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I still think the writers are following a Tale of the Body Thief-style arc this season, which is narratively interesting, sure, but...inadvisable in a weekly release format.
We've got:
- Amicable but distant Louis and Lestat at the start, shifting into a Lestat feeling let down by Louis.
- Lestat's DARVO mindset regarding his treatment of Louis (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender).
- A recurring hallucination of Claudia that needles Lestat into begrudging self-reflection and partial accountability.
- (Doylist racism that the writers(s) are oblivious to 🫠)
Which I think is all leading to:
- Lestat realising that he has not broken the cycles of his abusive behaviour, despite his regrets, because it gets him the people he wants, and he knows that he will ultimately be forgiven enough to keep them in his life (hopefully a more Louis-focused execution in the show).
Which is all very chewy, BUT.
I was so pissed and disillusioned at times reading TOTBT that I nearly put the series down. Louis was only in a few scenes, but after each one I thought "What was the point of book one? Why does the author expect me to ignore everything bad Lestat did and coddle his hurt feelings?" (And I don't even like book-Louis! Show-Louis is such an incredible character and so different to the book version)
The TOTBT ending low-key blew my mind and retroactively changed how I felt about the entire book, but AGAIN, I nearly didn't get to the ending.
And it's worse with the show, both from a weekly-release perspective and also because the abuse that Lestat inflicted on Louis and Claudia was much more pronounced and racially charged in the show, so it continuing to go unaddressed (or seemingly forgiven) is understandably upsetting and even infuriating to many fans.
No mic-drop ending can fix trust with the show if they prolong this past a viewer's breaking point...which I've seen happen with multiple people I follow.
Combine that with the earned (!) lack of trust engendered by aforementioned Doylist racism, and we have...a messy situation.
And that's if I'm right and there is a best-case-scenario ending on the horizon...
The same people who spent years insisting that Louis should not be sanitized because it would erase his complexity, arguing that he is a monster just like the rest of them, are now asking people to see Lestat's actions through the lens of his trauma.
Suddenly, Lestat's suffering becomes essential context. His anger is understandable. His cruelty is a product of abuse. His actions are examined with empathy. Meanwhile, that same grace is rarely extended to Louis.
That's double standard.
Louis was never afforded the benefit of the doubt by large portions of the fandom. If he described abuse, he was lying. If he remembered events differently, he was an unreliable narrator, Armand must have manipulated him. Every flaw, every mistake, every harmful action became proof of how monstrous he was. Yet when it comes to Lestat, his worst actions are endlessly contextualized, justified, minimized, or explained away through trauma.
To be clear, I have no problem with people criticizing Louis. I've criticized Louis myself especially during season one (which put me on many block lists). My issue is the lack of consistency. If we're going to hold Louis accountable, then we should keep that same energy for Lestat.
For example, Louis being a pimp in 1910 has become one of the defining traits of his character in fandom discussions. It is constantly brought up as evidence of his exploitation of women. Fair enough. But Lestat was emptying coffers to buy women in that same time period. He killed Miss Lily. Yet people rarely frame him as someone who exploits women. They never call him a john. Instead, the discussion quickly shifts back to how abused and tragic he is.
Similarly, some fans write essays about how others have exploited Lestat's body while refusing to acknowledge the ways he has exploited others.
The abuse Louis and Claudia suffered at the hands of Lestat is endlessly debated or denied. People claim Louis lied. They claim Armand altered the narrative. They argue it wasn't really Lestat. They search for every possible explanation except the obvious one: that Lestat was capable of being abusive.
The same pattern appears elsewhere. Lestat's affair (and abuse) with Antoinette is recontexualized or ignored. His affair with Armand while involved with Nicki is denied by the fandom. His admission that he let Louis leave with Armand despite knowing Armand orchestrated the trial gets interpreted as a lie from him. Even Lestat dropping Louis from the sky is attributed to an external influence rather than his own agency.
Fans criticize Louis for reading Claudia's diaries, yet conveniently forget that Lestat did the exact same thing in season one. Or was that a lie too? Another fabrication?
At some point, the excuses become more revealing than the actions themselves.
Lestat is a predator in every sense of the word. He is also a victim of abuse , sexual, physical. and emotional. Those two truths can coexist. Being abused does not erase the harm he causes, just as Louis' suffering does not erase the harm he causes.
Interview with the Vampire is a story about monsters. Complex, tragic, fascinating monsters. The problem is that some fans seem unwilling to let Lestat be one. They watch a show about monsters but want their monster to be a saint. They want him to be a monster one the surface while being virtous at his core. They want plausible deniability for every wrongdoing and an explanation for every cruelty.
But complexity does not require innocence.
If trauma can be used to understand Lestat, then it should also be used to understand Louis. If Louis can be held accountable despite his suffering, then Lestat should be held accountable despite his.
with the way the writing for louis is going, s4 is gonna have a plot point where louis buys these puppies (*buys* not adopts. you must remember he is a capitalist. yes this is what louis would name puppies) to cheer lestat up after lestat got kidnapped by akasha
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I don’t understand the flattening out of Louis’ character. Surely if it’s due to a pov shift that makes it even worse. The redeeming factor of lestat and louis’ relationship was that lestat saw all these beautiful things in him and didn’t want him to conform to roles. Now we have lestat pov dumbing down Louis’ vocabulary and making his prevailing trait “business” to the extent that we don’t see him reading, storytelling, designing, pondering art and artistic movements, taking photographs, making literary criticism, dancing, enjoying music, experimenting with fashion, philosophising, poeticising, crying at opera, romanticising or any of those things, just being fucked up about grief and making money. Is the idea that Louis is once more trapped inside the racialised/gendered/heteronormative roles that he played when lestat first met him? Or has the series abandoned Louis’ complexity in favour of creating a redeemable lestat. The irony is that despite lestat’s inability to see the ways that race and sexuality factored into Louis’ difficulty with being authentic, lestat’s redeeming feature in s1 was his attention and care to the multifaceted dimensions of Louis’ personality. Louis fell for him because he felt seen. Why does tvl lestat not see Louis?
Camp is self aware but what season 3 is doing isn’t camp. If anything it’s become too self aware, too constantly aware of its audience to perform true camp. It hampers itself, second guesses itself, spotlights its own insecurities. It’s so self conscious, so concerned with the audience’s reaction— both in pleasing and disgusting them— that the performance cannot support its own scaffolding. It buckles under its own weight. The center doesn’t hold. When they write season 4 they need to be locked in a remote cabin with no internet and have their phones confiscated. It’s simply the only way forward after this
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The first photo is from 1956. It shows a Black woman watching members of the Ku Klux Klan (a terrorist, racist, far-right organization focused on white supremacy) walking along a sidewalk in Montgomery, Alabama (USA). I couldn't find the photo's author, but most sources state that it was taken in 1956.
The second photo shows members of the Patriot Front group (a white supremacist and nationalist group, formed in 2017, that openly advocates what they call "American Fascism") traveling on the subway during the 250th anniversary of the U.S. independence in Washington D.C., while a Black woman watches them. The photo is by photographer Cheney Orr, taken on July 4, 2026, 70 years after the first photo.
Possible interview with the vampire book spoilers but I'm pretty sure it should be ok.
I have a genuine question! please forgive me if it comes off as defending the racist writing I want to be clear that its really pissing me off also and is why I'm sending this ask. But how do you know when something is racist in this show and when it's something that was in the original books? or when it's both? Because Louis in the books as we know was a white slave owner, I feel like making him black has both improved the story tenfold and also made it really complicated now that we are in Lestats pov because Louis is intentionally lying in the books in a way I don't think show Louis is. I have not read the Vampire Lestat but I know there are some reveals that make Lestat more sympathetic and I'm afraid of those reveals in the show coming off as racist now and dismissing Louis more than he already has been. I don't know if this makes much sense but I'm just really struggling with sympathizing with Lestat and Louis at the same time when the writing is getting more racist than ever this season. I'm trying to enjoy it as a story and also be critical of it as a piece of media someone wrote and it's just getting more and more annoying. What is racist writing and what is Lestat and Daniel being racist and complicated characters. You are one of the only blogs who I consistently agree with on interview with the vampire so that is why I'm asking you but of course no pressure to respond or post this! it feels like it may invite discourse and I don't want to inflict that on your blog.
hello! thank you so much for the ask! it definitely doesn't come off as defending the racist writing or anything, i completely understand where you're coming from 🙂↕️ and hopefully i can answer in a way that makes sense. (it ended up being VERY long so it's under a read more lmao im sorry)
ignoring the reason that rolin said he made louis a black man specifically just for the sake of this post (because that would only make it even lengthier while i go into detail about my disdain for that man), i also think making him a black man living in the jim crow south was a wonderful change from his book origins—it gave him so much more depth and allowed his story to be told in a more meaningful way. the issue though with making him black, comes in how he's written within the context of those around him. i believe that, for the most part, s1 and s2 did a great job of emphasizing the racism and homophobia that louis experiences without it feeling like the writers themselves are inflicting their own antiblack biases upon him. he grew up as a closeted creole man in the south so his negative experiences made sense from a story standpoint, you know? we knew why they were happening for the most part.
lestat was a french man from a different century that was frustratingly out of touch, but that too felt purposeful. you could see the moments where he truly loved louis and how that love drove him to behave in despicable ways out of fear of losing that love. it played into the belief that you can care for someone, but not understand them, and ultimately hurt them deeply because of that. lestat is a flawed character, they all are, but he felt far more realistic and better written to me. even during the trial he admitted that he'd dropped louis from the sky to hurt him, to break him, because louis wasn't returning his affection. the onus was not put upon louis (by lestat, as other vampires did very much blame louis) for not returning lestat's feelings.
lestat was actually one of my favorite characters in the previous seasons, i really loved a lot of what they did with him. overall, it was a realistic sort of writing without feeling like the show and universe were making him (louis) a dartboard for everyone's grievances or turning him into the stereotypical sort of black caricature. it didn't feel like they were resentful of his blackness in those seasons.
although, sometimes it did feel like they were skirting around wanting to fully acknowledge his (or claudia's) blackness, but that was more of an issue for me in s2—such as calling the trial a stoning and not a lynching. but i still think it was all handled with more care and intention than in s3. you could see where both louis and lestat were in the wrong for various actions, as opposed to louis being the singular villain that drove lestat to do all the bad things he does.
in TVL (the novel), lestat becomes a rockstar primarily to take the heat off of louis, who is at risk from other vampires following the publication of the book. at its core, his motives are based on love for louis and a desire to protect him from the danger that he has unknowingly put himself in by revealing their nature to the world. in the series, though, louis does not want the book published, but daniel does so anyway, putting louis in danger (as is shown by the reveal that he killed 30-something vampires in dubai). if they were still attempting to go for book accuracy—which you'd think, given rolin toted that fuckass book around everywhere during early promo, showing off how loved it was—this wouldn't have happened, OR it would've been revealed that lestat helped him kill those vampires. because would lestat not want to aid the man he supposedly loves, especially considering that louis didn't even want the book published in this universe and made that clear?
and that's only the beginning of the the changes they make, though in regards to louis it's just brand new writing, seeing as he's not that big of a character in TVL. they had the opportunity to do quite literally anything with louis' character because they were deviating from book-canon with him, and yet this is the route they took. and it's where i think they shifted from an in-universe racism that made sense given the time period, to the writers slipping in their own dislike of the character. i will die on this hill, but i truly don't think they anticipated the love louis (and claudia) would get during the first two seasons, along with the backlash lestat would receive due to the abuse he put them through, and so they're trying to walk it back and make louis seem like this deplorable, wretched character that's more flawed than anyone else. also, lowkey, i think there was some bitterness regarding how powerful louis' ending monologue was and how deeply it was loved.
lestat being characteristically racist, to me, was with scenes in s1 and s2 where he overlooked the disrespect louis experienced at the hands of tom, the alderman or at the opera in favor of trying to pacify him or smooth over louis' disdain by downplaying the experiences or ignoring the racism at their core. lestat didn't know the first thing about racism or experiencing it and didn't care to, he's a blond-haired, blue-eyed frenchman. you watch the disconnect between him and louis, or lestat and claudia and, while frustrating, you understand why it's happening and where it comes from.
the way every character is treating louis in s3 is the writers themselves being racist and antiblack towards louis and using the other characters as a channel to express it. daniel calling louis a "bucket of louisiana fried chicken" was extremely unnecessary and played more for racist shock value than the character daniel actually trying to be as scathing as possible. he's undoubtedly got a way with words and could've said innumerable cruel things without jumping to that particular insult. i think that was done more for the writers enjoyment than correct characterization. there's no real reason for him to suddenly make such a comment about louis when he was trying to repair their relationship last we saw the two together (as he also brings up louis ignoring him).
louis is called a whore by lestat for sleeping with one man (a reveal that's given to us while louis is reaching out during a moment if extreme emotional distress), louis is called a liar and a manipulator by lestat and armand respectively, they're still pushing the pimp narrative, and his character arcs feels rushed and discarded. the writers are consistently disrespecting louis and retconning what he's said and done during the first two seasons for reasons that go beyond wanting to push him back into a relationship with lestat. louis is forced to apologize and lower himself again and again when there is no reason for him to.
lestat's overall treatment doesn't make much sense. like i said in a previous post, him being upset at louis for not reaching out when he was shot makes no sense considering lestat wasn't rushing to his aid when louis was shot as a very young fledgling in s1. nor did he go rushing to louis' aid if he truly thought him to be dead after armand called him (lestat) in s2—something that's even more bizzare considering he allegedly did not stay away from louis out of fear that he would not believe lestat was actually the one to save him, but because he wanted louis to be miserable. where is the love between these two characters that was felt in s1 & s2?
i don't feel any longing for louis from lestat's perspective (nor longing for lestat from louis' tbh). it feels like the writers just want louis to beg and crawl to lestat's feet and then he'll take him back and all will be well. where is the mutual love? the painful desire and regret given their past and shared trauma following the death of their daughter? they've barely shared any scenes together and what we have seen has been a rushed mess or just another way to show that louis was yet again in the wrong. this isn't in-universe in-character choices, this is the writers attempting to humble the black man as retribution for how much growth/gained independence he had in the previous season, and how well-loved he was as a way to coddle and exonerate his white love interest.
you cannot cherry pick what you want to adapt from the books if you're only doing so in order to demonize one character and absolve the other/excuse him of the awful things he's done. im going to run the risk of sounding like a broken record here so im gonna bring this to a close, but i hope i answered your question even a little bit!
tldr; you could see the complexities of all the characters in s1 and s2 and understand their relationships in regards to racism, internalized homophobia and sexism within themselves and each other. it all felt purposeful and (mostly) correctly characterized—everyone felt real. in s3 louis has been turned into an apologetic caricature with a lack of good writing, and almost everyone else has been turned into copy-paste cynical quip-givers that the writers can use to vomit exposition and lore/show how louis is actually the worst of the worst and lestat was essentially forced to do every bad thing he's ever done.
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