Interview With The Vampire season 2: Sam Reid "struggled" with a big twist that's "not in the books"

In just a couple weeks, AMC will premiere the second season of Interview With The Vampire, its sumptuous, optimistic adaptation of Anne Rice's classic horror book. The brutal Lestat (Sam Reid) has been left for dead by the other members of his vampire family, Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Claudia (Delainey Hayles), who have left for Europe. But Reid is still popping up in promo material and in the trailers. We have not seen the last of Lestat.

And that's a little confusing, because if the show follows Rice's book, he really shouldn't show up again until the very end. But the first season of the show proved that it wasn't shackled to the source text; for instance, it changed the setting from the late 18th century to the late 19th. And it sounds like there are twists to come.

"There’s a really f***ing cool twist in this season that is not in the books that I struggled with because I was like, 'This is different, and I’m not sure,'" Reid told SFX Magazine. "But actually, you can justify it because when you look at the books and look at the way that they come out, and what happens in subsequent books after season one, there is a level of an unreliable element. You don’t always have to know the truth, because Anne Rice never really tells you the truth. She likes to change it up a bit."

It's hard to know exactly what that means, but executive producers Rolin Jones and Mark Johnson sound determined to not let viewers get too comfortable. There will be surprises. "We’ve tried to figure out how we can be as ‘honorable’ and also aggressive, like we were in season one, with something that isn’t plot-driven," Jones said. "We clearly went bigger, which can be a pitfall for folks. But I think we work really, really hard and were very critical on ourselves to make sure that we didn’t lose any emotional depth."

"So, the people that are expecting season one, you’re going to be sorely disappointed in a great way. We got bigger. We got rawer. Hearts are fatter. And the consequences are way more brutal. They’re just bigger. It’s all rigged to crack open your heart, and then we pick it up and we throw it against the wall about three more times. That’s the deal."

After the success of season 1, I'll assume that whatever changes the cast and crew are making will be worth it.

Interview With The Vampire season 2 will be a "rollercoaster" for Claudia

Another major change for season 2 is that the character of Claudia — the vampire who is stuck as a 14-year-old girl for all time — will now be played by Delainey Hayles, whereas the first season she was played by Bailey Bass.

We don't know why Bass dropped out, but Hayles has nothing but praise for her predecessor's work. “I think Bailey did an amazing job in Season 1,” Hayles told TV Insider. She read Rice's original book religiously to catch up, and Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid were there to fill in any gaps for her. “Jacob was always by my side reass. I was very thankful that I was with him. ‘This is what happened here. Vampires, blah, blah lenses. The lenses! You can’t see at night, but try to see.' He’s very attentive.”

As for Claudia's journey in season 2, her search to find vampires like her, to find her place in the world, brings her and Louis to Paris. “We’ll see her maturity this season, how she’s aged over the years,” Hayles said. “What is the same is that she is Claudia. She’s still bloodthirsty. She still has Lestat’s blood inside of her. How she navigates circumstances will always be the same. She still has that love of life of being a vampire, but we’re in a different world now … We see her navigating that.”

As the trailers indicate, Louis and Claudia do find other vampires, older ones who abide by rules that are new to them. And one of the rules is that you don't turn children into vampires. That could be a problem...

Claudia's teenage body is at the heart of her predicament, which involves some lingering resentment towards Louis and Lestat for freezing her in time like this. “It’s the main factor that holds her back," Hayles said. "If she reflected the age that she was, she’d be walking in these places with the same energy as Lestat, but she has to keep herself safe.”

We'll find out all the details when Interview With The Vampire premieres its second season on AMC on Sunday, May 12. Hayles leaves us with this: “Season 2, for Claudia, is a rollercoaster.”

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h/t GamesRadar