That scene is up there with the 2.8 reunion for me. They're both such stunning actors. The way Louis envelops Lestat with his whole body is so moving. And Sam here...unbelievable. Legitimately some of the most incredible acting I've ever seen in anything. You may have already seen this but I loved this article from the critic Caroline Siede on this episode.
https://girlculture.substack.com/p/i-cant-stop-thinking-about-this-episode
It’s at once playfully romantic, achingly raw, morally challenging, and completely audacious—anchored by a performance from Sam Reid that genuinely took my breath away the first time I watched it.Â
When we talk about good acting, it can be hard to separate it from good writing. The scripted choice to have Lestat spontaneously throw up is such a messy, human response that it’s almost startling to watch. Yet that writing decision is only elevated by the way Reid plays Lestat’s subsequent panic attack as realistically as I’ve ever seen one portrayed. There’s the flustered laughter, the way he suddenly starts speaking like he’s drunk because he’s so fully disassociated from his body, the desperate attempt to act calm and rational to reassert control over the narrative. “You’re being very judgy,” he stresses.
Shame is often played in a gentle, quiet, reserved way onscreen, but Reid makes it big and desperate and overwhelming. Lestat—someone who can make a joke out of literally anything—is suddenly brought to his rawest self by the one thing he decided no one would ever, ever know about him. Louis is understandably triggered by the idea of someone keeping a manipulative secret from him, the way Lestat and Armand both did in their earlier relationships. But Lestat is triggered by something even deeper; the fundamental childhood wound of sexual coercion and abandonment that’s left him with the belief that everyone he loves will leave him if they truly know him.
I’ve watched this episode four times now and been as overwhelmed by the sequence each time. To me, the most impressive acting is when an actor makes a choice that feels completely truthful but also completely surprising—different from how 99% of other performers would have played the same material. Everything that Anderson and especially Reid do here feels like that. There’s nothing cool or cathartic about this scene, it’s just ugly and awful and out-of-body like life sometimes is.
What’s even more remarkable is that the episode somehow keeps going after that—not just with the gentle denouement at the bar that follows (everything about Reid’s exhausted body language is incredible there too), but with an even more intense scene of the two calling back Claudia’s ghost. The pacing of this season has been unlike any TV show I’ve watched before and it creates this sense that anything can happen at any point in a way that pays off so powerfully here.
You guys send me so many asks about this scene, and I truly adore it so much and still don't know how to talk about it, haha. That review pretty much articulates my thoughts though perfectly - it's an incredible sequence, with astonishing performances from Sam and Jacob, and the hit nerve of it lands every time I watch it. It's unbelievable, and it lives rent free in my head.
