The Vampire Lestat Season 1, Episode 5
“New York”
Writers: Daniel Hart & Hannah Moscovitch
Director: Levan Akin
Cast: Sam Reid, Jacob Anderson, Assad Zaman, Joseph Potter, Delainey Hayles, Jennifer Ehle, Eric Bogosian, Sheila Atim, Christopher Heyerdahl, Noah Reid, Ryan Kattner, Seamus Patterson, Sarah Swire, Christopher Geary, Shepherd Monroe, Guy Maddin, Amy Keating
In an episode about a legend, it feels right that our leading player has turned himself into one.
The vampire Lestat has faked his death after the shooting incident. He and his band are recording a “posthumous” album in New York City. The sessions are difficult, marred especially by Lestat’s loathing of his least favorite band member, Larry. But Lestat’s relentless perfectionism extends to his own performance as well: At one point he repeatedly exposes himself to the sun to make his scream of the word “ALIIIIIIIIIIIVE!” sound more convincing.
Things change when Louis — who never bothered to get in touch after the shooting — reaches out to Lestat out of the blue. Mr. du Lac is increasingly fucked up by the arrangement he’s made with the British waitress Regina to pretend to be his Southern sister, Claudia. He’s watching her make out with a fake French redhead (Amy Keating) in order to recreate the relationship between Claudia and her slain lover and fledgling, Madeleine ... why, exactly? Is he even into this kind of thing — or is he losing his grip on what’s real, because he believes Regina may actually be Claudia, somehow? All he can think to do is reach out to the only person he knows who could truly confirm it either way: her maker, Lestat.
Lestat’s meeting with Regina over her diner counter leaves him weeping. She’s not Claudia — the fledgling who tried to kill him, and who he watched burn before his eyes — but the resemblance is devastatingly close. There’s simply a spark in Claudia’s eyes that isn’t there in Regina’s. Lestat tells both her and Louis never to see one another again.
Then he returns to the studio, where the only other person in attendance is his much disliked producer, the vampire Sam, and pours his heart and non-soul into his music. What results is genuinely affecting song about Claudia, the one major player from his past he hadn’t the heart to use as a muse until now.
The song is so good that it causes Lestat to rethink his band’s entire musical direction and restart their album from scratch. Everyone in the band is all the way in, offering up their blood to be made into vampires themselves, the better to make the sound Lestat hears in his head. “It will drag you into depravity and reward you with regret,” he says of the Dark Gift, but that doesn’t stop Alex from slicing open his palm, Salamander from slitting his wrist (vertically, the I mean business way), and T.C. from offering up her neck.
Everyone does this, that is, except Larry. Overwhelmed by the prospect of starting over, he quits and leaves before the vampire business begins, though he seems to blame himself more than Lestat for his failure. Taking the subway from the studio, he’s talking with a fan across the tracks when Armand appears.
Earlier in the episode, Armand approaches Daniel Molloy once again, saying he’s been lovingly watching over him for 52 years, at times telepathically guiding him to help save his life. I can’t stop thinking about the face of actor Eric Bogosian as Daniel in this moment, realizing that some of the most important and profound experiences of his life were the result of nonconsensual mental compulsion. His rapist saved his life, I don’t know how else to put it.
The point is that Armand is a pretty creepy customer — what another character refers to as a “rotten boy.” In case you didn’t pick up how creepy, he telepathically, uh, encourages Larry to throw himself in front of a subway train, killing him instantly offscreen. The episode ends with a closeup of Armand sitting placidly as the humans around him scream in horror.
Based in the not-even-subliminal message for vampires to “MAKE MORE! MAKE MORE!” that Lestat inserted into one of his songs at Gabriella’s request, I’ve got a feeling that’s a dynamic we’re going to have to get used to.
And now, to paraphrase Lestat, we are finally going to talk about the Queen.
This episode’s flashbacks amount to one of the most elegant, engaging, and artful infodumps I’ve ever seen on a genre show — a massive mainline dose of lore, delivered so smoothly that you only want more.
We learn unequivocally why Lestat spent decades in the ground: He allowed himself to be buried along with one of the sailors he and his mother killed, so devastated was he about his abandonment by his mother-fledgling-lover Gabriella. He is rescued from this unsuccessful attempt at slow suicide by, of all people, Marius de Romanus (the great, gaunt character actor Christopher Heyerdahl), Armand’s 1900-year-old maker.
Marius is not acting on impulse. Lestat’s presence, it seems, has been requested by Marius’s own master. For centuries he has served as the guardian of the petrified corpses of Akasha (Sheila Atim) and Ankil, the Mother and Father of All Vampires. Ankil’s body has been cracked and damaged due to accidental sun exposure that left all the vampires in the world burning even at night, many of them lethally. Lestat tells Marius he and Gabriella survived by immersing themselves in a bog. “Bogs are rare,” says the eccentric older vampire.
Akasha, however, lives, however slowly and remotely. Marius has spent the centuries bringing her news and items from the outside world — she likes music in particular — but he feels he’s letting things slip, which could lead to disaster. Lestat, he says, is a worthy successor in the role. Marius warns him not to worry if she’s uncommunicative, saying she didn’t telepathically speak with him for 22 years.
“Twenty-threeeeeeee,” she whispers in Lestat’s mind immediately. Oh, she likes this dude.
The years pass. The next time we see Lestat he seems giddy as a child to have a mother again, excitedly showing her his progress as a musician and chattering happily about the world above Marius’s underground lair. He also brings her a newfangled invention called an “ice cream scoop,” teaching her how to say the word: “Scooooooooooo…” She can’t quite managed the “p,” though by now she is animate enough to knock the scoop to the floor with her fingers.
The time after that, though…
It’s New Year’s Eve, 1900. Lestat, who by now appears deep in the throes of mental illness, has prepared a banquet for all the absent figures from his past, represented by items placed at the table in their stead. Gabriella is a Tiffany lamp, his father and brother are cabbages, Nicolas is a violin, Magnus is a frightening painting by William Blake, Marie Antoinette (?!?) is a piece of cake, and Marius’s chair is simply empty. In lieu of a kiss and champagne, Lestat goes against Marius’s advice never to feed Akasha anything but the ashes of burned corpses and gives her a tiny taste of his blood.
Well, you can guess how that goes.
By the time an enraged Marius returns from ... wherever he’s been, Lestat has drank of Akasha’s blood and vice versa. She is sitting bolt upright, pouring forth an unending stream of manic chatter — seemingly about herself, her past, her present, and someone called Amel. Lestat has been floating in midair for three full days; Akasha’s blood gave him the Cloud Gift, but he has no idea how to use it. Only when Marius forcibly returns Akasha to the slab, a process he says will ultimately take him centuries, does Lestat fall to the ground so that Marius can expel him from the lair.
The end of this sequence is a crescendo of absolutely bonkers over-the-top vampire acting, and I mean this in the most complimentary way. Marius’s maw gapes open, voice booming as he rants and raves about Lestat’s unworthiness. Lestat staggers up the stairs, mind battered by the two mega-powerful vampires below. Courtesy of what amounts to a showstopping spoken-word performance by actor Sheila Atim, Akasha’s feverish chatter culminates in a series of declarations about who the fuck she is:
“I AM THE GIRL! I AM THE GOD! I AM THE VOICE! I AM THE SONG! I AM THE NIGHT! AND I CAN ANSWER! I CAN ARRANGE IT! I CAN SAY ‘RISE,’ AND I CAN SAY ‘SPEAK’! AND I AM HER! AND I AM SHE! AND I, I, I, I! AM! THE! ANSWER!”
I’m not sure what question she’s the answer to. I get the feeling she’s less an answer and more a final solution, waiting to be unleashed.
The Vampire Lestat is now at the point that Interview with the Vampire reached in its second season. It is escalating in quality at a rate that is frankly psychotic. Each episode is better than the last; in IWTV’s case, this culminated in the Season 2 finale, which was the best episode in the history of the show. There are two episodes left in this season. Pump them directly into my veins.
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