to do one in memoriam concert.

[“Nothing to Lose” playing]

[laughing] OK.

Nice to talk.

♪ Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, ♪ Oh, yeah ♪

Florence Welch wants The Vampire Lestat to open for her.

But he is 2 meters deep in Ostrava.

Well, she wants them, after the album comes out.

Sorry. Sorry.

Can we do that again?

Can I get a little bit more, uh, vocal in my ears, please?

In the ear, down the throat, past the colon.

Play it from your groin.

Larry, please, stop thinking about Alex eating burgers and enjoying Glenlivet again.

More singer, Sam.

Hold the head shrinking.

From the top.

♪ Mama, need a ravenous queen ♪

So you’re gonna rerecord his parts, then.

Bury the rest behind the other three.

♪♪

[drums and bass cut out]

That’s a deep grave.

♪ I need an architect, feel the desert inside ♪

Pretend I’m Armand or the Talamasca.

Be the spineless mole once more.

♪♪

[mimicking Sam’s accent] You dig a hole in the burrow for Larry’s guitar.

[normally] This is the job, Sam.

Fill the space with worldly things.

Go into the noise and dust of the city, and bring back presents of the present.

This is the job.

I don’t want a job. I wanna die.

But you didn’t die.

80 years face down with the seaman you killed, long enough to learn the depths of despair.

Do the job.

Learn to endure the depths of living.

Find yourself, Lestat, as I have lost myself.

“Bring me Lestat, son of Magnus.”

From the tree of us, she chose you.

A great honor.

She likes music.

She loves music.

I don’t know how to play.

Recall your fledgling.

Start with mimicry.

I… Don’t interrupt.

Keep your hunts short… a quick sip of blood, the fast-fading warmth of the kill, then back to them.

Her.

What happened to him?

Interruption!

If you must bring one back, burn them here.

Use the ashes to keep her thriving.

And no blood.

Oh, blood overwhelms.

Just the ash.

Play her music.

[soft music]

His name was Enkil.

How did… We burn in the sun, yes?

Do you remember a night when your body burned under the Moon?

Yes.

Uh… yes, in Denmark, 1802.

December 19, 1802.

Finished the job transporting them from one crypt to another.

Two bottles of ginger flower gin in the veins of a celebratory meal.

I woke up next to her, my body afire.

Hadn’t finished the job.

Left him above in the sun.

My mother and I were countryside.

We ran ourselves into a bog.

Oh.

Took us months to recover.

Bogs. Bogs are rare.

♪♪

And now you know why there are so few of us.

I set us back ages.

We are all connected through her.

She is… she is the seed.

Mm. Mm.

And if she burns, oh, we all burn.

And you are her Keeper.

I don’t like being alone.

I slip, trip, stumble, fumble in small ways.

I am not worthy of this job.

And if I do not… ugh… leave now, the small becomes big, and the big becomes the end, and the end will burn the tree of us.

You are…

Worthy.

♪

Let her tell you that herself, huh?

[footsteps retreating]

It will take time, Lestat.

She is not on our clock.

To me, not a word for 22 years when I first took the job.

[telepathically] 23.

[door slams]

You are listening to “The Failures,”.

Album 46, Side A.

It’s called RevPAR, short for Revenue Per Available Room.

It’s been trending down, especially in high-end luxury property.

Probably expanded too fast.

But there’s panic now, so I jumped on it.

I got two more… one in Montreal, one in Boston.

So a place for us?

Yeah, and them.

There’s not enough of, uh, us to make it profitable.

But they can come watch if they want.

Yeah. If you don’t wanna be watched, +then there’s a private room in the back.

Different menu in the back room.

Little drinks.

[soft jazzy music]

I missed you, brother.

I missed you too, sis.

Both of you.

[with bad French accent] I wish we could stay longer, but you know Claudia, always go, go, go.

Uh, got in something deep last night.

Mm. Didn’t clean good, so…

Oh?

What happened last night?

We went to the Russian Vodka Room for karaoke, when the understudies from “Moulin Rouge!” walked in.

Something about theater kids makes me moody.

Mm.

We pickled Satine, took her downtown to the Cubbyhole, sucked her dry in the Gansevoort, and shoved her down the laundry chute.

She’s good.

[in American accent] I actually played Satine on tour two years ago.

No way. Yeah.

It was really fun.

[in French accent] So we are here for two nights.

And then… ♪♪

I think the whole thing’s a fake.

Total Milli Vanilli situation.

It’s Larry who wrote all their songs.

I was a Jarda-phile. We knew that was his real name.

When I heard him sing, it just hit me hard.

I’m not saying it’s a good thing the guy got shot, but I don’t think he was even legally allowed to be here anyway.

I got to go to dinner with him once at a White Castle after the Hartford show.

He was…

He was so fucking hot.

State your name for the camera.

No names.

OK, random Manhattanite, what do you make of Lestat’s exit?

He faked us, high and dry when we needed him most.

All cheap and easy nonfiction ends in death.

Revolutions do not require a soundtrack.

They only need numbers.

And are you making more?

Just one.

I had a fang in his neck, but I was interrupted.

Had to let him go. Sure. Happens.

I tracked him down, planned to finish the work.

But as I followed him, I found him… fascinating.

I’d sit at the foot of his bed in derelict motel rooms… both: As he slept off a fix.

And gradually, over the next 52 years… [telepathically] I was interceding on his behalf.

And when he blacked out under an overpass… OK. Jesus.

A junkie about to roll over him in an RV, a wife, Alice, at home, pregnant at the time… Where the fuck are you, Dad?

52 years?

I wanted to tell you in Philadelphia, but I felt you were not in a space to receive it.

That was my gag reflex at, “I’m in love with you.”

Prove it.

[soft music]

February 11, 1990, a reading at Amherst, Massachusetts.

Four students attend, three are there for extra credit, one is there for you to use, which you do, aggressively, in your rental car in the garage of your Northampton hotel.

I make sure the boy makes it home and forgets the event.

May 15, 2002, you sneak away from your book research to attend your daughter’s graduation at Rice University.

She didn’t ask you to come and mouths the words “fuck off” when she sees you approach.

You respect her wishes and drive away in a daze.

But I guide you to the Rothko Chapel, where inside, you unburden yourself and weep uncontrollably.

The attending guard asks you to step outside…

But he started coughing.

But I supply him a coughing fit.

And you mourn your daughter’s hatred for the next 30 minutes… in peace.

♪♪

August 5, 2025, I don’t plan to say “love” until I make profound amends for the harm I’ve caused you.

Yeah, sure. It’s a timing issue.

52 years, I’ve watched you… where you went, what you did, watching your sorrow, your modulating sexuality.

And where was Louis at that time?

At home, waiting to hear the minute details when I got back.

[laughing] No. Yes.

You sainted him gray in your book, but he’s calculating to the core, methodically cruel.

And here you are again, wearing the same set of horse blinders with Lestat.

I signed a contract. I’m finishing a job.

He casts you out, and still you carry his water.

Let me help you finish that job.

Yeah?

Love between vampires can be one thing, or it can be countless things.

I will never love… Like Lestat and Sofia.

♪♪

I want to be your maker.

Finish the thought, Armand.

I want to give you half your life back.

Lestat and Sofia.

Help you walk in the sun.

I knew her as Gabriella.

She’s Lestat’s mother.

What?

Lestat lays with his mother.

♪♪

Did you say walk in the sun?

♪ This ain’t no goddamn crime of passion ♪

[all vocalizing]

All: ♪ Make more

♪ Make more ♪

Why did you leave me?

[chuckles] Two months ago?

No. In New Orleans?

Both times?

[chuckles]

I was happy you left, both times.

♪♪

By the river when you were three?

And you… [laughs]

Picked up the 9,000th stick that day, and I kept having to say, “Oh, what does that stick do?”

[chuckles]

♪

You were a terrible mother.

I was.

[chuckles]

In Spain?

I didn’t need you anymore.

You don’t need around you what does not need you anymore.

Breaks the circle.

Yeah!

Oh. Great. Rad. That was cool.

OK, let’s do another.

[“Cabbage” playing]

♪♪

You need me now?

[whispering] I do.

All: ♪ Make more, make more ♪

♪ Make more, make more ♪

♪ Make more ♪

♪ Make more ♪

♪♪

Oh. Rad. That sounds awesome.

Does this satisfy the request?

What… what… what does it mean, “make more”?

Like, make more what?

I don’t recall.

Sounded cool.

Elbowed my way along the Monastiraki.

There’s a new shop, jewelry in the style of the Byzantium and plates embossed with the head of Zeus.

It’s all in very poor taste.

But then the colonialists all have very poor taste, so why not feed it back to them?

The city is modernizing with such velocity… crude houses, narrow streets, dead monuments, and then electric trams.

[laughs]

And this. I found this.

[light music]

A lever-action ice cream disher.

For ice cream. [laughs]

The merchant called it a scoop.

A scoop! [laughs]

Scoop. Scoop.

Tickles the back of the throat when you say it.

It’s like an owl daydreaming he’s a kingfisher.

One final treasure.

The young man with the bouzouki out again, a new one added to his usual repertoire.

And… [violin playing Greek folk song]

And the G…

[telepathically] Scoo… Something like that.

Scoo… “Puh.”

You have to put the “puh.” “Puh.”

Scoop.

So is this what time works on us?

Will I bloodlessly bloom into a husk?

[chuckles]

[clears throat]

[violin playing]

If you were the first, then who made you?

Why do we exist?

Why do we endure at all?

And why did she leave me?

[violin playing]

Am I evil?

♪♪

Is my evil sanctioned by nature…

[laughs] Or divine error?

Where is God?

[scoop clatters]

[“Big Boss” playing]

♪ Who dies and who stays alive? ♪

♪♪

[music stops] [breathing heavily]

Again, same place.

One, two, three, four!

♪ Big boss gets to have fun ♪ 39.8.83.

♪ If you’re a boo-boo ♪

♪ Then he doesn’t want you Ate his dick.

Behind my back.

♪ Oh, don’t you dare ♪

♪ Write down his history 112.145.

♪ If you know him then ♪

♪ You won’t know much more 179.211.

♪ Only the big boss gets to decide ♪ 312.406.

♪ Who dies and who stays alive ♪

♪♪

Oh, you’re not gonna die ’cause you’re already dead.

It’s a great idea. Is this a good idea?

Are we ready? Are we ready? Are we ready?

Bad idea. Ready.

♪♪

♪ Who dies and who stays alive ♪

[screaming]

Again!

♪ Who dies and who stays alive ♪

Nope. Nope.

♪ Who stays alive ♪

[whimpering]

[high-pitched screaming]

♪♪

[glass shatters] Oh, shit!

The fucking bowl! Moving on.

[soft piano music]

You are listening to “The Failures,”.

Album 49, Side B.

[in New Orleans accent] So how’s it work, you and him?

How’s it work?

Well, yeah, with Lemuel.

Uh, taking it slow.

Mm. Holding hands for now.

Yeah.

Keeping it loose.

Um, sorry.

You don’t… you don’t have to do the accent.

Oh.

Yeah.

It’s… it’s hard, the a… so maybe just…

[in British accent] Use my own voice.

Yeah. Safe.

Start again? Yeah.

What’s it like with Lemuel?

Simple things.

Like, he asks me how I’m doing.

And I say, I’m good. Hmm.

And I ask him how he’s doing, and he says, I’m hungry, or, “Put down that iPad and give me some attention.”

[laughs]

He doesn’t count time like it’s a badge.

I go nights I don’t know where he is.

But I like it that way.

Yeah.

Taking it slow.

Mm.

What you… what you writing in there?

Uh, yeah, just this and this.

All right, you two, don’t make me call the police.

Take the boat back to the dock.

We’re gonna pretend this never…

You doing that to him?

Yeah.

Do it to me.

Nah. Do it.

Let’s just get outta… no.

Come on, make me a stone.

[inhales]

What… did you…

Let’s just, uh, get outta here.

I can’t hold him for too long.

[classical music playing]

[humming along]

[tapping]

♪

Here they come, Nicky.

The oboe. The clarinet.

[tapping] The announcement. The reprise.

The harmonic shift.

Oh, foreshadowing!

[laughing] Yes, Enkil, yes.

Move to the subdominant, but not yet.

Not yet. Not yet, Madame.

Déficit, you would have loved it.

Competing strings, Father Mags.

The counterpoint… [sighs]

It’s like, uh, trembling waterfalls.

It’s like hungry peasants itching for a fight!

[breathing heavily]

What do you think, Marius?

Oh, you’re still on holiday?

I blame you, Armand, rotten guest.

Oh!

[telepathically] No voices.

[laughs]

No voices.

Perhaps if he’d finished the goddamn symphony, he might have brought the choir in the final movement.

But, um, it’s a signature blend of Ottoman bicycle enthusiast and Swedish barrel maker from Malmo who thought the Acropolis looked drab.

[tapping]

Then it became that kind of party, Enkil.

You like to watch?

Well, don’t look now.

But Magnus, his hand is wandering down my older brother’s pants.

Are you affronted by these intimacies, Enkil?

My hand on your Eve on the eve of a great century.

♪♪

[tapping]

Splash of red for the new year.

You would have been exquisite in your years.

[music building]

♪

[music stops]

[sighs]

They split Number 8 down the middle.

Practical limitations cutting through its Romantic gestures.

You’re supposed to watch the music, Armand.

I don’t know why I invite you, worthless.

[needle scratching on record]

[crowd counting down in Greek]

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[distant cheering]

[whispering] I scratched it.

I scratched it! [glass shatters]

Stupid! [crashing]

[distant cheering and fireworks]

I ruined your party.

[fireworks exploding]

Huh.

It’s 1900.

We made it.

Come.

Come.

[“When I Call Out Your Name” playing]

Come… to me.

[crunching] [whimpering]

[hissing]

[gasping]

[singing indistinctly]

♪♪

♪ What are we doing? ♪

♪ Why are we here?

♪ Is it for nothing?

♪ Don’t be cavalier

♪ Is it obsession, a deep lover’s spell? ♪

♪ I’m thinkin’ of you now

How is it that… that… that they live with such harmony, the b… Billions of stars.

How is it that they live in such harmony, the billions of stars, when most men can barely go a minute without declaring war in their own minds?

Something wrong, Lestat?

No.

Yes.

Thomas Aquinas.

[soft music]

♪

Why did you take me to the Witches’ Place?

What?

I was asking Sofia.

She’s taking a call, I think.

Check your phone.

What?

Your phone. It’s…

[phone dinging] B-buzzing.

Again, same place?

Again, same place?

[phone dings]

Ready?

No.

No. Tune it down a whole step.

What?

Tune it down a whole step, A minor.

All right, let me, uh… let me work that out.

Ugh, beards to the floor waiting for you to work it out, Larry!

You tune it down a whole step!

Everyone tune it down a whole step.

Lay it down without me, Sam.

For our ears, not theirs.

♪♪

He’s an asshole.

Thank you.

And you suck.

I suck. Everyone sucks.

Singer sucks.

[mimicking Lestat] ♪ Alive ♪

[laughs]

Is this messing you up?

I can stop. I can totally stop.

Played these parts a million times, man.

I’m just… got the yips.

I feel like I’m back in select letting in grapefruits.

You were a terrible goalie.

[laughs] I was not good.

But you’re a total shredder with an axe.

And look, everything we’ve talked about.

We’re finally making an album that people might actually hear.

And it’s, like… it’s really good.

It’s good, yeah? Yeah.

Put your mitts on, one take, and then rest.

And then we played out scenes as if she had lived… was alive.

But now it’s all blurred.

I called her Claudia.

But she’s herself too now, I think.

And I know it’s not real.

But is it?

Is it her, come back to me?

I can’t tell.

And whole nights go by where I don’t wanna be able to tell.

And I just, um…

[crying] Is it her?

Can you go in there and tell me if it’s her?

I was shot in the streets, and you didn’t call.

I’m a selfish bastard.

Anybody spends five minutes with me, they know that.

I’m… I knew you were gonna bring it up.

Don’t have an answer for it.

[breathes deeply]

[sighs]

I’m in the middle of recording my fucking…

Yes.

OK.

[bell rings]

Chicken and waffle special.

I wouldn’t order it, but I gotta say it.

Get you a water?

You.

The internet says you’re dead.

Huh.

Then I must be.

[telepathically] You know he has been there for an hour.

Stop performing.

[sighs]

What does he order when he comes here?

I bring him anything about to go bad, what the cook’s pushing.

Then I’ll have that.

[somber music]

♪

I had some debts to pay off.

So it’s, like, beneficial, going in both…

And if he’s paying you what I imagine he’s paying you, why do you still work here?

Well, if things with us get too freaky, I just pick up a shift or two to get some real real back into my life.

♪♪

He’s bringing you in this now?

That’s his next thing, is it?

[in New Orleans accent] We gonna be a family, Uncle Les?

♪

Find someone else to swindle.

[normally] He’s the one coming around here doing all this with me.

I just wait for the bell to ring, or the blower to buzz, or the hundred texts a day.

You’re hurting him.

[in New Orleans accent] Oh. I’m hurting Louis?

♪♪

[normally] I look like her.

I look just like her, don’t I?

Your gait suggests a hip injury that she never suffered.

And she had a heart murmur. You don’t.

But I look like her.

♪

It’s not her.

It’s not anything like her.

The eyes.

Yeah, the eyes.

No spark, right?

♪

Don’t see this person again.

And next time someone tries to murder me, pick up the phone.

♪♪

♪ The day you were born

♪ I was shakin’ like a leaf ♪

♪ On an old oak tree ♪

♪ Then you stayed like a thorn ♪

♪ Red roses rainin’ down till they ♪

♪ Flooded me ♪

[somber piano music]

♪ Even when we parted ways ♪

♪ You never turned, never turned your gaze ♪

♪ And I can still, I can still hear you say ♪

♪ Don’t break that stare ♪

♪ I’m burnin’ in your mirror tonight ♪

♪ No, don’t you dare call it yearning ♪

♪ It’s the fear that I’m right ♪

♪ Don’t you try to forget ♪

♪ All the things you regret ♪

♪ In those stained glass ♪

♪ Stained glass ♪

♪ Eyes ♪

♪ Yeah ♪

♪♪

♪ Had our fun, like a child

♪ Just a couple of knives ♪

♪ Cutting through 20 years ♪

♪ No one ever gets to keep my smile ♪

♪ But you can’t peel it off me ♪

♪ Like one of your souvenirs ♪

♪♪

♪ Even when we parted ways ♪

♪ You never turned, never turned your gaze ♪

♪ I can still, I can still hear you say ♪

♪ Don’t break that stare ♪

♪ I’m burnin’ in your mirror tonight ♪

♪ No, don’t you dare call it yearning ♪

♪ It’s the fear that I’m right ♪

♪ Don’t you try to forget

♪ All the things you regret ♪

♪ Like the ashes you spread ♪

♪ Till you had nothing left ♪

♪ Of those stained glass ♪

♪ Stained glass

♪ Eyes ♪

♪ Hey ♪

This… this doesn’t sound like us.

How’s it fit with “Long Face”?

It doesn’t.

“Long Face” is not going on the album.

But it’s… it’s our calling card.

[chuckles]

And if that’s the new sound, then neither is “Why Do I Have To Feel,” or “Big Bad Wolf,” or… and you’re just gonna, what, rerecord… The entire album.

Instruments played like metaphors.

[laughs] Well, yeah, it’s a beauty.

So…

Um, you shouldn’t fire them.

That would be a… a mistake.

They can do it.

But I can’t.

So, um, thank you for the ride.

Best two years of my life.

And, uh, I quit.

Larry.

[door slams]

So we’re just… we’re just gonna… we’re just gonna record the whole album again.

[laughs] Not you.

It’s for our ears. Yeah? Is it?

You need to be a vampire to hear it, TC.

Yeah.

You need the blood.

Read our minds.

No.

We want it. Mm-hmm.

No, I’ve come to enjoy you all very much, but let me tell you something about this blood.

Let me save you from myself.

[eerie music]

♪♪

I was on the shores of Spain when my great love left me.

She, she, she, it is she… I let myself be buried in a stranger’s grave, until a queen took pity and summoned me to service.

[moaning]

It is often she.

And in the old songs and in the long nights, she holds him in the softness of her arms, in her arms that are open, in her arms that are wide, that are open, that are always, that must always be open.

And in the old ways and in the old laws, this was arranged.

All this was arranged.

And who arranged it? Did Amel?

What is this?

What have you done?

You drank of her!

She drank of me. I drank of her.

And that is what it means to be loved.

The blood is hot. The blood is hot.

My mother, I’m back.

It is Amel. It is always Amel.

It is often she… You drank the blood!

She said drink! And I drank!

And I have been up here for three days!

Into the land where the dead are kept, where the dead are worshipped.

She was on the slab for centuries!

It will take me years to get her back on it!

And why the days without number?

And what am I for? [trembling]

What is this for? Lie down. Lie down.

And what should Amel do with it if not to answer?

[clangs]

[gasping]

Stairs!

The stairs!

My mother.

And why are they throwing stones?

And why is she curled on the ground?

And why is it wound…

The blood.

It already owns you.

May madness or sunlight relieve you of the burden.

And in my eyes is desire, and why is it desire?

She told me to drink. Go!

And why does he tell her what God has said?

And why Amel in their mouths?

And why must my voice be smooth?

And why must I sing so low? And why is she kept?

Why must she be kept?

And why in this place must she be kept?

And what does it mean if you are not asked?

And what does it mean if you are not answered?

Fail, fail, fail.

And what is it to see and to know, but to be told… Unworthy.

You have not seen.

You have not known. And why is her tongue cut out?

And why is her death prolonged?

And when will it stop?

Unworthy!

And who will stop it?

Unworthy!

And why must they, must we, must I, must he, must they, as the millennia, unfold?

Why the girl curled?

Why her eyes lowered?

Why on the side of the road?

Why limp in the straw?

I am the girl!

I am the god!

I am the voice! I am the song!

I am the night! And I can answer!

I can arrange it!

I can say rise, and I can say speak!

And I am her! And I am she!

And I, I, I, I am the answer!

♪

This is the metal sun inside my veins.

This is the hell I unleash on all those near me.

It cannot be restrained in the moment or tamed over time.

It will drag you into depravity and reward you with regret.

So follow Larry to a better life.

[grunting]

We’re finishing the album.

[groaning]

We’re a fucking band.

Make more.

[laughing]

[laughter]

Larry?

Larry Slater?

Lead guitar, TVL?

Um, yeah.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God, hey, I… I’m sorry.

I’m so sorry about what happened to him.

Oh, yeah.

I play those videos all the time.

The concert stuff, not the shooting.

I mean, uh… so what… so what are you doing in New York with your guitar?

Uh, I can’t really say.

Oh, my fucking God, it’s true, isn’t it?

You guys are making the album.

I saw it online.

You’ve got his vocals.

And I just think it’s so amazing…

[subway drowning out speech]

And I think it’s wonderful because the world really needs to hear how beautiful he was, you know what I mean, and… Actually, I’m not in the band anymore.

I don’t even know if there is a band anymore.

They’re, like, laying down a record.

And I’m just, like, fucking tired.

So… Oh.

Oh, my God, I’m sor… I’m sorry.

You do look tired.

I’ll, uh, leave you alone.

A terrible goalie, but a total shredder with an axe.

I’m sorry, what?

She’s right. You do look tired.

You should probably get some rest.

Do I know you?

[indistinct chatter]

Rest?

Rest.

Rest.

[subway rumbling]

No! [crashes]

[screaming] Oh, my God!

Oh, my God, he jumped! Oh, my God!

[screaming and shouting]

Somebody help him!

Oh, no!

[discordant music]

♪

Listen to tracks from “The Vampire Lestat” wherever you stream music.

Taylor and Travis.

Have you set that date yet?

♪ Be damaged, be cabbage ♪

♪ When the curtains drive you back ♪

You reached out to the worst kind of witch.

She is not like the rest.

Armand’s in town.

He’s going to try to disrupt things.

50,000 of us out in the woods together.

What could go wrong?

♪

Guests at my deathbed, we are making an album about my life, which has been a three century train wreck.

We are here to pull the plug.

Have some reverence. Kill me savagely.

♪

I would leave this coffin only once in four months.

I would butcher the band for bloom and marbling and stop at nothing until an album worthy of the long, lurid life of Lestat de Lioncourt burned into elegiac audio formats.

So episode five, they’re recording the album.

“Big Bad Wolf”, vocals, take one.

His mother comes back to him and says, “Hey, why don’t you be this other thing?”

She needs him to create a song that will speak to all the vampires lurking in all the shadows of the world.

And so he makes the album to be this thing for her.

But of course, he’s a really fastidious and obsessive artist, so he can’t really help but take complete control over it and get lost in the creative process.

But throughout that process, he’s niggled by these memories that he can’t quite reconcile with.

Why did she take me to the burning of these teenage girls when I was a child?

Why did she touch me in those inappropriate places when I was, you know, wounded?

You were a terrible mother.

I was.

In the moment, they definitely do find it hard to stop their complicated relationship.

You need me now.

I do.

♪

I missed you, brother.

I missed you too, sis.

Both of you.

This show is really funny. Intentionally so.

I wish we could stay longer.

But you know Claudia, always go, go, go.

There’s lots of very dark humor, but also kind of like silly, fun humor.

And Off Off Broadway Madeline is definitely very funny.

Took a downtown tootsie cubbyhole, sucked it dry, and shoved it down the laundry chute.

She’s good.

Beautifully played, but it’s also very twisted.

It was so weird, but, like, so comedically written that it was hard to not have fun with it.

Something about theater kids makes me moody.

And I think Louis being on the other side of the table just made it that bit weirder.

I think at one point I was literally sitting in my chair, like, and I was off camera, and I was like sitting there like… make it stop.

I know Jacob. It was very…

I think it was uncomfortable for everybody because obviously we know the circumstance behind it.

But for Regina, it’s just another day on the job.

Holding hands for now.

Um, sorry.

You don’t have to do the accent.

Oh, did you… Let’s just get out of here.

♪

♪

Can you go in there and tell me if it’s her?

I was shot in the streets. And you didn’t call.

Selfish bastard.

There’s a lot of things that keep haunting Lestat.

And then he meets Regina.

I look like her. I look just like her, don’t I?

And that instigates a change in his music.

♪ The day you were born ♪

♪ I was shaking like a leaf ♪

♪ On an old oak tree ♪

That means he comes back, and he writes a song about her that is more poppy and more truthful and more pared back and more honest than he’s ever done before.

And he presents that to the band and said, “I think this is the sound.

I think this is what we’re doing now.”

So follow Larry to a better life.

[Groans]

We’re finishing the album.

He no longer is trying to present himself, and he’s just being himself with his music.

♪ Don’t break that stare, I’m burning ♪

♪ In your mirror tonight ♪

♪ No, don’t you dare call it yearning ♪

♪ It’s the fear that I’m right ♪

♪ Don’t you try to forget ♪

♪ All the things you regret ♪

♪ Like the ashes you spread ♪

♪ ‘Til you have nothing left ♪

♪ Of those Stained Glass ♪

I think if he wrote “Stained Glass Eyes” at the very start of the tour and he played it to himself, I don’t think he would have taken it seriously, but I think he’s had to get to this point where he could write something very emotional and very raw to realize that his music is a personal conduit of his expression as an individual.

And you’re just going to, what? Re-record?

The entire album.

Instruments played like metaphors.

♪

We’re about to shoot Akasha, and in fact, our very last day.

And so high anticipation of just looking at her as Akasha and how she’s going to play it.

We’re rolling Whenever you’re ready.

[Breathing softly]

It’s a wonderful set.

It’s kind of like this underground storage unit with all of these pieces of history that Marius has collected to try and keep her entertained.

It’s been very fun to film in as a set, and it’s been a remarkable setting for the introduction of Akasha to the series.

It’s alive, very alive.

This season, played by Sheila Atim, who is an extraordinary actor.

She is the seed, and you are her keeper.

Marius is there trying to keep her controlled, and Lestat being Lestat, is much more about, like, let’s push and see what happens.

He’s also very lonely.

A lever action ice cream disher.

Anne Rice has Akasha awoken by Lestat.

But we actually have Lestat stay within her crypt for, you know, 10 years.

In the book, he’s there for a couple of days school.

[Speaking indistinctly]

He puts on concerts for her.

Where is God?

[Clanging]

And she wakes up.

[Whispering softly]

[Bones crunching] [Groans]

[Growling]

And then he’s got the blood of Akasha in him.

And then the way that that manifests in him is obviously he’s like flying, and I was up on that rig.

Hold him there.

But it gives you some articulation.

Yeah. Great. Okay.

It was a really fun thing to do, actually.

That’s so real. Oh, my God.

I told you, man.

‘Cause I was upside down, and, you know, I was talking to Ron, who’s like, “What does it feel like to have the blood of Akasha, you know, cursing through you?”

So we were kind of like doing these jolting movements.

And then they dropped me, which was like a proper 10-foot free fall.

Wow. That’s so much fun.

What is this?

And what should we do with it if not to answer?

♪

Sheila is phenomenal and extraordinary as Akasha.

And I, I, I, I am the answer!

[Screaming]

[discordant music]

♪♪