Louis’ Memories Come Flooding Back in ‘Interview With the Vampire’ Trailer (VIDEO)

Kelli Boyle March 31, 2024, 9:40 pm

If you’ve been theorizing that Armand has a hand in the suppression of Louis’ painful memories in AMC‘s Interview With the Vampire, the newest trailer for Season 2 adds more fuel for that fire.

Louis’ memories come flooding back in the new Interview With the Vampire Season 2 trailer, released during The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live finale on Sunday, March 31, and they’re a doozy. We see Claudia (Delainey Hayles) scream, “It’s never been about me!” from the Théâtres des Vampires stage, her face bruised and bloodied, Louis attacking Lestat (Sam Reid) in a fit of rage, and more painful moments as Jacob Anderson‘s troubled vampire tells Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) they need to “get every detail right” in their Dubai interview. It’s a gut-wrenching experience for him as “all those years” start “coming back.”

Claudia is initiated into the Parisian vampire coven, which Armand (Assad Zaman) says has “grand designs” for the “petite beauty.” It then cuts to Armand and Louis in Dubai, where Armand somberly says to his lover of 77 years, “You’ve remembered?” As a haunted Louis says next, “Claudia… I’m remembering it now.”

“Memory is the monster” flashes across the screen as more intense moments roll by. Those shots include a younger Armand seeing Lestat — whom he calls “the finest actor ever to walk our stage” — perform, juxtaposed by moments of pain when Lestat screams on a cobblestone street in one frame and carefully carries a dead body in another. The trailer also features Lestat speaking for the first time since Season 2 clips began to drop.

“We both now exist in two different worlds,” Lestat’s sorrowful, echoing voice is heard saying as his portrait in the Théâtres des Vampires burns. The theatrical theme continues in the Interview With the Vampire Season 2 key art, below.

'Interview With the Vampire' Season 2 key art

AMC

The moment when Claudia screams at Louis is the first glimpse of her speaking during what appears to be the trial scene from the book. Fans of Anne Rice‘s original novels know this reference, but for those who don’t, it will be one of the season’s most intense moments and, as hinted in the trailer above, will serve as a reckoning for Louis’ relationship with his vampire daughter.

Another thrilling part of the trailer comes when Daniel breaks journalistic form and makes a personal plea. “I want to know, for me, what happened between us,” Daniel implores to Louis. We then see the longest clip of the 1973 San Francisco interview scene we’ve seen so far. The young Daniel (Luke Brandon Field) is in a dark room with the younger Louis, who lunges to drink his blood.

This is a climactic moment from Rice’s Interview With the Vampire novel, and one of the final moments of the 1994 film, but the AMC series set this adaptation 50 years after this moment. It was referenced in Season 1 when Louis and Daniel were listening to the original interview tapes. We heard Louis attacking Daniel on this tape, but now we’ll get to see it in Season 2, premiering Sunday, May 12 at 9/8c on AMC.

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The Interview With the Vampire extended trailer (gorgeously formed by creator and showrunner Rolin Jones) released on March 19 shows Daniel yelling, “You don’t understand the meaning of your own story!” in this original interview. Another snippet shows young Daniel being influenced by Armand in this timeline. (It also revealed previously unannounced cast member Justin Kirk in a mystery role.)

“I’m the quiet you’ve been longing for,” Armand says. “After all the garishness of life, the jostling, the clawing, an easeful death.” In the March 31 trailer, he suggests that Louis should “take a break” from this memory excavation, prompting curious stares from Louis and Daniel. Put the pieces of Armand’s Dubai clips from the various trailers together, and you begin to see a pattern of Armand remembering things that Louis and Daniel do not. Did he wipe Louis’ painful memories from his mind as an act of love? Did Louis ask his ancient vampire lover to help him forget? And why must Daniel forget what happened in his first interview with the vampire?

Other noteworthy clips from the March 31 trailer: Louis is attacked by an ancient creature; the Paris coven feeds on a terrified woman; Armand watches in horror as something plays out on stage; an ancient vampire screams in front of Louis and Claudia; Santiago (Ben Daniels) welcomes Claudia into the coven; Louis and Claudia feed on Madeleine (Roxane Duran); and Lestat storms backstage at the Théâtres des Vampires.

Is it May 12 yet?

Interview With the Vampire, Season 2 Premiere, Sunday, May 12, 9/8c, AMC and AMC+