Clarity. Honesty. Uncomfortability — The Vampire Lestat’s Jacob Anderson & Delainey Hayles Reflect on Their Characters’ Journeys

Louis de Pointe du Lac spends much of The Vampire Lestat Season 1 confronting the stories he’s told himself, as well as the people he loves.

After the release of Interview with the Vampire, his relationship with Lestat is strained, to the point where the two communicate only when they’re forced together by the ramifications of a boutique hotel debacle that must be seen to be believed.

It’s not until Louis’s relationship with Regina spirals to uncomfortable places that the two return to each other’s circles, reigniting their relationship in new ways.

The Vampire Season 1 Episode 6 could easily be dubbed the “Louis & Lestat” hour, as it put the two longtime lovers in the center of the narrative through one enlightening, terrifying, and hopeful evening in Montreal.

The pair spent the hour finally talking about issues from their past, opening them up to a new understanding of each other.

Of course, their evening is marred by Armand and Daniel releasing a video of Lestat and Gabriella, leading to an emotionally charged confrontation between the pair right before they engage in a séance with Merrick Mayfair to bring their dead daughter back for a little while.

That séance reunites Louis and Lestat with Claudia, albeit briefly, as Claudia forces both of her fathers to reckon with the ways they disappointed her, exposing resentments and revealing her own motivations.

Considering the Claudia we’ve seen throughout the series has been through the eyes of others, it makes you wonder whether the Claudia in the séance is as close to the real Claudia as we’ve ever seen.

The question was posed to Delainey Hayles, who didn’t necessarily confirm that theory, but rather provided perspective for Claudia, who is being pulled into this meeting with two men who’ve repeatedly disappointed her.

“I think we meet her where she’s at,” Hayles told us in an exclusive conversation. “She’s obviously lived a very hard life, and she’s been roaming hell for all these years, so we just meet her where she’s at.

“Do I think that she is that angry of a vampire? I do think she’s multifaceted. She does have that anger, but that is not what kind of defines her. It’s just that they call her at this time.”

In calling Claudia forward, Louis and Lestat must confront some things about themselves, though those moments in the aftermath are short-lived as the pair continue their night in Montreal, walking the streets yet again.

When the pair end up on a bench, there is a calm that settles over them, and it’s the closest we’ve seen to a moment of peace between them in a very long time.

Naturally, in The Vampire Lestat, that contentment is short-lived but nevertheless imperative to understanding their dynamic and what could be in store for the pair who’ve reached a deeper level of intimacy since they reconciled.

As the two share this quiet moment, there’s a genuine connection.

Jacob Anderson sees how this moment recontextualizes the relationship between Louis and Lestat, who’ve grown not just closer but more emotionally available.

“I think there’s a moment where they’ve reached a new level of vulnerability with each other,” Anderson explained to us.

“I think they’ve reached a point where there is a sense of a future rather than an overwhelming sense of the past. It’s always been about, ‘You did this, but then you did this, and you are doing this to me, and you are doing that to me.’

“Now they reach a point where they can actually communicate. And the way that Louis wants to communicate is like, ‘I see a future, and you are a part of it. We can build this future together.’

“I think there’s a comfort and a futuristic thought about where their relationship could go, and then it’s brutally snatched away.”

Lestat and Louis’ moment of harmony isn’t just snatched away but sliced away by Daniel and Armand in a shocking moment that sets up the horror-fueled spectacle of The Vampire Season 1 Episode 7.

Louis spends almost the entire hour headless, his decapitated head fully communicating with his ex-lover, Armand, whose sole mission is to get Louis to give him the apology he believes he deserves.

Louis and Armand’s conversations reveal quite a bit, with Louis initially stubborn before becoming increasingly more amenable as his condition worsens. The revelation of Armand’s deception only complicates matters further.

As he’s pushed closer to the brink, Louis admits to Armand that Lestat is the love of his life, and for Anderson, this moment marks Louis just being real.

“I think he’s honest,” Anderson admitted about the bold declaration. “I think the honesty in that whole amends that he makes to Armand is clouded by his being under duress. But I think that there are also moments of honesty because he’s dying.

“I think he’s actually not entirely sure if he’s going to make it out of this. So, I think there are really important moments of honesty for him. And honesty, really from the end of season two, honesty has become Louis’s kind of north star now.

“It gets interrupted because the thing with Bruce goes so badly wrong that it drives him to regress in a way that kind of carries him to Regina.

“But now we also know that it was very much orchestrated by Armand. Armand is responsible for that. Which I actually haven’t talked about with anybody.

“Armand is responsible. Armand’s a problem. But Louis has the grace in the amends to be like, ‘Look, I’m not perfect. There are some things that we probably could have talked about, and it might’ve helped you in some way.’”

With everything happening in the butcher shop, Louis has little time to process Regina’s connection to Armand or fully reckon with just how many pieces Armand had been moving behind the scenes to bring them to that exact moment.

Anderson admitted, “He’s pretty angry with Armand at the beginning. He is like, ‘Fuck you.’

“But I think it’s really the realization that he’s actually going to die that is when he maybe delves back into the honesty part of it.

“He probably doesn’t process it that quickly because he also doesn’t want Regina to be a casualty of all of this. I think he genuinely wants her to walk out of this alive.”

Regina is a very intriguing character, made all the more complex when we learn that she was planted in Louis’s path and that Armand had been in her head at various points.

Hayles had the unique opportunity to help shape this new addition to the series, building Regina’s identity while still acknowledging the unavoidable parallels to Claudia.

“I would describe Claudia as in the séance scene, she’s very heavy, and Regina is very light, and that comes in mannerisms,” Hayles explained.

“Regina does have a different walk than Claudia. I think she carries herself a lot differently because she’s a bit more comfortable in her body. Whereas Claudia has a lot of dysmorphia due to her circumstances. I think she’s constantly uncomfortable.

“Regina is less uncomfortable or gets the privilege of feeling comfortable one day and then not feeling another day. Whereas Claudia — it’s constant uncomfortability. I think that’s where I’ve kind of found that they differ.

“Claudia is trying to be comfortable, whereas Regina is, but she has her off days, some days.

And I think we see that when she meets Lestat at the end of that one scene, she lets out a big exhale because, ultimately, she’s giving her best performance there. She’s doing her best acting to try to be comfortable.”

Hayles’ approach highlights how carefully Regina was constructed as her own person despite the obvious echoes of Claudia.

By the end of the hour, Regina has been let go by Armand, and Louis has been stitched back up and aboard Lestat’s tour bus, waiting for the vampire rockstar to awaken from his own brush with death.

Much of Louis’s journey this season has been about him confronting the consequences of his choices.

And when he’s sitting there alone, and Lestat rushes to see him and the two share muted words and loving stares, it’s natural to wonder how Anderson feels about the season fundamentally changing Louis.

“It’s a good question because I think a lot of it is to do with Lestat,” Anderson candidly surmised. “I think your questions are really good. It’s kind of made me reframe how I think about it. I think, yeah, Louis has kind of reached a second moment of honesty by the end.

“He’s able to be like — there’s probably a freedom that comes out of all of this that’s happened, a sense of it’s all out there now. It’s all on the table. What do I have left?

“He’s heard what I think he suspected Claudia felt about him, or a version of it. He’s heard that, and that has provided him, I think, some kind of comfort as messed up as it is.

“I think he’s said something to Armand that he didn’t necessarily know was even really in him and that he felt he had opened up to Lestat in a new way.

“I think that, I don’t know, there’s something kind of graceful about Louis at the end that I think is maybe an even more truthful moment of grace than he reached at the end of season two.

“That first interview was 11 days, and maybe he hadn’t had time to process it.

“By the end of this season, he’s been through it. I think he’s tired. I think he’s exhausted by the whole thing, but there is a kind of clarity that comes from that exhaustion.”

Interviews like this take time and care — and we hope it shows.

If you liked hearing from me, please comment or share the article. That’s how we keep conversations like this going.

We’ve got all your The Vampire Lestat coverage, interviews, and episode reviews right here.