Interview With The Vampire star Assad Zaman tries to pin down the real Armand

The season 2 finale of Interview With The Vampire sent me into an emotional tailspin. Not only was I reeling from the tale of epic romance between Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat (Sam Reid), but I now had to face the prospect of a long dark night before getting to watch season 3, which has officially been confirmed. While we wait, let's pick apart the perspectives of the various players in this drama, including the vampire Armand (Assad Zaman), who in the finale was revealed to be a manipulative jagwagon jerkface.

That might be going a bit far, but also, no it's not. In the final episode of season 2, we learn that Armand, who has been with Louis for decades, secretly plotted the death of Louis' daughter Claudia (or at least, he willingly went along with it) and then didn't tell Louis for 70 years. The two have a literal monster fight and end the season thoroughly broken up.

Speaking to Vulture, actor Assad Zaman talked about his take on Armand. "I think what’s interesting about Armand is often he knows how awful his actions might be, yet he does them anyway," he said. YEAH, I AGREE!

"And that is a symptom, I think, of the curse of immortality, where the consequences of your actions weigh less on you because you know you have eternity to get over it, or your lover has an eternity to get over it. So what are you willing to do or sacrifice when the consequence is just time?"

Armand can be a tricky character to get ahold of. He's the oldest vampire we've met on the show so far, and he's adept at adapting to any given situation. "[H]is self-preservation technique, one of them, is constantly code-switching and adapting," Zaman mused. "I’m not fully sure that we’ve even heard a true voice for Armand yet...There’s nothing to say that we don’t see a completely new facet to him [in season 3] now because he’s been exposed; that mask is off now. I’m really, really curious to see what happened in Dubai after Louis left that room. Maybe he’ll sound completely different. I don’t know."

Have we ever met the real Armand?

Given that he lied to Louis for so long, you might think that we've never seen the real Armand, if such a creature even exists. But Zaman thinks there are at least two moments where he slipped through. "The first is in episode four, when he talks about Amadeo in the Louvre, and the second is in episode six with Madeleine, when he’s debating whether he should make her into a vampire," the actor said. "The first one is a window into Armand as Amadeo, the boy, and a glimpse into the trauma of his life and finding solace, meaning, and love in this other ancient vampire when he meets Marius. He’s recounting his feelings toward Marius, especially when he says, 'I served him with all my heart, basked in his mercy.' Those are completely true things. That’s the one time where he felt completely safe for the first time in his life, and I don’t think he’s ever felt safe after that. We who know the books will know what happened."

"[The scene with Madelaine] was a bit of a revelation to me. There’s almost a camaraderie that builds between Armand and Madeline, maybe more toward Armand’s side. The thing that fascinates him about Louis is his fascination with humanity, because I don’t think Armand really has that fascination anymore. He’s kind of lost it. He goes into that scene with Madeleine talking to another human about becoming a vampire, and he thinks he’s talking to a piece of meat or an animal. And then something happens, and the curiosity takes over: in her strength, her ferocity, her wit, her wisdom. That last moment, where he sits down with her and says, “What will you do when she throws herself into the fire? Because she will,” and she says, “Maybe she won’t. You don’t know,” that moment is, I think, two equals."

At the end of the episode, we skip forward in time a bit and learn that Armand turned Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) into a vampire when Louis wasn't in the room, and boy do I want to see how that played out. "I think that’s something we should look forward to," Zaman said. Will do!

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