spooky scary

The scene in the box jumps around erratically with no clear throughline.

This is by far the biggest tell to me. They go from talking about Nicki's playing affecting the theater, to discussing "them," to Gabrielle randomly and bizarrely coming in late, telling Armand that Lestat is fucking other people not just him, and then interjecting with a completely off-topic question about Armand's maker. Back to talking about what to do with Nicki, punctuated by a bizarre out of nowhere insertion where Armand tells Lestat he loves him. To name most but not even everything going on in this scene. And all of this in the span of only a couple of minutes. From a narrative perspective, as someone telling a story and trying to get multiple things across at once, this is at best effective, but incredibly clunky. It's not how people carry on conversations. Either in real life or in storytelling.

Lestat comes across as almost comically confident and in control, to kinda an odd degree in comparison with his past flashbacks.

At this point earlier in the story when he's talking to Daniel, Lestat is trying to convey that he's unruffled by things that would normally bother a regular person, vampire or no. The framing where he's completely in control, the unflappable high-status one in this box and in the larger community, is both at odds with how we've seen him in most other flashbacks up til this point. And it's how he's trying to come across to Daniel specifically. Though when he does, it tends to be cartoonish, like the "song" with Magnus. It's also at odds with how we see him behaving in the later scene with Nicki, which is the more emotionally raw and authentic scene we get when Lestat is actually letting his walls down.

Armand isn't acting like himself. Or like any real person/character would.

I feel like this is so obvious I worry it comes across as if I'm talking down to people, when I'm really not trying to at all. But we have spent a LOT of time with Armand. In flashbacks with Louis and Armand narrating, but also in "reality" outside of flashbacks. Armand's deal is that he's understated and almost inhumanly cold, but the reality is that this is a performance within a performance. Audience members who are good at reading facial expressions can almost always tell when Armand is upset, embarrassed, hurt, challenged, angry, plotting, etc etc etc. Because even if they are understated, his face does still change in his expression. He absolutely understands what's happening when someone is belittling or challenging him. And he responds to it in a believable way, even if a way that's unique to him. Because we've seen it a million times by now, we know he feels it deeply when people are talking down to him or being intentionally cruel to him. He might not respond verbally, but you see it clicking on his face. His expression can go blank, but not THAT blank.

However, throughout the scene in the box, and especially toward the end, he's getting nothing but viciously rejected, critiqued, and ridiculed, to a frankly absurd degree. Yet he's 1. not acting like himself (no deep breaths to control his composure, no tightly schooled expression, no clear sense of that composure wearing down so we get the impression it's going to snap soon). And 2. he's not acting like a person at all; he barely seems to even react AT ALL to these words. And when he does, it makes no sense. Going from hearing someone you're obsessed with tell you "there is no us," to inserting "I love you" awkwardly with no catalyst for it, to having the most blank expression on his face when he's rejected in the most over-the-top insulting and dismissive way possible... None of this is how anyone, including Armand as we know him, behaves. Unless they're like. I don't know. Having a stroke or something?? Or unless there's something else emotionally hanging over the scene and the relationship to make it make sense they're behaving that way. (Which at this point, we've been given no indication of.)

It's very clear that Lestat is primarily concerned about how he's coming across as he's conveying this scene. So if Armand is being really weird and barely coming cross like a person, much less like himself, Lestat isn't really worried about that because that's not the part he most wants Daniel to believe.

But we as an audience should be picking up all the flags here, to the point where it should feel almost laughably absurd. No one would respond (or have such a lack of response) to being treated like this. Even if different people would react in very different ways depending on circumstances? Nobody would have such a lack of response that they feel more like a plot device, and by the end of the scene more like a wax doll of themselves.

None of the above dynamic/framing carries over to next scene they're in together, with Nicki. Or the way that Lestat talks about Armand's role in Nicki's offscreen death.

One scene is being told earlier when Lestat is still trying to project a specific image of himself as powerful, unruffled. A consummate libertine, completely in control and confident to the point of boredom. The next is being told with vulnerability and openness, a willingness to share pain, uncertainty, and failure.

Armand is basically silent in this scene, and yet the way Lestat interacts with him is still very different, with different dynamics. Armand seems caught in between cold and removed, withholding. Perhaps even a hint of pitying and judgmental. With Lestat being someone who is asking for Armand's help with a situation that is beyond him.

There's both a loneliness in the scene and a focus on Lestat's failure and grief and guilt over Nicki. But here, Armand comes across again as a complicatedly if neutral figure; withholding and almost terrifyingly practical; powerful, a keeper of knowledge and ability; accepting, pitying, but resigned, unable to help in the way Lestat wants him to be; ultimately helpful in a complicatedly macabre way that no one else could or would be. And a co-leader with whom Lestat shares that role:

"WE think you should take some time off." As if he and Armand are a unit in this aspect. Or as if he's trying to offload some responsibility from himself onto Armand, to protect how he's coming across to Nicki. Or alternatively to that, to add his own voice as someone coming at this from a place of care, to help soften to blow for Nicki. Any of those three could be possible and make emotional sense (or maybe a bit of several at once). Without more information we can't be sure. But either way? We're getting an image of someone who thinks about the way that Armand exists within his life, at least this aspect of his life, much more three-dimensionally. Whether as a paired leadership unit, as a convenient scapegoat, or as someone who's authority he's trying to support rather than undermine. More than one? Or plus something more? None of this is, of course, at all how he was trying to portray their relationship in the earlier box scene.

Lastly there's the contrast between the way he projects his romantic and/or sexual relationship in the first scene, versus what the second scene betrays: In the first scene, Armand is portrayed as almost delusional levels of invested in a love story that Lestat is telling him (rudely) over and over to his face doesn't exist. Followed up by Gabriella inserting that Lestat "drinks the blood" of many vampires in the coven, as a a clear and unmistakable euphemism. This all aligns with how Lestat has wanted to come across to the invisible listener since the beginning in his fast-forward VO, as well as how he wants to come across to Daniel in real time: A liberated lothario who fucks whoever, whenever; who enjoys sex as a thrilling, fun distraction. Someone for whom the act carries little psychological or emotional weight. He is in control of it, and his relationship to it, and the relationships he has with the people he's doing it with. Rather than it ever having control over him.

However, in the more vulnerable and authentic scene with Nicki? Nicki is shown as being uniquely, singularly threatened by an ongoing sexual relationship between Armand and Lestat. Not between Lestat and a string of unnamed coven members that just so happen to include Armand. An accusation which no one else in the room, including Lestat, denies.

And that doesn't include how Nicki isn't just threatened by Lestat having sex; he's threatened by the "we" implied in "we think you should take some time off." Which doesn't HAVE to mean Nicki sees this as a romance. But does imply that he sees the some aspect of the Lestat/Armand relationship as coming between himself and Lestat. One where Nicki sees Lestat and Armand as becoming more closely aligned than Lestat is with Nicki himself in that moment. Which is part of where the implied threat is coming from.

To conclude:

The point is that the first scene is doing extremely clear signaling not only that this is Lestat's story. But that Lestat's story is almost cartoonishly irrational in his need to depict the scene in a certain light; one that makes him look like he had all the power. Meanwhile Armand was so besottedly sycophantic (and at the same time inhumanly emotionless, and ALSO at the same time snide and biting) that he comes off not feeling like a real person at all.

Contrasted with the second scene, in which Armand says basically nothing, is in the background of the main action, and yet feels far more like a real human character and more aligned (if not perfectly) with the Armand we already know from the rest of the show.

The implication the audience is meant to take away is that the first scene comprises an almost entirely obvious and intentional exaggeration, if not many outright lies. Though whether Lestat is also lying to himself as much as his audience is still up for debate.