The Vampire Lestat (2022) s02e05 Episode Script

This is the part of my
story back in San Francisco
where you said,
and I paraphrase,
"Give it to me."
You weren't always
a vampire, were you?
Hey, stop! No!
That's my voice, but
I don't remember it.
The boy we met in San
Francisco, he's still in there.
We can have him saying what
happened next in no time.
Would you like to join us?
You go ahead. Have your fun.
I see they've separated
you from your laptop.
Tapes are an
admitted performance.
Give it to me. I
won't waste it.
This is the premise
of our interview.
The odyssey of recollection.
I let you whine
and have your say.
I used to be real good
at running things.
Yes
What about me and you?!
Picked another one over me!
You and fucking him!
Memories just keep bubbling up.
I want this.
To remember.
Things got a little
heated. With a boy!
Things got heated with a boy.
We had it figured
out, didn't we?
- Mmm.
- What we needed from the other.
Our proper roles.
A less dictatorial approach
to the coven is
embraced by my love.
A dreamy kind of balance.
Ah, July, 1949.
- The reading room.
- Mmm.
We broke into the same library
every night that month,
hypnotized security, as one
does, flipped the lights,
laid our backs on long tables
and stared up at the ceiling.
Hot.
Iron pillars holding
up terracotta domes,
a light trick that
made the ceiling
appear higher than it was.
And why not pass
a month that way?
An effortless, eternal
life ahead of us.
Funny thing,
trying to remember what
occupied one's time
when one was ignorant of
the plotting around him.
Grab that.
Santiago had broken
into our apartm
I'm sorry, grab what?
Hmm? Oh, it's just a note to
my assistant. It's nothing.
What did you want
to grab, Daniel?
Eternal life ahead of us.
Funny thing, trying to
remember what occupied
one's time when one was ignorant
of the plotting around him.
Grab that.
It's a thing with
syntax. I see it a lot.
The impersonal pronoun "one",
"one's time", "one didn't".
Becomes the third person "him".
Stops being "I" or "me".
And that indicates what?
You're circling something.
You're getting close to
something you want distance from.
Language as a chicken
exit on a roller coaster.
Or it's daytime and a
vampire of Louis's age
is fighting the narcoleptic
pull of the sun.
Or that.
Ah. Is this Malik?
It is, sir.
- You're the guy?
- Mmm.
You're gonna chase me down
in your little Jimmy
Choo sneakers, huh?
Shall we take our business
to the living room?
- Who are they?
- They are not your concern.
Oi! Who are you?
- Friends.
- If you'll excuse us?
Your friend here is a
hot-headed young man, hmm?
Good thing to be.
Tell him to buy a Bugatti,
crash it into the guardrails.
What was that?
Armand rarely eats.
So when he does he
prefers to hunt for it.
- Does Malik know he's lunch?
- Are you recording?
No.
Malik knows if he makes it
on foot to Jumeirah
Mosque by evening,
he'll be paid enough crypto to,
well, most anything he wants.
Has anyone ever cashed in?
Often it's someone
carefully chosen
for the harm he does the world
with his chosen profession.
And when he can't find an
arms dealer dumb enough
to answer his ad?
Someone half in love
with an easeful death.
He's ditching us?
He'll have Malik begging
for it in an hour.
His methodology, it's never
violent, I assure you.
Mm-hm.
Follow up with the vampire
Armand about diet and exercise.
And once again, Louis
alone with himself.
So, everything in
its right place
before the theater burns down.
In middle school you stole
your dad's Playboy magazines.
- Sold them at recess.
- I'm sorry!
Little dirty, little deceitful
but it's enterprising.
- Is that what makes you fascinating?
- The coffin!
In high school you told a girl
you'd only do her Rest.
- if she had a paper bag over her head.
- Daniel?
- She agreed and you did it
- Daniel.
How long is your
boyfriend's lunch again?
An hour. Two at the most.
Let's change it up.
I was going over my
notes last night.
Something he said on
his initial flight
to the book shelves
caught my ear.
"This time I won't
save your life."
Armand saved you
from me in 1973.
Yeah, you bit me, I blacked out.
He ripped you off me.
Dumped me in a drug den.
- Yes.
- Five hundred years,
hundreds of thousands of kills.
How often has Armand
spared a life?
Armand could see I
was partial to you.
Armand preserves my happiness
even when I don't or can't.
He had a hunch you might
prove fruitful in later times.
Okay. Sure. Let's go with that.
Um Our first
interview It's a fog.
I mean, it's the
'70s. All a blur.
Woke up in a parking
lot in Milwaukee once.
- Don't know how I got there.
- What's the question, Daniel?
We had drinks, you paid.
We cabbed to your place
on Divisadero, you paid.
That's right.
Did we?
I like what you've, uh,
done with the place.
Getting some bail bondsman,
post-divorce vibes.
I own a few of these places.
Oh, yeah? How many?
Many.
Are you a real estate mogul?
Oh, I'm a lot of things.
Does that scare you, boy?
So you climb in it,
close the lid, and bang?
Sometimes.
Okay.
I mean, I'm into
counter-cultures.
So am I the first guy that
you've brought back here?
The fifth.
Backgammon?
Well, that's wholesome.
Old-timey fun from
the Sasanian Empire.
Oh, wow!
Cheeseburgers or chicken
chow mein, take your pick.
Oh! Oh, well
All your slickness at
the bar, all that's gone.
What do I seem like now, boy?
A veteran of many
wars. It's yours.
Cocaine's a fun boy's
drug. I'm not fun.
Alright, suit yourself.
Mm!
I prefer you like this.
All dark and real.
Maybe I could cheer you up?
What are you doing?
Fulfilling my side of
the social contract.
Do you normally interview your
subjects with your shirt off?
No.
So we didn't?
No.
I really I really
thought we did.
Do you want to now?
He sometimes lingers when
boats come into harbor.
San Francisco.
Psychedelics, disco biscuits,
angel powders and young men.
Just about every
night I lived there.
You offered something
off the menu.
Louis de Pointe du
Lac, from New Orleans.
You specialize in
low-end real estate?
I like predicting what
overlooked product
will flourish in time:
low-end property,
little-known art.
Worth is often
miscalculated because of
Hue?
Minor factors.
You can squeeze profit
out of that margin.
Did you gravitate to San
Fran as a hub for homophiles?
Paris in the 1940s,
with its permissive
laissez-aller sexual atmosphere,
was the more formative
liberation for me.
Take this seriously.
I am.
Shit!
I forget to put a tape in.
- I'm a vampire.
- Okay.
I mean, I'm really interested
to know why you believe that.
Fuck!
Are those fangs?
Hi.
Fuck, man
ae you the Zodiac killer?
Don't be afraid.
Just start the tape.
Okay.
It's on now.
Uh
First question.
You weren't always
a vampire, were you?
No. I was a 33-year-old man
when I became a vampire.
And how did it come about?
There's a simple answer to that.
I don't believe I want
to give simple answers.
I wanna tell the real story.
You smoked shaky cigarette
after shaky cigarette.
You shook more than you do now.
What I remember most, other
than that you were an alien,
five feet from me, was how
eager you were to spill.
No coaxing on my part,
no journalism per se.
You were terrified
of me, Daniel.
You were lonely, Louis.
It was gratifying to
tell you what I was,
after mingling with
humans for so long.
You weren't thrill-seeking,
you were floundering.
Tape after tape of
emotional upchuck.
Where's this leading, Daniel?
I have some outstanding
questions about 1973.
Like why you talked
to me in the first place?
- You had curiosity, swagger.
- Nah!
I would chat for a few hours,
and then who would come looking
if another drug-addled-homophile
disappeared.
The Berkeley Barb?
Malik will be dead in two hours.
You've made me an
accessory to murder
and you've had 13 sessions.
I want 20 minutes, for me.
I'd like to know, for me,
what happened between us.
Okay?
Okay.
Okay.
Then let me ask you
this, Daniel Molloy.
What's the next
thing you remember?
You eviscerating Lestat.
He had a dark pull, a
numbing effect on the senses.
- He was a handsome Satan.
- Yeah, I mean, I know the type.
When you stripped away
his superficial charms,
beneath his flimsy
gentleman's veneer
- Mmm.
- Lestat was trivial,
- vapid, vulgar.
- Mmm. Vulgar?
Maniacal, blind and
sterile and contemptible!
- Big time asshole.
- He appeared frail
and stupid to me.
A man made of dried twigs
with a thin, carping voice.
And for all that Lestat boasted
about his love of music,
he played without
an iota of feeling,
nothing, no one home,
like an automaton
plunking away at the notes
with all the emotional
acuity of a monster!
Yeah, but you were
suggestible, he lured you in.
You know? He's a faker,
but you figured that out.
By then you'd paid a biblical
price for your first love.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to
No, that was astute, boy.
You see. You were
nimble-minded, even back then.
I was a moron.
Will you, uh, do the
fang thing again?
I love that, man.
Just for reference that
was Louis de Pointe du Lac
just now making his
fangs come out.
Oh, shit!
The tape ran out. It's just
a small 30 minute thing.
If I had been an actual
journalist and, you know,
not fried on coke and
ludes, I would have realized
what a dangerously
unstable psyche I was with.
Because the next thing that
happened was, you detonated.
Oh, the sewing machine ♪
A girl's best friend ♪
I sat on that bench
in Jackson Square,
watched Claudia
disappear into the night.
I'm kinda with her. Get
off that bench, brother.
I pictured her on the platform,
boarding the train, carrying
her off into her future.
A future I would be absent from.
- Or you just pick yourself up.
- Stay behind with Lestat.
And I knew within seconds
it was the only choice,
the wrong choice.
And then what?
Then what?!
I had nothing.
Nothing but the bench
I was sitting on.
So, I stayed on it for hours.
All I had to do was
watch the sun come up.
Let it bleach my bones.
Purify the putrid soul.
Are you kidding me?! What,
you were just going to end it?
I mean, what about life?
Like, joyrides and
night swimming,
and marriage and cancer,
and all of that till
the death rattle.
I mean, we gotta carry all this
shit and you had a ticket out.
And you were just
gonna throw it away?
You've overstepped now, boy.
Listen, no. Obviously
you didn't do it,
but you were given the gift
and I've been hearing you
bitch the night away about it,
and since you use the
past tense about her,
- I figure she's
- She's what?
Well, I can see where
it's going and
And what?
And give it to me.
I won't waste it. I
think you could use me.
I think we have an
energy, you and me.
I could be your Lestat,
your Claudia, but better.
I mean, I got a little
bit of both of them in me,
plus a few things they don't.
This, after all I've told you,
is what you ask for, boy?!
Yeah, well, you don't know
what human life is like.
I mean, you've forgotten, man.
I mean, you don't understand
the meaning of your own story!
No! Hey, stop!
Suicide hotline 101.
Don't say to the person on
the other end of the line,
"Hey, why don't you
cheer the fuck up?"
- I overreacted.
- Not sure that killing me
was a totally warranted
response to my idiocy.
I took a scoop out
of your throat.
I deserved to have my ass kicked
for the sheer number of times
I said, "And then what?"
All the drugs in your blood,
it all went back into me.
- probably why I can't remember
- Cornerstone of prize-winning journalism.
And then what?
I, um
- Hmm.
- Daniel?
Daniel?
Yeah, uh
A hesitation.
I have a surprise for you.
A curveball which will seem
like less of a surprise,
and more like an ambush.
Is that our original interview?
Turns out I had a copy
saved in the cloud.
- You're a liar, Daniel.
- So are you, Louis.
Whether you know it or not.
You remember the last
nine minutes at the end?
Betty Hutton drowning out
the indecipherable
moaning and yelling.
- Yes.
- Well, um
My researcher, uh, assistant,
uh, she's a bit
of an audiophile,
and, uh, well, she
cleaned it up a bit.
Press pause on the betrayal
of it all and listen.
Louis?
That wet thud?
That's Armand saving me.
What?
- What?!
- It's morning!
I lost time.
- Things got a little heated.
- With a boy!
Things got heated with a boy.
I was at home picking
lint off the sofa!
- I said to join us!
- The night's gone.
The room's soiled and
once again, I'm here
with mop and mindlessness
to clean it up.
So the room got dirty, so
what? I'll clean it up.
No, I clean it up! You make
the mess and I clean it up!
Mark it on the calendar,
align it with Ursa Major.
Louis' tri-annual
fuck off and find me
- with apologies to follow.
- I'm sorry.
Seek comfort in the arms of
lowlifes and unfortunates,
- and broken children, fine.
- Oh, fine!
The fine that
doesn't sound like
But revealing our
nature to a reporter
you met in a bar ten hours ago?
- What if it was published?
- I was having some fun!
You don't have enough
to fear from Paris?
I was in the middle of
ending things, when you
You'd have been passed out on
the floor next to him, Louis!
Out on your feet from the
drugs you stuffed him with!
Oh, this is boring!
You're boring!
You are so boring!
- And here come the drugs.
- Colorless.
- Up the fangs, down this road.
- Flavorless.
- Dull! Dull! Dull!
- Into the heart and off with the fingers, feet.
- Dull nights, dull weeks!
- And wallowing brain.
Dull months, dull as fuck!
Suffocation by the
world's softest,
beige-est pillow!
The ten hours I
spent with that boy
were more exciting,
more fascinating,
than decades with you!
Oh, there it is!
The half-blank,
half-apocalyptic look!
But what does it
mean tonight, huh?
Does he want to lick my
boots or chop my hands off?
Is it the gremlin or
the good nurse tonight?
Huh?
Okay.
Okay, perhaps.
But am I as boring
as the blather committed
onto the ferric tapes
of your fascinating boy?
"Oh, it's so, so hard to be me."
- Picking lint off the sofa?!
- "It's so hard to kill humans."
"I can feel their
feelings as I drain them."
You sat on your hands and
put your ear to the wind.
- "Everyone I know wrongs me."
- Okay.
Okay, let's wake the boy
up and let's try you.
"I'm the vampire Armand
and my daddy vampire
groomed me into a little bitch."
- "My brother tossed himself off a roof!"
- "Vampires who murdered my daddy
- made me pretend I didn't have a dick for 240 years."
- "My sister buried me alive.
My daughter was my sister
was my throw pillow.
Well, he wouldn't
look at me kindly.
"Lestat. Lestat. Lestat.
Lestat. Lestat. Lestat. Lestat."
I talked shit about
him the whole time.
- So what?!
- The name!!
The name!
Unuttered in our
home for 23 years,
said over and over again
until it was pounding in
my brain like a hammer.
Our problems aren't about him.
And you threw her name
around just for cover,
but it always
circled back to him.
- I loved her.
- But she didn't love you.
Not like he did,
not like I have.
I know.
I know!
Yes!
I know.
Thank you for saying it.
It's all creeping back.
Paris and the, uh,
what, what, what?
But there's all
of it coming back.
There's, uh, Paris.
Paris.
Can you hear that?
Can you hear that, hm?
Can you hear her?
She's calling me.
I think that's you
running out of the room.
Hear that?
Second door slam further off?
What's that second door slam?
I don't I don't remember.
I don't remember any of this.
First door opens.
Slam.
Footsteps.
Second door slams, metal door.
- Armand calls your name.
- Louis!
He runs after you.
Metal door opens to screams.
A few more seconds,
tape runs out.
Where is Armand
following you, Louis?
It's morning.
You went out of the room.
Door opens.
Slams.
Steps.
Metal door.
Louis!
No! No, no, no! No!
I walked into the sun.
You remember that?
I'm remembering it now.
Let me ask you a really
loaded question, Louis.
And then what?
My skin burnt to
the color of pitch.
Char coming off me.
The pain?
Like a siren.
Like a noise in my body.
I walked out into the sun.
I think so.
Pieces of my life, gone.
I knew who I was
without those pieces.
Wait. Sidestep the big picture.
Get the story straight first.
The pain!
Must be exquisite.
What happened?
You drained a drug fiend.
You said the worst things
you've ever said to me.
- No. No.
- And then you ran outside.
And now you're a convalescent.
So so
What is it?
I'm sorry.
Meaningless word.
Meaningless.
The floor slants slightly north.
The boy's blood flowed that way.
We should fix that
before we sell.
He's alive?
The boy?
The fascinating boy?
He's fine.
Don't
He's just fine.
Don't!
Oh, he's fine. Your fine!
This is fine! We're all fine!
You two kept me in that
apartment for how long?
- You were there, Daniel.
- I don't remember.
I That's why I'm asking.
I can remember a
few things, like
He's just fine.
There's someone else there.
He's fine.
We're all fine!
A cellophaned
corpse on the floor.
Meaningless word.
Meaningless.
A neighbor saw you while he
was taking out the trash.
I had to chase him down.
The floor slants slightly north.
The boy's blood flowed that way.
There's a TV in the
corner near the corpse.
Some kind of sock
or shoe commercial?
There's sheets of plastic
tarp, some duct tape, bleach.
Surely, I'm next.
Armand!
I can see him walking
out of the bedroom.
I can hear you but
I can't see you.
The doorframe is blocking you.
Okay, yeah.
Armand puts the
table back and
finds the recorder under the TV.
Brings it to the table. Huh.
He ejects the tape.
Yeah. Flips it over
and
presses play.
I hear my voice
on the recorder.
the more you liked it.
A fresh young girl that
was his favorite food,
but the triumphant kill
for a sadist like Lestat
- was always a young man.
- Armand!
A young man like yourself
would have appealed
to him in particular.
You see, they represented
the greatest loss to
Lestat, because they stood
on the threshold of the
maximum possibility of life.
- Rest.
- Of course
Lestat didn't
understand this himself.
Lestat understood nothing.
Curious.
Armand stands over you.
He's commandeered your body.
Rise.
Armand.
From Polynesian Mary's.
I was with Louis.
- I can't move.
- Move your body?
Yeah. Yeah.
- I don't want
- To die?
On that item,
I think I know
something you don't.
I'm told you've lived
a fascinating life.
- I never said that.
- No, Louis did.
Leave him alone, Armand!
- Armand!
- You held Louis' attention.
He confessed his
innermost secrets to you.
I wanted drugs.
We didn't even have sex, man.
- 128 boys he's brought here.
- He said five.
And you're the first he
didn't consummate and drain.
- This is so bad!
- That makes you special.
Please, man, I'm just a shitty
little kid from Modesto.
That warrants investigation.
I could be on my
knees in a second.
Bartering with desire.
Is that what makes
you fascinating?
He didn't even
want me in the end!
I mean, look at my neck!
I'm fucking bleeding
down to my ankles!
- "Vera."
- She's a single mother.
Works in a titty bar
on Market Street.
"Kevin."
Some Vietnam vet who
lives in The Castro
with his Vietnamese refugee
boyfriend with no legs.
You think, in all these spools,
you've arrived at
some ineffable truth?
No, it's all bullshit.
An instinct to self-efface.
Is that what makes
you fascinating?
Okay, yes.
I'm good at getting angles,
getting people to open up.
I can't feel my body.
It's freaking me out.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
You're going to teach me
how to be fascinating.
Leave him be, Armand! Stop!
In middle school you stole
your dad's Playboy magazines.
Sold them at recess. A little
dirty, a little deceitful,
but it's enterprising. Is that
what makes you fascinating?
- How are you?
- In high school, you told a girl
you'd only do her if she had
a paper bag over her head.
She agreed and you did
it even as she cried.
A splinter of coldness in you?
Is that what makes
you fascinating?
My legs are starting to cramp.
Even his transgressions
are ordinary!
Louis, the pinhole's
closing back up.
Okay, it's you
who's fascinating!
You can read minds, right?
Louis thinks I'm boring.
- I have Charlie Horse, left leg.
- Do you find me boring?
No.
Do you want to hear my story?
Yes. Yes!
Yes.
My first memory.
I'm being run down
by slavers in Delhi.
My second.
Hmm.
An eager black hole.
Oh, my God.
I'll keep digging.
But I'm not
not hopeful there's
much more to you Daniel,
other than a hole.
I was in Zheleznogorsk
to interview an
operative for the KGB.
Halfway through I tried
to go to the bathroom.
He'd locked me in.
I was the one being interviewed.
Your point?
I don't know. No point.
Other than, fuck your boyfriend.
Rage is an imprecise emotion.
I'd hurt him, but I was
fragile, an invalid.
Spiro Agnew?
Daniel? Daniel?
Washington insiders
are claiming
this Saturday evening that
Vice President Spiro T. Agnew
may be close to
resigning in light of
ongoing investigations.
Federal prosecutors will
soon present evidence to
- a Baltimore Grand Jury over
- Yeah, I'm with him now.
- The Vice President allegedly
- I won't say where.
Saturday. It was Saturday.
But we met on Tuesday.
So, I was the
house pet for what?
One, two, three, four days?
- Your boyfriend
- I'm with him now.
Was in a trance of some sort.
- I won't tell you why.
- I don't know. I can't
- No.
- Lunch is almost over. Try.
- I won't say where.
- You fucking try.
- You were there.
- Go back to the chair, the TV.
Vice President Spiro
T. Agnew may be
This feet in the block
shit is bullshit.
You're in the chair,
the TV is on
- Some service stations
- Armand, can you come?!
I can't get up. It hurts!
Put me in the coffin.
Coffin.
Yeah, it's you. You
keep saying coffin.
My nose is bleeding?
- Some service stations
- Armand, can you come?!
Where are you?!
The pain is back!
It's like I'm still burning!
Armand, put me in the coffin!
Please!
- Yes.
- Thank you.
Rest.
Uhh! Oh!
consumers and
gas station owners.
I listened to the tapes.
All of them twice.
Lestat, Lestat.
Claudia, Lestat, Lestat.
And all I talked
about him was trash.
Yes, you said that. But why?
It's not exactly how you've
talked about him to me.
Did I catch you in a fantasy,
where the boy somehow fumbles
his way to publication?
Where Lestat strolls
past a bookstore,
your book displayed
in the shop window,
where he buys himself a copy,
reads your nasty embellishments
and comes chasing
after you again?
If you want the insanity back,
if you wanted escape from
this prison of empathy
I've locked you away in,
all you had to do
was ask, Louis.
A final act of service I'd
like to perform before I
I leave you to yourself.
I know where he is.
I found his voice
among the many.
No.
I told him I was with you.
Lestat.
No.
I told him you were
thinking of him again.
- Lestat.
- No!
Yes. I'm here.
He's waiting for you.
I'm with him now.
He cannot hear you.
He has injured himself.
- Louis?
- No.
This is your chance, Louis.
I am your maker's voice.
Louis?
Louis.
- Mon cher.
- Mon cher.
You wanted to say
something to me?
You wanted to say
something to me?
Why are you ill?
What's happened to you?
Why are you ill?
What's happened to you?
I love you, Louis.
Uh
Tell him I love him, Armand.
I love you, Louis.
Tell him, Armand.
Tell him!
Louis?
Louis.
Louis!
Louis!
Uh
He was my maker.
It's nothing more.
You left me for death.
Will I be on suicide watch
for the next 1,000 years?
Have I atoned for my part of
Paris?
Have I crawled an inch forward?
Or am I a reminder
of the worst of it?
I'll finish cleaning up.
Rest.
Rest.
Rest.
He said that to me too.
Rest.
Shh, shh-shh-shh.
Rest now.
A bunch of words
but it started with "rest".
"Rest" and then?
Shh, rest.
I've been calling to
you for some time.
From every bad fix,
from the unnamed malaise
you feel Sunday afternoons.
And now here I am,
and you can rest.
I don't want to rest.
I am the quiet you've
been longing for.
After all the
garishness of life,
- the jostling, the clawing
- I like my life.
The dull thrum of
desperation in you.
Will I get the fixes I need?
Will I be somebody?
Will I get the fixes
I need to be somebody?
But, Daniel,
you already know who you'll be.
An ugly duplex back in Modesto.
A job in an office with drab
carpets and flickering lights.
A woman in the mold
of your mother,
vacuuming on valium.
A genteel drinking
problem, like your father.
Your wife counting
down your thrusts.
Your children shying
away from you.
All the confidence
and hope of your youth
replaced by a seething,
boiling regret.
Until one day,
you're at a traffic light.
The light turns green,
horns honking.
You don't move.
Horns honking.
You don't move.
I have a thing
happening in the city.
I'm a bright young reporter
with a point of view.
Shh-shh-shh. A
comfortable chair
in a room that
slants to the north.
An easeful death.
Rest.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It'll feel like a bath.
Rest.
Like honey on your tongue.
It is the comfort
we all long for.
The end.
Rest.
Rest.
Come.
Come.
I'll hold you, you rest now.
Stop, Armand.
- I'm cleaning up the mess.
- It doesn't need cleaning.
After what you've put me
through here, I deserve this.
I know.
But I need this one to live.
As a testament to
our companionship.
Of its endurance.
This boy to live out the night.
Are you asking, Maitre?
No, Arun.
I'm not asking.
Daniel?
Page 484.
"Listen as though I'm the
voice of God or an angel
talking to you.
Telling you this
room doesn't matter,
this night doesn't matter.
You're not inconsequential
or a junkie.
You're a bright young
reporter with a point of view.
There are stories
that need to be told.
If things ever get bad again,
these are the words you'll
hear in your mind like a tape
playing over and over, like
a song stuck in your brain.
These words will hold
you up and carry you.
"They are your lifeline."
That's a free-baser I befriended
for a few days at the drug den.
He told me to get
my shit together
and then he Richard
Pryor'd in front of me.
Everyone scrambled but I stuck
around, watched him burn.
What's always confused
me was that
You know, he said
those words to me,
and he was already all burnt up.
Figured I'd conflated
the two events.
But I didn't.
Because it was you.
I destroyed two marriages.
I fucked up two daughters.
But I stayed a journalist.
I
I was never so lost I
couldn't hold down a job.
We, I think
gave you more drugs.
Distorted it all in your mind.
You woke up in a drug den.
Fed you a truncated version.
- He bit you.
- He bit me.
- You blacked out.
- I blacked out.
You woke up in a drug den.
I woke up in a drug den.
- He bit you.
- He bit me.
- You blacked out.
- I blacked out.
You woke up in a drug den.
Armand fogged my brain.
Redacted himself,
which accounts for
why I didn't remember.
Yes.
And what accounts
for why you didn't?
I was disfigured.
I was in pain.
But you remember right
up until you bit me.
And I remember right up
until when you bit me.
And then both our
memories cut out.
Same precise edit on two brains?
How was your lunch?
Entertaining.
He made it all the way
to the Burj Khalifa.
How's Paris?
We paused Paris.
Reminisced about San Francisco.
And?
It started with Daniel.
He asked why you
saved him in 1973.
Hmm.
I could see you
were partial to him.
I preserve your happiness
even when you don't or can't.
- I had a hunch
- I had a hunch
Daniel might prove
fruitful in later times.
You're stronger.
I can feel it.
But you got to give up
something to get something.
You fear Armand.
You should fear the other one.
Can you imagine me
without the burden of her?
Today we're turning a
spotlight on ourselves.
Are you ready?
Episode 5, "Don't Be Afraid,
Just Start the Tape,"
explains the past.
It explains the relationships,
and it explains the betrayal.
In high school, you told
a girl you'd only do her
if she had a paper bag over
her head. Louis: Daniel.
She agreed, and
you did it. Daniel.
What's in the bag?
In Season 1, we saw the
Hello original
meeting in the bar
Hi of young Molloy and
Louis in San Francisco.
Would you like to join us?
With Armand there lurking
in the background.
No.
You go ahead. Have your fun.
And now we're back
with that same trio.
Louis and Molloy have returned
to the apartment in
San Francisco, and
I like what you've, uh,
done with the place.
We see this interview play out.
Are you a real-estate mogul?
Oh, I'm a lot of things.
Re-creating 1973
was a lot of fun.
Those of us who know
something about that era
just sort of laugh at everything
from the clothes to the hair,
and every detail, every prop,
every set dressing
has to be right.
Backgammon?
Old-timey fun from
the Sasanian Empire.
This went through
many permutations,
but basically it's a beautiful
'70s backgammon board,
rebuilt to handle all the drugs,
all the the fun and games
that Louis is offering
to Molloy in the '70s.
It was actually the first
thing we shot this season.
It was like shooting
a little play, really,
'cause you're in the one
set for the whole time.
At first blush, it
is a one-off episode,
and yet it explains everything
that's happened up till then
and, more importantly,
everything that's
going to happen.
Does that scare you, boy?
It was really fun to
revisit that dynamic
with the younger Daniel.
So am I the first guy that
you brought back here?
It was amazing to
work with Luke,
having seen up
close Eric's Daniel.
Our first interview, it's a fog.
I mean, it's the
'70s, all a blur.
Unbeknownst to me when
we met in New Orleans,
before we even started
shooting anything,
I didn't realize that
he was watching me
and planning a strategy on
how to play the younger me.
Some of the stuff
that Luke was doing,
I was like, "That's Eric.
That is That's Eric."
I'm a vampire.
Okay. I mean, I'm
really interested
to know why you,
uh, believe that.
Even when they
first meet in '73,
Louis has a real
fondness for Daniel.
Are those fangs?
He likes him. He's cool. Hi.
That's why Daniel lived
as long as he did.
First question.
You weren't always
a vampire, were you?
We have these two
guys in Dubai who,
with the help of the Talamasca,
they start trying to piece
together what happened.
Armand: We're all fine.
You don't know what
human life is like.
I mean, you've forgotten, man.
I mean, you don't understand
the meaning of your own story.
Bogosian: It's intense.
It's intense for me.
Having watched it,
it then informs everything that
I am doing in later scenes.
I have a surprise for
you, kind of a curveball,
which will seem like
less of a surprise
and more like a ambush.
Louis?
That's Armand saving me.
The relationship
between Armand and Louis
was very up and down.
Louis, as much as
he wants to say
that this relationship
cured him of his malaise
The 10 hours I
spent with that boy,
were more exciting,
more fascinating
than decades with you.
Clearly has all
kinds of problems.
Many of the same issues he
had when he was with Lestat
have resurfaced.
Lestat, Lestat, Lestat,
Lestat, Lestat
Armand is always conniving.
He's always working.
And I think that's
also the tragedy of him
is that he can't ever
relax with the truth.
I'm remembering it now.
It's kind of the biggest
betrayal, isn't it?
When you choose to spend
your life with somebody,
you accept each other.
I can't think of a bigger
betrayal than lying
to that person in such
a significant way,
to the extent where you
would rewrite their history.
- Rest.
- Rest.
He said that to me, too.
It makes me angry now.
Armand is so wrong for that.
Don't.
He's just fine.
Don't. Oh, he's fine.
You're fine. This is fine.
We're all fine.
Stop, Armand.
We both discover the
depths of duplicity
that Armand has gone to and
what he's done to each of us.
Up to this point,
the Molloy/Louis
dynamic is adversarial.
It is really this
kind of amazing moment
of connection between
the two of them.
Like a song stuck
in your brain,
these words will hold
you up and carry you.
Jacob has said it. Louis
doesn't have any friends.
They are your lifeline.
And Daniel doesn't
have any friends.
So if they have any
any friends at all,
maybe it's each other.
There's an odd couple for you.