Interview with the Vampire (2022) s03e07 Episode Script
The Failures
1
- Watch
"The Vampire Lestat: After Dark"
on AMC+ or wherever you
get your podcasts.
- Previously on
"The Vampire Lestat"
- The collection has been
named "The Failures."
- That's why these
movie producers hired you,
Daniel Molloy, vampire slayer.
- They said you requested me.
What happened at age 9?
- I was taken to see witches
being burned at a stake.
It's what moms did with kids
before LEGO and Peppa Pig.
- Ready to eat your own?
- What is with the tan, Dan?
- I'm seeing someone.
- The Vampire Armand,
the love of my life.
- More deaths than births.
It's happening, Daniel.
- The Great Conversion,
it's real.
- Your music speaks to them.
They long for a communion.
- You're the one putting
the show together?
50,000 of us.
- They're coming
from all over the world.
- Find someone else to swindle.
- He's the one coming around
here doing all this with me.
I look like her.
I look just like her, don't I?
- We eat your soul
at the long table.
- If it was just the two of us
again, could be nice.
- Could be.
- You'd be a head mounted
above a coven toilet
if it weren't for me.
- You assume death
at decapitation.
["All Fall Down"]
♪
- 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 ♪
- You are listening
to "The Failures"
[record scratches]
Album 57, Side A.
- Could be nice, says Louis.
Could be, I say.
And our hands touch.
I am staring at Alex
in his plastic Dracula mask.
And then I think,
why is he here?
And then the world pivots.
And I see stars in the sky.
Boots upside down.
My blood, a half-painted moon.
And then I'm dreaming.
[gentle music]
[birds chirping]
I'm walking a path.
I am listening
to hidden birds in a forest
and transcribing their chatter
into music on paper.
It's the same dream
I've been having
since I finished the album
and faked my death,
except now I'm hungry
and it's daylight all around.
And as I'm a vampire,
confirmed by the glass nails
on my fingers,
I should be burning,
but I'm not.
The birds' music
becomes repetitive.
And then
the forest goes quiet.
No birds singing.
I am left with my hunger,
a feeling like my stomach
is eroding from the inside.
And then, as if the forest
has heard my thoughts,
a murder of waiters
carrying silver-domed trays
take over my path.
- Come now, Lestat.
No falling behind.
[laughs]
- And I follow my hunger
into the wood.
[distant horns honking]
And I begin to hear
sounds of a city,
and that little song they play
for the blind
at crosswalks
throughout Montreal
carries my hunger
to the table of my youth,
where my selves sit with
the abbot of Haute-Loire
- Circles us as God
- Instructing
from my father's chair.
[distant horns honking]
[bright melody playing]
- Encircles us with his love.
- The hood?
- Limits our view
and cuts out the world
so we gaze ahead towards God.
- And the length
of our habit trips us up
and gets in our goddamn way.
- [laughs]
- Lestat.
- Lestat.
- Lestat.
- Lestat.
- Have a seat, Lestat.
- There's seven waiters
and only four of us.
both: Have a seat.
- Have a s--
[stammering]
Seat. Seat.
[platters clattering]
- The light's gone
out of your blue eyes.
all: As if all
the summer days are gone.
- Course 187, the soul.
[eerie music]
- [humming and vocalizing]
♪
- [gasps, gurgling]
- I have been enduring
intense conversations
with myself in the three years
since our companionship ended.
And as part of that journey,
I wish to say something
from the deepest regions
of my soul.
- Ar--
- Two grievous lies,
gross betrayals.
The first is
a well-trod pit of hot coals
I blistered my feet on
for 77 years.
- Arm
[gasping]
- I chose my coven over you,
lured you into a production
of a play,
in which your death would act
as the grotesque climax.
The coven was
twisting my arm, but
- Ar
- I took aesthetic pleasure
in making your death
visually exhilarating.
- mand.
- All of which was made worse
by our heady lovemaking
throughout this period
of betrayal, and
the second.
- [gasping]
- I shamefully took credit
when Lestat saved your life.
- Where am I?
- That lie bound you to me,
and it lay like a corpse
in the boiler room
of our companionship.
Many times, I told myself
the lie did not matter
because what we had built,
a love that served as a bunker
against time,
was weightier
and more consequential
than the lie,
but it wasn't true.
- Can't move
- The lie did matter
because the corpse was there,
calling forth the facts.
- Can't move my body.
[gasping]
- And as for the many boys
you drugged, drained,
and lay with,
I feigned resentment
when, in fact,
I welcomed your straying
because your guilt
in their aftermath
bound you to me
all the more tightly
and allowed me my hours
of observation with Daniel.
I told you I loved you,
but did I?
Hmm? Did I?
Or was it a clinging
to the underside
of anyone
who would help me survive?
And when I look back
on who I've deceived,
how I've deceived,
how easy it was
for me to lead a cult
for 400 years,
to burn in ritual any
who broke the archaic laws
we lived by, I--
I think I might be
a room without walls,
floors, a ceiling.
An infinite nothing.
Also, yes.
I put the Fred Steins
in your photo collection
just to fuck with your head.
And that is my full
and heartfelt "Armends."
Now
♪
It's your turn.
- I am the chair, the maker,
the Vampire Magnus.
Fledglings, state your names
for the record.
- The Vampire
Nicolas de Lenfent.
- The Vampire
Louis de Pointe du Lac.
[typewriter clicking]
- The Vampire Gabriella Vecce.
- The Vampire Antoinette Brown.
- The Vampire TC.
- And where's Claudia?
- She said all she needs to say
to you is what she said.
- Her actual words were,
"Fuck him, fuck y'all, go burn
like that dumb nine-fingered
bitch, Antoinette."
- [laughs]
- Antoinette, hello.
- Don't you
"Antoinette, hello," me.
- Restrain yourself, Ms. Brown.
[typewriter chimes]
- So I'm dead.
[typewriter clicking]
This is death?
My father's ugly table
in your shitty tower?
- Dying.
This is you dying.
- This is the reminiscence,
the deliberation
and mastication
of the early risings
and nightly failures
of the vampire.
- How?
- "How" is not his name.
His name is Lestat.
- How did I die?
- I'ma type Lestat.
- Dying.
Not yet dead.
- Wasting time.
Much like you've wasted
your lives.
- Could be nice.
- Could be.
Hands touch.
[typewriter chimes]
- Second time's the charm.
- Keep typing, Ms. Brown.
[typewriter clicking]
- So you're all here
to judge me.
- We are the failure finders.
Judgment comes from God, Satan,
the Simulation.
We don't know.
No one ever tells us.
And yet here we are
on course number 205.
all: The soul.
[laughter]
- [laughing]
[somber music]
This is a dream.
[laughing]
I am not here.
- You are here.
- And also
in a bowling ball bag
walking west
on Avenue Van Horne.
- [laughing]
A bowling bag.
[laughter]
- And also lying
on the sideboard
in the back room
of a butcher shop.
♪
- It's November 1st.
- All Saints Day,
a Saturday morning.
- Which means
we won't be disturbed,
as it's an observant butchery,
and it's their Shabbos.
All the shops
along this avenue are closed.
- And anyone who might possibly
think of coming to your rescue
is asleep.
- [snoring]
- Or otherwise engaged.
- [gurgling]
♪
- [sighs]
I was hoping
time and perspective
would have made you eager
to repent.
- Don't care.
- My blunder.
I haven't properly laid out
your predicament.
- [gasping]
- This is your sundered head.
And this is your petulant body.
And this
is the glorious air between
on which the two of you
still manage to communicate
a good 2 hours and 12 minutes
since uncoupling.
- I don't care.
- If you weren't
Lestat's progeny,
this would not be happening.
You would be dead, which is why
this is being live-cast
to a very important room
gathered in Budapest.
- [groaning]
- You are special, Louis.
- Fareed.
- Yes, our former doctor,
back in research
where he thrives,
studying us, analyzing us.
But was he doing that
all along?
Hmm? In Dubai?
- See you, Fareed.
- In Lestat's bus?
- I don't care.
- He will say he was not here.
And if you reconsider
your amends and survive,
you most probably
won't remember him.
Or this.
- [gasping]
- Don't print
the obituary just yet.
Getting some much needed rest
before the big concert,
aren't we?
I backdoored myself
into his band,
enjoyed ruining
for the sake of ruining.
- [groaning]
Where is his--
- Where is his--where is his--
where is his head?
It's with my companion.
- Snuck out before
the wife woke up, did you?
- Told me to take my head
as far away from her body
as I could.
- Well,
never question the boss.
What size shoe?
- 10 1/2.
- I think you know
you've wronged me.
And I think you know
the specific ways
in which you've done it.
- Don't care.
- Yes, you seem to be
caught in that sentiment.
Regrettably, your maker's body
has not induced you to own it.
So one additional motivation.
[metal scraping]
- [groaning]
- We broke in
yesterday afternoon,
glamoured the kindly
brisket-carving butcher
early home to Shabbos.
We owe him new knives
and a deep clean.
You may own the night, Louis,
but you're as kosher
as clams casino.
Also, we brought her.
- No, no, no.
- Waitress, sister, daughter.
- No, no.
- None of those things.
- No, no, no.
She didn't know.
Armand!
[moans]
- [screams]
- Setting aside opinions
of the coven master in place,
his destruction of the children
of darkness was
- Impulsive, reckless.
- Overdue.
- Thank you.
- His abandonment
of the Paris coven?
- Selfish, cowardly.
- Generous to a fault.
- I did
what my maker showed me,
throw money at the problem
and run away.
- Magnus gifted you
immortality.
Magnus gifted you
boundless lucre.
- Magnus speaks
in the third person
when he's on the back foot.
[laughter]
- Fledgling Lestat gave
meaning to his players
and absconded with it
when he ran.
A failure of leadership.
- The plays ran
for a century and a half.
- That's longer than "Wicked."
- Course 214, the soul.
- Why is he the chair?
- I am your maker!
- I knew you for a week.
What do you know of me?
"Ask for it, wolf killer,
and you shall love forever."
I refused!
- Consent is
a 20th-century concern.
- Showed me a coffin,
some money.
Told me to scatter his ashes.
And then he lit himself
on fire,
dancing as he burned!
[laughs]
I have two makers.
- Ah.
You want her.
You want mommy in the chair?
[soft music]
♪
- Yes.
- Failure continues
in the astral plane.
- [laughs]
[bottle whistles]
- Ms. Brown,
please note for the record
a change in the chairmanship.
[typewriter clicking]
- [singing in Italian]
- [clears throat]
Ms. Brown,
the next item on the agenda.
[typewriter dings]
- [sobbing]
- Let her go.
- OK, getting
our bearings back.
Good.
A pedigreed vampire,
as you know,
he can endure a great deal.
How are his vitals, Fareed?
- Not good.
- I ask about your vitals,
Louis,
because I don't think
it's landed yet
who sits before you.
- She ain't part of us.
- Please.
I don't want to die.
- No, he doesn't
want you to die,
but let's see if that holds.
You two met by chance, yes?
The merciful universe
acknowledging
your need to grieve
and her need for saving.
Or was she conceived
the instant you hurled me
into the supporting wall
of our Dubai penthouse?
Brought to life when I used
an old photo of Claudia
in her Baby Lu blues
and facial recognition software
on my iPad to find
a 7 out of 10 in Berlin,
an 8 1/2 in Tunis,
or this zone 2 girly
with a grifter's résumé.
- Don't. Don't.
- No.
- There's a years-long tale
of seduction
and cold commerce
- He told me he had a friend
- In East London, the setting
her up in New York--
- Who Lost his daughter.
I didn't think he was booky.
- The 19 times
she passed in front of you
before you noticed.
But your withering vitals
suggest I speed ahead.
You walk into a Brooklyn diner.
I would say,
"Shh, calm yourself.
"He's here for you.
Easy mark."
And she would walk up
and say
[imitating Regina] "Best thing
to do with our burgers,
let it cool till the grease is
all soaked, bread's all wet."
- He got--he was in my head,
but he wasn't there.
- I would say,
"Endear yourself to him."
And she'd say, "Had a few
more hopes for New York,
"but so far it's been, like,
six flatmates, one toilet.
"And it's like, do I want
to take my tampon out
in front of the podcaster
been with us since Tuesday?"
And you'd say
- But you caught me
at a--a lonely hour.
And I--I don't want
to put this on you.
- And I'd say, "He's tender.
Back off."
But she knew better.
- Sure you do.
It's right there on your jaw.
What is it?
I remind you of your sis?
- And then I knew she had you.
And her mastery allowed me
to drop in and out.
I was in other business
with Lestat, with Daniel.
- I'm sorry, Louis.
- All to say, there has been
extraordinary effort
put forth
towards this reunion.
- What I gone and done to us?
- Just kill me.
- No, no.
You're going to make
your amends
so we can both get on
with our lives.
- [sobbing]
- Or I'm going to lop
her head off
with this same blade
I did yours
and sew your head
onto her body.
- They said I was dead ♪
They tried to save me ♪
They cut off my head ♪
[pins clatter]
[upbeat hip-hop music playing]
♪
- Lestat, Lestat, Lestat,
Lestat, Lestat, Lestat.
You took one look at me,
had me all figured out.
Yeah, question mark?
Smarter than me?
Maybe.
Better looking than me?
I'll give you that.
More talented? Hmm.
You go do
what I did with my life.
You go knock down those doors.
You go get some.
Oh, that's right,
you were in a rock band.
Wow, big dick deal.
- He gave me the gift
rather than tell me
he love me.
I begged him to say it,
say, "Nikki,
I will never love you
the way that you love me."
- Gotta say that shit
a mile up in the air
if you want it to stick.
- He told you he loved you
a thousand times.
- 10,000.
[zipper rips]
- But now
that I've gotten over
my transformational trauma
and find myself
in my day-walking
yaoi manther phase
- There's a hole in your roof.
- I only give a shit
about Dan.
Thought you were
better than me, didn't you?
Gave me a little camera crew,
a laminated backstage pass,
and then you laughed in my face
and jerked off on my lens.
Well, look at you now,
spending your last hours
in a fucking bowling bag,
listening to Wheelchair Jimmy.
Blow me.
[zipper rips]
- Oh.
- There is a lot
coming at you, mon cher.
Just remember,
you are the only one
who can control the volume.
- [mumbling]
♪
- Oh, you.
What are you doing here?
Armand tell you to meet me?
- [mumbling]
- Oh, yeah, he's in there.
It's in there.
Lestat's mom made you, yeah?
She give you the autism gift?
You bowl?
- I'm a lot of bad things,
but I'm not, like--
- Vitals, Fareed?
- Waning.
- I wouldn't have done it
had I known he was full fiend,
gonna cut you up like he done.
I was in the grip of it
and couldn't get myself out.
- Fareed assured me
it would work.
Pop it back on.
Let the blood do its magic.
- On a work visa,
signed by him.
- Not sure it would work
on a mortal,
but this is how progress
- Walk into a police precinct
- Is made--trial and error.
- And say, "In some trouble.
It's weird. He's a vampire,"
gonna end up
on a grippy sock holiday.
- I listened in
on your séance last night.
I think Claudia would approve
of this scientific risk.
- We ain't coming out of this.
[muffled]
We're gonna die.
They gonna sell
a snuff tape, Louis.
Don't give it to them.
- Ah, he's shut us both out.
[laughs]
- [whimpering]
- You know,
I've known for some time
Claudia was the aperture
through which
I could rip his innards out.
I understood
his obsession for forgiveness.
I lived it with him.
He was my Claudia.
But I wasted a near century.
And that is not nothing.
That deserves amends.
- He said to the head
on the skewer.
- You think I'm bluffing?
[suspenseful music]
Tell me your name again.
- Nelson.
- Nelson. Nelson.
Nelson here is
one of my followers.
Pick up that knife.
[blade scrapes]
I have about a hundred
of them now.
Nelson, rest.
- [gurgling]
- [screaming]
[clattering]
- Nelson thinks he was here
to stop the Great Conversion,
to return to the Five Laws.
I needed him to stuff your head
in a cooler and drive me here.
- [grunts]
♪
- Rest.
♪
- I liked you, Louis.
You're a bit messed up,
but I liked you.
♪
Please.
I don't wanna die.
[whimpering]
- Paper.
Paper.
[knife clatters]
- You failed to fill
the Ryan Center
of Kingston, Rhode Island.
- Van Gogh sold one painting
in his lifetime.
- Thank you, Mother.
- Lover.
- "An intransigent
Crypt Keeper
in the hokiest light
imaginable,"
"Billboard" magazine.
- "If this is the mind,
heart, liver
"of someone looking down
the barrel of immortality,
then kill me now,"
theneedledrop.
- "A cross between
a self-absorbed
"Robert Plant impersonator
and an '80s hot dog,
embalmed with hair gel."
[laughter]
"Only the drummer
escapes alive."
- Woof.
- Stereogum.
- You saw me front it
in Toronto, and you in Detroit,
and I killed it both nights.
- Yes, but we did not see you
at Potawa Tommie's
in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
[typewriter chimes]
- Turn to page 3, measure 95.
["When I Call Out Your Name"
playing]
- State your name
for the record.
- Marco Piemontessi.
- You were murdered
by the Vampire Lestat
after a performance
of "Don Pasquale."
- And him.
- As an expert in your field
- Ha.
- As an unwitting meal
of the Vampire Lestat
- And him.
- Walk us through the May 5,
2025, performance of
- Waiter.
- "When I Call Out Your Name."
- Already behind.
[volume increases]
You should be
anticipating the beat.
And now we are rushing.
My, my.
And swallowing our consonants.
Tête.
You could learn something
from your Italian mother.
- Grazie bello.
- Always disappearing
when she has the chance.
- Ms. Brown,
your turn is coming.
Keep typing.
- Flat again.
- At least we don't have
to listen
to his violin playing
on this one.
- Flat.
The control of a child
with your vibrato.
- Gabriella, Gabriella ♪
- Again, flat.
- Screaming like a witch
at the stake,
the hem of your devil's dress
catching fire.
- Gabriella, Gabriella
- Mama, mama ♪
Mama ♪
[music fades out]
- [breathing heavily]
- Come now, Lestat,
no falling behind.
[somber violin music]
♪
- The Lord is a jealous
and avenging God!
He is avenging,
and He is wrathful!
He takes vengeance
on His adversaries
and keeps wrath
for His enemies!
The Lord is slow to anger
but great in power.
- Why did you take me there?
- His way is the whirlwind
and the storm.
The clouds are the dust
of His feet!
- Why did you take me there?
- I wanted you to see
who they were.
- He rebukes the sea
and makes it dry!
- You say we are the witches?
You are the witches!
[crowd shouting]
You are all the witches!
You are the witches!
You are the witches!
[gasping]
You are the witch--
[crowd gasping]
You are the--
you are--
[gasping]
- Who can stand before
His indignation?
Who can endure
the heat of His anger?
His wrath is poured out
like fire!
- No one who conceals
transgressions will prosper.
But one who confesses
and forsakes them
will obtain mercy.
[crowd shouting]
- They have confessed!
- Even the Marquis stayed home.
- I wanted you
to escape Auvergne.
- Marguerite Doree.
Ceased her prayers.
Adored the devil in ceremony!
Putrid throats she caused
in her father through spells.
- The father favored
the daughter.
The mother mixed death cap
mushrooms in his cassoulet.
- Jean Bodin.
Ceased her prayers.
Spied by our schoolmaster
swallowing
- The schoolmaster cleans up
his transgressions--
most cowardly.
- Chanting the black mass
in the breaks between!
And the twin witches,
Marthe and Aimée Roulet,
nine years each.
- Aimée Roulet.
- What did they cease doing?
- She used to play
in our home, Mother.
- Run from this place.
- A bag of gunpowder
tied around her neck
so she could burn hot.
- Did you run?
- Aimée?
- No.
Did you stay home
until you were 30?
- Aimée?
- Cabbage!
- God, see us again!
all: God, see us again!
- Cabbage!
- God, see us again!
all: God, see us again!
- No! No!
[dramatic music]
♪
- I love you.
- Mother?
- I love you.
- Mother!
- I love you.
- Mother!
♪
[moaning deeply]
♪
- Did the same thing
to Claudia in New Orleans.
Called it tough love then.
- Then he kills the wolves.
And then your hands wander,
Madam Chair.
- He did not have a problem
with these hands
for the next 200-odd years.
- Handsome, noble,
with considerable
considerables.
Lestat's makers
love their Lestat.
- This is not about
his vampire life.
Why are we even
discussing this?
Strike it from the record.
- [moaning continues]
[paper tears]
- Moving on.
[somber music]
♪
- There were 1,600 of you
when we first met, Daniel.
- Oh, you.
- 290,000 of you now,
averaging approximately
1.3 meals a day,
that's more deaths
than there are births
in the world.
That's a tipping point.
You beat peak oil.
Hello.
- Raglan, this is Alex.
He's on the vampire spectrum.
Alex, this is Raglan.
He's a watcher.
He watches.
He's watchful.
He's always watching.
He's a watcher.
[bowling ball thuds]
- Hmm.
You might want to alter
your angle of entry
or switch to a ball
that reads earlier.
How about that one?
- You roll, Raglan?
- Mentor for the junior
fun bunch, yes.
I also came for a particular
outdoor concert.
Didn't purchase
event cancellation insurance.
We want the bag.
- You usually send
Rashid in first.
- He's crosstown,
waiting for the butcher
to open.
[soft dramatic music]
- No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
This is nothing.
Artifice.
- I used you to punish.
I never forgave you for Par--
- Paris.
- Never. I never did.
- And now?
- [whimpering]
- Nope.
- Rest.
- Can't. Won't.
- Then what are you sorry for?
- Love of my life was him.
- [sobbing]
- Rest.
- [gasps]
- We want him
to play the concert.
- I want to play the concert.
- Alex wants to play
the concert.
- Why?
- We've been planning it
for a year.
- Excuse me?
- Nudging it, urging it on,
on the periphery, as we do.
"Make more"?
We came up with that.
- You want
the Great Conversion.
- Loss of motor skills,
jaw control
- [crying]
- Blood deprivation.
- Heard the witch.
Must've heard bench.
Me, him.
Then.
- [crying]
- Nutrient loss equivalence.
- Even now,
still thinking about him.
[suspenseful music]
S-sorry.
- No.
No, Louis, you're declining.
- [crying]
- Use your telepathy.
I'll repeat, for posterity.
- [sighs] Too many of us
for what's left in the ground.
Cradle your cell phone.
Sell your Range Rover
while you can.
- A desperate hour.
- There was a breakout room
at the last G7 conference.
They called it
May the Vamps Safely Graze.
- Rescue the head,
save the planet.
- It's a bit of a stretch.
Can't see your kind governing,
but then
you and I have
our own reasonings.
- He pissed me off.
- Evidence
of the soul's existence.
- Soul?
- The alchemist Magnus
chooses him to carry on
the blood.
And what does he do?
He gifts it
to his ailing mother.
Noble.
But the tailor's son?
- Stupid and wasteful.
I was mad.
- [telepathically]
I got lies to account for.
- I've got lies to account for.
- Lies to myself.
- Lies to myself.
- To others.
- Lies to others.
- I know what it's like
to build a house
- I know what it's like
to build a house
- A cathedral on top of a lie.
- Cathedral on top of a lie.
- No biological rationale
for head here and body there.
That's the soul fighting,
Daniel.
- Romps with my rotten boy.
- A--a cat-burgling stint
on the devil's road
with Gabriella, Sofia,
mother, lover, Madam Chair.
- Live that lie so fully
that it might as well be true.
- To live the lie so fully,
might as well be true.
- Meaning beyond mortality.
Wonder returned.
[sighs]
Alex, I think you should open
with "Big Boss."
- Raglan.
- Daniel?
♪
- A straight man.
- Straight man.
- Good Negro, an artist.
- Good Negro, an artist.
- Things I wasn't.
- Things I was not.
- And you got some reason
to be dark-sided, Armand.
- And you--
you have some reason
to be dark-sided, Armand.
- You were sold
by who you were sold by.
- You were sold
by who you were sold by.
- Sold into what
you were sold into.
- Sold into what you were--
- I saw a lot of that
in New Orleans.
- Saw a lot of that
in New Orleans.
- On the opposite shore.
- On the opposite shore.
- Running houses I ran.
You and I didn't
- You and I
- Didn't talk about it much
- We didn't talk about it much.
- With you
- Shut it off.
- [crying softly]
- 'Cause I didn't want
to think on my own sins.
Or picture you at 12.
At 12.
You were 12.
Scared.
Poor boy,
Arun.
You need a love
that'll cradle you.
[somber music]
You should have that.
And I was never that for you.
And I'm sorry.
- [whimpering]
♪
- My coldness,
my denial
drove you to this.
♪
I saw good in you
- [crying softly]
- For a while.
♪
- [sighs]
♪
[sighs]
♪
[tape rips]
- [whimpering]
- Bad things happen
to girlies who talk.
♪
- [gasping]
[tape rips]
[door slams]
- Using a standard suture kit.
- [groaning]
- 2.0 absorbable nylon suture
to reaffix the head,
close the wound.
Isn't going to do much other
than hold the head in place
while it fuses
through the blood.
- [groaning]
- I am not a plastic surgeon.
This is not
my field of expertise.
[door slams]
- And when she told him
that she wanted more darkness,
he looked at her
with the eyes of a juvenile.
A great abandonment.
And he threw himself
on the shore.
And he let the gravediggers
fish him from the tide
and bury him
in the sands of anonymity.
- Now that's acting.
- And there he lies
for 80 years,
heaved out of the dirt because
the mother of all of us
chooses him,
lets him drink of her,
makes him a godling.
And what does he do
with this honor?
- Hops the "SS Abandoned"
in New Orleans.
Gives the gift to a pimp
who lives
to make him miserable,
daddy-traps him,
slits his throat,
and fucks his ex.
A lot.
Could be nice.
- Could be.
all: The soul!
- The failed progeny of Magnus.
- Unworthy chosen of Akasha.
all: The soul!
- Kills the daughter,
saves the pimp,
rots in a rotting robe
in a rotting shack
in the rotting city.
[chaotic piano music]
A tragic crippled thing,
playing a plank for a piano,
waiting for a hug.
all: The soul!
- A book.
- A band.
- An album and a cause.
all: The soul!
- But does failure
finally fail to find him?
No.
all: The soul!
- He sits on a bench
like a stupid idiot
in a fog he mistakes for love.
- Could be.
- Could be nice.
- Whack!
- [laughing]
- Reckless.
Self-sabotaging.
Vain.
A brat.
- Stupid.
- Trashy. Tawdry.
- A rotten boy.
- Failure.
- Impulsive. Imprudent.
- And st-st-stutterer.
- Cowardly. Selfish.
- Wretched.
- A waste.
A failure.
- The Bimbo Himbo of Hambone.
- Did you stay home
until you were 30?
Cabbage!
- A great abandonment.
[music building]
- [laughing]
- Your whole damn life
a failure.
- Unworthy.
- Uncharitable.
- Manipulative.
- Miserable.
- Idiot.
- Ignorant.
- A careless caretaker.
- A crooning cartoon.
- A prima donna.
- A peacock.
- Your whole
goddamn life
a pathetic failure!
[music climaxes]
[alarm chiming]
[breathing heavily]
Well done.
Good show.
A bit shit.
But that's why you're opening
and I'm headlining.
The Vampire Lestat,
one life only.
Tickets through Ticketmaster.
Inevitable complaints
to Roget and Associates.
[feedback whines]
[bold rock music playing]
[cheers and applause]
Bonjour, St-Germain,
Vieux Carré, Tontreal!
Let's hear it for Sofia Gabs
and the Fledglings of Failure!
[cheers and applause]
[laughs]
You are all here tonight
because I murdered you,
made you,
or memorably traumatized you.
Congratulations for your
historical proximity to me.
No doubt it was the defining
moment of your life.
- We love you, Lestat!
- I love you too.
- Play "Long Face"!
- Fuck that song!
That is a song
you wash your car too.
[laughter]
Perhaps that's
the purposeful life of Lestat.
He made more clean cars.
[laughter]
Should've said that
at the long table.
[cheering]
Has that ever happened to you?
You think of the perfect thing
to say to the Pope
an hour after you leave
the Vatican?
I know you.
I drained you in Vienna.
Christmas Market, 1953.
[bells ringing]
What's your name?
- Enzo.
- Enzo.
[festive music playing]
Quite the sharp suit.
I spilled a lot of your blood.
I was in a foul mood
that evening.
You deserved better.
[feedback whines]
A lot of familiar faces
in the audience tonight.
[cheers and applause]
More than a lot.
All familiar.
[bold rock music continues]
Janice.
- [giggles]
- CeCi.
- Lestat! Lestat!
- Baggage Man,
New York Limited.
How's the head?
Tickets, please!
"Black Licorice."
I wrote a song about you.
I killed you
in the Lower Ninth.
Thank you for coming.
[booing]
- Love you, Lestat!
[cheering]
- We've got a great show
for you tonight
in a venue
of overwhelming sentiment,
because, well,
this is the place
that music first
wrapped its belt
around my aorta and yoked me
through two centuries plus
of vampiric life.
[feedback whining]
[breathing heavily]
[bold rock music playing]
What a life it's been.
- Play "Long Face"!
- Is that you, Dad?
[cheering]
♪
[laughs]
Regarding life,
recent findings of the many
I love most
found my life to be a failure.
[booing]
Right?
[cheering]
Right?
I took your blood.
I did my vampire duty.
I brought death, spread fear,
fostered superstition
and paranoia.
[laughs]
Moral complaints all fall
on the idea that humanity is--
- Failure!
- I don't agree.
[crowd shouting]
- No one asked you, lady!
- I think in the end--
in the end
[laughs]
I think
I was pretty fucking great!
[cheers and applause]
- [shouting in Japanese]
- But
if I failed,
if--if I failed
- [chuckles]
- Then that means
I actually attempted something.
[cheering]
Which is more than I can say
for most of those
I love the most.
I don't know if I mean that.
[sighs]
That was performative.
I loved you.
I did.
[no audio]
As grotesque as that love
appeared to you,
I did.
♪
[cheering]
Thank you for coming.
[cheering]
- We love you, Lestat!
We love you!
- We've got a great show
for you tonight.
[cheering]
We're gonna play
a new song for you tonight!
We've got TC on the drums,
Salamander on the bass,
Plastic Dracula Alex
on the guitar,
and I am the Vampire Lestat!
[breathing heavily]
I was supposed to stage dive
just then.
[breathing heavily]
Could be.
Hands touch.
I'm feeling a little--
[somber music]
♪
You need to get
your snooze fixed, Lestat.
[gasps]
[feedback whines]
[breathing heavily]
What else?
[breathing heavily]
I'm failing.
♪
My blood.
My blood.
I did my best with it.
♪
No.
No, I let--I let too much
spill too often.
♪
I did not always honor it.
Enzo.
Can--can someone tell--
[breathing heavily]
Can someone tell Enzo
that I'm sorry?
He had
a package with
the most beautiful wrapping.
And I hope it got to who
whom it was meant for.
Grammar.
♪
- He has a hard time saying it.
Got that from our daddy.
It doesn't mean he doesn't.
It's just his way.
Thank you for loving him,
for loving him the way
he needs to be loved.
I still wish you were a woman.
- [laughs weakly]
Me too, sometimes.
♪
Wow.
- It's not all that
once you get there.
♪
- Silver threads.
Silver threads stretched out
over other threads.
[birdsong]
- OK. You sure about that?
[birdsong]
Yes, ma'am.
OK.
♪
- Would you believe me
if I said
the next thing I remember
is waking up on my tour bus,
parked in the woods
several hundred yards away
from the stage,
where 45,000 frenzied
and impatient vampires
and 10,000 naive
and beautifully unwell mortals
gathered from all corners
of the savage garden
to hear me sing "Make More"?
It was disorienting, my return
to the physical world,
her kind and caring words
so very different
from her words
at the long table.
The shoe leather
of how I got there
was explained to me
by a man I did not recognize
but who I now call a friend.
He told me his watchful
operatives were in the park
the night Armand and Daniel
cut through the fog of love
and the flesh of our necks.
They trailed our parts
to their destinations
and followed
their protocols of engagement.
He was vague
about Alex's role.
There was, however,
nothing vague
about whose idea it was
to bring me
from my immortal brush
with mortality
directly to the now
infamously catastrophic gig.
And as I talked over
their absurd persuasions
for me to perform,
a second thought saved them
all from my provoked rage.
[soft dramatic music]
♪
He didn't go
into the details of his day.
I would only hear of them
later,
after the concert,
after the mayhem.
Should have quit
right then and there.
I know. I know.
This is you, right?
Right? This is your idea?
- You want to go out
and tell them that there is
going to be no show?
- You want to put me
in a coffin, let me have a nap,
and then you put me
on fucking stage?
- You want to see what happens
when you go out there
and tell them that?
- Are you insane?
You tell whoever the fuck
brought you back into my life--
- You think that there is going
to be a safe mile anywhere
- That I am not
fucking delivering!
- In this sacred garden
- You go onstage!
You get torn apart!
- If you do that?
- You do it
because I am not going onstage!
I am not fucking singing,
you fucking monster!
[whirring]
[inhales]
Struggle to articulate
is something.
I look around my living room,
where I record this now,
and everything just feels off.
I imagine you're here with me,
my patron.
Whoever you are.
Do you hate me?
Do you smoke?
[chuckles]
Have I scaled the walls
of your privilege,
made you feel how I felt
in the summer,
spring, and fall of 2025?
Or have I failed at auction,
these reels returned
to me unsold?
Am I talking to myself?
[crackling]
- You are listening
to "The Failures,"
Album 58, Side A.
["Butterscotch Bitch" playing]
♪
- What did I say
at the start of this,
as to the Queen,
as to destruction unleashed?
Something about
the regretful dead
and the hmm, what was it?
Traumatized alive.
[chuckles]
That I had made
a contribution.
Let me take that back.
[distant sirens wailing]
The fault was mine.
All mine.
♪
- Listen to tracks
from "The Vampire Lestat"
wherever you stream music.
♪
♪
- The idea for the episode,
I think came from a fever dream
from Rolin Jones,
and he was like,
they're headless.
And we were like,
"Okay, okay, crazy."
- My first thought about having
my head skewered
on a butcher's slab was,
"[Bleep] you, Rolin Jones."
because he made
a ridiculous promise to me,
you're not going to get like,
super bloody again.
[Laughs] He lied.
- Mark.
- It's your turn.
- There are too many prosthetic
heads out in the world of me,
I hate it.
- Both the boys find
it disturbing
to watch themselves
talk back to them.
- Burn them now.
[Laughs]
- I don't know who's got my head
or where it is now, but
- Take them out on
a Saturday night, right?
- And I think you know the
specific ways you've done it.
- Fuck you.
- I've been waiting for
this moment.
This was very cathartic
for me and Armand,
because all season we haven't
seen Armand and Louis interact.
Motivation.
- I acted as a severed head
and I acted as a body.
And we just switched around and
did loads of different passes.
It was fun. It's quite hard
to keep your head rigid.
I had to, like, lock myself
into the cutout on the table
and just, like,
keep my head very still.
- Also, we brought her.
- Delainey has an all-timer
Hall of Fame MVP scream.
- No, she didn't know.
- The butcher scene,
it's so icky.
- And action.
- But filming it was fun.
And Armand is--
I was gonna swear then.
He's a scary, scary man.
- Armand!
- Ah.
- [Screams]
I think the first scream was
the most powerful scream,
because I didn't know it was
going to be an animatronic head.
[Screaming]
- Delainey needs to be
a scream queen yesterday.
AMC Shudder,
look up Delainey Hayles.
You know her.
[Laughs]
- In that moment,
I think Regina's like,
"How do I get out alive?
Like, Louis,
it's too late for you.
But how do I make it out?"
- Paper. Paper.
- Louis and Armand
It's really beautiful
that they get this moment
to just, like, reconcile.
- Picture you at 12.
- That's the moment Armand
- Scared.
- finally accepts that
- Poor boy.
- this is over.
- Arun, you need a love
that will cradle you.
- It's a really powerful moment.
I hope it does come across.
It felt really important
when we did it.
♪
- I am the chair, the maker.
- Lestat, he's at the long table,
which I knew was coming from
the very beginning,
because Rolin had said,
the whole season
is going to be revolving
around this concept
of the long table.
And where's Claudia?
- She said all she needs
to say to you is what she said.
- Originally, it was going
to be everyone who was killed,
which is kind of
where we get to by the very end
when he's performing on
the stage in the Paris street,
which is of no time.
- This whole episode
is designed to revisit the past
- and talk to those people
- I'm dead.
who have been
a huge part of his life.
- This is death?
My father's ugly table
in your shitty tower.
- Dying.
- For the first time,
he's forced to actually deal
with the relationships in his
life that he tries to sculpt,
or change, or run away from.
So you're all here to judge me?
- We are the failure finders.
- These people point out
to him things about himself
that he maybe couldn't see.
In some ways,
he's gaining an education
and he's gaining emotional
intelligence about himself.
- Cross between a self-absorbed
Robert Plant impersonator
and an 80s hot dog
embalmed with hair gel.
- I got to wear that
beautiful raspberry suit again.
And I love that suit.
And it's a comfortable suit.
And it makes me feel like Louis
in a certain period,
a different Louis to the one
we know now.
- At least we don't
have to listen to
his violin playing on this one.
- Lestat is coming to terms
with the fact
that perhaps none
of them like him,
and that's a very
traumatizing experience for him.
And realizing that your
whole life has been a failure.
♪
- And I love the soliloquies
to a bowling bag.
It's kind of crazy
and wonderful.
You go do what I did
with my life.
You go knock down those doors,
you go get some.
- Molloy's pissed off
and he's got the guy's head,
and he's like,
"I'm gonna yell at this thing."
- I get to gloat,
and then ultimately,
things change up again.
- Hello.
- Alex, this is Raglan.
He's a watcher.
He watches.
Once again,
Daniel is frustrated.
- [Laughs]
- Hmm.
You might want to alter
your angle of entry
or switch to a ball
that reads earlier.
How about that one?
- If you've read all
the Anne Rice,
then you know that Raglan James
is a very complicated
character, ultimately.
- Alex, I think you
should open with Big Boss.
- I fantasize having
the power that a vampire has,
and I can't wait to fight
with everybody.
- Raglan.
- Daniel?
♪
- The soul.
- The failed progeny of Magnus.
- Unworthy chosen of Akasha.
- The soul.
- He keeps getting kicked down.
Gets back up.
Keeps getting kicked down.
Gets back up.
And now he's kicked back down
on the floor again.
And he might not be
able to get back up right now.
- Failure as a theme, I just
think is a beautiful thing.
We should all fail more.
If you don't fail,
you don't learn.
- Pathetic failure!
- Even if he listens to all
of the failures
while they're sitting
there eating his soul
at the dinner table,
he still gets up on the table
and says, "Well done.
Good job. Good shit.
That's why you're opening.
And I'm headlining.
- The Vampire Lestat.
- [Cheers]
- Bonjour, Saint Germain.
I think the overarching
whole theme
of the whole show
and Lestat's journey
is his whole life might be
a total train wreck,
but at least he tried.
At least he's trying.
♪
For me, the greatest shock
of this episode
was bringing Paul back into it.
And for Paul to be the one
that tells Lestat,
actually, Louis does love you.
- He has a hard time saying it.
Got that from my daddy.
- Beautiful,
beautiful moment with Paul
where Lestat is this person who,
however he wants
to be self-critical,
he also has to be self-loving
in some ways,
and that really opens his eyes.
- You didn't fail,
because somebody loved you.
I thought that was like, "Whoa,
heartbreaking, heartbreaking.
Insane." It's beautiful.
On second thought, save them
all from my provoked rage.
- I think it's really sweet
that they just pick up
where they left off.
As extreme as it all gets,
there is actually something
very simple about this reunion,
and maybe it's because it's
where they acknowledged
a future,
so they just pick up again.
I think that's beautiful.
♪
- At the very end
of the season,
and it's also the conclusion
to the first opening scene
in episode one,
where you now discover
what our timeline is.
You can see that Louis
and Armand are injured.
Lestat is no longer there.
And this is post-Akasha.
This is post the destruction
of the world.
I would say he's very,
very responsible
for that destruction.
I mean, he woke the Queen.
The fault was mine.
All mine.
♪
- My head is rollin' round
Will my toesies ever touch
the ground? ♪
Hang every rope ♪
Burn every witch ♪
But you'll never catch
the butterscotch bitch ♪
Yah, bah-dah
Bah-dah ♪
Yah-dah-dah, dah ♪
- Watch
"The Vampire Lestat: After Dark"
on AMC+ or wherever you
get your podcasts.
- Previously on
"The Vampire Lestat"
- The collection has been
named "The Failures."
- That's why these
movie producers hired you,
Daniel Molloy, vampire slayer.
- They said you requested me.
What happened at age 9?
- I was taken to see witches
being burned at a stake.
It's what moms did with kids
before LEGO and Peppa Pig.
- Ready to eat your own?
- What is with the tan, Dan?
- I'm seeing someone.
- The Vampire Armand,
the love of my life.
- More deaths than births.
It's happening, Daniel.
- The Great Conversion,
it's real.
- Your music speaks to them.
They long for a communion.
- You're the one putting
the show together?
50,000 of us.
- They're coming
from all over the world.
- Find someone else to swindle.
- He's the one coming around
here doing all this with me.
I look like her.
I look just like her, don't I?
- We eat your soul
at the long table.
- If it was just the two of us
again, could be nice.
- Could be.
- You'd be a head mounted
above a coven toilet
if it weren't for me.
- You assume death
at decapitation.
["All Fall Down"]
♪
- 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 ♪
- You are listening
to "The Failures"
[record scratches]
Album 57, Side A.
- Could be nice, says Louis.
Could be, I say.
And our hands touch.
I am staring at Alex
in his plastic Dracula mask.
And then I think,
why is he here?
And then the world pivots.
And I see stars in the sky.
Boots upside down.
My blood, a half-painted moon.
And then I'm dreaming.
[gentle music]
[birds chirping]
I'm walking a path.
I am listening
to hidden birds in a forest
and transcribing their chatter
into music on paper.
It's the same dream
I've been having
since I finished the album
and faked my death,
except now I'm hungry
and it's daylight all around.
And as I'm a vampire,
confirmed by the glass nails
on my fingers,
I should be burning,
but I'm not.
The birds' music
becomes repetitive.
And then
the forest goes quiet.
No birds singing.
I am left with my hunger,
a feeling like my stomach
is eroding from the inside.
And then, as if the forest
has heard my thoughts,
a murder of waiters
carrying silver-domed trays
take over my path.
- Come now, Lestat.
No falling behind.
[laughs]
- And I follow my hunger
into the wood.
[distant horns honking]
And I begin to hear
sounds of a city,
and that little song they play
for the blind
at crosswalks
throughout Montreal
carries my hunger
to the table of my youth,
where my selves sit with
the abbot of Haute-Loire
- Circles us as God
- Instructing
from my father's chair.
[distant horns honking]
[bright melody playing]
- Encircles us with his love.
- The hood?
- Limits our view
and cuts out the world
so we gaze ahead towards God.
- And the length
of our habit trips us up
and gets in our goddamn way.
- [laughs]
- Lestat.
- Lestat.
- Lestat.
- Lestat.
- Have a seat, Lestat.
- There's seven waiters
and only four of us.
both: Have a seat.
- Have a s--
[stammering]
Seat. Seat.
[platters clattering]
- The light's gone
out of your blue eyes.
all: As if all
the summer days are gone.
- Course 187, the soul.
[eerie music]
- [humming and vocalizing]
♪
- [gasps, gurgling]
- I have been enduring
intense conversations
with myself in the three years
since our companionship ended.
And as part of that journey,
I wish to say something
from the deepest regions
of my soul.
- Ar--
- Two grievous lies,
gross betrayals.
The first is
a well-trod pit of hot coals
I blistered my feet on
for 77 years.
- Arm
[gasping]
- I chose my coven over you,
lured you into a production
of a play,
in which your death would act
as the grotesque climax.
The coven was
twisting my arm, but
- Ar
- I took aesthetic pleasure
in making your death
visually exhilarating.
- mand.
- All of which was made worse
by our heady lovemaking
throughout this period
of betrayal, and
the second.
- [gasping]
- I shamefully took credit
when Lestat saved your life.
- Where am I?
- That lie bound you to me,
and it lay like a corpse
in the boiler room
of our companionship.
Many times, I told myself
the lie did not matter
because what we had built,
a love that served as a bunker
against time,
was weightier
and more consequential
than the lie,
but it wasn't true.
- Can't move
- The lie did matter
because the corpse was there,
calling forth the facts.
- Can't move my body.
[gasping]
- And as for the many boys
you drugged, drained,
and lay with,
I feigned resentment
when, in fact,
I welcomed your straying
because your guilt
in their aftermath
bound you to me
all the more tightly
and allowed me my hours
of observation with Daniel.
I told you I loved you,
but did I?
Hmm? Did I?
Or was it a clinging
to the underside
of anyone
who would help me survive?
And when I look back
on who I've deceived,
how I've deceived,
how easy it was
for me to lead a cult
for 400 years,
to burn in ritual any
who broke the archaic laws
we lived by, I--
I think I might be
a room without walls,
floors, a ceiling.
An infinite nothing.
Also, yes.
I put the Fred Steins
in your photo collection
just to fuck with your head.
And that is my full
and heartfelt "Armends."
Now
♪
It's your turn.
- I am the chair, the maker,
the Vampire Magnus.
Fledglings, state your names
for the record.
- The Vampire
Nicolas de Lenfent.
- The Vampire
Louis de Pointe du Lac.
[typewriter clicking]
- The Vampire Gabriella Vecce.
- The Vampire Antoinette Brown.
- The Vampire TC.
- And where's Claudia?
- She said all she needs to say
to you is what she said.
- Her actual words were,
"Fuck him, fuck y'all, go burn
like that dumb nine-fingered
bitch, Antoinette."
- [laughs]
- Antoinette, hello.
- Don't you
"Antoinette, hello," me.
- Restrain yourself, Ms. Brown.
[typewriter chimes]
- So I'm dead.
[typewriter clicking]
This is death?
My father's ugly table
in your shitty tower?
- Dying.
This is you dying.
- This is the reminiscence,
the deliberation
and mastication
of the early risings
and nightly failures
of the vampire.
- How?
- "How" is not his name.
His name is Lestat.
- How did I die?
- I'ma type Lestat.
- Dying.
Not yet dead.
- Wasting time.
Much like you've wasted
your lives.
- Could be nice.
- Could be.
Hands touch.
[typewriter chimes]
- Second time's the charm.
- Keep typing, Ms. Brown.
[typewriter clicking]
- So you're all here
to judge me.
- We are the failure finders.
Judgment comes from God, Satan,
the Simulation.
We don't know.
No one ever tells us.
And yet here we are
on course number 205.
all: The soul.
[laughter]
- [laughing]
[somber music]
This is a dream.
[laughing]
I am not here.
- You are here.
- And also
in a bowling ball bag
walking west
on Avenue Van Horne.
- [laughing]
A bowling bag.
[laughter]
- And also lying
on the sideboard
in the back room
of a butcher shop.
♪
- It's November 1st.
- All Saints Day,
a Saturday morning.
- Which means
we won't be disturbed,
as it's an observant butchery,
and it's their Shabbos.
All the shops
along this avenue are closed.
- And anyone who might possibly
think of coming to your rescue
is asleep.
- [snoring]
- Or otherwise engaged.
- [gurgling]
♪
- [sighs]
I was hoping
time and perspective
would have made you eager
to repent.
- Don't care.
- My blunder.
I haven't properly laid out
your predicament.
- [gasping]
- This is your sundered head.
And this is your petulant body.
And this
is the glorious air between
on which the two of you
still manage to communicate
a good 2 hours and 12 minutes
since uncoupling.
- I don't care.
- If you weren't
Lestat's progeny,
this would not be happening.
You would be dead, which is why
this is being live-cast
to a very important room
gathered in Budapest.
- [groaning]
- You are special, Louis.
- Fareed.
- Yes, our former doctor,
back in research
where he thrives,
studying us, analyzing us.
But was he doing that
all along?
Hmm? In Dubai?
- See you, Fareed.
- In Lestat's bus?
- I don't care.
- He will say he was not here.
And if you reconsider
your amends and survive,
you most probably
won't remember him.
Or this.
- [gasping]
- Don't print
the obituary just yet.
Getting some much needed rest
before the big concert,
aren't we?
I backdoored myself
into his band,
enjoyed ruining
for the sake of ruining.
- [groaning]
Where is his--
- Where is his--where is his--
where is his head?
It's with my companion.
- Snuck out before
the wife woke up, did you?
- Told me to take my head
as far away from her body
as I could.
- Well,
never question the boss.
What size shoe?
- 10 1/2.
- I think you know
you've wronged me.
And I think you know
the specific ways
in which you've done it.
- Don't care.
- Yes, you seem to be
caught in that sentiment.
Regrettably, your maker's body
has not induced you to own it.
So one additional motivation.
[metal scraping]
- [groaning]
- We broke in
yesterday afternoon,
glamoured the kindly
brisket-carving butcher
early home to Shabbos.
We owe him new knives
and a deep clean.
You may own the night, Louis,
but you're as kosher
as clams casino.
Also, we brought her.
- No, no, no.
- Waitress, sister, daughter.
- No, no.
- None of those things.
- No, no, no.
She didn't know.
Armand!
[moans]
- [screams]
- Setting aside opinions
of the coven master in place,
his destruction of the children
of darkness was
- Impulsive, reckless.
- Overdue.
- Thank you.
- His abandonment
of the Paris coven?
- Selfish, cowardly.
- Generous to a fault.
- I did
what my maker showed me,
throw money at the problem
and run away.
- Magnus gifted you
immortality.
Magnus gifted you
boundless lucre.
- Magnus speaks
in the third person
when he's on the back foot.
[laughter]
- Fledgling Lestat gave
meaning to his players
and absconded with it
when he ran.
A failure of leadership.
- The plays ran
for a century and a half.
- That's longer than "Wicked."
- Course 214, the soul.
- Why is he the chair?
- I am your maker!
- I knew you for a week.
What do you know of me?
"Ask for it, wolf killer,
and you shall love forever."
I refused!
- Consent is
a 20th-century concern.
- Showed me a coffin,
some money.
Told me to scatter his ashes.
And then he lit himself
on fire,
dancing as he burned!
[laughs]
I have two makers.
- Ah.
You want her.
You want mommy in the chair?
[soft music]
♪
- Yes.
- Failure continues
in the astral plane.
- [laughs]
[bottle whistles]
- Ms. Brown,
please note for the record
a change in the chairmanship.
[typewriter clicking]
- [singing in Italian]
- [clears throat]
Ms. Brown,
the next item on the agenda.
[typewriter dings]
- [sobbing]
- Let her go.
- OK, getting
our bearings back.
Good.
A pedigreed vampire,
as you know,
he can endure a great deal.
How are his vitals, Fareed?
- Not good.
- I ask about your vitals,
Louis,
because I don't think
it's landed yet
who sits before you.
- She ain't part of us.
- Please.
I don't want to die.
- No, he doesn't
want you to die,
but let's see if that holds.
You two met by chance, yes?
The merciful universe
acknowledging
your need to grieve
and her need for saving.
Or was she conceived
the instant you hurled me
into the supporting wall
of our Dubai penthouse?
Brought to life when I used
an old photo of Claudia
in her Baby Lu blues
and facial recognition software
on my iPad to find
a 7 out of 10 in Berlin,
an 8 1/2 in Tunis,
or this zone 2 girly
with a grifter's résumé.
- Don't. Don't.
- No.
- There's a years-long tale
of seduction
and cold commerce
- He told me he had a friend
- In East London, the setting
her up in New York--
- Who Lost his daughter.
I didn't think he was booky.
- The 19 times
she passed in front of you
before you noticed.
But your withering vitals
suggest I speed ahead.
You walk into a Brooklyn diner.
I would say,
"Shh, calm yourself.
"He's here for you.
Easy mark."
And she would walk up
and say
[imitating Regina] "Best thing
to do with our burgers,
let it cool till the grease is
all soaked, bread's all wet."
- He got--he was in my head,
but he wasn't there.
- I would say,
"Endear yourself to him."
And she'd say, "Had a few
more hopes for New York,
"but so far it's been, like,
six flatmates, one toilet.
"And it's like, do I want
to take my tampon out
in front of the podcaster
been with us since Tuesday?"
And you'd say
- But you caught me
at a--a lonely hour.
And I--I don't want
to put this on you.
- And I'd say, "He's tender.
Back off."
But she knew better.
- Sure you do.
It's right there on your jaw.
What is it?
I remind you of your sis?
- And then I knew she had you.
And her mastery allowed me
to drop in and out.
I was in other business
with Lestat, with Daniel.
- I'm sorry, Louis.
- All to say, there has been
extraordinary effort
put forth
towards this reunion.
- What I gone and done to us?
- Just kill me.
- No, no.
You're going to make
your amends
so we can both get on
with our lives.
- [sobbing]
- Or I'm going to lop
her head off
with this same blade
I did yours
and sew your head
onto her body.
- They said I was dead ♪
They tried to save me ♪
They cut off my head ♪
[pins clatter]
[upbeat hip-hop music playing]
♪
- Lestat, Lestat, Lestat,
Lestat, Lestat, Lestat.
You took one look at me,
had me all figured out.
Yeah, question mark?
Smarter than me?
Maybe.
Better looking than me?
I'll give you that.
More talented? Hmm.
You go do
what I did with my life.
You go knock down those doors.
You go get some.
Oh, that's right,
you were in a rock band.
Wow, big dick deal.
- He gave me the gift
rather than tell me
he love me.
I begged him to say it,
say, "Nikki,
I will never love you
the way that you love me."
- Gotta say that shit
a mile up in the air
if you want it to stick.
- He told you he loved you
a thousand times.
- 10,000.
[zipper rips]
- But now
that I've gotten over
my transformational trauma
and find myself
in my day-walking
yaoi manther phase
- There's a hole in your roof.
- I only give a shit
about Dan.
Thought you were
better than me, didn't you?
Gave me a little camera crew,
a laminated backstage pass,
and then you laughed in my face
and jerked off on my lens.
Well, look at you now,
spending your last hours
in a fucking bowling bag,
listening to Wheelchair Jimmy.
Blow me.
[zipper rips]
- Oh.
- There is a lot
coming at you, mon cher.
Just remember,
you are the only one
who can control the volume.
- [mumbling]
♪
- Oh, you.
What are you doing here?
Armand tell you to meet me?
- [mumbling]
- Oh, yeah, he's in there.
It's in there.
Lestat's mom made you, yeah?
She give you the autism gift?
You bowl?
- I'm a lot of bad things,
but I'm not, like--
- Vitals, Fareed?
- Waning.
- I wouldn't have done it
had I known he was full fiend,
gonna cut you up like he done.
I was in the grip of it
and couldn't get myself out.
- Fareed assured me
it would work.
Pop it back on.
Let the blood do its magic.
- On a work visa,
signed by him.
- Not sure it would work
on a mortal,
but this is how progress
- Walk into a police precinct
- Is made--trial and error.
- And say, "In some trouble.
It's weird. He's a vampire,"
gonna end up
on a grippy sock holiday.
- I listened in
on your séance last night.
I think Claudia would approve
of this scientific risk.
- We ain't coming out of this.
[muffled]
We're gonna die.
They gonna sell
a snuff tape, Louis.
Don't give it to them.
- Ah, he's shut us both out.
[laughs]
- [whimpering]
- You know,
I've known for some time
Claudia was the aperture
through which
I could rip his innards out.
I understood
his obsession for forgiveness.
I lived it with him.
He was my Claudia.
But I wasted a near century.
And that is not nothing.
That deserves amends.
- He said to the head
on the skewer.
- You think I'm bluffing?
[suspenseful music]
Tell me your name again.
- Nelson.
- Nelson. Nelson.
Nelson here is
one of my followers.
Pick up that knife.
[blade scrapes]
I have about a hundred
of them now.
Nelson, rest.
- [gurgling]
- [screaming]
[clattering]
- Nelson thinks he was here
to stop the Great Conversion,
to return to the Five Laws.
I needed him to stuff your head
in a cooler and drive me here.
- [grunts]
♪
- Rest.
♪
- I liked you, Louis.
You're a bit messed up,
but I liked you.
♪
Please.
I don't wanna die.
[whimpering]
- Paper.
Paper.
[knife clatters]
- You failed to fill
the Ryan Center
of Kingston, Rhode Island.
- Van Gogh sold one painting
in his lifetime.
- Thank you, Mother.
- Lover.
- "An intransigent
Crypt Keeper
in the hokiest light
imaginable,"
"Billboard" magazine.
- "If this is the mind,
heart, liver
"of someone looking down
the barrel of immortality,
then kill me now,"
theneedledrop.
- "A cross between
a self-absorbed
"Robert Plant impersonator
and an '80s hot dog,
embalmed with hair gel."
[laughter]
"Only the drummer
escapes alive."
- Woof.
- Stereogum.
- You saw me front it
in Toronto, and you in Detroit,
and I killed it both nights.
- Yes, but we did not see you
at Potawa Tommie's
in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
[typewriter chimes]
- Turn to page 3, measure 95.
["When I Call Out Your Name"
playing]
- State your name
for the record.
- Marco Piemontessi.
- You were murdered
by the Vampire Lestat
after a performance
of "Don Pasquale."
- And him.
- As an expert in your field
- Ha.
- As an unwitting meal
of the Vampire Lestat
- And him.
- Walk us through the May 5,
2025, performance of
- Waiter.
- "When I Call Out Your Name."
- Already behind.
[volume increases]
You should be
anticipating the beat.
And now we are rushing.
My, my.
And swallowing our consonants.
Tête.
You could learn something
from your Italian mother.
- Grazie bello.
- Always disappearing
when she has the chance.
- Ms. Brown,
your turn is coming.
Keep typing.
- Flat again.
- At least we don't have
to listen
to his violin playing
on this one.
- Flat.
The control of a child
with your vibrato.
- Gabriella, Gabriella ♪
- Again, flat.
- Screaming like a witch
at the stake,
the hem of your devil's dress
catching fire.
- Gabriella, Gabriella
- Mama, mama ♪
Mama ♪
[music fades out]
- [breathing heavily]
- Come now, Lestat,
no falling behind.
[somber violin music]
♪
- The Lord is a jealous
and avenging God!
He is avenging,
and He is wrathful!
He takes vengeance
on His adversaries
and keeps wrath
for His enemies!
The Lord is slow to anger
but great in power.
- Why did you take me there?
- His way is the whirlwind
and the storm.
The clouds are the dust
of His feet!
- Why did you take me there?
- I wanted you to see
who they were.
- He rebukes the sea
and makes it dry!
- You say we are the witches?
You are the witches!
[crowd shouting]
You are all the witches!
You are the witches!
You are the witches!
[gasping]
You are the witch--
[crowd gasping]
You are the--
you are--
[gasping]
- Who can stand before
His indignation?
Who can endure
the heat of His anger?
His wrath is poured out
like fire!
- No one who conceals
transgressions will prosper.
But one who confesses
and forsakes them
will obtain mercy.
[crowd shouting]
- They have confessed!
- Even the Marquis stayed home.
- I wanted you
to escape Auvergne.
- Marguerite Doree.
Ceased her prayers.
Adored the devil in ceremony!
Putrid throats she caused
in her father through spells.
- The father favored
the daughter.
The mother mixed death cap
mushrooms in his cassoulet.
- Jean Bodin.
Ceased her prayers.
Spied by our schoolmaster
swallowing
- The schoolmaster cleans up
his transgressions--
most cowardly.
- Chanting the black mass
in the breaks between!
And the twin witches,
Marthe and Aimée Roulet,
nine years each.
- Aimée Roulet.
- What did they cease doing?
- She used to play
in our home, Mother.
- Run from this place.
- A bag of gunpowder
tied around her neck
so she could burn hot.
- Did you run?
- Aimée?
- No.
Did you stay home
until you were 30?
- Aimée?
- Cabbage!
- God, see us again!
all: God, see us again!
- Cabbage!
- God, see us again!
all: God, see us again!
- No! No!
[dramatic music]
♪
- I love you.
- Mother?
- I love you.
- Mother!
- I love you.
- Mother!
♪
[moaning deeply]
♪
- Did the same thing
to Claudia in New Orleans.
Called it tough love then.
- Then he kills the wolves.
And then your hands wander,
Madam Chair.
- He did not have a problem
with these hands
for the next 200-odd years.
- Handsome, noble,
with considerable
considerables.
Lestat's makers
love their Lestat.
- This is not about
his vampire life.
Why are we even
discussing this?
Strike it from the record.
- [moaning continues]
[paper tears]
- Moving on.
[somber music]
♪
- There were 1,600 of you
when we first met, Daniel.
- Oh, you.
- 290,000 of you now,
averaging approximately
1.3 meals a day,
that's more deaths
than there are births
in the world.
That's a tipping point.
You beat peak oil.
Hello.
- Raglan, this is Alex.
He's on the vampire spectrum.
Alex, this is Raglan.
He's a watcher.
He watches.
He's watchful.
He's always watching.
He's a watcher.
[bowling ball thuds]
- Hmm.
You might want to alter
your angle of entry
or switch to a ball
that reads earlier.
How about that one?
- You roll, Raglan?
- Mentor for the junior
fun bunch, yes.
I also came for a particular
outdoor concert.
Didn't purchase
event cancellation insurance.
We want the bag.
- You usually send
Rashid in first.
- He's crosstown,
waiting for the butcher
to open.
[soft dramatic music]
- No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
This is nothing.
Artifice.
- I used you to punish.
I never forgave you for Par--
- Paris.
- Never. I never did.
- And now?
- [whimpering]
- Nope.
- Rest.
- Can't. Won't.
- Then what are you sorry for?
- Love of my life was him.
- [sobbing]
- Rest.
- [gasps]
- We want him
to play the concert.
- I want to play the concert.
- Alex wants to play
the concert.
- Why?
- We've been planning it
for a year.
- Excuse me?
- Nudging it, urging it on,
on the periphery, as we do.
"Make more"?
We came up with that.
- You want
the Great Conversion.
- Loss of motor skills,
jaw control
- [crying]
- Blood deprivation.
- Heard the witch.
Must've heard bench.
Me, him.
Then.
- [crying]
- Nutrient loss equivalence.
- Even now,
still thinking about him.
[suspenseful music]
S-sorry.
- No.
No, Louis, you're declining.
- [crying]
- Use your telepathy.
I'll repeat, for posterity.
- [sighs] Too many of us
for what's left in the ground.
Cradle your cell phone.
Sell your Range Rover
while you can.
- A desperate hour.
- There was a breakout room
at the last G7 conference.
They called it
May the Vamps Safely Graze.
- Rescue the head,
save the planet.
- It's a bit of a stretch.
Can't see your kind governing,
but then
you and I have
our own reasonings.
- He pissed me off.
- Evidence
of the soul's existence.
- Soul?
- The alchemist Magnus
chooses him to carry on
the blood.
And what does he do?
He gifts it
to his ailing mother.
Noble.
But the tailor's son?
- Stupid and wasteful.
I was mad.
- [telepathically]
I got lies to account for.
- I've got lies to account for.
- Lies to myself.
- Lies to myself.
- To others.
- Lies to others.
- I know what it's like
to build a house
- I know what it's like
to build a house
- A cathedral on top of a lie.
- Cathedral on top of a lie.
- No biological rationale
for head here and body there.
That's the soul fighting,
Daniel.
- Romps with my rotten boy.
- A--a cat-burgling stint
on the devil's road
with Gabriella, Sofia,
mother, lover, Madam Chair.
- Live that lie so fully
that it might as well be true.
- To live the lie so fully,
might as well be true.
- Meaning beyond mortality.
Wonder returned.
[sighs]
Alex, I think you should open
with "Big Boss."
- Raglan.
- Daniel?
♪
- A straight man.
- Straight man.
- Good Negro, an artist.
- Good Negro, an artist.
- Things I wasn't.
- Things I was not.
- And you got some reason
to be dark-sided, Armand.
- And you--
you have some reason
to be dark-sided, Armand.
- You were sold
by who you were sold by.
- You were sold
by who you were sold by.
- Sold into what
you were sold into.
- Sold into what you were--
- I saw a lot of that
in New Orleans.
- Saw a lot of that
in New Orleans.
- On the opposite shore.
- On the opposite shore.
- Running houses I ran.
You and I didn't
- You and I
- Didn't talk about it much
- We didn't talk about it much.
- With you
- Shut it off.
- [crying softly]
- 'Cause I didn't want
to think on my own sins.
Or picture you at 12.
At 12.
You were 12.
Scared.
Poor boy,
Arun.
You need a love
that'll cradle you.
[somber music]
You should have that.
And I was never that for you.
And I'm sorry.
- [whimpering]
♪
- My coldness,
my denial
drove you to this.
♪
I saw good in you
- [crying softly]
- For a while.
♪
- [sighs]
♪
[sighs]
♪
[tape rips]
- [whimpering]
- Bad things happen
to girlies who talk.
♪
- [gasping]
[tape rips]
[door slams]
- Using a standard suture kit.
- [groaning]
- 2.0 absorbable nylon suture
to reaffix the head,
close the wound.
Isn't going to do much other
than hold the head in place
while it fuses
through the blood.
- [groaning]
- I am not a plastic surgeon.
This is not
my field of expertise.
[door slams]
- And when she told him
that she wanted more darkness,
he looked at her
with the eyes of a juvenile.
A great abandonment.
And he threw himself
on the shore.
And he let the gravediggers
fish him from the tide
and bury him
in the sands of anonymity.
- Now that's acting.
- And there he lies
for 80 years,
heaved out of the dirt because
the mother of all of us
chooses him,
lets him drink of her,
makes him a godling.
And what does he do
with this honor?
- Hops the "SS Abandoned"
in New Orleans.
Gives the gift to a pimp
who lives
to make him miserable,
daddy-traps him,
slits his throat,
and fucks his ex.
A lot.
Could be nice.
- Could be.
all: The soul!
- The failed progeny of Magnus.
- Unworthy chosen of Akasha.
all: The soul!
- Kills the daughter,
saves the pimp,
rots in a rotting robe
in a rotting shack
in the rotting city.
[chaotic piano music]
A tragic crippled thing,
playing a plank for a piano,
waiting for a hug.
all: The soul!
- A book.
- A band.
- An album and a cause.
all: The soul!
- But does failure
finally fail to find him?
No.
all: The soul!
- He sits on a bench
like a stupid idiot
in a fog he mistakes for love.
- Could be.
- Could be nice.
- Whack!
- [laughing]
- Reckless.
Self-sabotaging.
Vain.
A brat.
- Stupid.
- Trashy. Tawdry.
- A rotten boy.
- Failure.
- Impulsive. Imprudent.
- And st-st-stutterer.
- Cowardly. Selfish.
- Wretched.
- A waste.
A failure.
- The Bimbo Himbo of Hambone.
- Did you stay home
until you were 30?
Cabbage!
- A great abandonment.
[music building]
- [laughing]
- Your whole damn life
a failure.
- Unworthy.
- Uncharitable.
- Manipulative.
- Miserable.
- Idiot.
- Ignorant.
- A careless caretaker.
- A crooning cartoon.
- A prima donna.
- A peacock.
- Your whole
goddamn life
a pathetic failure!
[music climaxes]
[alarm chiming]
[breathing heavily]
Well done.
Good show.
A bit shit.
But that's why you're opening
and I'm headlining.
The Vampire Lestat,
one life only.
Tickets through Ticketmaster.
Inevitable complaints
to Roget and Associates.
[feedback whines]
[bold rock music playing]
[cheers and applause]
Bonjour, St-Germain,
Vieux Carré, Tontreal!
Let's hear it for Sofia Gabs
and the Fledglings of Failure!
[cheers and applause]
[laughs]
You are all here tonight
because I murdered you,
made you,
or memorably traumatized you.
Congratulations for your
historical proximity to me.
No doubt it was the defining
moment of your life.
- We love you, Lestat!
- I love you too.
- Play "Long Face"!
- Fuck that song!
That is a song
you wash your car too.
[laughter]
Perhaps that's
the purposeful life of Lestat.
He made more clean cars.
[laughter]
Should've said that
at the long table.
[cheering]
Has that ever happened to you?
You think of the perfect thing
to say to the Pope
an hour after you leave
the Vatican?
I know you.
I drained you in Vienna.
Christmas Market, 1953.
[bells ringing]
What's your name?
- Enzo.
- Enzo.
[festive music playing]
Quite the sharp suit.
I spilled a lot of your blood.
I was in a foul mood
that evening.
You deserved better.
[feedback whines]
A lot of familiar faces
in the audience tonight.
[cheers and applause]
More than a lot.
All familiar.
[bold rock music continues]
Janice.
- [giggles]
- CeCi.
- Lestat! Lestat!
- Baggage Man,
New York Limited.
How's the head?
Tickets, please!
"Black Licorice."
I wrote a song about you.
I killed you
in the Lower Ninth.
Thank you for coming.
[booing]
- Love you, Lestat!
[cheering]
- We've got a great show
for you tonight
in a venue
of overwhelming sentiment,
because, well,
this is the place
that music first
wrapped its belt
around my aorta and yoked me
through two centuries plus
of vampiric life.
[feedback whining]
[breathing heavily]
[bold rock music playing]
What a life it's been.
- Play "Long Face"!
- Is that you, Dad?
[cheering]
♪
[laughs]
Regarding life,
recent findings of the many
I love most
found my life to be a failure.
[booing]
Right?
[cheering]
Right?
I took your blood.
I did my vampire duty.
I brought death, spread fear,
fostered superstition
and paranoia.
[laughs]
Moral complaints all fall
on the idea that humanity is--
- Failure!
- I don't agree.
[crowd shouting]
- No one asked you, lady!
- I think in the end--
in the end
[laughs]
I think
I was pretty fucking great!
[cheers and applause]
- [shouting in Japanese]
- But
if I failed,
if--if I failed
- [chuckles]
- Then that means
I actually attempted something.
[cheering]
Which is more than I can say
for most of those
I love the most.
I don't know if I mean that.
[sighs]
That was performative.
I loved you.
I did.
[no audio]
As grotesque as that love
appeared to you,
I did.
♪
[cheering]
Thank you for coming.
[cheering]
- We love you, Lestat!
We love you!
- We've got a great show
for you tonight.
[cheering]
We're gonna play
a new song for you tonight!
We've got TC on the drums,
Salamander on the bass,
Plastic Dracula Alex
on the guitar,
and I am the Vampire Lestat!
[breathing heavily]
I was supposed to stage dive
just then.
[breathing heavily]
Could be.
Hands touch.
I'm feeling a little--
[somber music]
♪
You need to get
your snooze fixed, Lestat.
[gasps]
[feedback whines]
[breathing heavily]
What else?
[breathing heavily]
I'm failing.
♪
My blood.
My blood.
I did my best with it.
♪
No.
No, I let--I let too much
spill too often.
♪
I did not always honor it.
Enzo.
Can--can someone tell--
[breathing heavily]
Can someone tell Enzo
that I'm sorry?
He had
a package with
the most beautiful wrapping.
And I hope it got to who
whom it was meant for.
Grammar.
♪
- He has a hard time saying it.
Got that from our daddy.
It doesn't mean he doesn't.
It's just his way.
Thank you for loving him,
for loving him the way
he needs to be loved.
I still wish you were a woman.
- [laughs weakly]
Me too, sometimes.
♪
Wow.
- It's not all that
once you get there.
♪
- Silver threads.
Silver threads stretched out
over other threads.
[birdsong]
- OK. You sure about that?
[birdsong]
Yes, ma'am.
OK.
♪
- Would you believe me
if I said
the next thing I remember
is waking up on my tour bus,
parked in the woods
several hundred yards away
from the stage,
where 45,000 frenzied
and impatient vampires
and 10,000 naive
and beautifully unwell mortals
gathered from all corners
of the savage garden
to hear me sing "Make More"?
It was disorienting, my return
to the physical world,
her kind and caring words
so very different
from her words
at the long table.
The shoe leather
of how I got there
was explained to me
by a man I did not recognize
but who I now call a friend.
He told me his watchful
operatives were in the park
the night Armand and Daniel
cut through the fog of love
and the flesh of our necks.
They trailed our parts
to their destinations
and followed
their protocols of engagement.
He was vague
about Alex's role.
There was, however,
nothing vague
about whose idea it was
to bring me
from my immortal brush
with mortality
directly to the now
infamously catastrophic gig.
And as I talked over
their absurd persuasions
for me to perform,
a second thought saved them
all from my provoked rage.
[soft dramatic music]
♪
He didn't go
into the details of his day.
I would only hear of them
later,
after the concert,
after the mayhem.
Should have quit
right then and there.
I know. I know.
This is you, right?
Right? This is your idea?
- You want to go out
and tell them that there is
going to be no show?
- You want to put me
in a coffin, let me have a nap,
and then you put me
on fucking stage?
- You want to see what happens
when you go out there
and tell them that?
- Are you insane?
You tell whoever the fuck
brought you back into my life--
- You think that there is going
to be a safe mile anywhere
- That I am not
fucking delivering!
- In this sacred garden
- You go onstage!
You get torn apart!
- If you do that?
- You do it
because I am not going onstage!
I am not fucking singing,
you fucking monster!
[whirring]
[inhales]
Struggle to articulate
is something.
I look around my living room,
where I record this now,
and everything just feels off.
I imagine you're here with me,
my patron.
Whoever you are.
Do you hate me?
Do you smoke?
[chuckles]
Have I scaled the walls
of your privilege,
made you feel how I felt
in the summer,
spring, and fall of 2025?
Or have I failed at auction,
these reels returned
to me unsold?
Am I talking to myself?
[crackling]
- You are listening
to "The Failures,"
Album 58, Side A.
["Butterscotch Bitch" playing]
♪
- What did I say
at the start of this,
as to the Queen,
as to destruction unleashed?
Something about
the regretful dead
and the hmm, what was it?
Traumatized alive.
[chuckles]
That I had made
a contribution.
Let me take that back.
[distant sirens wailing]
The fault was mine.
All mine.
♪
- Listen to tracks
from "The Vampire Lestat"
wherever you stream music.
♪
♪
- The idea for the episode,
I think came from a fever dream
from Rolin Jones,
and he was like,
they're headless.
And we were like,
"Okay, okay, crazy."
- My first thought about having
my head skewered
on a butcher's slab was,
"[Bleep] you, Rolin Jones."
because he made
a ridiculous promise to me,
you're not going to get like,
super bloody again.
[Laughs] He lied.
- Mark.
- It's your turn.
- There are too many prosthetic
heads out in the world of me,
I hate it.
- Both the boys find
it disturbing
to watch themselves
talk back to them.
- Burn them now.
[Laughs]
- I don't know who's got my head
or where it is now, but
- Take them out on
a Saturday night, right?
- And I think you know the
specific ways you've done it.
- Fuck you.
- I've been waiting for
this moment.
This was very cathartic
for me and Armand,
because all season we haven't
seen Armand and Louis interact.
Motivation.
- I acted as a severed head
and I acted as a body.
And we just switched around and
did loads of different passes.
It was fun. It's quite hard
to keep your head rigid.
I had to, like, lock myself
into the cutout on the table
and just, like,
keep my head very still.
- Also, we brought her.
- Delainey has an all-timer
Hall of Fame MVP scream.
- No, she didn't know.
- The butcher scene,
it's so icky.
- And action.
- But filming it was fun.
And Armand is--
I was gonna swear then.
He's a scary, scary man.
- Armand!
- Ah.
- [Screams]
I think the first scream was
the most powerful scream,
because I didn't know it was
going to be an animatronic head.
[Screaming]
- Delainey needs to be
a scream queen yesterday.
AMC Shudder,
look up Delainey Hayles.
You know her.
[Laughs]
- In that moment,
I think Regina's like,
"How do I get out alive?
Like, Louis,
it's too late for you.
But how do I make it out?"
- Paper. Paper.
- Louis and Armand
It's really beautiful
that they get this moment
to just, like, reconcile.
- Picture you at 12.
- That's the moment Armand
- Scared.
- finally accepts that
- Poor boy.
- this is over.
- Arun, you need a love
that will cradle you.
- It's a really powerful moment.
I hope it does come across.
It felt really important
when we did it.
♪
- I am the chair, the maker.
- Lestat, he's at the long table,
which I knew was coming from
the very beginning,
because Rolin had said,
the whole season
is going to be revolving
around this concept
of the long table.
And where's Claudia?
- She said all she needs
to say to you is what she said.
- Originally, it was going
to be everyone who was killed,
which is kind of
where we get to by the very end
when he's performing on
the stage in the Paris street,
which is of no time.
- This whole episode
is designed to revisit the past
- and talk to those people
- I'm dead.
who have been
a huge part of his life.
- This is death?
My father's ugly table
in your shitty tower.
- Dying.
- For the first time,
he's forced to actually deal
with the relationships in his
life that he tries to sculpt,
or change, or run away from.
So you're all here to judge me?
- We are the failure finders.
- These people point out
to him things about himself
that he maybe couldn't see.
In some ways,
he's gaining an education
and he's gaining emotional
intelligence about himself.
- Cross between a self-absorbed
Robert Plant impersonator
and an 80s hot dog
embalmed with hair gel.
- I got to wear that
beautiful raspberry suit again.
And I love that suit.
And it's a comfortable suit.
And it makes me feel like Louis
in a certain period,
a different Louis to the one
we know now.
- At least we don't
have to listen to
his violin playing on this one.
- Lestat is coming to terms
with the fact
that perhaps none
of them like him,
and that's a very
traumatizing experience for him.
And realizing that your
whole life has been a failure.
♪
- And I love the soliloquies
to a bowling bag.
It's kind of crazy
and wonderful.
You go do what I did
with my life.
You go knock down those doors,
you go get some.
- Molloy's pissed off
and he's got the guy's head,
and he's like,
"I'm gonna yell at this thing."
- I get to gloat,
and then ultimately,
things change up again.
- Hello.
- Alex, this is Raglan.
He's a watcher.
He watches.
Once again,
Daniel is frustrated.
- [Laughs]
- Hmm.
You might want to alter
your angle of entry
or switch to a ball
that reads earlier.
How about that one?
- If you've read all
the Anne Rice,
then you know that Raglan James
is a very complicated
character, ultimately.
- Alex, I think you
should open with Big Boss.
- I fantasize having
the power that a vampire has,
and I can't wait to fight
with everybody.
- Raglan.
- Daniel?
♪
- The soul.
- The failed progeny of Magnus.
- Unworthy chosen of Akasha.
- The soul.
- He keeps getting kicked down.
Gets back up.
Keeps getting kicked down.
Gets back up.
And now he's kicked back down
on the floor again.
And he might not be
able to get back up right now.
- Failure as a theme, I just
think is a beautiful thing.
We should all fail more.
If you don't fail,
you don't learn.
- Pathetic failure!
- Even if he listens to all
of the failures
while they're sitting
there eating his soul
at the dinner table,
he still gets up on the table
and says, "Well done.
Good job. Good shit.
That's why you're opening.
And I'm headlining.
- The Vampire Lestat.
- [Cheers]
- Bonjour, Saint Germain.
I think the overarching
whole theme
of the whole show
and Lestat's journey
is his whole life might be
a total train wreck,
but at least he tried.
At least he's trying.
♪
For me, the greatest shock
of this episode
was bringing Paul back into it.
And for Paul to be the one
that tells Lestat,
actually, Louis does love you.
- He has a hard time saying it.
Got that from my daddy.
- Beautiful,
beautiful moment with Paul
where Lestat is this person who,
however he wants
to be self-critical,
he also has to be self-loving
in some ways,
and that really opens his eyes.
- You didn't fail,
because somebody loved you.
I thought that was like, "Whoa,
heartbreaking, heartbreaking.
Insane." It's beautiful.
On second thought, save them
all from my provoked rage.
- I think it's really sweet
that they just pick up
where they left off.
As extreme as it all gets,
there is actually something
very simple about this reunion,
and maybe it's because it's
where they acknowledged
a future,
so they just pick up again.
I think that's beautiful.
♪
- At the very end
of the season,
and it's also the conclusion
to the first opening scene
in episode one,
where you now discover
what our timeline is.
You can see that Louis
and Armand are injured.
Lestat is no longer there.
And this is post-Akasha.
This is post the destruction
of the world.
I would say he's very,
very responsible
for that destruction.
I mean, he woke the Queen.
The fault was mine.
All mine.
♪
- My head is rollin' round
Will my toesies ever touch
the ground? ♪
Hang every rope ♪
Burn every witch ♪
But you'll never catch
the butterscotch bitch ♪
Yah, bah-dah
Bah-dah ♪
Yah-dah-dah, dah ♪