Jacob Anderson Knows Why Interview With The Vampire Fans Want To See Louis And Lestat Together

AMC's "Interview with the Vampire" made it clear from the beginning that, despite his seductive, French-speaking qualities, Lestat (Sam Reid) could be dangerous and was not a good dude. In the series premiere (spoilers follow), Louis (Jacob Anderson) delivers an emotional confession to a priest, saying, "I laid down with the Devil, and he has roots in me," and it immediately becomes a "speak of the Devil, and he shall appear" moment. Lestat promptly arrives, tears the priest's throat out, and punches straight through another priest's head.

The scene takes on further Faustian overtones as Lestat gazes deep into Louis's eyes and offers him the "dark gift" of vampirism. Yet vampires in general obviously live by a different set of rules than most of us. As undead creatures that require the blood of humans or other living things for sustenance, you can't always judge them by human standards. For some viewers, this might make it easy to overlook Lestat's true nature until it's too late and he's carrying out the airborne vampire equivalent of domestic violence against Louis.

Speaking to Vanity Fair ahead of the "Interview with the Vampire" season 1 finale, Anderson acknowledged the appeal of Louis and Lestat's romance, despite how toxic it is ultimately. As he put it:

"They're connected to spend eternity together, and they have this connection, which is kind of a very difficult connection to articulate. Louis says it: There's no human equivalent to vampire bond. It's very difficult to rationalize it. 'Well, he was awful. How could you go back to him?' Because, it's like, there was this other thing. There was just this thing that was holding us together. You can parallel that with a domestic setting—people can't quite explain why they're so drawn to somebody who is bad for them."

Unlike Lestat, Louis tries to be a vegetarian vampire of sorts, subsisting off animal blood rather than human blood à la "Twilight." He means well, but he's also shown a pattern of denial, something his interviewer, Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), calls him out on in the season finale. In his own (non-vampire) interview with Vanity Fair, Anderson continued to underline the moral complexity of the vampire world, and how that relates back to the real world, saying:

"These vampires do some awful things in those books. Some truly awful things, including Louis. But it's really difficult to moralize them or to look at them in the same way that you'd look at a human. It's one of the reasons why I think this show really fits into the place we're in right now as a society. I think we really want to moralize the world—we need to put it into boxes. We need to say, 'This is good and this is bad and this is right and this is wrong.' And you need to pick a side, you need to pick a lane. But we live in a very complex world and human beings are very complex. There are nuances that contextualize all behavior and it doesn't mean that you have to agree with any of it. But you have to acknowledge the nuance in human behavior, and therefore, vampire behavior."

"Interview with the Vampire" season 1 foregrounded Louis and Lestat's relationship, and both the finale and Anne Rice's literary source material suggest season 2 will be shifting focus to Louise and the new vampire "love of [his] life," Armand. Suffice it to say, that relationship looks to be no less complex.

"Interview with the Vampire" season 1 is now streaming on AMC+.