The Vampire Lestat (2022) s03e05 Episode Script
New York
1
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"The Vampire Lestat: After Dark"
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Previously on
"The Vampire Lestat"
Shall we do it?
Shall we scorch
the mortal world?
Decimate it.
Together, for all eternity.
Claudia. I look like her.
You're the only one
watching me like I'm Netflix.
In a million guesses,
you would not guess.
What happened to her?
You could have a different life.
What now, Daddy Lou?
-What about Greece?
-Hot springs.
-Those Who Must Be Kept.
-What was that?
I have the blood
of Akasha in me.
Sorry. What the fuck is Akasha?
Is there an evil older than you?
-Your maker Marius.
-My maker is dead.
I've told you that already.
Was Dubai bullshit?
Me breaking you down.
You knew everything
the whole time.
Loving Louis
doesn't shut it off.
It wasn't my love for Louis.
-Rest.
-Rest.
But it was love.
-You've been reaching them.
-Yes.
They are lost
and tired of enduring.
Your music speaks to them.
When's he going
to make an album?
When we are ready!
You are listening
to "The Failures,".
Album 41, Side B.
My first coffin had the likeness
of my maker carved into its lid,
indecipherable Latin
etched around the rim
and, as I was an orphan vampire,
my sleep within troubled.
Again.
I spent half of two decades
in the silken embrace
of a chestnut casket,
purchased for
my French Quarter town home,
before it was hurled
off a balcony
during one of Mr. du Lac's
redirected moods.
Again.
What exactly are we going for
here on, uh, take 17?
We are going for "again."
OK.
I have slumbered
in a variety of sarcophagi
over the centuries.
But if I had to choose
a favorite,
it would be
the 7,000-square-foot model
I endured in the fall of 2025,
while I recorded
my posthumously-produced album
that Pitchfork would trash
and for which the world shouts
in feeble attempts
to explain away
clearly attributable
devastation,
"J'accuse."
But I, Amel, digress.
Again.
Take 28.
The deranged Wegmans
produce manager, Beau Riddley,
provided me
the Frenchest of exits.
And the good fortune
of a second mass shooting
with a higher body count
occurring that same night
made the faking of my death
-Sorry. Sorry.
-All the easier.
-Again.
-Yeah.
Take 46.
An amnesia fund was created.
And annual payments
in perpetuity
were issued to Jarda Klapek,
a coroner,
an obituary writer for
the Czech broadsheet "Právo,".
Dee, Daniel, Fareed,
and two dozen
other collaborators,
including Christine Claire,
who bought a retirement villa
and wallpapered
her basement sex dungeon
with billable hour invoices.
Again.
Take 61.
Fuck!
I would leave this coffin
only once in four months.
I would butcher the band
for bloom and marbling,
fleece the muses
of their animus,
and stop at nothing
until an album
worthy of the long, lurid life
of Lestat de Lioncourt
burned into elegiac audio formats.
And when that was achieved,
I would perform it once live
in that now-infamous concert.
And, well
We will come to that later.
But like Elvis or Andy Kaufman,
rumors swirled of my survival.
So Sofia Gabriella
de Lioncourt di Vece
took over for Christine
and whittled down my entourage
to the essentials, which was her
and the Vampire Sam Barclay,
whom she hired as a producer
for three reasons.
One, he had faked his death
once before,
so he could be trusted
to maintain the rite.
Two, he knew the board
well enough
from his own recordings.
"Big Bad Wolf," vocals,
take one.
And three, she knew I hated him
for his part in Paris.
And that would keep me lively.
Hoo!
I'm the big bad wolf ♪
Badass!
-Nice.
-And that's take one.
Fabulous.
Moving on.
So straighten your tie,
inflate your lips,
be it facial or labial.
We are going to trace
my self-taught musicianship
back to its weird
and haunting origins.
That's right.
I am finally going to talk
about the Queen.
I'm the little killer ♪
I'm the lonely one ♪
I'm the chill
creeping up your spine ♪
Telling you to run ♪
I'm a hanging shadow ♪
I'm a lost love ♪
I'm the past and the future ♪
The last of the sutures,
the cooing dove ♪
We're the rock and rollers ♪
We're the good time ♪
We're the heart
pumping blood ♪
We're the face in the mud ♪
We're this stupid rhyme
Bang, bang - Bang, bang
Bang, bang, bang, bang,
bang, bang ♪
All fall down ♪
Burn the ground ♪
All fall down ♪
Burn the
Bang, bang - Bang, bang ♪
Bang, bang - Bang, bang ♪
Bang, bang, bang, bang,
bang, bang ♪
Again.
Hmm.
Your drum sounds like a drum.
That's 'cause it's a drum.
Mm-mm.
No.
The drums can't sound
like a drum.
OK.
What do you want it
to sound like, then?
It has to sound
like death approaching.
-Oh, my God.
-Like life emerging.
Like yeah, cool,
like life and death.
-Death, then life.
-OK.
A mewling babe extracted
from a mother's womb.
OK.
I, uh I don't play
metaphorical drums.
Try.
I can do faster,
or harder, or shuffle,
fill, flam, buzz roll.
Like, a drum is a drum.
A stick is a stick.
I don't know what to tell you.
It's 'cause she's not a vampire.
It's because
her deepest wound is a man
walking away mid-ceremony.
Wow. Cool.
Thank you, Yoko Mirren.
Guests at my deathbed,
we are making an album
about my life,
which has been
a three-century train wreck.
-Your drums are my heart.
-Oh.
Your guitar is my hunger.
Your bass, the night terrors
that follow me to coffin.
What's my guitar?
Yes, please interrupt
my flow, Larry.
Your guitar
is my frailty.
Keep coloring inside the lines
as you play,
and I'll knot a tempo mark
to your life jacket.
Lar. Lar. Come on.
He didn't mean it.
We are here
to pull the plug, hmm?
Have some reverence.
Kill me savagely.
Yep. Sure.
Sam, let's jump
to something else.
-TC's not ready.
-I'm fi I
Can I hear "When I Call Out
Your Name," vocal 12?
Copy that.
Blue eyes
Eyes of blue ♪
Blue eyes ♪
Eyes of blue
Blue as the sea,
tinctures of violet,
blond hair, blue eyes,
eyes so blue, blue as the sea.
Fished him from the wilds
of a paup pauper's grave.
Oh, loves his mother.
Loves, loves her.
Wanted to take care of her,
as you said.
Well, he was there.
She was not.
Where am I?
Thank you for pulling me
from the Earth.
Thank you for saving me
from starvation.
Thank you
for the warm blood shared.
Yes, you're welcome.
She told me where you were,
and there you were,
and there I was.
I brought you back, and
Here we are.
Who are you?
I am Marius de Romanus.
I am the Keeper.
Oh, was the Keeper.
Now you are the Keeper.
Marius?
Oh, an echo.
Armand said
that you were destroyed.
Well, he was wrong.
Rotten boy.
She likes music.
Come.
Touch.
They are mother and father
to all of us.
And they must be kept.
This one.
Akasha.
The stone, it's alive?
Very alive.
Very much alive.
That's a very flattering offer.
Sadly, we were only planning
to do one in memoriam concert.
OK.
-Nice to talk.
-Oh, yeah, oh, yeah,
Oh, yeah ♪
Florence Welch wants
The Vampire Lestat
to open for her.
But he is 2 meters deep
in Ostrava.
Well, she wants them,
after the album comes out.
Sorry. Sorry.
Can we do that again?
Can I get a little bit more,
uh, vocal in my ears, please?
In the ear, down the throat,
past the colon.
Play it from your groin.
Larry, please, stop thinking
about Alex eating burgers
and enjoying Glenlivet again.
More singer, Sam.
-Hold the head shrinking.
-From the top.
Mama, need a ravenous queen ♪
So you're gonna
rerecord his parts, then.
Bury the rest
behind the other three.
That's a deep grave.
I need an architect,
feel the desert inside ♪
Pretend I'm Armand
or the Talamasca.
Be the spineless mole once more.
You dig a hole in the burrow
for Larry's guitar.
This is the job, Sam.
Fill the space
with worldly things.
Go into the noise
and dust of the city,
and bring back presents
of the present.
This is the job.
I don't want a job. I wanna die.
But you didn't die.
80 years face down
with the seaman you killed,
long enough to learn
the depths of despair.
Do the job.
Learn to endure
the depths of living.
Find yourself, Lestat,
as I have lost myself.
"Bring me Lestat,
son of Magnus."
From the tree of us,
she chose you.
A great honor.
She likes music.
She loves music.
I don't know how to play.
Recall your fledgling.
Start with mimicry.
-I
-Don't interrupt.
Keep your hunts short
a quick sip of blood,
the fast-fading warmth
of the kill,
then back to them.
-Her.
-What happened to him?
Interruption!
If you must bring one back,
burn them here.
Use the ashes
to keep her thriving.
And no blood.
Oh, blood overwhelms.
Just the ash.
Play her music.
His name was Enkil.
-How did
-We burn in the sun, yes?
Do you remember a night
when your body burned
under the Moon?
Yes.
Uh
yes, in Denmark, 1802.
December 19, 1802.
Finished the job
transporting them
from one crypt to another.
Two bottles of ginger flower gin
in the veins
of a celebratory meal.
I woke up next to her,
my body afire.
Hadn't finished the job.
Left him above in the sun.
My mother and I
were countryside.
We ran ourselves into a bog.
Oh.
Took us months to recover.
Bogs. Bogs are rare.
And now you know
why there are so few of us.
I set us back ages.
We are all connected
through her.
She is she is the seed.
Mm. Mm.
And if she burns,
oh, we all burn.
And you are her Keeper.
I don't like being alone.
I slip, trip,
stumble, fumble in small ways.
I am not worthy of this job.
And if I do not
ugh leave now,
the small becomes big,
and the big becomes the end,
and the end will burn
the tree of us.
You are
Worthy.
Let her tell you that
herself, huh?
It will take time, Lestat.
She is not on our clock.
To me, not a word for 22 years
when I first took the job.
23.
You are listening
to "The Failures,".
Album 46, Side A.
It's called RevPAR, short for
Revenue Per Available Room.
It's been trending down,
especially
in high-end luxury property.
Probably expanded too fast.
But there's panic now,
so I jumped on it.
I got two more
one in Montreal, one in Boston.
So a place for us?
Yeah, and them.
There's not enough of, uh, us
to make it profitable.
But they can come watch
if they want.
Yeah.
If you don't wanna be watched,
+then there's a private room
in the back.
Different menu in the back room.
Little drinks.
I missed you, brother.
I missed you too, sis.
Both of you.
I wish we could stay longer,
but you know Claudia,
always go, go, go.
Uh, got in something deep
last night.
-Mm.
-Didn't clean good, so
Oh?
What happened last night?
We went to the Russian
Vodka Room for karaoke,
when the understudies
from "Moulin Rouge!" walked in.
Something about theater kids
makes me moody.
Mm.
We pickled Satine,
took her downtown
to the Cubbyhole,
sucked her dry
in the Gansevoort,
and shoved her down
the laundry chute.
She's good.
I actually played Satine
on tour two years ago.
-No way.
-Yeah.
It was really fun.
So we are here for two nights.
And then
I think
the whole thing's a fake.
Total Milli Vanilli situation.
It's Larry
who wrote all their songs.
I was a Jarda-phile.
We knew that was his real name.
When I heard him sing,
it just hit me hard.
I'm not saying it's
a good thing the guy got shot,
but I don't think
he was even legally allowed
to be here anyway.
I got to go to dinner
with him once
at a White Castle
after the Hartford show.
He was
He was so fucking hot.
State your name for the camera.
No names.
OK, random Manhattanite,
what do you make
of Lestat's exit?
He faked us, high and dry
when we needed him most.
All cheap and easy nonfiction
ends in death.
Revolutions do not require
a soundtrack.
They only need numbers.
-And are you making more?
-Just one.
I had a fang in his neck,
but I was interrupted.
-Had to let him go.
-Sure. Happens.
I tracked him down,
planned to finish the work.
But as I followed him,
I found him
fascinating.
I'd sit at the foot of his bed
in derelict motel rooms
both: As he slept off a fix.
And gradually,
over the next 52 years
I was interceding on his behalf.
And when he blacked out
under an overpass
-OK. Jesus.
-A junkie about to roll
over him in an RV,
a wife, Alice, at home,
pregnant at the time
Where the fuck are you, Dad?
52 years?
I wanted to tell you
in Philadelphia,
but I felt you were not
in a space to receive it.
That was my gag reflex
at, "I'm in love with you."
Prove it.
February 11, 1990, a reading
at Amherst, Massachusetts.
Four students attend,
three are there
for extra credit,
one is there for you to use,
which you do, aggressively,
in your rental car in the garage
of your Northampton hotel.
I make sure
the boy makes it home
and forgets the event.
May 15, 2002, you sneak away
from your book research
to attend
your daughter's graduation
at Rice University.
She didn't ask you to come
and mouths the words "fuck off"
when she sees you approach.
You respect her wishes
and drive away in a daze.
But I guide you
to the Rothko Chapel,
where inside,
you unburden yourself
and weep uncontrollably.
The attending guard asks you
to step outside
But he started coughing.
But I supply him a coughing fit.
And you mourn
your daughter's hatred
for the next 30 minutes
in peace.
August 5, 2025,
I don't plan to say "love"
until I make profound amends
for the harm I've caused you.
Yeah, sure. It's a timing issue.
52 years, I've watched you
where you went, what you did,
watching your sorrow,
your modulating sexuality.
And where was Louis
at that time?
At home, waiting to hear
the minute details
when I got back.
-No.
-Yes.
You sainted him gray
in your book,
but he's calculating
to the core,
methodically cruel.
And here you are again, wearing
the same set of horse blinders
with Lestat.
I signed a contract.
I'm finishing a job.
He casts you out,
and still you carry his water.
Let me help you finish that job.
Yeah?
Love between vampires
can be one thing,
or it can be countless things.
-I will never love
-Like Lestat and Sofia.
I want to be your maker.
Finish the thought, Armand.
I want to give you
half your life back.
Lestat and Sofia.
Help you walk in the sun.
I knew her as Gabriella.
She's Lestat's mother.
What?
Lestat lays with his mother.
Did you say walk in the sun?
This ain't
no goddamn crime of passion ♪
all: Make more
Make more ♪
Why did you leave me?
Two months ago?
-No.
-In New Orleans?
Both times?
I was happy you left,
both times.
By the river
when you were three?
And you
Picked up
the 9,000th stick that day,
and I kept having to say,
"Oh, what does that stick do?"
You were a terrible mother.
I was.
In Spain?
I didn't need you anymore.
You don't need around you
what does not need you anymore.
-Breaks the circle.
-Yeah!
Oh. Great. Rad. That was cool.
OK, let's do another.
You need me now?
I do.
All: Make more, make more ♪
Make more, make more ♪
Make more ♪
Make more ♪
-Oh. Rad.
-That sounds awesome.
Does this satisfy the request?
What what
what does it mean, "make more"?
Like, make more what?
I don't recall.
Sounded cool.
Elbowed my way along
the Monastiraki.
There's a new shop, jewelry
in the style of the Byzantium
and plates embossed
with the head of Zeus.
It's all in very poor taste.
But then the colonialists
all have very poor taste,
so why not feed it back to them?
The city is modernizing
with such velocity
crude houses, narrow streets,
dead monuments,
and then electric trams.
And this. I found this.
A lever-action ice cream disher.
For ice cream.
The merchant called it a scoop.
A scoop!
Scoop. Scoop.
Tickles the back of the throat
when you say it.
It's like an owl
daydreaming he's a kingfisher.
One final treasure.
The young man
with the bouzouki out again,
a new one added
to his usual repertoire.
And
And the G
-Scoo
-Something like that.
Scoo
"Puh."
You have to put the "puh."
"Puh."
Scoop.
So is this
what time works on us?
Will I bloodlessly bloom
into a husk?
If you were the first,
then who made you?
Why do we exist?
Why do we endure at all?
And why did she leave me?
Am I evil?
Is my evil sanctioned
by nature
Or divine error?
Where is God?
Who dies
and who stays alive? ♪
Again, same place.
One, two, three, four!
Big boss gets to have fun ♪
-39.8.83.
-If you're a boo-boo ♪
Then he doesn't want you
Ate his dick.
-Behind my back.
-Oh, don't you dare ♪
Write down his history
112.145.
If you know him then ♪
You won't know much more
179.211.
Only the big boss
gets to decide ♪
312.406.
Who dies and who stays alive ♪
Oh, you're not gonna die
'cause you're already dead.
It's a great idea.
Is this a good idea?
-Are we ready?
-Are we ready? Are we ready?
Bad idea. Ready.
Who dies and who stays alive ♪
Again!
Who dies and who stays alive ♪
Nope. Nope.
Who stays alive ♪
Oh, shit!
-The fucking bowl!
-Moving on.
You are listening
to "The Failures,".
Album 49, Side B.
So how's it work, you and him?
How's it work?
Well, yeah, with Lemuel.
Uh, taking it slow.
Mm. Holding hands for now.
Yeah.
Keeping it loose.
Um, sorry.
You don't you don't have
to do the accent.
Oh.
Yeah.
It's it's hard,
the a so maybe just
Use my own voice.
-Yeah.
-Safe.
-Start again?
-Yeah.
What's it like with Lemuel?
Simple things.
Like, he asks me how I'm doing.
-And I say, I'm good.
-Hmm.
And I ask him how he's doing,
and he says, I'm hungry,
or, "Put down that iPad
and give me some attention."
He doesn't count time
like it's a badge.
I go nights
I don't know where he is.
But I like it that way.
Yeah.
Taking it slow.
Mm.
What you
what you writing in there?
Uh, yeah, just this and this.
All right, you two,
don't make me call the police.
Take the boat back to the dock.
We're gonna pretend
this never
You doing that to him?
Yeah.
Do it to me.
-Nah.
-Do it.
Let's just get outta no.
Come on, make me a stone.
What did you
Let's just, uh, get outta here.
I can't hold him for too long.
Here they come, Nicky.
The oboe. The clarinet.
The announcement. The reprise.
The harmonic shift.
Oh, foreshadowing!
Yes, Enkil, yes.
Move to the subdominant,
but not yet.
Not yet. Not yet, Madame.
Déficit,
you would have loved it.
Competing strings, Father Mags.
The counterpoint
It's like, uh,
trembling waterfalls.
It's like hungry peasants
itching for a fight!
What do you think, Marius?
Oh, you're still on holiday?
I blame you, Armand,
rotten guest.
Oh!
No voices.
No voices.
Perhaps if he'd finished
the goddamn symphony,
he might have brought the choir
in the final movement.
But, um, it's a signature blend
of Ottoman bicycle enthusiast
and Swedish barrel maker
from Malmo
who thought the Acropolis
looked drab.
Then it became
that kind of party, Enkil.
You like to watch?
Well, don't look now.
But Magnus,
his hand is wandering
down my older brother's pants.
Are you affronted
by these intimacies, Enkil?
My hand on your Eve
on the eve of a great century.
Splash of red for the new year.
You would have been exquisite
in your years.
They split Number 8
down the middle.
Practical limitations cutting
through its Romantic gestures.
You're supposed
to watch the music, Armand.
I don't know
why I invite you, worthless.
Oh, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no.
I scratched it.
I scratched it!
Stupid!
I ruined your party.
Huh.
It's 1900.
We made it.
Come.
Come.
Come
to me.
What are we doing? ♪
Why are we here?
Is it for nothing?
Don't be cavalier
Is it obsession,
a deep lover's spell? ♪
I'm thinkin' of you now
How is it that
that that they live
with such harmony, the b
Billions of stars.
How is it that they live
in such harmony,
the billions of stars,
when most men can barely go
a minute
without declaring war
in their own minds?
Something wrong, Lestat?
No.
Yes.
Thomas Aquinas.
Why did you take me
to the Witches' Place?
What?
I was asking Sofia.
She's taking a call, I think.
-Check your phone.
-What?
Your phone. It's
B-buzzing.
Again, same place?
Again, same place?
Ready?
No.
No. Tune it down a whole step.
What?
Tune it down a whole step,
A minor.
All right, let me, uh
let me work that out.
Ugh, beards to the floor
waiting for you
to work it out, Larry!
You tune it down a whole step!
Everyone tune it down
a whole step.
Lay it down without me, Sam.
For our ears, not theirs.
He's an asshole.
Thank you.
And you suck.
I suck. Everyone sucks.
Singer sucks.
Alive ♪
Is this messing you up?
I can stop. I can totally stop.
Played these parts
a million times, man.
I'm just
got the yips.
I feel like I'm back in select
letting in grapefruits.
You were a terrible goalie.
I was not good.
But you're a total shredder
with an axe.
And look,
everything we've talked about.
We're finally making an album
that people might actually hear.
And it's, like
it's really good.
-It's good, yeah?
-Yeah.
Put your mitts on, one take,
and then rest.
And then we played out scenes
as if she had lived
was alive.
But now it's all blurred.
I called her Claudia.
But she's herself too now,
I think.
And I know it's not real.
But is it?
Is it her, come back to me?
I can't tell.
And whole nights go by where
I don't wanna be able to tell.
And I just, um
Is it her?
Can you go in there
and tell me if it's her?
I was shot in the streets,
and you didn't call.
I'm a selfish bastard.
Anybody spends five minutes
with me, they know that.
I'm I knew you were
gonna bring it up.
Don't have an answer for it.
I'm in the middle of recording
my fucking
Yes.
OK.
Chicken and waffle special.
I wouldn't order it,
but I gotta say it.
Get you a water?
You.
The internet says you're dead.
Huh.
Then I must be.
You know
he has been there for an hour.
Stop performing.
What does he order
when he comes here?
I bring him
anything about to go bad,
what the cook's pushing.
Then I'll have that.
I had some debts to pay off.
So it's, like, beneficial,
going in both
And if he's paying you what
I imagine he's paying you,
why do you still work here?
Well, if things with us
get too freaky,
I just pick up a shift or two
to get some real real
back into my life.
He's bringing you in this now?
That's his next thing, is it?
We gonna be a family,
Uncle Les?
Find someone else to swindle.
He's the one coming around here
doing all this with me.
I just wait
for the bell to ring,
or the blower to buzz,
or the hundred texts a day.
You're hurting him.
Oh. I'm hurting Louis?
I look like her.
I look just like her, don't I?
Your gait suggests a hip injury
that she never suffered.
And she had a heart murmur.
You don't.
But I look like her.
It's not her.
It's not anything like her.
The eyes.
Yeah, the eyes.
No spark, right?
Don't see this person again.
And next time someone tries
to murder me,
pick up the phone.
The day you were born
I was shakin' like a leaf ♪
On an old oak tree ♪
Then you stayed like a thorn ♪
Red roses rainin' down
till they ♪
Flooded me ♪
Even when we parted ways ♪
You never turned,
never turned your gaze ♪
And I can still,
I can still hear you say ♪
Don't break that stare ♪
I'm burnin'
in your mirror tonight ♪
No, don't you dare
call it yearning ♪
It's the fear that I'm right ♪
Don't you try to forget ♪
All the things you regret ♪
In those stained glass ♪
Stained glass ♪
Eyes ♪
Yeah ♪
Had our fun, like a child
Just a couple of knives ♪
Cutting through 20 years ♪
No one ever gets
to keep my smile ♪
But you can't peel it off me ♪
Like one of your souvenirs ♪
Even when we parted ways ♪
You never turned,
never turned your gaze ♪
I can still,
I can still hear you say ♪
Don't break that stare ♪
I'm burnin'
in your mirror tonight ♪
No, don't you dare
call it yearning ♪
It's the fear that I'm right ♪
Don't you try to forget
All the things you regret ♪
Like the ashes you spread ♪
Till you had nothing left ♪
Of those stained glass ♪
Stained glass
Eyes ♪
Hey ♪
This this doesn't sound
like us.
How's it fit with "Long Face"?
It doesn't.
"Long Face" is not
going on the album.
But it's
it's our calling card.
And if that's the new sound,
then neither is
"Why Do I Have To Feel,"
or "Big Bad Wolf," or
and you're just gonna, what,
rerecord
The entire album.
Instruments played
like metaphors.
Well, yeah, it's a beauty.
-So
-Um, you shouldn't fire them.
That would be a a mistake.
They can do it.
But I can't.
So, um, thank you for the ride.
Best two years of my life.
And, uh, I quit.
Larry.
So we're just
we're just gonna
we're just gonna record
the whole album again.
Not you.
-It's for our ears.
-Yeah? Is it?
You need to be a vampire
to hear it, TC.
Yeah.
You need the blood.
Read our minds.
No.
-We want it.
-Mm-hmm.
No, I've come
to enjoy you all very much,
but let me tell you
something about this blood.
Let me save you from myself.
I was on the shores of Spain
when my great love left me.
She, she, she, it is she
I let myself be buried
in a stranger's grave,
until a queen took pity
and summoned me to service.
It is often she.
And in the old songs
and in the long nights,
she holds him
in the softness of her arms,
in her arms that are open,
in her arms that are wide,
that are open, that are always,
that must always be open.
And in the old ways
and in the old laws,
this was arranged.
All this was arranged.
-And who arranged it? Did Amel?
-What is this?
What have you done?
You drank of her!
She drank of me. I drank of her.
And that is what it means
to be loved.
The blood is hot.
The blood is hot.
My mother, I'm back.
It is Amel. It is always Amel.
-It is often she
-You drank the blood!
She said drink! And I drank!
And I have been up here
for three days!
Into the land
where the dead are kept,
where the dead are worshipped.
She was on the slab
for centuries!
It will take me years
to get her back on it!
And why the days without number?
And what am I for?
-What is this for?
-Lie down. Lie down.
And what should Amel do
with it if not to answer?
Stairs!
The stairs!
My mother.
And why are they
throwing stones?
And why is she
curled on the ground?
-And why is it wound
-The blood.
It already owns you.
May madness or sunlight
relieve you of the burden.
And in my eyes is desire,
and why is it desire?
-She told me to drink.
-Go!
And why does he tell her
what God has said?
And why Amel in their mouths?
And why must my voice be smooth?
And why must I sing so low?
And why is she kept?
Why must she be kept?
And why in this place
must she be kept?
And what does it mean
if you are not asked?
And what does it mean
if you are not answered?
Fail, fail, fail.
And what is it to see
and to know, but to be told
-Unworthy.
-You have not seen.
You have not known.
And why is her tongue cut out?
And why is her death prolonged?
-And when will it stop?
-Unworthy!
-And who will stop it?
-Unworthy!
And why must they, must we,
must I, must he, must they,
as the millennia, unfold?
Why the girl curled?
Why her eyes lowered?
Why on the side of the road?
Why limp in the straw?
I am the girl!
I am the god!
I am the voice! I am the song!
I am the night!
And I can answer!
I can arrange it!
I can say rise,
and I can say speak!
And I am her! And I am she!
And I, I, I, I am
the answer!
This is the metal sun
inside my veins.
This is the hell I unleash
on all those near me.
It cannot be restrained
in the moment
or tamed over time.
It will drag you into depravity
and reward you with regret.
So follow Larry
to a better life.
We're finishing the album.
We're a fucking band.
Make more.
Larry?
Larry Slater?
Lead guitar, TVL?
-Um, yeah.
-Oh, my God.
Oh, my God, hey, I I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry
about what happened to him.
Oh, yeah.
I play those videos
all the time.
The concert stuff,
not the shooting.
I mean, uh so what
so what are you doing
in New York with your guitar?
Uh, I can't really say.
Oh, my fucking God,
it's true, isn't it?
You guys are making the album.
I saw it online.
You've got his vocals.
And I just think
it's so amazing
And I think it's wonderful
because the world really needs
to hear how beautiful he was,
you know what I mean, and
Actually, I'm not
in the band anymore.
I don't even know
if there is a band anymore.
They're, like,
laying down a record.
And I'm just, like,
fucking tired.
-So
-Oh.
Oh, my God, I'm sor
I'm sorry.
You do look tired.
I'll, uh, leave you alone.
A terrible goalie,
but a total shredder
with an axe.
I'm sorry, what?
She's right. You do look tired.
You should probably
get some rest.
Do I know you?
Rest?
Rest.
Rest.
No!
Oh, my God!
Oh, my God, he jumped!
Oh, my God!
Somebody help him!
Oh, no!
Listen to tracks
from "The Vampire Lestat"
wherever you stream music.
Taylor and Travis.
Have you set that date yet?
Be damaged, be cabbage ♪
When the curtains drive
you back ♪
You reached out
to the worst kind of witch.
She is not like the rest.
Armand's in town.
He's going to try
to disrupt things.
50,000 of us
out in the woods together.
What could go wrong?
Guests at my deathbed,
we are making an album
about my life,
which has been a three century
train wreck.
We are here to pull the plug.
Have some reverence.
Kill me savagely.
I would leave this coffin
only once in four months.
I would butcher the band
for bloom and marbling
and stop at nothing until
an album worthy of the long,
lurid life
of Lestat de Lioncourt
burned into elegiac
audio formats.
So episode five,
they're recording the album.
"Big Bad Wolf",
vocals, take one.
His mother comes back to him
and says,
"Hey, why don't you be
this other thing?"
She needs him to create a song
that will speak
to all the vampires lurking
in all the shadows of the world.
And so he makes the album
to be this thing for her.
But of course, he's a really
fastidious and obsessive artist,
so he can't really help but
take complete control over it
and get lost
in the creative process.
But throughout that process,
he's niggled by these memories
that he can't quite
reconcile with.
Why did she take me to the
burning of these teenage girls
when I was a child?
Why did she touch me
in those inappropriate places
when I was, you know, wounded?
You were a terrible mother.
I was.
In the moment,
they definitely do find it hard
to stop their
complicated relationship.
You need me now.
I do.
I missed you, brother.
I missed you too, sis.
Both of you.
This show is really funny.
Intentionally so.
I wish we could stay longer.
But you know Claudia,
always go, go, go.
There's lots of very dark humor,
but also kind of like silly,
fun humor.
And Off Off Broadway Madeline
is definitely very funny.
Took a downtown tootsie
cubbyhole, sucked it dry,
and shoved it
down the laundry chute.
She's good.
Beautifully played,
but it's also very twisted.
It was so weird, but, like,
so comedically written
that it was hard
to not have fun with it.
Something about theater kids
makes me moody.
And I think Louis being
on the other side of the table
just made it that bit weirder.
I think at one point I was
literally sitting in my chair,
like, and I was off camera, and
I was like sitting there like
make it stop.
I know Jacob. It was very
I think it was
uncomfortable for everybody
because obviously we know
the circumstance behind it.
But for Regina, it's just
another day on the job.
Holding hands for now.
Um, sorry.
You don't have to do the accent.
-Oh, did you
-Let's just get out of here.
Can you go in there
and tell me if it's her?
I was shot in the streets.
And you didn't call.
Selfish bastard.
There's a lot of things
that keep haunting Lestat.
And then he meets Regina.
I look like her.
I look just like her, don't I?
And that instigates
a change in his music.
The day you were born ♪
I was shaking like a leaf ♪
On an old oak tree ♪
That means he comes back,
and he writes a song about her
that is more poppy and more
truthful and more pared back
and more honest
than he's ever done before.
And he presents that to the band
and said,
"I think this is the sound.
I think this is what
we're doing now."
So follow Larry
to a better life.
We're finishing the album.
He no longer is trying
to present himself,
and he's just being himself
with his music.
Don't break that stare,
I'm burning ♪
In your mirror tonight ♪
No, don't you dare call it
yearning ♪
It's the fear that I'm right ♪
Don't you try to forget ♪
All the things you regret ♪
Like the ashes you spread ♪
'Til you have nothing left ♪
Of those Stained Glass ♪
I think if he wrote
"Stained Glass Eyes"
at the very start of the tour
and he played it to himself,
I don't think he
would have taken it seriously,
but I think
he's had to get to this point
where he could write
something very emotional
and very raw to realize
that his music is a personal
conduit of his expression
as an individual.
And you're just
going to, what? Re-record?
The entire album.
Instruments played
like metaphors.
We're about to shoot Akasha,
and in fact, our very last day.
And so high anticipation
of just looking at her
as Akasha
and how she's going to play it.
We're rolling
Whenever you're ready.
It's a wonderful set.
It's kind of like
this underground storage unit
with all of these pieces
of history
that Marius has collected to try
and keep her entertained.
It's been very fun
to film in as a set,
and it's been a remarkable
setting for the introduction
of Akasha to the series.
It's alive, very alive.
This season,
played by Sheila Atim,
who is an extraordinary actor.
She is the seed,
and you are her keeper.
Marius is there trying
to keep her controlled,
and Lestat being Lestat,
is much more about, like,
let's push and see what happens.
He's also very lonely.
A lever action ice cream disher.
Anne Rice has
Akasha awoken by Lestat.
But we actually have Lestat stay
within her crypt for,
you know, 10 years.
In the book, he's there for
a couple of days school.
He puts on concerts for her.
Where is God?
And she wakes up.
And then he's got the blood
of Akasha in him.
And then the way
that that manifests in him
is obviously he's like flying,
and I was up on that rig.
Hold him there.
But it gives you
some articulation.
Yeah. Great. Okay.
It was a really fun thing
to do, actually.
That's so real. Oh, my God.
I told you, man.
'Cause I was upside down,
and, you know, I was
talking to Ron, who's like,
"What does it feel like
to have the blood of Akasha,
you know, cursing through you?"
So we were kind of like
doing these jolting movements.
And then they dropped me,
which was like a proper
10-foot free fall.
Wow. That's so much fun.
What is this?
And what should we do with it
if not to answer?
Sheila is phenomenal
and extraordinary as Akasha.
And I, I, I, I am the answer!
Watch
"The Vampire Lestat: After Dark"
on AMC+ or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Previously on
"The Vampire Lestat"
Shall we do it?
Shall we scorch
the mortal world?
Decimate it.
Together, for all eternity.
Claudia. I look like her.
You're the only one
watching me like I'm Netflix.
In a million guesses,
you would not guess.
What happened to her?
You could have a different life.
What now, Daddy Lou?
-What about Greece?
-Hot springs.
-Those Who Must Be Kept.
-What was that?
I have the blood
of Akasha in me.
Sorry. What the fuck is Akasha?
Is there an evil older than you?
-Your maker Marius.
-My maker is dead.
I've told you that already.
Was Dubai bullshit?
Me breaking you down.
You knew everything
the whole time.
Loving Louis
doesn't shut it off.
It wasn't my love for Louis.
-Rest.
-Rest.
But it was love.
-You've been reaching them.
-Yes.
They are lost
and tired of enduring.
Your music speaks to them.
When's he going
to make an album?
When we are ready!
You are listening
to "The Failures,".
Album 41, Side B.
My first coffin had the likeness
of my maker carved into its lid,
indecipherable Latin
etched around the rim
and, as I was an orphan vampire,
my sleep within troubled.
Again.
I spent half of two decades
in the silken embrace
of a chestnut casket,
purchased for
my French Quarter town home,
before it was hurled
off a balcony
during one of Mr. du Lac's
redirected moods.
Again.
What exactly are we going for
here on, uh, take 17?
We are going for "again."
OK.
I have slumbered
in a variety of sarcophagi
over the centuries.
But if I had to choose
a favorite,
it would be
the 7,000-square-foot model
I endured in the fall of 2025,
while I recorded
my posthumously-produced album
that Pitchfork would trash
and for which the world shouts
in feeble attempts
to explain away
clearly attributable
devastation,
"J'accuse."
But I, Amel, digress.
Again.
Take 28.
The deranged Wegmans
produce manager, Beau Riddley,
provided me
the Frenchest of exits.
And the good fortune
of a second mass shooting
with a higher body count
occurring that same night
made the faking of my death
-Sorry. Sorry.
-All the easier.
-Again.
-Yeah.
Take 46.
An amnesia fund was created.
And annual payments
in perpetuity
were issued to Jarda Klapek,
a coroner,
an obituary writer for
the Czech broadsheet "Právo,".
Dee, Daniel, Fareed,
and two dozen
other collaborators,
including Christine Claire,
who bought a retirement villa
and wallpapered
her basement sex dungeon
with billable hour invoices.
Again.
Take 61.
Fuck!
I would leave this coffin
only once in four months.
I would butcher the band
for bloom and marbling,
fleece the muses
of their animus,
and stop at nothing
until an album
worthy of the long, lurid life
of Lestat de Lioncourt
burned into elegiac audio formats.
And when that was achieved,
I would perform it once live
in that now-infamous concert.
And, well
We will come to that later.
But like Elvis or Andy Kaufman,
rumors swirled of my survival.
So Sofia Gabriella
de Lioncourt di Vece
took over for Christine
and whittled down my entourage
to the essentials, which was her
and the Vampire Sam Barclay,
whom she hired as a producer
for three reasons.
One, he had faked his death
once before,
so he could be trusted
to maintain the rite.
Two, he knew the board
well enough
from his own recordings.
"Big Bad Wolf," vocals,
take one.
And three, she knew I hated him
for his part in Paris.
And that would keep me lively.
Hoo!
I'm the big bad wolf ♪
Badass!
-Nice.
-And that's take one.
Fabulous.
Moving on.
So straighten your tie,
inflate your lips,
be it facial or labial.
We are going to trace
my self-taught musicianship
back to its weird
and haunting origins.
That's right.
I am finally going to talk
about the Queen.
I'm the little killer ♪
I'm the lonely one ♪
I'm the chill
creeping up your spine ♪
Telling you to run ♪
I'm a hanging shadow ♪
I'm a lost love ♪
I'm the past and the future ♪
The last of the sutures,
the cooing dove ♪
We're the rock and rollers ♪
We're the good time ♪
We're the heart
pumping blood ♪
We're the face in the mud ♪
We're this stupid rhyme
Bang, bang - Bang, bang
Bang, bang, bang, bang,
bang, bang ♪
All fall down ♪
Burn the ground ♪
All fall down ♪
Burn the
Bang, bang - Bang, bang ♪
Bang, bang - Bang, bang ♪
Bang, bang, bang, bang,
bang, bang ♪
Again.
Hmm.
Your drum sounds like a drum.
That's 'cause it's a drum.
Mm-mm.
No.
The drums can't sound
like a drum.
OK.
What do you want it
to sound like, then?
It has to sound
like death approaching.
-Oh, my God.
-Like life emerging.
Like yeah, cool,
like life and death.
-Death, then life.
-OK.
A mewling babe extracted
from a mother's womb.
OK.
I, uh I don't play
metaphorical drums.
Try.
I can do faster,
or harder, or shuffle,
fill, flam, buzz roll.
Like, a drum is a drum.
A stick is a stick.
I don't know what to tell you.
It's 'cause she's not a vampire.
It's because
her deepest wound is a man
walking away mid-ceremony.
Wow. Cool.
Thank you, Yoko Mirren.
Guests at my deathbed,
we are making an album
about my life,
which has been
a three-century train wreck.
-Your drums are my heart.
-Oh.
Your guitar is my hunger.
Your bass, the night terrors
that follow me to coffin.
What's my guitar?
Yes, please interrupt
my flow, Larry.
Your guitar
is my frailty.
Keep coloring inside the lines
as you play,
and I'll knot a tempo mark
to your life jacket.
Lar. Lar. Come on.
He didn't mean it.
We are here
to pull the plug, hmm?
Have some reverence.
Kill me savagely.
Yep. Sure.
Sam, let's jump
to something else.
-TC's not ready.
-I'm fi I
Can I hear "When I Call Out
Your Name," vocal 12?
Copy that.
Blue eyes
Eyes of blue ♪
Blue eyes ♪
Eyes of blue
Blue as the sea,
tinctures of violet,
blond hair, blue eyes,
eyes so blue, blue as the sea.
Fished him from the wilds
of a paup pauper's grave.
Oh, loves his mother.
Loves, loves her.
Wanted to take care of her,
as you said.
Well, he was there.
She was not.
Where am I?
Thank you for pulling me
from the Earth.
Thank you for saving me
from starvation.
Thank you
for the warm blood shared.
Yes, you're welcome.
She told me where you were,
and there you were,
and there I was.
I brought you back, and
Here we are.
Who are you?
I am Marius de Romanus.
I am the Keeper.
Oh, was the Keeper.
Now you are the Keeper.
Marius?
Oh, an echo.
Armand said
that you were destroyed.
Well, he was wrong.
Rotten boy.
She likes music.
Come.
Touch.
They are mother and father
to all of us.
And they must be kept.
This one.
Akasha.
The stone, it's alive?
Very alive.
Very much alive.
That's a very flattering offer.
Sadly, we were only planning
to do one in memoriam concert.
OK.
-Nice to talk.
-Oh, yeah, oh, yeah,
Oh, yeah ♪
Florence Welch wants
The Vampire Lestat
to open for her.
But he is 2 meters deep
in Ostrava.
Well, she wants them,
after the album comes out.
Sorry. Sorry.
Can we do that again?
Can I get a little bit more,
uh, vocal in my ears, please?
In the ear, down the throat,
past the colon.
Play it from your groin.
Larry, please, stop thinking
about Alex eating burgers
and enjoying Glenlivet again.
More singer, Sam.
-Hold the head shrinking.
-From the top.
Mama, need a ravenous queen ♪
So you're gonna
rerecord his parts, then.
Bury the rest
behind the other three.
That's a deep grave.
I need an architect,
feel the desert inside ♪
Pretend I'm Armand
or the Talamasca.
Be the spineless mole once more.
You dig a hole in the burrow
for Larry's guitar.
This is the job, Sam.
Fill the space
with worldly things.
Go into the noise
and dust of the city,
and bring back presents
of the present.
This is the job.
I don't want a job. I wanna die.
But you didn't die.
80 years face down
with the seaman you killed,
long enough to learn
the depths of despair.
Do the job.
Learn to endure
the depths of living.
Find yourself, Lestat,
as I have lost myself.
"Bring me Lestat,
son of Magnus."
From the tree of us,
she chose you.
A great honor.
She likes music.
She loves music.
I don't know how to play.
Recall your fledgling.
Start with mimicry.
-I
-Don't interrupt.
Keep your hunts short
a quick sip of blood,
the fast-fading warmth
of the kill,
then back to them.
-Her.
-What happened to him?
Interruption!
If you must bring one back,
burn them here.
Use the ashes
to keep her thriving.
And no blood.
Oh, blood overwhelms.
Just the ash.
Play her music.
His name was Enkil.
-How did
-We burn in the sun, yes?
Do you remember a night
when your body burned
under the Moon?
Yes.
Uh
yes, in Denmark, 1802.
December 19, 1802.
Finished the job
transporting them
from one crypt to another.
Two bottles of ginger flower gin
in the veins
of a celebratory meal.
I woke up next to her,
my body afire.
Hadn't finished the job.
Left him above in the sun.
My mother and I
were countryside.
We ran ourselves into a bog.
Oh.
Took us months to recover.
Bogs. Bogs are rare.
And now you know
why there are so few of us.
I set us back ages.
We are all connected
through her.
She is she is the seed.
Mm. Mm.
And if she burns,
oh, we all burn.
And you are her Keeper.
I don't like being alone.
I slip, trip,
stumble, fumble in small ways.
I am not worthy of this job.
And if I do not
ugh leave now,
the small becomes big,
and the big becomes the end,
and the end will burn
the tree of us.
You are
Worthy.
Let her tell you that
herself, huh?
It will take time, Lestat.
She is not on our clock.
To me, not a word for 22 years
when I first took the job.
23.
You are listening
to "The Failures,".
Album 46, Side A.
It's called RevPAR, short for
Revenue Per Available Room.
It's been trending down,
especially
in high-end luxury property.
Probably expanded too fast.
But there's panic now,
so I jumped on it.
I got two more
one in Montreal, one in Boston.
So a place for us?
Yeah, and them.
There's not enough of, uh, us
to make it profitable.
But they can come watch
if they want.
Yeah.
If you don't wanna be watched,
+then there's a private room
in the back.
Different menu in the back room.
Little drinks.
I missed you, brother.
I missed you too, sis.
Both of you.
I wish we could stay longer,
but you know Claudia,
always go, go, go.
Uh, got in something deep
last night.
-Mm.
-Didn't clean good, so
Oh?
What happened last night?
We went to the Russian
Vodka Room for karaoke,
when the understudies
from "Moulin Rouge!" walked in.
Something about theater kids
makes me moody.
Mm.
We pickled Satine,
took her downtown
to the Cubbyhole,
sucked her dry
in the Gansevoort,
and shoved her down
the laundry chute.
She's good.
I actually played Satine
on tour two years ago.
-No way.
-Yeah.
It was really fun.
So we are here for two nights.
And then
I think
the whole thing's a fake.
Total Milli Vanilli situation.
It's Larry
who wrote all their songs.
I was a Jarda-phile.
We knew that was his real name.
When I heard him sing,
it just hit me hard.
I'm not saying it's
a good thing the guy got shot,
but I don't think
he was even legally allowed
to be here anyway.
I got to go to dinner
with him once
at a White Castle
after the Hartford show.
He was
He was so fucking hot.
State your name for the camera.
No names.
OK, random Manhattanite,
what do you make
of Lestat's exit?
He faked us, high and dry
when we needed him most.
All cheap and easy nonfiction
ends in death.
Revolutions do not require
a soundtrack.
They only need numbers.
-And are you making more?
-Just one.
I had a fang in his neck,
but I was interrupted.
-Had to let him go.
-Sure. Happens.
I tracked him down,
planned to finish the work.
But as I followed him,
I found him
fascinating.
I'd sit at the foot of his bed
in derelict motel rooms
both: As he slept off a fix.
And gradually,
over the next 52 years
I was interceding on his behalf.
And when he blacked out
under an overpass
-OK. Jesus.
-A junkie about to roll
over him in an RV,
a wife, Alice, at home,
pregnant at the time
Where the fuck are you, Dad?
52 years?
I wanted to tell you
in Philadelphia,
but I felt you were not
in a space to receive it.
That was my gag reflex
at, "I'm in love with you."
Prove it.
February 11, 1990, a reading
at Amherst, Massachusetts.
Four students attend,
three are there
for extra credit,
one is there for you to use,
which you do, aggressively,
in your rental car in the garage
of your Northampton hotel.
I make sure
the boy makes it home
and forgets the event.
May 15, 2002, you sneak away
from your book research
to attend
your daughter's graduation
at Rice University.
She didn't ask you to come
and mouths the words "fuck off"
when she sees you approach.
You respect her wishes
and drive away in a daze.
But I guide you
to the Rothko Chapel,
where inside,
you unburden yourself
and weep uncontrollably.
The attending guard asks you
to step outside
But he started coughing.
But I supply him a coughing fit.
And you mourn
your daughter's hatred
for the next 30 minutes
in peace.
August 5, 2025,
I don't plan to say "love"
until I make profound amends
for the harm I've caused you.
Yeah, sure. It's a timing issue.
52 years, I've watched you
where you went, what you did,
watching your sorrow,
your modulating sexuality.
And where was Louis
at that time?
At home, waiting to hear
the minute details
when I got back.
-No.
-Yes.
You sainted him gray
in your book,
but he's calculating
to the core,
methodically cruel.
And here you are again, wearing
the same set of horse blinders
with Lestat.
I signed a contract.
I'm finishing a job.
He casts you out,
and still you carry his water.
Let me help you finish that job.
Yeah?
Love between vampires
can be one thing,
or it can be countless things.
-I will never love
-Like Lestat and Sofia.
I want to be your maker.
Finish the thought, Armand.
I want to give you
half your life back.
Lestat and Sofia.
Help you walk in the sun.
I knew her as Gabriella.
She's Lestat's mother.
What?
Lestat lays with his mother.
Did you say walk in the sun?
This ain't
no goddamn crime of passion ♪
all: Make more
Make more ♪
Why did you leave me?
Two months ago?
-No.
-In New Orleans?
Both times?
I was happy you left,
both times.
By the river
when you were three?
And you
Picked up
the 9,000th stick that day,
and I kept having to say,
"Oh, what does that stick do?"
You were a terrible mother.
I was.
In Spain?
I didn't need you anymore.
You don't need around you
what does not need you anymore.
-Breaks the circle.
-Yeah!
Oh. Great. Rad. That was cool.
OK, let's do another.
You need me now?
I do.
All: Make more, make more ♪
Make more, make more ♪
Make more ♪
Make more ♪
-Oh. Rad.
-That sounds awesome.
Does this satisfy the request?
What what
what does it mean, "make more"?
Like, make more what?
I don't recall.
Sounded cool.
Elbowed my way along
the Monastiraki.
There's a new shop, jewelry
in the style of the Byzantium
and plates embossed
with the head of Zeus.
It's all in very poor taste.
But then the colonialists
all have very poor taste,
so why not feed it back to them?
The city is modernizing
with such velocity
crude houses, narrow streets,
dead monuments,
and then electric trams.
And this. I found this.
A lever-action ice cream disher.
For ice cream.
The merchant called it a scoop.
A scoop!
Scoop. Scoop.
Tickles the back of the throat
when you say it.
It's like an owl
daydreaming he's a kingfisher.
One final treasure.
The young man
with the bouzouki out again,
a new one added
to his usual repertoire.
And
And the G
-Scoo
-Something like that.
Scoo
"Puh."
You have to put the "puh."
"Puh."
Scoop.
So is this
what time works on us?
Will I bloodlessly bloom
into a husk?
If you were the first,
then who made you?
Why do we exist?
Why do we endure at all?
And why did she leave me?
Am I evil?
Is my evil sanctioned
by nature
Or divine error?
Where is God?
Who dies
and who stays alive? ♪
Again, same place.
One, two, three, four!
Big boss gets to have fun ♪
-39.8.83.
-If you're a boo-boo ♪
Then he doesn't want you
Ate his dick.
-Behind my back.
-Oh, don't you dare ♪
Write down his history
112.145.
If you know him then ♪
You won't know much more
179.211.
Only the big boss
gets to decide ♪
312.406.
Who dies and who stays alive ♪
Oh, you're not gonna die
'cause you're already dead.
It's a great idea.
Is this a good idea?
-Are we ready?
-Are we ready? Are we ready?
Bad idea. Ready.
Who dies and who stays alive ♪
Again!
Who dies and who stays alive ♪
Nope. Nope.
Who stays alive ♪
Oh, shit!
-The fucking bowl!
-Moving on.
You are listening
to "The Failures,".
Album 49, Side B.
So how's it work, you and him?
How's it work?
Well, yeah, with Lemuel.
Uh, taking it slow.
Mm. Holding hands for now.
Yeah.
Keeping it loose.
Um, sorry.
You don't you don't have
to do the accent.
Oh.
Yeah.
It's it's hard,
the a so maybe just
Use my own voice.
-Yeah.
-Safe.
-Start again?
-Yeah.
What's it like with Lemuel?
Simple things.
Like, he asks me how I'm doing.
-And I say, I'm good.
-Hmm.
And I ask him how he's doing,
and he says, I'm hungry,
or, "Put down that iPad
and give me some attention."
He doesn't count time
like it's a badge.
I go nights
I don't know where he is.
But I like it that way.
Yeah.
Taking it slow.
Mm.
What you
what you writing in there?
Uh, yeah, just this and this.
All right, you two,
don't make me call the police.
Take the boat back to the dock.
We're gonna pretend
this never
You doing that to him?
Yeah.
Do it to me.
-Nah.
-Do it.
Let's just get outta no.
Come on, make me a stone.
What did you
Let's just, uh, get outta here.
I can't hold him for too long.
Here they come, Nicky.
The oboe. The clarinet.
The announcement. The reprise.
The harmonic shift.
Oh, foreshadowing!
Yes, Enkil, yes.
Move to the subdominant,
but not yet.
Not yet. Not yet, Madame.
Déficit,
you would have loved it.
Competing strings, Father Mags.
The counterpoint
It's like, uh,
trembling waterfalls.
It's like hungry peasants
itching for a fight!
What do you think, Marius?
Oh, you're still on holiday?
I blame you, Armand,
rotten guest.
Oh!
No voices.
No voices.
Perhaps if he'd finished
the goddamn symphony,
he might have brought the choir
in the final movement.
But, um, it's a signature blend
of Ottoman bicycle enthusiast
and Swedish barrel maker
from Malmo
who thought the Acropolis
looked drab.
Then it became
that kind of party, Enkil.
You like to watch?
Well, don't look now.
But Magnus,
his hand is wandering
down my older brother's pants.
Are you affronted
by these intimacies, Enkil?
My hand on your Eve
on the eve of a great century.
Splash of red for the new year.
You would have been exquisite
in your years.
They split Number 8
down the middle.
Practical limitations cutting
through its Romantic gestures.
You're supposed
to watch the music, Armand.
I don't know
why I invite you, worthless.
Oh, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no.
I scratched it.
I scratched it!
Stupid!
I ruined your party.
Huh.
It's 1900.
We made it.
Come.
Come.
Come
to me.
What are we doing? ♪
Why are we here?
Is it for nothing?
Don't be cavalier
Is it obsession,
a deep lover's spell? ♪
I'm thinkin' of you now
How is it that
that that they live
with such harmony, the b
Billions of stars.
How is it that they live
in such harmony,
the billions of stars,
when most men can barely go
a minute
without declaring war
in their own minds?
Something wrong, Lestat?
No.
Yes.
Thomas Aquinas.
Why did you take me
to the Witches' Place?
What?
I was asking Sofia.
She's taking a call, I think.
-Check your phone.
-What?
Your phone. It's
B-buzzing.
Again, same place?
Again, same place?
Ready?
No.
No. Tune it down a whole step.
What?
Tune it down a whole step,
A minor.
All right, let me, uh
let me work that out.
Ugh, beards to the floor
waiting for you
to work it out, Larry!
You tune it down a whole step!
Everyone tune it down
a whole step.
Lay it down without me, Sam.
For our ears, not theirs.
He's an asshole.
Thank you.
And you suck.
I suck. Everyone sucks.
Singer sucks.
Alive ♪
Is this messing you up?
I can stop. I can totally stop.
Played these parts
a million times, man.
I'm just
got the yips.
I feel like I'm back in select
letting in grapefruits.
You were a terrible goalie.
I was not good.
But you're a total shredder
with an axe.
And look,
everything we've talked about.
We're finally making an album
that people might actually hear.
And it's, like
it's really good.
-It's good, yeah?
-Yeah.
Put your mitts on, one take,
and then rest.
And then we played out scenes
as if she had lived
was alive.
But now it's all blurred.
I called her Claudia.
But she's herself too now,
I think.
And I know it's not real.
But is it?
Is it her, come back to me?
I can't tell.
And whole nights go by where
I don't wanna be able to tell.
And I just, um
Is it her?
Can you go in there
and tell me if it's her?
I was shot in the streets,
and you didn't call.
I'm a selfish bastard.
Anybody spends five minutes
with me, they know that.
I'm I knew you were
gonna bring it up.
Don't have an answer for it.
I'm in the middle of recording
my fucking
Yes.
OK.
Chicken and waffle special.
I wouldn't order it,
but I gotta say it.
Get you a water?
You.
The internet says you're dead.
Huh.
Then I must be.
You know
he has been there for an hour.
Stop performing.
What does he order
when he comes here?
I bring him
anything about to go bad,
what the cook's pushing.
Then I'll have that.
I had some debts to pay off.
So it's, like, beneficial,
going in both
And if he's paying you what
I imagine he's paying you,
why do you still work here?
Well, if things with us
get too freaky,
I just pick up a shift or two
to get some real real
back into my life.
He's bringing you in this now?
That's his next thing, is it?
We gonna be a family,
Uncle Les?
Find someone else to swindle.
He's the one coming around here
doing all this with me.
I just wait
for the bell to ring,
or the blower to buzz,
or the hundred texts a day.
You're hurting him.
Oh. I'm hurting Louis?
I look like her.
I look just like her, don't I?
Your gait suggests a hip injury
that she never suffered.
And she had a heart murmur.
You don't.
But I look like her.
It's not her.
It's not anything like her.
The eyes.
Yeah, the eyes.
No spark, right?
Don't see this person again.
And next time someone tries
to murder me,
pick up the phone.
The day you were born
I was shakin' like a leaf ♪
On an old oak tree ♪
Then you stayed like a thorn ♪
Red roses rainin' down
till they ♪
Flooded me ♪
Even when we parted ways ♪
You never turned,
never turned your gaze ♪
And I can still,
I can still hear you say ♪
Don't break that stare ♪
I'm burnin'
in your mirror tonight ♪
No, don't you dare
call it yearning ♪
It's the fear that I'm right ♪
Don't you try to forget ♪
All the things you regret ♪
In those stained glass ♪
Stained glass ♪
Eyes ♪
Yeah ♪
Had our fun, like a child
Just a couple of knives ♪
Cutting through 20 years ♪
No one ever gets
to keep my smile ♪
But you can't peel it off me ♪
Like one of your souvenirs ♪
Even when we parted ways ♪
You never turned,
never turned your gaze ♪
I can still,
I can still hear you say ♪
Don't break that stare ♪
I'm burnin'
in your mirror tonight ♪
No, don't you dare
call it yearning ♪
It's the fear that I'm right ♪
Don't you try to forget
All the things you regret ♪
Like the ashes you spread ♪
Till you had nothing left ♪
Of those stained glass ♪
Stained glass
Eyes ♪
Hey ♪
This this doesn't sound
like us.
How's it fit with "Long Face"?
It doesn't.
"Long Face" is not
going on the album.
But it's
it's our calling card.
And if that's the new sound,
then neither is
"Why Do I Have To Feel,"
or "Big Bad Wolf," or
and you're just gonna, what,
rerecord
The entire album.
Instruments played
like metaphors.
Well, yeah, it's a beauty.
-So
-Um, you shouldn't fire them.
That would be a a mistake.
They can do it.
But I can't.
So, um, thank you for the ride.
Best two years of my life.
And, uh, I quit.
Larry.
So we're just
we're just gonna
we're just gonna record
the whole album again.
Not you.
-It's for our ears.
-Yeah? Is it?
You need to be a vampire
to hear it, TC.
Yeah.
You need the blood.
Read our minds.
No.
-We want it.
-Mm-hmm.
No, I've come
to enjoy you all very much,
but let me tell you
something about this blood.
Let me save you from myself.
I was on the shores of Spain
when my great love left me.
She, she, she, it is she
I let myself be buried
in a stranger's grave,
until a queen took pity
and summoned me to service.
It is often she.
And in the old songs
and in the long nights,
she holds him
in the softness of her arms,
in her arms that are open,
in her arms that are wide,
that are open, that are always,
that must always be open.
And in the old ways
and in the old laws,
this was arranged.
All this was arranged.
-And who arranged it? Did Amel?
-What is this?
What have you done?
You drank of her!
She drank of me. I drank of her.
And that is what it means
to be loved.
The blood is hot.
The blood is hot.
My mother, I'm back.
It is Amel. It is always Amel.
-It is often she
-You drank the blood!
She said drink! And I drank!
And I have been up here
for three days!
Into the land
where the dead are kept,
where the dead are worshipped.
She was on the slab
for centuries!
It will take me years
to get her back on it!
And why the days without number?
And what am I for?
-What is this for?
-Lie down. Lie down.
And what should Amel do
with it if not to answer?
Stairs!
The stairs!
My mother.
And why are they
throwing stones?
And why is she
curled on the ground?
-And why is it wound
-The blood.
It already owns you.
May madness or sunlight
relieve you of the burden.
And in my eyes is desire,
and why is it desire?
-She told me to drink.
-Go!
And why does he tell her
what God has said?
And why Amel in their mouths?
And why must my voice be smooth?
And why must I sing so low?
And why is she kept?
Why must she be kept?
And why in this place
must she be kept?
And what does it mean
if you are not asked?
And what does it mean
if you are not answered?
Fail, fail, fail.
And what is it to see
and to know, but to be told
-Unworthy.
-You have not seen.
You have not known.
And why is her tongue cut out?
And why is her death prolonged?
-And when will it stop?
-Unworthy!
-And who will stop it?
-Unworthy!
And why must they, must we,
must I, must he, must they,
as the millennia, unfold?
Why the girl curled?
Why her eyes lowered?
Why on the side of the road?
Why limp in the straw?
I am the girl!
I am the god!
I am the voice! I am the song!
I am the night!
And I can answer!
I can arrange it!
I can say rise,
and I can say speak!
And I am her! And I am she!
And I, I, I, I am
the answer!
This is the metal sun
inside my veins.
This is the hell I unleash
on all those near me.
It cannot be restrained
in the moment
or tamed over time.
It will drag you into depravity
and reward you with regret.
So follow Larry
to a better life.
We're finishing the album.
We're a fucking band.
Make more.
Larry?
Larry Slater?
Lead guitar, TVL?
-Um, yeah.
-Oh, my God.
Oh, my God, hey, I I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry
about what happened to him.
Oh, yeah.
I play those videos
all the time.
The concert stuff,
not the shooting.
I mean, uh so what
so what are you doing
in New York with your guitar?
Uh, I can't really say.
Oh, my fucking God,
it's true, isn't it?
You guys are making the album.
I saw it online.
You've got his vocals.
And I just think
it's so amazing
And I think it's wonderful
because the world really needs
to hear how beautiful he was,
you know what I mean, and
Actually, I'm not
in the band anymore.
I don't even know
if there is a band anymore.
They're, like,
laying down a record.
And I'm just, like,
fucking tired.
-So
-Oh.
Oh, my God, I'm sor
I'm sorry.
You do look tired.
I'll, uh, leave you alone.
A terrible goalie,
but a total shredder
with an axe.
I'm sorry, what?
She's right. You do look tired.
You should probably
get some rest.
Do I know you?
Rest?
Rest.
Rest.
No!
Oh, my God!
Oh, my God, he jumped!
Oh, my God!
Somebody help him!
Oh, no!
Listen to tracks
from "The Vampire Lestat"
wherever you stream music.
Taylor and Travis.
Have you set that date yet?
Be damaged, be cabbage ♪
When the curtains drive
you back ♪
You reached out
to the worst kind of witch.
She is not like the rest.
Armand's in town.
He's going to try
to disrupt things.
50,000 of us
out in the woods together.
What could go wrong?
Guests at my deathbed,
we are making an album
about my life,
which has been a three century
train wreck.
We are here to pull the plug.
Have some reverence.
Kill me savagely.
I would leave this coffin
only once in four months.
I would butcher the band
for bloom and marbling
and stop at nothing until
an album worthy of the long,
lurid life
of Lestat de Lioncourt
burned into elegiac
audio formats.
So episode five,
they're recording the album.
"Big Bad Wolf",
vocals, take one.
His mother comes back to him
and says,
"Hey, why don't you be
this other thing?"
She needs him to create a song
that will speak
to all the vampires lurking
in all the shadows of the world.
And so he makes the album
to be this thing for her.
But of course, he's a really
fastidious and obsessive artist,
so he can't really help but
take complete control over it
and get lost
in the creative process.
But throughout that process,
he's niggled by these memories
that he can't quite
reconcile with.
Why did she take me to the
burning of these teenage girls
when I was a child?
Why did she touch me
in those inappropriate places
when I was, you know, wounded?
You were a terrible mother.
I was.
In the moment,
they definitely do find it hard
to stop their
complicated relationship.
You need me now.
I do.
I missed you, brother.
I missed you too, sis.
Both of you.
This show is really funny.
Intentionally so.
I wish we could stay longer.
But you know Claudia,
always go, go, go.
There's lots of very dark humor,
but also kind of like silly,
fun humor.
And Off Off Broadway Madeline
is definitely very funny.
Took a downtown tootsie
cubbyhole, sucked it dry,
and shoved it
down the laundry chute.
She's good.
Beautifully played,
but it's also very twisted.
It was so weird, but, like,
so comedically written
that it was hard
to not have fun with it.
Something about theater kids
makes me moody.
And I think Louis being
on the other side of the table
just made it that bit weirder.
I think at one point I was
literally sitting in my chair,
like, and I was off camera, and
I was like sitting there like
make it stop.
I know Jacob. It was very
I think it was
uncomfortable for everybody
because obviously we know
the circumstance behind it.
But for Regina, it's just
another day on the job.
Holding hands for now.
Um, sorry.
You don't have to do the accent.
-Oh, did you
-Let's just get out of here.
Can you go in there
and tell me if it's her?
I was shot in the streets.
And you didn't call.
Selfish bastard.
There's a lot of things
that keep haunting Lestat.
And then he meets Regina.
I look like her.
I look just like her, don't I?
And that instigates
a change in his music.
The day you were born ♪
I was shaking like a leaf ♪
On an old oak tree ♪
That means he comes back,
and he writes a song about her
that is more poppy and more
truthful and more pared back
and more honest
than he's ever done before.
And he presents that to the band
and said,
"I think this is the sound.
I think this is what
we're doing now."
So follow Larry
to a better life.
We're finishing the album.
He no longer is trying
to present himself,
and he's just being himself
with his music.
Don't break that stare,
I'm burning ♪
In your mirror tonight ♪
No, don't you dare call it
yearning ♪
It's the fear that I'm right ♪
Don't you try to forget ♪
All the things you regret ♪
Like the ashes you spread ♪
'Til you have nothing left ♪
Of those Stained Glass ♪
I think if he wrote
"Stained Glass Eyes"
at the very start of the tour
and he played it to himself,
I don't think he
would have taken it seriously,
but I think
he's had to get to this point
where he could write
something very emotional
and very raw to realize
that his music is a personal
conduit of his expression
as an individual.
And you're just
going to, what? Re-record?
The entire album.
Instruments played
like metaphors.
We're about to shoot Akasha,
and in fact, our very last day.
And so high anticipation
of just looking at her
as Akasha
and how she's going to play it.
We're rolling
Whenever you're ready.
It's a wonderful set.
It's kind of like
this underground storage unit
with all of these pieces
of history
that Marius has collected to try
and keep her entertained.
It's been very fun
to film in as a set,
and it's been a remarkable
setting for the introduction
of Akasha to the series.
It's alive, very alive.
This season,
played by Sheila Atim,
who is an extraordinary actor.
She is the seed,
and you are her keeper.
Marius is there trying
to keep her controlled,
and Lestat being Lestat,
is much more about, like,
let's push and see what happens.
He's also very lonely.
A lever action ice cream disher.
Anne Rice has
Akasha awoken by Lestat.
But we actually have Lestat stay
within her crypt for,
you know, 10 years.
In the book, he's there for
a couple of days school.
He puts on concerts for her.
Where is God?
And she wakes up.
And then he's got the blood
of Akasha in him.
And then the way
that that manifests in him
is obviously he's like flying,
and I was up on that rig.
Hold him there.
But it gives you
some articulation.
Yeah. Great. Okay.
It was a really fun thing
to do, actually.
That's so real. Oh, my God.
I told you, man.
'Cause I was upside down,
and, you know, I was
talking to Ron, who's like,
"What does it feel like
to have the blood of Akasha,
you know, cursing through you?"
So we were kind of like
doing these jolting movements.
And then they dropped me,
which was like a proper
10-foot free fall.
Wow. That's so much fun.
What is this?
And what should we do with it
if not to answer?
Sheila is phenomenal
and extraordinary as Akasha.
And I, I, I, I am the answer!