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selenakDarth Real Life continues to breathe down my neck, but I managed to marathon the second sason of AMC's Interview with the Vampire, aka the tv version of the second half (or, well, last third) of the titular novel. (I reviewed season 1 here.) It continues to be a fascinating take on and argument with Rice's story, andn while as with the first season I'm not on board with every single adaptation choice, so much of them delighted me that I hope the production team will get The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned greenlighted as well. (My personal history with the books: the last one I read completely was Tale of the Body Thief, and while I liked that one, it didn't captivate me in the same way the first three did, and I just read the first few pages of Memnoch before concluding the books were no longer for me. Which means no, I haven't read Armand's or Marius' or Pandora's novels.)
The new actress playing Claudia was excellent in terms of continuing with the character as presented in s1 and making it her own at the same time. In terms of adaptation, Claudia is still my one "yes, buuuuut" case, i.e. divorced from the source material, I really like her character and feel for her and love the casting in both seasons, but as a version of the character as created by Anne Rice, there's still no getting around the fact that eternal teenager Claudia simply does not have the same horror/tragedy of being an adult trapped in the body of a prepubescent small child. TV!Claudia has her own issues, and these are important ones, but they're not the same.
This said, TV!Claudia's entire storyline was so well done in this season. The twists and turns from the original story all felt earned and enhanced it - the Paris vampires being seemingly welcoming and her period of enchantment with the whole concept of pack hunting and the vampire theatre, the way she wanted to be a part of this, and felt was a part of a community for that brief time until disenchantment set in and she felt increasingly suffocated. The fact that she had to play a little girl on stage night after night after night, and that Armand, when she complained and wanted another role, instead punished her by forcing her to wear the little girl dress all the time. The entire relationship with Madeline (more about Madeline herself later). Her incandescent rage. The fact she got to go out with a defiant threat to both the on stage vampires and the audience. The whole idea of making the trial a show as well.
(I was wondering how they'd match the incredible effective creepiness of the play scene staging from Jordan's movie, and letting the Parisian vampires who, with the story now moved to shortly after WWII, have other technical abilities at their disposal, use film to support their performance was one way, but the true pay off was really to make the trial part of the performance. Again, more about this later. Back to Claudia.)
Because this Claudia is keenly aware that she owes her vampiric existence to Louis/Lestat relationship drama and hates this on various levels, including the one where she sees Louis never completely choosing her over Lestat, the fact that Madeline does choose her was such an emotionally moving and satisfying pay off. Which went along with Madeline being fleshed out and given a personality and story. (Which is a different one from her having lost a child, but then Madeline in IWTV the novel is such a ghost of a character, hardly there at all, which works with Louis-as-the-narrator barely noticing her.) How the show brings Madeline to life also for me is a good use of the changed timeline. It's not just that the Paris section now takes place in the post war years in Paris, instead of the late 19th century. No, it's that this show chooses to use the new temporal setting. Madeline had a love affair (she's very clear that this was not a case of rape or blackmail or fear) with a young German soldier and now is scorned and hated as a collaborator; the treatment of French women who had or were accused of having had affairs with the Germans in post liberation Paris is one of the darker chapters there, and it foreshadows both what the Parisian vampires will do with Claudia, Madeline and Louis, and how the human audience will react. (Approvingly.)
It occured to me, watching this second season, that IWTV the show has a darker pov on human beings (not just vampires) than the novel has, and the way the tv show highlights the human audience reacting to and responding to the cruelty on stage crystallizes this. In Jordan's film version as as well as the novel, the emphasis is on the decadence of the vampires offering actual murder as a spectacle to be enjoyed, but there's no doubt the humans do regard it as masterful theatre, and I don't think - it's been years since I read the book, so maybe I'm forgetting something - I don't think the human audience comes across as worse than any audience watching a horror movie today. Whereas in IWTV it felt to me like there was something rotten not just in the vampires on stage but in the audience as well. Because the delight in the torment of others didn't come across as being carried by the assurance it was all fictional in the same way, and by the time we end up with the trial as an on stage performance with audience participation, you feel with Claudia cursing the lot of them. And like I said, I feel it was foreshadowed in what had happened to Madeline as a human once the "collaborator" label was stuck on her. Mob violence, mob hatred; a story very much of our age.
That Madeline became a loner by choice after this, but a prickly and defiant one, lays a good groundwork for her developing relationship with Claudia, and I really appreciated both on a Doylist and Watsonial level that Madeline was given a choice (as she wasn't in the book) as to whether she'd be killed with Claudia or to become a member of the Parisian coven. Her choosing to stay with Claudia doesn't come across as suicidal or passive but her actively choosing Claudia over anyone else and not bowing to group pressure. Which I was glad for both for her and Claudia's sake, and thought presented a fascinating compare/contrast not so much to Louis than to Armand.
(Armand in the books and as far as we know so far also in the tv show: becomes a member of the Roman coven who as far as he knows kills his creator Marius when given the "die with him or become one of us" choice. And then there's the way things go down with the Parisian Coven, but more about this in a moment.)
Much more than the first, the second season plays around with the "unreliable narrator" trope. Both in its present day story (where Daniel figures out just how his first encounter with Louis - and Armand - ended back in the 1970s and San Francisco, and keeps noticing slight inconsistencies in Louis' and Armand's accounts from the 1940s Paris day) and in the 1940s. Again, I find it fascinating how the show engaged with its source material and offered its own twists.
Book: as far as I remember, in Louis' narration, the following happens: the Parisian vampires stage their show trial for him and Claudia. (Lestat is there, but still physically affected from almost getting murdered in New Orleans; he's not entirely compos mentis, either, and won't be again until after spending some years in the earth between books 1 and 2.) Louis keeps asking for Armand, but Armand isn't there, Louis assumes this is all happening without his knowledge. Claudia and Madeline get killed, Louis gets buried alive, Armand retrieves Louis, Louis avenges Claudia by wiping out the entire coven and leaves Paris with Armand who claims he only found out about the whole trial plus execution thing too late to stop it. They spend many years together, but eventually, after realising post Claudia Louis, far from connecting Armand with the present day age and providing the emotional intensity he used to radiate, Armand confesses that he did in fact know all about the trial in advance and basically wanted to save Louis but not Claudia (and was more than ready to ditch the coven).
Jordan's movie: no Lestat and no trial. In the interest of cinematic pace, the Parisian vampires immediately after kidnapping Louis, Claudia and Madeline proceed to execute Madeline and Claudia and bury Louis alive. Armand saves Louis, Louis avenges Claudia and wipes out the coven, and leaves with Armand, Armand asks him to travel the world together and Louis says thanks but no thanks and signals he already has figured out that Armand did intentionally let Claudia die; there is no shared (un)life before they part ways.
The TV Series: tells the Louis and Armand relationship backwards. We meet them through Daniel as a couple. At the end of season 1, Louis after Armand has ditched the "Rashid" disguise introduces him as "the love of my life". They are stated to have been together 77 years (i.e. ever since Paris). S2 shows how they meet, flirt and fall for each other in a deliberate contrast to the way Louis and Lestat did (on a soft and caring note, Armand while much older and physically more powerful still lets Louis take the initiative) while the mid season flashback episode to the 1970s and the circumstances of Daniel's first interview with Louis also provides a disturbing look on Louis and Armand being spectacularly dysfunctional in said decade. Since this involves a suicide attempt on Louis' part and Armand editing Louis' memories afterwards, and since the late 1940s Paris story put such an emphasis on Armand being supplanted as the coven leader by Santiago, I did wonder whether the show would let him be entirely innocent of Claudia's demise. (Or rather, only guilty in as much as he agreed to let the other vampires stage a trial.) And the last but one episode presented it this way, with Louis immediately concluding that Armand had no choice because he sees Sam next to Armand. But no. We did get an equivalent to the book's "oh, yeah, I did figure out you were behind it" moment, only it's tied to the completely unique to this version take on the interview situation, and Daniel as an interviewer, and Daniel's personality, full stop, because in this version, it's Daniel who has figured out what the contradictions he's been noticing mean and who has found the written proof that Armand wasn't just behind the trial, he was behind putting it on stage, literally, having directed the rehearsals. And it's Daniel who thus becomes the catalyst for the Louis/Armand break up.
Daniel along with Santiago and Madeline is one of the three characters who were mostly plot devices in the original novel and gain a completely new personality here. (Daniel does get a personality in the novels, but not until the third one, The Queen of the Damned. I have to say, I do prefer the show version.) I love that he's himself a massively flawed person (as deduced by Armand telepathically re: his backstory), but he's actually good at what he does, he's a sharp investigator and reporter, and letting him be an extremely sarcastic older man in the present instead of the young man from the 1970s means he holds his own - despite the massive power imbalance that comes with being in the presence of two supernatural predators who could have killed him at any moment - in a way I don't think a younger character could believably have. Making him from a plot device (Louis had to tell the story to someone) into a person who keeps challenging the narration in a way that feels true to his personality as presented and who slowly but surely becomes part of the story is another great twist the tv show pulled off.
On to our main guy. Jacob Anderson continues to wow me as this version of Louis. There was one time - when he didn't have an issue with making Madeline the way he does in the novel - when I quibbled with what the show was doing. However, there's an in-show reason, and besides, it's certainly true that in the novels, both Louis and Armand really really really don't want to create other vampires (Louis gives in with Madeline because Claudia argues he owes her this, and Armand gives in with Daniel in The Queen of the Damned because at this point, book!Daniel is already two thirds there and a suicidal mess). Within the reality of the show, it makes sense that Claudia - at this point a member of Armand's coven - would ask him first, both because of the way the Parisian vampires act and because she wants Madeline as a companion, not a sister. And once you have Armand voicing his disgust/horror at the idea of creating another vampire, letting Louis show the same before overcoming it would have felt repetitive.
(There's also the fact show!Louis while in s1 affected by grief for his lost (by death and enstragement) human family and trying for a considerable time not to be a predator has finished this part of his storyline already. In s2, he's busy figuring out who he is post Lestat and, as Claudia challenges him, outside or her, too.)
Louis being attracted to Armand from pretty much the start but not to the coven while Claudia at first loves the idea of the coven and being part of a community of vampires comes with both of them finding (at first) seemingly exactly what they wanted/secretly wished for: Louis a partner who adores him but doesn't try to dominate him and lets him set the pace of their relationship, who (again, seemingly) doesn't withhold knowledge but answers questions, and Claudia (seemingly) being part of a community of equals who accept her, not being a vampire shaped divorce prevention/daughter/sister used as an emotional tool. The show even makes the fact they let Louis and Claudia stay two years with the Parisians instead of a much shorter time work, since that allows both the Louis/Armand and Claudia/Madeline relationships to grow and the audience to get invested.
And Lestat, as both the hallucination in Louis' head during the first part of the season and as the real deal in the last three episodes, has in terms of screen time a much reduced presence as compared to s1, but in terms of emotional impact is one of those guest stars who seem to be far more in the story than they actually are. Sam Reid continues to be fabulous. Again, I raised an eyebrow at the idea of Lestat being well enough to fully participate in the trial (as opposed to being a half mad wreck of a witness) instead at first (not least one of my few complaints about s1 was that s1 had show!Lestat seemingly caring for Claudia only as a tool to use for and against Louis and otherwise being hostile the moment she starts to question him, whereas book!Lestat does eventually become hostile, but not to the same extent, and also in his egotistic way does care for her as his daughter). But then the show got me by letting Lestat go off script (true for Lestat in all his incarnations, to paraphrase Armand), and then of course with the later reveal in the last episode, courtesty of Investigator!Daniel, that it was Lestat, not Armand, who changed the audience's minds psychically so Louis would not be killed. (For which he needed to be in better shape than he is in the novel at this point.) Especially since the show managed to do this without, for lack of a better term, whitewashing Lestat. He's still the same possessive dick who ruined his relationship with Louis all on his lonesome. And him wanting revenge on Claudia enough to go along with the trial but then being horrified when facing the reality of her death and being haunted by guilt thereafter also feels like a plausible interpretation. Last but not least, Lestat, too, is used as part of the unreliable narrator principle, but in a somewhat different way than the books do it. I.e. some of his version of events as told by the trial are clearly self serving and wrong (i.e. Louis stalking him instead of him stalking Louis), but as the show lets Louis in the present conclude, other parts of Lestat's version might actually be closer to the truth (the creation of Claudia).
(BTW: big difference here to the novels, where Louis' and Lestat's takes on the creation of Claudia do not contradict each other. He did it both to prevent Louis from leaving him and because he wanted to find out what would happen, because he could.)
And lastly, on the subject of unreliable narrators, I fully expect Armand's version of how things ended with Lestat and Nikki back in the 18th century to be contradicted when/if we get to the next book/season, and not just because I've read The Vampire Lestat, but because it's how this show rolls. And I might or might not have squeed when Lestat said "I have the blood of Akasha in me". Bring on a good version of The Queen of the Damned, say I! This team can do it. But don't you dare to move the time frame on Akasha, Maharet and Makare, show. I want Ancient Egypt flashbacks.
The new actress playing Claudia was excellent in terms of continuing with the character as presented in s1 and making it her own at the same time. In terms of adaptation, Claudia is still my one "yes, buuuuut" case, i.e. divorced from the source material, I really like her character and feel for her and love the casting in both seasons, but as a version of the character as created by Anne Rice, there's still no getting around the fact that eternal teenager Claudia simply does not have the same horror/tragedy of being an adult trapped in the body of a prepubescent small child. TV!Claudia has her own issues, and these are important ones, but they're not the same.
This said, TV!Claudia's entire storyline was so well done in this season. The twists and turns from the original story all felt earned and enhanced it - the Paris vampires being seemingly welcoming and her period of enchantment with the whole concept of pack hunting and the vampire theatre, the way she wanted to be a part of this, and felt was a part of a community for that brief time until disenchantment set in and she felt increasingly suffocated. The fact that she had to play a little girl on stage night after night after night, and that Armand, when she complained and wanted another role, instead punished her by forcing her to wear the little girl dress all the time. The entire relationship with Madeline (more about Madeline herself later). Her incandescent rage. The fact she got to go out with a defiant threat to both the on stage vampires and the audience. The whole idea of making the trial a show as well.
(I was wondering how they'd match the incredible effective creepiness of the play scene staging from Jordan's movie, and letting the Parisian vampires who, with the story now moved to shortly after WWII, have other technical abilities at their disposal, use film to support their performance was one way, but the true pay off was really to make the trial part of the performance. Again, more about this later. Back to Claudia.)
Because this Claudia is keenly aware that she owes her vampiric existence to Louis/Lestat relationship drama and hates this on various levels, including the one where she sees Louis never completely choosing her over Lestat, the fact that Madeline does choose her was such an emotionally moving and satisfying pay off. Which went along with Madeline being fleshed out and given a personality and story. (Which is a different one from her having lost a child, but then Madeline in IWTV the novel is such a ghost of a character, hardly there at all, which works with Louis-as-the-narrator barely noticing her.) How the show brings Madeline to life also for me is a good use of the changed timeline. It's not just that the Paris section now takes place in the post war years in Paris, instead of the late 19th century. No, it's that this show chooses to use the new temporal setting. Madeline had a love affair (she's very clear that this was not a case of rape or blackmail or fear) with a young German soldier and now is scorned and hated as a collaborator; the treatment of French women who had or were accused of having had affairs with the Germans in post liberation Paris is one of the darker chapters there, and it foreshadows both what the Parisian vampires will do with Claudia, Madeline and Louis, and how the human audience will react. (Approvingly.)
It occured to me, watching this second season, that IWTV the show has a darker pov on human beings (not just vampires) than the novel has, and the way the tv show highlights the human audience reacting to and responding to the cruelty on stage crystallizes this. In Jordan's film version as as well as the novel, the emphasis is on the decadence of the vampires offering actual murder as a spectacle to be enjoyed, but there's no doubt the humans do regard it as masterful theatre, and I don't think - it's been years since I read the book, so maybe I'm forgetting something - I don't think the human audience comes across as worse than any audience watching a horror movie today. Whereas in IWTV it felt to me like there was something rotten not just in the vampires on stage but in the audience as well. Because the delight in the torment of others didn't come across as being carried by the assurance it was all fictional in the same way, and by the time we end up with the trial as an on stage performance with audience participation, you feel with Claudia cursing the lot of them. And like I said, I feel it was foreshadowed in what had happened to Madeline as a human once the "collaborator" label was stuck on her. Mob violence, mob hatred; a story very much of our age.
That Madeline became a loner by choice after this, but a prickly and defiant one, lays a good groundwork for her developing relationship with Claudia, and I really appreciated both on a Doylist and Watsonial level that Madeline was given a choice (as she wasn't in the book) as to whether she'd be killed with Claudia or to become a member of the Parisian coven. Her choosing to stay with Claudia doesn't come across as suicidal or passive but her actively choosing Claudia over anyone else and not bowing to group pressure. Which I was glad for both for her and Claudia's sake, and thought presented a fascinating compare/contrast not so much to Louis than to Armand.
(Armand in the books and as far as we know so far also in the tv show: becomes a member of the Roman coven who as far as he knows kills his creator Marius when given the "die with him or become one of us" choice. And then there's the way things go down with the Parisian Coven, but more about this in a moment.)
Much more than the first, the second season plays around with the "unreliable narrator" trope. Both in its present day story (where Daniel figures out just how his first encounter with Louis - and Armand - ended back in the 1970s and San Francisco, and keeps noticing slight inconsistencies in Louis' and Armand's accounts from the 1940s Paris day) and in the 1940s. Again, I find it fascinating how the show engaged with its source material and offered its own twists.
Book: as far as I remember, in Louis' narration, the following happens: the Parisian vampires stage their show trial for him and Claudia. (Lestat is there, but still physically affected from almost getting murdered in New Orleans; he's not entirely compos mentis, either, and won't be again until after spending some years in the earth between books 1 and 2.) Louis keeps asking for Armand, but Armand isn't there, Louis assumes this is all happening without his knowledge. Claudia and Madeline get killed, Louis gets buried alive, Armand retrieves Louis, Louis avenges Claudia by wiping out the entire coven and leaves Paris with Armand who claims he only found out about the whole trial plus execution thing too late to stop it. They spend many years together, but eventually, after realising post Claudia Louis, far from connecting Armand with the present day age and providing the emotional intensity he used to radiate, Armand confesses that he did in fact know all about the trial in advance and basically wanted to save Louis but not Claudia (and was more than ready to ditch the coven).
Jordan's movie: no Lestat and no trial. In the interest of cinematic pace, the Parisian vampires immediately after kidnapping Louis, Claudia and Madeline proceed to execute Madeline and Claudia and bury Louis alive. Armand saves Louis, Louis avenges Claudia and wipes out the coven, and leaves with Armand, Armand asks him to travel the world together and Louis says thanks but no thanks and signals he already has figured out that Armand did intentionally let Claudia die; there is no shared (un)life before they part ways.
The TV Series: tells the Louis and Armand relationship backwards. We meet them through Daniel as a couple. At the end of season 1, Louis after Armand has ditched the "Rashid" disguise introduces him as "the love of my life". They are stated to have been together 77 years (i.e. ever since Paris). S2 shows how they meet, flirt and fall for each other in a deliberate contrast to the way Louis and Lestat did (on a soft and caring note, Armand while much older and physically more powerful still lets Louis take the initiative) while the mid season flashback episode to the 1970s and the circumstances of Daniel's first interview with Louis also provides a disturbing look on Louis and Armand being spectacularly dysfunctional in said decade. Since this involves a suicide attempt on Louis' part and Armand editing Louis' memories afterwards, and since the late 1940s Paris story put such an emphasis on Armand being supplanted as the coven leader by Santiago, I did wonder whether the show would let him be entirely innocent of Claudia's demise. (Or rather, only guilty in as much as he agreed to let the other vampires stage a trial.) And the last but one episode presented it this way, with Louis immediately concluding that Armand had no choice because he sees Sam next to Armand. But no. We did get an equivalent to the book's "oh, yeah, I did figure out you were behind it" moment, only it's tied to the completely unique to this version take on the interview situation, and Daniel as an interviewer, and Daniel's personality, full stop, because in this version, it's Daniel who has figured out what the contradictions he's been noticing mean and who has found the written proof that Armand wasn't just behind the trial, he was behind putting it on stage, literally, having directed the rehearsals. And it's Daniel who thus becomes the catalyst for the Louis/Armand break up.
Daniel along with Santiago and Madeline is one of the three characters who were mostly plot devices in the original novel and gain a completely new personality here. (Daniel does get a personality in the novels, but not until the third one, The Queen of the Damned. I have to say, I do prefer the show version.) I love that he's himself a massively flawed person (as deduced by Armand telepathically re: his backstory), but he's actually good at what he does, he's a sharp investigator and reporter, and letting him be an extremely sarcastic older man in the present instead of the young man from the 1970s means he holds his own - despite the massive power imbalance that comes with being in the presence of two supernatural predators who could have killed him at any moment - in a way I don't think a younger character could believably have. Making him from a plot device (Louis had to tell the story to someone) into a person who keeps challenging the narration in a way that feels true to his personality as presented and who slowly but surely becomes part of the story is another great twist the tv show pulled off.
On to our main guy. Jacob Anderson continues to wow me as this version of Louis. There was one time - when he didn't have an issue with making Madeline the way he does in the novel - when I quibbled with what the show was doing. However, there's an in-show reason, and besides, it's certainly true that in the novels, both Louis and Armand really really really don't want to create other vampires (Louis gives in with Madeline because Claudia argues he owes her this, and Armand gives in with Daniel in The Queen of the Damned because at this point, book!Daniel is already two thirds there and a suicidal mess). Within the reality of the show, it makes sense that Claudia - at this point a member of Armand's coven - would ask him first, both because of the way the Parisian vampires act and because she wants Madeline as a companion, not a sister. And once you have Armand voicing his disgust/horror at the idea of creating another vampire, letting Louis show the same before overcoming it would have felt repetitive.
(There's also the fact show!Louis while in s1 affected by grief for his lost (by death and enstragement) human family and trying for a considerable time not to be a predator has finished this part of his storyline already. In s2, he's busy figuring out who he is post Lestat and, as Claudia challenges him, outside or her, too.)
Louis being attracted to Armand from pretty much the start but not to the coven while Claudia at first loves the idea of the coven and being part of a community of vampires comes with both of them finding (at first) seemingly exactly what they wanted/secretly wished for: Louis a partner who adores him but doesn't try to dominate him and lets him set the pace of their relationship, who (again, seemingly) doesn't withhold knowledge but answers questions, and Claudia (seemingly) being part of a community of equals who accept her, not being a vampire shaped divorce prevention/daughter/sister used as an emotional tool. The show even makes the fact they let Louis and Claudia stay two years with the Parisians instead of a much shorter time work, since that allows both the Louis/Armand and Claudia/Madeline relationships to grow and the audience to get invested.
And Lestat, as both the hallucination in Louis' head during the first part of the season and as the real deal in the last three episodes, has in terms of screen time a much reduced presence as compared to s1, but in terms of emotional impact is one of those guest stars who seem to be far more in the story than they actually are. Sam Reid continues to be fabulous. Again, I raised an eyebrow at the idea of Lestat being well enough to fully participate in the trial (as opposed to being a half mad wreck of a witness) instead at first (not least one of my few complaints about s1 was that s1 had show!Lestat seemingly caring for Claudia only as a tool to use for and against Louis and otherwise being hostile the moment she starts to question him, whereas book!Lestat does eventually become hostile, but not to the same extent, and also in his egotistic way does care for her as his daughter). But then the show got me by letting Lestat go off script (true for Lestat in all his incarnations, to paraphrase Armand), and then of course with the later reveal in the last episode, courtesty of Investigator!Daniel, that it was Lestat, not Armand, who changed the audience's minds psychically so Louis would not be killed. (For which he needed to be in better shape than he is in the novel at this point.) Especially since the show managed to do this without, for lack of a better term, whitewashing Lestat. He's still the same possessive dick who ruined his relationship with Louis all on his lonesome. And him wanting revenge on Claudia enough to go along with the trial but then being horrified when facing the reality of her death and being haunted by guilt thereafter also feels like a plausible interpretation. Last but not least, Lestat, too, is used as part of the unreliable narrator principle, but in a somewhat different way than the books do it. I.e. some of his version of events as told by the trial are clearly self serving and wrong (i.e. Louis stalking him instead of him stalking Louis), but as the show lets Louis in the present conclude, other parts of Lestat's version might actually be closer to the truth (the creation of Claudia).
(BTW: big difference here to the novels, where Louis' and Lestat's takes on the creation of Claudia do not contradict each other. He did it both to prevent Louis from leaving him and because he wanted to find out what would happen, because he could.)
And lastly, on the subject of unreliable narrators, I fully expect Armand's version of how things ended with Lestat and Nikki back in the 18th century to be contradicted when/if we get to the next book/season, and not just because I've read The Vampire Lestat, but because it's how this show rolls. And I might or might not have squeed when Lestat said "I have the blood of Akasha in me". Bring on a good version of The Queen of the Damned, say I! This team can do it. But don't you dare to move the time frame on Akasha, Maharet and Makare, show. I want Ancient Egypt flashbacks.
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Date: 2024-09-02 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-02 11:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-03 08:10 am (UTC)I only just recently managed to watch both season 1 and 2 of IWTV, but this little gem here is one of the first things that popped up when I started looking up the show on Youtube:
IWTV season 3 Comic Con teaser
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Date: 2024-09-03 08:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-03 04:15 pm (UTC)Sam Reid (especially in that teaser) got me thinking: what if Brad Pitt had been cast as Lestat instead of Louis in the film?
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Date: 2024-09-05 01:32 pm (UTC)(Young Brad Pitt was very good in Twelve Monkeys, solid in Se7en and of course had a great debut in Thelma & Louise, but none of these roles say Lestat to me. Then again: famously Anne Rice couldn't see Tom Cruise as Lestat, either, until she did see him and was repentant and convinced.)
Eric Bogosian is amazing, and the whole present day timeline would not work without him bringing his A-Game.
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Date: 2024-09-05 05:39 am (UTC)I thought it was interesting how, despite it being unintentional, recasting Claudia really helped emphasize the unreliable narration and how we only see her from other's perspective - even her own journals have been edited by Louis and Armand. And so at the end, when we see Lestat's version of her turning, it's literally a different person from who we saw in Louis version in season one.
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Date: 2024-09-05 01:22 pm (UTC)