Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 7 of Interview with the Vampire and mentions of sexual assault.
At one point during Lestat de Lioncourt’s (Sam Reid) operatic testimony in Season 2, Episode 7 ofInterview with the Vampire, the undead man soulfully declares, “The single worst thing a vampire can feel is loneliness.” The series shares Lestat’s purview.Interviewexamines the many ways supernatural monsters clamor for scraps of human intimacy, which is, in and of itself, a contradiction. Once they possess companionship, they doeverything in their considerable power to retain it: morality be damned. Although these motivators make the Lestat, Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson), and Armand (Assad Zaman) love triangle enjoyable, Episode 7 confirms what fans ofAnne Rice’s bestselling novels, and new but eagle-eyed viewers, already knew. At its heart,Interviewis a riveting tragedy, withno relationship more heartbreaking than Claudia (Delainey Hayles) and Madeleine (Roxane Duran), who meet their brutal demise after physical and psychological torture.
NoInterviewcharacter is innocent, nor are Rice’s stories home to happily ever afters. Out of everyone, however, Claudia and Madeleine deserve happiness the most. They yearn for more than their world permits. They dare to resist and are immolated for it after snatching the briefest happiness. These doomed soulmates are, hands down,Interview’s truly tragic characters.
Interview with the Vampire
Based on Anne Rice’s iconic novel, follow Louis de Pointe’s epic story of love, blood and the perils of immortality, as told to the journalist Daniel Molloy.
‘Interview With the Vampire’ Season 2 Lets Claudia Grow
Claudia opens Season 2 ofInterview with the Vampiredesperate for connection. Before her vampire life, her mother died during childbirth and her father discarded Claudia into the care of her abusive aunt. Once Lestat turns Claudia in Season 1 (then played byBailey Bass), her positive parent-child relationship with Louis and Lestat inevitably devolves into further abuse. The few relationships she forges outside of her toxic home meet ruinous ends. To gain her freedom from Lestat, and to exact righteous vengeance, Claudia hardens into even more of a ferocious killer — one with no qualms aboutmurdering her Maker. Like every vampire, however, isolation is her true curse: that cruel Venn diagram of hope, vulnerability, and heartbreak. Claudia’s fight feels futile no matter how much she bares her fangs in seething rage.
Worst of all,Claudia never asked for this. Louis begged Lestat to turn her into a vampire, and,despite what Louis claimed in Season 1, it wasn’t an act of mercy. If Louis could assuage his guilt over the New Orleans fires by resurrecting Claudia, then condemning an innocent 14-year-old to eternal torment didn’t matter. Louise genuinely loves her, but Claudia has only ever existed as a bargaining chip; a child-sized bandage slapped onto Louis’s sins. She always places second in his affections. Her diaries are her only armor and outlet for all this blistering hatred, despair, and trauma. Claudia wants to revel in her heightened bloodlust. She craves the freedom and maturity that her perpetually prepubescent body denies her.
Claudia Seeks Companionship in ‘Interview With the Vampire’ Season 2
When Claudia stumbles upon the ancient vampire Daciana (Diana Gheorghian), she’s wonderstruck. It’s the first time she’s seen another female vampire. They strike a fundamental rapport, until the older woman declaresvampire existence to be inescapably hopeless. Daciana takes her life, shattering Claudia’s fragile dreams. Enter theThéâtre des Vampires to strike Claudia at her most vulnerable. She might be over 40 years old, but the coven enchants her: a vibrant group proliferated with vampires of all genders who indulge themselves on stage and hunt with abandon off-stage. She happily works herself to the bone for just a chance of acceptance.
As soon as the coven initiates her,coalescing her hopes for a real, loving family into reality after decades of systematic abuse, they subject her to ceaseless infantilization. They use her nightly performance to remind her she’s an unwanted abomination that deserves humiliation. If Daciana razes Claudia’s hopes with fire, the coven spits in her face. Worst of all, Louis, theonly person she still calls kin, witnesses the coven’s abuse and doesn’t intervene. Season 2 begins with Louis promising Claudia a fresh start; they’ll be a pair united against the world. Notwithstanding, once Louis re-accumulates power, a new hobby, anda new lover, he casts Claudia aside. Claudia has never been more eviscerated, bitter, and brittle — which means she’s never had greater clarity.
‘Interview With the Vampire’s Madeleine and Claudia Understand Each Other
A French seamstress who’s more than meets the eye, Madeleine spends most of her time onInterviewas the series’ rare human.She’s also the only person who actively and consciously chooses Claudia at every stepof their doomed love affair. One needn’t be vampiric to be intimately acquainted with the perils of loneliness and how it compels people to make controversial decisions (to put it lightly). As a child, Madeleine was orphaned by a tuberculosis outbreak that also claimed her sister. An adult Madeleine watched her neighbors die of starvation during the Nazi Party’s occupation of France. When a 19-year-old German lieutenant propositioned her for sex, she said yes for the same reason — an antidote against all that death. “It was [for] the comfort,” she explains. “He was alive.”
Who Are the Talamasca? ‘Interview with the Vampire’s Secret Society Explained
This secret organization has a complicated history (and members).
It’s rather impossible to condone sleeping with a fascist even if Madeleine compromised her morals for only one night. That said, every character inInterview with the Vampireis aprofoundly flawed walking contradiction and informed by compounding traumas. Despite Madeleine’s better judgment, she chased danger becauseshe craved emotional connection. Ever since, her community has ostracized her — not unlike Claudia. Their equally combative demeanors don’t make them fast friends, but both women seem to enjoy how the other shows her teeth. Madeleine tracks Claudia’s hollow eyes and spares her some caustic advice. Claudia admits her worst impulses when she’s not hiding her smitten grins. Madeleine’s keen intuition recognizes Claudia as her mirror, even though she can’t place just how much.
Madeleine Is the Only Person Who Chooses Claudia
The series doesn’t tell us Claudia’s location when three of Madeleine’s neighbors attempt to rape and murder her in her home. It doesn’t matter; Claudia rescues Madeleine by massacring her assailants. Claudia definitively chooses Madeleine over the coven and risks Madeleine rejecting her true nature. In turn,Madeleine chooses Claudiaby embracing her vampirism with morbid excitement. It’s no morally repugnant crime but a lifeline: a chance to remake their lives. Finally, for the first time,Claudia finds someone who understands her, accepts her unconditionally, and wants to share her company. “I get to pick one thing,” she tells Louis, “and it’s her,” calling Madeleine the “X” on Claudia’s map.
And, unlike Claudia, Madeleine chooses to be turned. If she already self-labels as a monster, then she and Claudia are two of a kind. They recognize themselves in the other and forge a forbidden bond: an adult human and anadult child vampire, two women, and two communal outcasts. They don’t wonder; they know. All things considered, and compared to Louis’s love affairs,their bond is healthy and communicative, a harmonious relationship entirely devoid of manipulation.
Claudia and Madeleine Are ‘Interview With the Vampire’s Biggest Tragedy
The coven destroys their joy for the willful sadism of it all. After a lifetime of tragedy, of being volleyed back and forth at the cost of her freedom, Claudia is punished for breaking rules she didn’t know existed. But Claudia the realist resigning herself toher devastatingly cruel fatedoesn’t equate to anything less than a defiant inferno. Forever her only advocate for herself, Claudia achieves what neither Madeleine nor Louis can by walking on feet with severed tendons. She spits out vengeful promises with a cool, collected fury.We expect nothing else of Claudia than to die fighting, and she does — an absolute blaze.
Then, there’s Madeleine, on trial-by-mob for a second time. She refuses to save herself by renouncing Claudia, even when Claudia urges her to. “My coven is Claudia,” she says with the tender resilience of a marriage vow. She refuses to cower. Not only is their love worth sacrificing her human life for,it’s worth this harrowing finality. In the last minutes of Claudia’s love-starved life,Madeleine gives her the validation she sought, needed, and desperately deserved. It can’t be said that Claudia dies contented, but she clings to the singular love of her life until the sunlight withers Madeleine to dust — leaving this cursed, eternal childalone one last time. Neither woman asked for more than love, and the chance to live a full life unburdened by condemnation or despair. Instead,Interview’s haunting final image of Claudia and Madeleine, backlit by a theatre spotlight and the murmurings of a satisfied audience, is of two overlapping piles of ash.
New episodes ofInterview with the VampireSeason 2 premiere weekly on Sundays and are available to stream on AMC+.
