'Interview with the Vampire': Rolin Jones on the Season 2 finale

This article contains spoilers for the season 2 finale of “Interview with the Vampire.”

Although he is now the showrunner of AMC's “Interview with the Vampire,” Rolin Jones was initially unfamiliar with the Anne Rice novels on which the television series is based.

He first met with AMC executives in 2020 to discuss shows he would potentially develop as series for the network, and just as he was preparing to leave, an executive casually mentioned that the company had recently acquired the rights to Rice's books: could you be interested?

“The truth is that I was very interested in doing a love story and doing something great and big,” Jones said in a Zoom interview earlier this month. “I wanted to see if they would let me do something David Lean-style.”

Jones, whose television career includes credits on critically acclaimed shows like “Friday Night Lights,” “Boardwalk Empire” and the revamped “Perry Mason,” read Rice’s “Interview with the Vampire” (her debut novel) and watched the adaptation 1994 film starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. He quickly realized that he would approach the series very differently than the film. He said AMC executives put him through a rigorous evaluation process to determine what the show could be like.

“They didn't want just the pilot or just season 1,” Jones said. “They wanted to know what the hell this was and how long we could keep it on the air.”

Fans now have two critically acclaimed seasons of the gothic horror story starring Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid as vampires Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt, respectively. The Season 2 finale aired Sunday, bringing to a close Louis’ journey of coming clean about his human and vampire life to reporter Daniel Molloy, played by Eric Bogosian.

The story begins with Louis and vampire girl Claudia, played by Delainey Hayles in this season, dealing with the consequences of their failed assassination attempt on Lestat and the moral implications of their vampire existence. They travel through Europe and finally end up in Paris, where they meet a coven, founded by Lestat, of vampires who perform in theater. Louis finds new love in the coven's 500-year-old leader, Armand, played by Assad Zaman.

After hiding their ties to Lestat, Louis and Claudia are eventually discovered and put on trial for violating multiple “great laws” — the rules all vampires must abide by — and are punished. Sunday’s finale, titled “And That’s the End. There’s Nothing More,” follows the aftermath of Claudia’s death. Louis burns down the theater, killing most of the coven members and discovers it was Lestat who saved him during the trial, leading him to reconnect with his former toxic lover.

The series was renewed for a third season on Wednesday, and will focus primarily on the events of Rice's “The Vampire Lestat,” which finds Lestat reclaiming his narrative as a rock star (During the interview, Jones proudly showed off his notes in the margins of his copy of the book). The renewal comes after Jones signed a new multi-year overall deal with AMC Studios.

Jones spoke to The Times about Delainey Hayles, who replaced Bailey Bass as Claudia for the second season; the complex bond between Louie, Armand and Lestat; and the stories the show will explore in season three and beyond. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

How do you feel after finishing season 2?

Look at the first shot of Jacob Anderson in Season 1 and the last shot of Season 2 and notice the difference between those faces. You will see how much work has been put into these three and a half years. It was an exhaustive but satisfying ending to everything. And it was rigged to not work. We had many obstacles. It wasn't just him [writers’ and actors’] Strikes. There were a lot of things that got bitten by snakes along the way and you're not sure if they'll stay together.

You reshot some scenes for Season 2 because the point is that Louis is fighting his memory. Whose version of events are we supposed to believe?

He basically tells Molloy, “I think you should listen to Lestat's version.” [Louis] he just walks up and says, “Maybe I was still telling you this thing where I was still trying to preserve the hero or me, or some things had broken.”

I would listen to Louie. The show is about Louie coming to terms with all of those things. He had a tortuous way of getting there. But in the end, he's the one who gets on a plane, goes back to New Orleans and finds Lestat. There's no confusion there. There's just a little ramp to some contrition, some forgiveness and the beginning of rebuilding everything. That's what's great about the show: that darkness can be there.

How did you know Delainey Hayles was right? for Claudia? [Hayles replaced Bass, who left the series last year after “unforeseen circumstances.”]

We have this amazing casting director and she brought in four actors, and they were all fantastic. The idea was to see these four actors. Then we'll go to this restaurant and sit down and talk about all the actors we saw. We get there and we look at each other, and we all say “Delainey” immediately, and there wasn't much discussion. None of the other actors gave bad performances, there was just a kind of magic that you felt. This is an actor you're going to see for the next four years; we had the first chance with her.

Jacob Anderson as Louis De Point Du Lac and Delainey Hayles as Claudia, who joined the series for season 2.

(Larry Horricks/AMC)

We all know Claudia is already dead. Was there ever a version in which she was alive?

No. Anne wrote that book in the wake of grieving the loss of a child. The changes we made for the plot were really thought out and fought for, and then aggressively implemented once we did. We always tried, first and foremost, to honor the spirit of what was happening in the novel. So no, Claudia was never going to live. It was mostly a battle over how to give a more beautiful, more haunting, or more painful death, however you want to put it, worthy of the character. Claudia will probably be hanging around the show for a while.

Would you agree that she was defiant in her final moments?

Defiant is right. She is arguably the most aggressive and the most vampiric of all the vampires we've shown so far. I think she's a real predator and a really tough and fierce person.

There was also to This season there is a big love triangle between the vampires. How do you feel about people's reactions to the energy of trios?

I think the strange and wonderful thing about the show's reception is that it seems equally exciting and maddening for everyone. Everyone stands on the shoulders of the vampire they most identify with and gets angry with those they don't. We were not a room of critical writers. We just set out to manifest Anne's really messy characters and make them messy.

It's been hard for people to reconcile with the fact that Louis forgave Armand after he betrayed him in these last few episodes. Can you break that down?

In the writers' room, when we started season 2, we read Part 2 and Part 3 out loud as writers. One of the things that touched us was this rampart speech that Armand gave to Louis just talking about everything he's thrown at Louis over these years and what he's given to him and Louis has just been cold. The task was to make him not a cartoon villain, but to make him as empathetic as possible.

We have come to the idea that Armand has two real moments of weakness. At the end of episode 6, he could have said, “Hey, you and I, let's get out of here. Let's run away and be together.” And he says it in episode 8. He says: “The choice was my coven who had been with me for 200 years or you.” If you go back and look at the kiss they had in the scene and Louie just walks away. Armand says: “This guy can live without me. What am I doing?” This idea that we all want to judge everyone is not the way our writers' room works. We're trying to create very complex, super-flawed people.

Rolin Jones on Armand’s (Assad Zaman) feelings toward Louie: “This guy can live without me. What am I doing?”

(Larry Horricks/AMC)

Are you happy with Lestat's journey this season? The last time we saw him he was as an inmate in New Orleans all these years after saving Louis.

I think what this season does is create a desire for the audience to hear Lestat's side of things. When you look back on this season, Louis slowly remembers that there is another side to Lestat that he hasn't been aggressively selling to the audience. I'm happy with where we placed them. There is much work to be done. In the end they are not together and there is somewhere to go dramatically. They want 10 seasons of this show. In the end they don't crash together. That's not happening.

Does Louis find peace in the end?

For Jacob Anderson, there's a very innocent little line that was very important to him and that he kept in balance throughout the season. It was a moment where he has that telepathic conversation with Molloy at the end, and he says, “I'm worried about you, Louis.” Jacob looks past the cameras and says, “I'm fine.” For Jacob, it was the first time he played that character where he felt like what he was saying was what he felt.

[At the end of Episode 8] The camera goes right to his face before he says, “I own the night,” and that’s the idea that there’s now a whole new set of stories to be written about that character. There’s arrogance and strength there. Most of his baggage has been shipped off. Louis is not leaving this show, that’s all I’m saying!

What will season 3 be like?

Lestat becomes a rock star. Let's start there. We're going to do a lot with that and we're excited about the possibility of working with Daniel Hart, who did the music for the first two seasons. We're going to try to top Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Rocky Horror. We're about to try to make a little pop masterpiece.

Anything else you'd like to mention?

The deeper I go [Anne Rice’s] books, I'm slowly catching up to the love that people who really love the show have for these books and hold them dear to their hearts. A lot of the artists who worked on our show talked about how the tone of the book allowed them to think about coming out. These books are important to people. I feel very privileged and very lucky to be this person who is guiding this to a new generation right now.