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Louis did it to remember.
He half remembered the first interview and probably kept going back to it, feeling like his memory of it was incomplete. Also he had been monitoring Daniel's life over the years, obviously knew he was dying and wanted to finish their unfinished interview. This time, deliberately, with more focus and a better purpose - to alert the humans to the great convening.
All that, but mostly to remember. Not just the first interview but major memories in his life which he knew he had buried out of trauma. At that point, he wasn't suspicious of Armand and his mind erasing skills. He just wanted an empathetic pseudo therapist much like Miss Lily in his pimping days and Daniel had been like that too in 1973.
Why didn't he just ask Armand? Well, he knew that some of the memories were painful or uncomfortable for Armand too so he needed a more neutral person (he could trust) to help him work through them
I mean on the surface level, the original interview was cut short by the blood sucking incident. He never even finished the story, and Armand unspooled all the tapes. So Daniel left without the tapes and missing half his memory.
Louis talks about wanting to put vampires si humanity is aware of the threat (shout out to one of my favourite Daniel jokes "yiu guys have a thread on 8chan?"), so he's trying again. Without the drugs or, hopefully, the vicious attack.
Underneath that, I think, is the part where Louis feels a hollow space and he needs to fill it in. Armand is wary of it for this reason- he put it there. So manipulates Louis to try to control how much gets out.
You can see by Louis' reaction every time he remembers something; this is what he needed. What he really wanted.
So there are layers to it.
Armand didn’t unspool the Louis’ interview tapes. He unspooled Daniel’s other tapes. Louis kept the interview tapes and mailed them to Daniel in episode one.
From a book perspective, Lestat retcons a lot of the first book in the second book and provides a ton of context. The interview was Louis’ attempt to get Lestat’s attention, which works, and The Vampire Lestat is Lestat’s response to Louis. But imo, if they don’t interrogate Louis’ unreliable narrative from the beginning, then I think in the show people would have a hard time accepting Lestat’s version of events 3 or 4 seasons in. Also it pushes back Lestat and Louis’ reunion by a while, meaning they don’t get their cathartic meeting that happens at the end of 2x08. So think the purpose is to break down the first interview with the second interview, let Louis and Lestat reconcile and grieve so that we aren’t waiting like 6 years into the show for it.
Edit: not to be cheesy but, truth & reconciliation 🖤
i'm interested to see what they do in this next season because i'm reading the vampire lestat and a lot of what armand said about his early days in france doesn't match up with lestat's account of it in the books. i know they are changing a lot of details but i'm wondering if when lestat discovers the book he will dispute the version of events armand put forth seeing as show armand has already been shown to be a liar and manipulator. i can just picture lestat reading daniel's book and going "he said WHAT" and running to set the story straight 😂
Oh yes I think absolutely! I think it’s no coincidence the stuff that Armand talks about in the show that’s from TVL is wildly different than what Lestat recounts. I do think they will still change elements of it in the show canon, but I have the feeling that era of the show might match the book somewhat closely? In any case Lestat is definitely going to be like fuck no
yeah because in the show armand portrays him as this fuckboy new vamp who seduced him and then abandoned him, yet in the book lestat is repulsed by armand who is very needy and tries to convince him to be his companion similarly to how he seduced louis in the first book. so i'm hoping that they stay true to that in the upcoming season and when lestat reads it he's like "we never even dated!!!"
That’s kind of what I’m expecting as well! Though it’s hard to tell how the show will frame it, I had a hard time buying that Lestat had ever been in a relationship with Armand, especially when Nicki was literally right there. Though obviously show vs books means the relationships can be sexual, Lestat and Armand definitely have an adversarial relationship in TVL, and that only gets worse at the end of the book.
yeah i hadn't read any of the books and even i thought that was weird. but i'm thinking that maybe it's more of armand's lies and mind games. book armand in the vampire lestat is 10x more wrathful than show armand. i think the episode where daniel and louis uncover their true memories of the events of the first interview was the first glimpse of the true armand in the show. hopefully the show shows more of the coldness and manipulation of his character from lestat's pov.
Yeah same. Idk if you’ve read the parts surrounding the trial yet, but the way Armand acts then is soooooo fucking creepy. Definitely foreshadowed in that ep in the way he tortures Daniel. I think it’s going to be pretty extreme in the show because nothing else makes sense for why it happened the way it did
I’m not talking about cheating or open relationships, I’m saying I don’t know if the show will actually portray Lestat and Armand as having truly had a sexual relationship, because in the books they can’t have sex, and Lestat very much rejects Armand, and he already has a solid relationship with Nicki (at one point anyway)
Maybe they'd show the initial infatuation between them and translate it as a sexual relationship. because in TVL Lestat was initially very besotted by Armand based on looks, it was only later when he realised that Armand was too cray for him to handle
As far as what was made clear early on, the second interview was going to memorialize Claudia and help clear up/ unspool Louis’ memories.
That said, there’s something about the “special dinner” that Louis and Armand had prepared for Daniel—the dinner they were so eager to arrange for him—that tells me Jones was sending another message to the audience about the intended purpose of the second interview. Closing all loose threads, perhaps?
Was Daniel being given an offer to join them or was he going to be dinner? He was told the risks about what he was doing by writing a book.
Thank you for the responses. A lot of them make sense but if I'm being honest, if these are indeed the reasons, said reasons were already apparent and revealed early on in the season. I just don't know why Jones made it seem like the answer would be revealed in episode 8 when for me, there aren't any new revelations there of why the interview is taking place. Jones made it seem like an unknown mystery which is probably why I overthought it I guess.
I mean, the interview lead to the revelation of a big truth and a cataclysmic breakup in Ep 8, so maybe it was that? Because in the end, Louis shook Daniel’s hand, thanked him, promised him payment, and set the laptop on fire, so I think for him, the interview had the result he was looking for without it ever being published. The interview process freed him, but more importantly, it filled in gaps he needed filled so he can become the whole man we saw in the end. One who can “learn to live honestly”, as he said.
This might be a stretch but I teach Hamlet a lot and I always say, the question isn’t “why doesn’t he kill Claudius for most of the play?”, the real question is, why does he kill him when he does? What changed? I feel like in the same way one could ask, why does Louis thank Daniel at the end? What is he thanking him for, really? And then if you can answer that, you get a lot closer to figuring out what he wanted out of this, and what the interview was for. So the above was my answer to it, though you might come up with something else.
This thread is flaired "Book Spoilers Allowed." This means book spoilers **do not require** spoiler tags! If you are concerned about book spoilers you may want to exit this thread. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/InterviewVampire) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Louis did it to remember. He half remembered the first interview and probably kept going back to it, feeling like his memory of it was incomplete. Also he had been monitoring Daniel's life over the years, obviously knew he was dying and wanted to finish their unfinished interview. This time, deliberately, with more focus and a better purpose - to alert the humans to the great convening. All that, but mostly to remember. Not just the first interview but major memories in his life which he knew he had buried out of trauma. At that point, he wasn't suspicious of Armand and his mind erasing skills. He just wanted an empathetic pseudo therapist much like Miss Lily in his pimping days and Daniel had been like that too in 1973. Why didn't he just ask Armand? Well, he knew that some of the memories were painful or uncomfortable for Armand too so he needed a more neutral person (he could trust) to help him work through them
it's for claudia. for memorializing her and getting her story out there.
I mean on the surface level, the original interview was cut short by the blood sucking incident. He never even finished the story, and Armand unspooled all the tapes. So Daniel left without the tapes and missing half his memory. Louis talks about wanting to put vampires si humanity is aware of the threat (shout out to one of my favourite Daniel jokes "yiu guys have a thread on 8chan?"), so he's trying again. Without the drugs or, hopefully, the vicious attack. Underneath that, I think, is the part where Louis feels a hollow space and he needs to fill it in. Armand is wary of it for this reason- he put it there. So manipulates Louis to try to control how much gets out. You can see by Louis' reaction every time he remembers something; this is what he needed. What he really wanted. So there are layers to it.
Armand didn’t unspool the Louis’ interview tapes. He unspooled Daniel’s other tapes. Louis kept the interview tapes and mailed them to Daniel in episode one.
Ah yes you're right, I knew he mailed them I just thought he repaired them but yeah he talks about listening to them after that!
From a book perspective, Lestat retcons a lot of the first book in the second book and provides a ton of context. The interview was Louis’ attempt to get Lestat’s attention, which works, and The Vampire Lestat is Lestat’s response to Louis. But imo, if they don’t interrogate Louis’ unreliable narrative from the beginning, then I think in the show people would have a hard time accepting Lestat’s version of events 3 or 4 seasons in. Also it pushes back Lestat and Louis’ reunion by a while, meaning they don’t get their cathartic meeting that happens at the end of 2x08. So think the purpose is to break down the first interview with the second interview, let Louis and Lestat reconcile and grieve so that we aren’t waiting like 6 years into the show for it. Edit: not to be cheesy but, truth & reconciliation 🖤
i'm interested to see what they do in this next season because i'm reading the vampire lestat and a lot of what armand said about his early days in france doesn't match up with lestat's account of it in the books. i know they are changing a lot of details but i'm wondering if when lestat discovers the book he will dispute the version of events armand put forth seeing as show armand has already been shown to be a liar and manipulator. i can just picture lestat reading daniel's book and going "he said WHAT" and running to set the story straight 😂
Oh yes I think absolutely! I think it’s no coincidence the stuff that Armand talks about in the show that’s from TVL is wildly different than what Lestat recounts. I do think they will still change elements of it in the show canon, but I have the feeling that era of the show might match the book somewhat closely? In any case Lestat is definitely going to be like fuck no
yeah because in the show armand portrays him as this fuckboy new vamp who seduced him and then abandoned him, yet in the book lestat is repulsed by armand who is very needy and tries to convince him to be his companion similarly to how he seduced louis in the first book. so i'm hoping that they stay true to that in the upcoming season and when lestat reads it he's like "we never even dated!!!"
That’s kind of what I’m expecting as well! Though it’s hard to tell how the show will frame it, I had a hard time buying that Lestat had ever been in a relationship with Armand, especially when Nicki was literally right there. Though obviously show vs books means the relationships can be sexual, Lestat and Armand definitely have an adversarial relationship in TVL, and that only gets worse at the end of the book.
yeah i hadn't read any of the books and even i thought that was weird. but i'm thinking that maybe it's more of armand's lies and mind games. book armand in the vampire lestat is 10x more wrathful than show armand. i think the episode where daniel and louis uncover their true memories of the events of the first interview was the first glimpse of the true armand in the show. hopefully the show shows more of the coldness and manipulation of his character from lestat's pov.
Yeah same. Idk if you’ve read the parts surrounding the trial yet, but the way Armand acts then is soooooo fucking creepy. Definitely foreshadowed in that ep in the way he tortures Daniel. I think it’s going to be pretty extreme in the show because nothing else makes sense for why it happened the way it did
Well Lestat started a relationship with Antoinette while Louis was right there. So I can kind of see it happening in the past too.
I’m not talking about cheating or open relationships, I’m saying I don’t know if the show will actually portray Lestat and Armand as having truly had a sexual relationship, because in the books they can’t have sex, and Lestat very much rejects Armand, and he already has a solid relationship with Nicki (at one point anyway)
Maybe they'd show the initial infatuation between them and translate it as a sexual relationship. because in TVL Lestat was initially very besotted by Armand based on looks, it was only later when he realised that Armand was too cray for him to handle
Yeah that’s definitely a possibility! I could see it going that way
As far as what was made clear early on, the second interview was going to memorialize Claudia and help clear up/ unspool Louis’ memories. That said, there’s something about the “special dinner” that Louis and Armand had prepared for Daniel—the dinner they were so eager to arrange for him—that tells me Jones was sending another message to the audience about the intended purpose of the second interview. Closing all loose threads, perhaps? Was Daniel being given an offer to join them or was he going to be dinner? He was told the risks about what he was doing by writing a book.
I'm not sure...but it might be the friends we made along the way
Thank you for the responses. A lot of them make sense but if I'm being honest, if these are indeed the reasons, said reasons were already apparent and revealed early on in the season. I just don't know why Jones made it seem like the answer would be revealed in episode 8 when for me, there aren't any new revelations there of why the interview is taking place. Jones made it seem like an unknown mystery which is probably why I overthought it I guess.
I mean, the interview lead to the revelation of a big truth and a cataclysmic breakup in Ep 8, so maybe it was that? Because in the end, Louis shook Daniel’s hand, thanked him, promised him payment, and set the laptop on fire, so I think for him, the interview had the result he was looking for without it ever being published. The interview process freed him, but more importantly, it filled in gaps he needed filled so he can become the whole man we saw in the end. One who can “learn to live honestly”, as he said. This might be a stretch but I teach Hamlet a lot and I always say, the question isn’t “why doesn’t he kill Claudius for most of the play?”, the real question is, why does he kill him when he does? What changed? I feel like in the same way one could ask, why does Louis thank Daniel at the end? What is he thanking him for, really? And then if you can answer that, you get a lot closer to figuring out what he wanted out of this, and what the interview was for. So the above was my answer to it, though you might come up with something else.
Truth and Reconciliation
Truth and Reconciliation
Truth and Reconciliation