Molloy (Eric Bogosian) and Louis (Jacob Anderson) revisited their very first Interview With the Vampire meeting in “Don’t Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape,” directed by Craig Zisk and written by Hannah Moscovitch and Jonathan Ceniceroz. And what memories they are.
The episode, season two’s fifth entry, does start in the modern day, with the older Louis and Molloy pausing where things left off in Paris before the Theatre des Vampires burned down. Armand (Assad Zaman) and Louis recount how things at the theater were good and they were in love. Molloy notes that the story becomes a lot of “we-based,” as if the recollection is shared through rose colored glasses. As he nudges, Armand decides to leave to take his meal—a Gen Z crypto scammer, food to play with and punish—and Molloy asks Louis to revisit their past tapes while Armand is gone. (Louis doesn’t know that Raglan James and Talamasca are feeding him crumbs to follow.) Molloy asks why he was spared and Louis tells him, “Armand could see I was partial to you. Armand preserves my happiness, even when I won’t or can’t.”
Trigger warning: Themes of abuse and un-aliving ahead.
They go back to 1973; it’s a fog, when Louis knew Molloy as the “boy” (played by Luke Brandon) journalist he picks up at at bar in San Francisco—the very night he reveals his nature as a vampire and asks him to interview him about his life. Together they lift the fog through its drug-addled haze and get into it: the first interview, reminiscent of Anne Rice’s original text. Molloy recalls that Louis was lonely and he was floundering, tape after tape, ranting mostly about Lestat. In these tapes Louis vents about Lestat with more hatred and exaggeration, calling him things like “trivial” and “vapid”—it establishes that Louis’ side of the story has always been inconsistent. Who is Lestat, outside of his or Armand’s perspective as what young Molloy supplies as “big-time asshole”?
Things shift when Louis reveals he almost died by suicide the first time Claudia left. And Molloy, high off his rocker, calls Louis (and to an extent Claudia) out for considering death as a way out from their dark gift. As loose cannon humans who want to live forever and keep the high going are wont to do, he offers himself to Louis as a replacement Lestat or Claudia, expressing he has things in common with him, and having picked up on Louis’ affinity for him plainly offers his body. They agree that this was the moment where Louis attacked him for the audacity and nearly killed him. Originally, after this moment, Molloy recalls waking up in a drug den and safe considering almost being eaten.
In the present day, Molloy reveals he still has the tapes, and they listen back to what really happened after, which they both don’t quite remember. It’s interesting to note that they had written off their faulty memories due to Molloy being high and Louis getting high by extension when he sucked too much of Daniel’s blood during his attack. During the playback they hear Louis attack, Molloy struggle for his life after being bitten, and then Armand showing up. He gets there in time to save Molloy, who gets laid out unconscious in the room. They argue about their relationship; this is Louis’ cycle: he gets bored of Armand’s soft and suffocating “beige pillow” of love. Ten hours with Molloy was more exciting than decades with him.
The return to the past continues. At the insult, Armand drags Louis for using the time with Molloy to rant about Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat—moreso than anything about Claudia. Louis is filled with remorse, and that triggers him to say he hears her in his head, while Armand tells him he used her for cover and she didn’t love him. In a reverie haunted by Claudia, Louis leaves the room and does the unthinkable—he takes to the sun. Louis had blocked this from his own memories, and is on the edge of tears hearing that Armand ran after him. He begins to recall the searing pain of burning and wanting to end it, before Armand pulled him back inside just in time before he turned to dust. Armand tells Louis he told him the worst things ever and then ran outside; Louis tries to apologize and Armand says it’s meaningless. Louis asks if Molloy is okay, and too far away for him to see, we see Molloy being tortured by Armand through his mind powers as he says, “He’s fine.” But we get a glimpse of Molloy being tortured to the point where he does overhear everything. Armand felt threatened by Molloy, and took out his anger on “the boy” who Louis really liked and opened up to in ways he hadn’t to him. Past Louis asks him to leave him be.
Older Molloy is stunned as it too comes back to him; they both forgot or were made to forget by the powerful ancient vampire’s manipulations. In the memories, Armand wonders if he told Molloy his story to break out of Armand’s “prison of empathy” so Lestat could stumble on the book and come running back. Using his mental communication, he calls Lestat to tell him he was thinking of him again and alluded to his injuries. “Louis!” Lestat calls out, and Armand acts as conduit and wonders why he’s ill and what’s happened. He also says “I love you Louis,” but Armand withholds that, because of course he does. Louis affirms Lestat was just his maker, nothing more, and Armand makes it about him by saying he left him for death, and has he not done enough to make up for Paris? He leaves to clean up and tells him to “rest”—a word he repeats to Molloy, “rest”—and then utters a bunch of words, likely to erase their memories and the pain he inflicted with soothing gaslighting. About to kill Molloy, Louis gets up and asks for him to let “the boy” go.
“The boy” and Louis share a moment of goodbye where he tells him to live out his life and be a good journalist—a moment older Molloy attributed to a druggie in another book. He destroyed marriages and families; he held down his jobs though. Armand fogged his brain and redacted himself but asked Louis why he didn’t remember past the bite, since they both were given the “same precise edit on two brains.” In the present day, Armand comes back and they ask him why Molloy lived, and Armand—dressed in the gaudy Gen Z fashion and sunglasses right off his victim—simply said it was to preserve Louis’ happiness, and he “had a hunch, Daniel might prove fruitful in later times.”
Interview With the Vampire airs Sundays on AMC and AMC+.
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