‘The Vampire Lestat’: Jacob Anderson & Delainey Hayles Explain ‘Really Sad’ Regina Story

Warning: The Vampire Lestat Episode 4 spoilers ahead.

Delainey Hayles‘ plot in The Vampire Lestat, a.k.a. Interview With the Vampire Season 3, was kept under tight lock and key until the end of Episode 3. In addition to playing Claudia, she’s now playing Regina, an English waitress living and working in Brooklyn who is the spitting image of Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat’s (Sam Reid) deceased vampire daughter. In an attempt to alleviate his grief about Claudia, Louis hires Regina to impersonate her. Here, Hayles and Anderson share their feelings about this “really sad” storyline that explores “uncomfortable” depths of Louis’ grief about Claudia’s murder.

Louis first talked about Regina in The Vampire Lestat Episode 2, when he told Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) that he saw a woman in her 20s who looked just like Claudia in New York. He followed her and found out where she worked. After killing Bruce (Damon Daunno), Claudia’s assailant, in Episode 3, Louis felt unexpectedly empty; the vengeance gave him no satisfaction. He turned to Regina, visiting her diner regularly until she called him out for the suspicious visits. Eventually, he explained that she reminds him of someone important — and that he is the titular vampire from Daniel’s famous book. He said he wanted to help improve her life, because it makes him feel like he’s helping Claudia in some way.

Louis used his resources to find personal information about Regina, such as her criminal record, financial struggles, and her OnlyFans account. He urged Regina to let him give her some financial stability. The resulting agreement was that Regina would pretend to act like Claudia, including her accent, for a high price. Episode 4 ended with Hayles slipping back into the role of Claudia through the lens of Regina. This dynamic will continue in Episode 5.

Hayles tells TV Insider her first reaction to Regina.

“I was kind of shocked when I first got the script,” Hayles says. “I went to the writers’ room, and they showed me a board of Post-it notes everywhere, and they were like, ‘Just trust us.’ I got the scripts, and I was like, ‘Oh, OK, this is actually really, really sad.'”

Sophie Giraud / AMC

“Louis is working out his grief, and it’s at the expense of another person now,” Hayles says before asking herself, “Well, is it? Yeah, kind of, in a way.” Hayles says she was ultimately “very happy” about this role, saying, “What a privilege to play two characters in one show. That’s very rare.” Hayles also gets to play Claudia again later this season.

Anderson shares his feelings about Regina: “It’s really, really uncomfortable. I feel like the Regina stuff is the most icky I’ve felt about Louis. Like [Sam Reid] said earlier on about Lestat and Gabriella, you want to play in the dirt. You don’t want it to all be so clean.”

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He feels it’s a natural progression for Louis, albeit a very confronting one.

“I was going to say he’s addicted to grief…I think that is true to an extent, but how do you ever un-grieve?” Anderson said in our Vampire Lestat aftershow for Episode 3. “I think that something that’s really unique about this show and about this story is that it’s not just about tying up loose ends. This is a conversation we’ve had. With Louis, I’m like, you just so beautifully rounded everything off, but then, and then! They live forever. You have to sit in your psychological sh*t all the time.” The “residue” of this was always bound to linger, Anderson added.

Anderson revealed his first reaction to learning the Bruce and Regina storylines when we talked with him on The Vampire Lestat premiere red carpet on June 2.

“My first reaction was, ‘What do you mean?'” the Game of Thrones alum said. “I feel like Season 2 was so beautifully closed for Louis, and I did all this stuff to come to terms with everything that I’d been through with him — sounds a bit woo-woo — so I think the idea of continuing on, for me, continuing that was scary, because I was like, ‘We’ve done everything with him. We’ve done everything.’ And it turns out, we didn’t.”

Here’s how he made sense of continuing Louis’ story: “For Louis, the thing I hadn’t really factored in was he found his peace, but that doesn’t really mean that everybody else did, and he spoke about a lot [in the book]. That’s going to come back. And do you ever really get over the death of a child?”

“That’s a f***ed up thing to say at this fun, glamorous thing,” he added, “but that’s what the show is.”

The Vampire Lestat, Sundays, 9/8c, AMC, Streaming on AMC+