House of R - 'The Vampire Lestat’ Episode 1 Deep Dive

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

Mal and Jo dive deep into the premiere episode of ‘The Vampire Lestat.’ They discuss all of the characters (both new and returning from ‘Interview with the Vampire’) and break down everything from Lestat being the show’s new narrator to how the show is adapting Anne Rice's novel.(00:00) Intro(05:50) Remembering Anthony Head(15:39) Quick Facts(21:41) Opening Snapshot(42:28) The Auction(48:04) Detroit, Night 1(01:12:27) The C-ntessa vs. the Useful Idiot(01:23:45) Montreal(01:31:19) Dracula’s daughter and vampons(01:39:01) Detroit, Night 2(01:44:57) Baby Jenks on the ceiling(01:48:05) Immortal properties(01:54:19) After-party on the Asshole Floor(02:00:50) A hotel in Windsor, Canada(02:03:11) Book spoilers!Explore the exclusive collection at ⁠Target.com⁠Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Mallory RubinProducers: Carlos Chiriboga and Scott LeeStudio Production: Jacob CornettSocial: Jomi AdeniranAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to a very spooky episode of House of Art. I'm Joanna Robinson. Joining me today, our very own tough cookie on the drums. It's Mallory Rubin. Joanna, never, never play two nights in Detroit. You never know what's going to happen. You might end up with a broken orbital bone. Listen, it's the vampire listat time.

It is interview with the vampire season three, aka the vampire list at. We're here to break it down for you with book context. We'll do a book spoiler section. We'll talk about the music. We'll talk about the fashion. We'll talk about all of it right after this. This episode of House of R is presented to you by Target.

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The entire collection is in store and online, so check it out now. Explore now at Target.com. Just really quickly, I just thought in honor of the absolute buy icon that is Listat to Leone Corp. Happy pride, everyone. What a perfect show for us to cover during Pride Month. I love it. Here we are. Here we are. Program reminders.

Yes. The end of this week. We're starting with vampires. That's right. We're writing with aliens, question mark. We'll find out. It's Disclosure Day. Yeah.

Are you excited? I am. I'm very excited. We're going to talk about Disclosure Day at the end of the week. Very excited about that. We have seen it. Yes. We'll be talking about it.

This is the first episode of Vampire Listadt coverage, but it is not the last because I have bullied the entire team into covering the vampire list out week to week. I'm excited. And they're all doing it with joy in their hearts. Yeah. Genuinely. It's going to be great. We've got another Nolan episode coming up with another very special guest that we're excited about.

We're trying to squeeze one more in before Hot D starts, and that will leave us with just one. Just Oppenheimer left after that. Before the Odyssey. Dark Night Rises, then Oppenheimer, then it's Odyssey Time. It would have been funny to flip those and do Oppenheimer and then end on Bain. Yeah. Just to really keep the bit going. Just to reinforce your whole.

Your five-year-long agenda. Yeah, that's longer than that. It's just five years on this podcast. Five years as far as I know. How's the dragon? That's right. I can't believe it. I can't believe it's June.

I'm very excited. It's very exciting. We're going to have an incredible summer because we're doing vampires and dragons. And guess what? Spoiler alert, incest for both. Exciting. Exciting. A lot of movies coming out this summer.

Supergirl, the Odyssey. Spidey. A two and a half hour long Spider-Man movie. I did see that. Exciting. Very exciting. Before we get into, oh, and we do want to apologize, we know that there was like a final House of the Dragon trailer that was dropped.

Yes, I was in Sweden. Mallory was in Sweden. She was off the hook, and I did not have it within me to try to find, like, the two remaining producers state side to record a solo pod. Almost the entire team was in Sweden. So it was, we had locked in programming six weeks before that trip. It was very, very difficult, genuinely to make a late stage adjustments. But great news.

we did full breakdowns of the prior two trailers. So if you're like, what do you guys think of the trailer? Those pods exist. We really loved the most recent trailer. There's a quick update. It thought it was great. Our hype level was already high. It's even higher now.

Great. We went beat by beat for the prior two trailers. So check out those pods if you're having it. They're waiting for you. Great news. Where can folks find all of those things, including discovering what I'm wearing on this podcast? I mean, this is a very normal thing that I've done. A very normal.

Stornin. in honor of the vampire list at normal work clothing. Now, I had been treated, I will answer your question about where people can find it, but I had been treated to a glimpse via text message, which was resplendent and majestic, but nothing could have prepared me for the absolute majesty of seeing you in person, the decked in full for the vampire list at your most anticipated show of the summer. You look like a rock goddess. Now, you always, it's always giving rock goddess?

I'm not sure that that's, we go that far. different with your hair? My hair is different. It's just incredible. And my hair is different, but the nerdy glasses are still here, and I'm not sure the vampire list out would be caught dead in these. I think those are pretty hip. And I think being a nerd is pretty hip.

Let me just throw that out there. Yeah. Where can all the hip nerds find us? Here's what I'd recommend. Follow the pot. Follow House of R on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. You can watch full video episodes of House of R on Spotify, Incredible, and the Ringervverse YouTube channel.

So follow that as well. Also, newish, Instagram. TikTok at House of Our Pod. It's popping over there. Follow along if you haven't yet. We've been having a blast. You can see Joanna's get up today on the video episode of the podcast. But also there will be some glimpses on social media for sure.

Mallor has procured some props for us. Well, I knew you had like a whole custom fit. So I said, what can I do? And then Rush ordered some plastic, very cheap fangs that I'm sure will destroy our mouths as we take a picture. And then hopefully we can heal in time for the Disclosure Day pod. So that's what I would recommend. course, the inbox is always open. Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com. Send us your emails on VampireLestat. Hot D, Disclosure Day, Nolan, anything, everything, all of it.

Before we get into more of the VampireLestat, we want to take a moment to talk to talk about a person who's very important to us who just passed away Anthony Stewart Head, who played Giles on Buffy Vampire Slayer, among many other things. When he passed away, I got the number of messages I thought I would get from people who know that I'm a lifelong Buffy fan. Yeah. But also the number of people who are like, is Mallory okay? I love him. Yeah.

Yeah. We both love Giles. We want to honor him. We got these beautiful stickers from Jacob, who works on the show, brought us these, my heart belongs to Daddy Giles stickers before Anthony Stewart. He got them for us before. Anthony Stewart had passed away. But we have them now. Talk about Giles and what this means for you. So when my flight landed from Sweden, I returned to the United States of America, landed in LAX, and you're loading your phone, how many messages will load, how many won't load, how many have I missed over these 22 hours of travel, etc. First alert I saw from multiple people, our thread with Carlos and Arjuna. First thing Adam had texted me about was all the news. So that was just,

like, you know, you let out an audible gasp. Very sad, very awful. We've had the pleasure now of covering four seasons of Buffy together. We're still in the midst of our watch. And as you know, as the bad babies know, I have just fallen so completely in love, not only with Giles, but with Anthony Head because it's just such a completely captivating performance.

And it's obviously just like tremendously sad. I think one of the, you know, one of the strange things about loss when it's like a public figure, right? Somebody who you as a viewer or a listener, whatever the case may be, a reader, have a deep attachment to, is that you feel this grief and you see then that other people who love that fictional universe, who love the performance, feel that way too, and there's something shared about that. And then, of course, you see what the loss means to everybody who knew him. And that was just so, you know, it's deeply sad.

It's very moving, but there is, of course, an element. amid the despair of like celebrating, celebrating the impact that he had on everybody. And so to see the tribute posts from all of the members of the cast who not only loved him, but clearly learned so much from him to see what a formative figure he was in shaping their young careers and lives was like pretty remarkable to get to see. Yeah, I think it was Sarah's post that really like, the same as when Nick Brendan passed away And it was Allison's post that really like walloped me. Sarah's post really really hit me hard.

And yeah, I'm thinking about Sarah Michelle Geller and Allison Hannigan and James Maristers and David Borianas who were all like a varying ages. And Sarah had been doing soaps for a while, but this was like her stepping into another level of something entirely. And the rest of them just like, you know, an early major project for them for David Borian is his like first acting project. So for them to talk about him as this like guiding giles. like figure for them on set in addition to everything else. And then I was just thinking a lot about Giles and what he meant to me.

I think, you know, I've talked a lot about how I was the exact same age as Buffy when I was watching the show. And like I don't have a great relationship with my parents and it was definitely fraught when I was a teenager. And so I so relate, like of all the things I really, there's like a lot that I don't have in common with Buffy.

But like the ability to find that like sort of guiding light family figure inside of your faculty is something that I really, really related to as a teenager. And so just like how important it was to see an example of the ability to find that kind of parental guidance and care and love, even if you can't, you know, even if your dad sucks and your mom is busy at the gallery a lot. So, you know, it was, that's Buffy, not me. You know, it was, he's very, very important. And I love how much you love him. Yeah.

And I've loved, you know, rediscovering him with you, has been wonderful. And, you know, between, you haven't even met Michelle Tractenberg's character, but between Michelle Tractonberg and Nick Brandon and Anthony Stewarthead, it's just like a lot of loss inside of the Buffy community recently. So I was thinking about that, knowing that Dawn awaits in season five, even though I don't have that experience yet. God, that's just, yeah, just tremendously sad. Thank you for sharing that with us. Thank you. I know how much you, you know, I saw your post about the photo that was like your

my desktop photo in college. Yeah. College. And I've obviously texted you right away just because I know what a, you know, seismic and central presence he was in your life for so long and continues to be. And like, just knowing how everybody has their own relationship to that character and the performance, but how much he means to so many. people and I love what you just said and, you know, it's been one of the really great things to cover.

Obviously, I just have like a tremendous crush on Giles and he's very powerful in many respects. But, you know, one of the things that's been such a joy to cover and to think about as I've watched the show for the first time is like the impact that he and Buffy have on each other and the way that they teach each other and the whole Scooby gang and that Giles is this mentor and this guide and this stalwart, but also he has as much to learn and they're shaping him in turn. That's just been such a rewarding way to think about the. relationships that can help kind of like root you throughout your life and guide you throughout your life and the idea that like somebody who you're meant to learn from like one of the things you can

just learn is to like embrace your ability and your sense of purpose and then figure out what you want to do with that it's just such like an empowering an empowering thing so it's been really really really great to to get to spend time with Giles and and with this performance and God it's going to be it's going to be sad to Boom. Season 5. So thank you to all the Buffy fans who have been watching along with us. We'll be back at the, like, probably towards the end of summer, maybe in August with Buffy season five is the plan.

So the rewatch continues. We just have some dragons and other vampires to get to in the meantime. Speaking of, I just want to shout out, I watched the Tony Awards last night because that's exactly the kind of person than I am. It's my favorite award show. And the Lost Boys musical really did quite well at the Tonys. and so it's vampire season, baby. Wonderful. We get a, you know, a vampire hunter-slayer reference inside of this episode.

Spoiler warning for this episode. Yes. Most of our, almost all of our discussion today will be confined to what happens in this episode, informed by context from the books, The Vampire List at, and Queen of the Dam, not to mention interview with vampire, but no direct spoilers. And I'm relying on Mallory to, like, sort of curb my impulses there if she, wants to. I have no book knowledge in this case. It's an interesting experience. It's fun to be, you know, and I guess if anybody is checking out this pod for the first time and didn't hear our

gift exchanges, you know, this to you is a, this is a sacred text, a big part of your life for a long time. The show has been your one of your seminal. Indeed. You've been there from minute one for the show. I had not read the books. I had not seen the show. And I consumed seasons one and then two subsequent holidays as part of our gift exchange in the annual tradition. And just loved the show. I thought it was just sensational. The writing is like God tear. The performance is wonderful.

I really thought both seasons were excellent. I thought season two was like spectacularly good. I still have not read any of the books. And so I, you know, that is obviously different to how I typically am covering on this pod. But I'm kind of looking forward to it a little bit. Actually, there's something very different about, you know, thinking of the experience. exclusively through the lens of what I am consuming inside of each episode.

So I did have a moment, as you know, because I said it on the pot. I like a week and a half ago right before Sweden, I was like, should I really? Can I really? Kind of too late at that point, honestly. But maybe one day I still will. But I have not. And, you know, I'm already looking for it, like I said, after the season two gift exchange.

Like, I'm already excited to like rewatch the show and spend more time with it kind of again and again, because especially just the richness of. It really a language. A re-watch. It really, really does. And even this episode, we'll talk about it,

of course, in depth. But I appreciated it. Every subsequent watch I did at this episode, I appreciated it more. So we'll be doing book context. Yes. I have some book passages

to read today, et cetera, et cetera. But we will do like a brief book spoiler section at the end. Mallory has given me permission. Yeah.

And we had like a long back and forth about this, but she has given me full permission to spoil. her about some, like, future book stuff that I know the fans are really eager to talk about as it pertains to this episode. So we will be doing a book spoiler section. You will hear an audio cue. Carlos has yet to decide which audio cue. Will it be a saucy guitar riff? Will it be a, like, Dracula, like, what about just the sound of, like, sucking blood? Sucking something,

you know? Plenty of options presented in this episode of television alone. All right. Vodka bottle. Let's do a vodka bottle. Did you enjoy the flash of the literal vodka bottle that got during the sex montage later. Incredibly important. So book context for the most part, book spoiler section at the very end. We'll warn you before we do that. Yes. Quick facts.

Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. I'm not going to go through the whole list, but I'll just say interview the vampire came out in 76. The Vampire Listad, which is the main source text for this show came out in 85. Queen of the Damned, which is sort of also seeded into this season, 88. Tale of the Body Thief, 92, and then we get Memnoth the Devil, 95, the Vampire Armand, 98.

I don't know on and on and on, up through 2018 was the last one. I don't know what the plans are, like, that depends entirely on, like, ratings and contracts and stuff like that. I don't know that I've heard, maybe he has, and maybe you guys can email us

at hobbs and dragson to Gmail.com if Roland Jones has talked about how far into the same. series he wants to go. But I think he's planning to go at least up through book four, which is quite exciting. Okay. This show, The Vampire Lastat, a rebranded season three of Enterief the Vampire. Yes.

AMC Sunday nights, but it's got that AMC plus, like, really fun slash annoying, like midnight drop on Saturday. So by the time you wake up on Sunday, plenty of people will have watched the episode. Right. It airs on AMC and Sunday nights. seven episodes set in 2025 and the 18th century and some unspecified future date of, you know, wherever else we may go. Right. And it picks up not too long after interview with the vampire season two concludes.

Right. At least in the 2025 timeline. Yes. And as I mentioned, based on both the Vampire Listat and Queen of the Damned, any questions, comments, or concerns about what I've said thus far? No, I don't think so. Do you have a sense of how many people are watching in real time? How many people have AMC Plus? Right. It's a great question.

I mean, we got emails when I woke up. We had emails from people who had already watched the episode, and that's when I realized that it was a midnight Saturday drop. And I was like, ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. Like, the subreddit is buzzing, but, like, my algorithms are all messed up. And I'm just getting served, like, as far as my algorithm is concerned, this is the biggest show that has ever existed.

and I know that's not the case. So, but people are excited. I think, yeah, I really, like, hope, because I have an editor working on the internet, SEO brain, like, no, don't rebrand your show. Right. Kind of like, reflexive recoil. But, and I say this with nothing but admiration for the first two seasons of interview with the vampire, which, again, you got me to watch.

And I thought were excellent. There is something about the rebrand that's an opportunity to say, like, come in now. ideally you go when you catch up on the part two seasons but if you haven't like you know a lot of uh they're they're out on the sam and jacob are out doing the gq uh friendship test interviews there's the u cover like they're all over instagram as well the concert so variety releasing the songs variety did publish an article about this about how this is like amc's approach is just sort of like and i because my algorithm is what my algorithm is there was some backlash i saw from the fandom being like why are you promoting the show so much more vigorously now that it's like a white lead

versus when Jacob Anderson was the lead of the first two seasons. That's what my algorithm was serving me was that frustration. But I, you know, and that's a perfectly valid response. But I see it as the show is amazing. But it's not finding the audience, the massive audience that certainly AMC hoped it would when they spent all that money on it on the rights to Anne Rice's Immoral Universe, the Mayfair Witch's show isn't doing as very well. The Talamaska show, I think, did not really hit as well as they wanted to.

So, like, as you say, this is like a real opportunity to say, like, come in. We have this, like, really flashy, like, rebrand and try to welcome people in to the universe. And I understand what the timing looks like for fans who feel frustrated by it. But, like, as someone who wants this show to just keep going, I want as many people to, like, to know about it and discover it as possible. And then the hope is like if you sit down to watch this episode, to watch Detroit, and it is your first experience with this AMC adaptation, with this version of this universe, you're going to want. There is, I think, no chance you could watch this episode

and not want to go back and watch the first two seasons. It's just too captivating, and the performances are too, like, there's just something like kind of rapturous about being in the world. So that's the hope, right? And, like, we'll see. It'll be interesting to track over the course of the season. My algorithm is less centrally. oriented around the vampireist act than yours is, but it has been making its way into my

algorithm. So that has been exciting and fun to see, and it gave me a real, just like last week while not sleeping for a solid week in Sweden. It was every time I saw something on my Instagram feed, I was like, fuck yeah, let's go. Like the more people who know how wonderful this is, the better. And I completely, I hear, you know, where was this before? And like, again, hopefully everybody goes back and discovers the excellence of the first two seasons as well. By the way, I'm sure the people who make the show are like, yeah, AMC, where was this entire huge effort? And I think AMC was hoping that the brand of the quality of the show and the brand of Anne Rice's universe would be enough to like push people. But AMC Plus is a subscription

service that like not everyone feels like they have the luxury to subscribe to. There's a whole like, and AMC went through this before with Breaking Bad. There's the whole like post, it's on Netflix bump that, you know, you can see where it's like, okay, I watched, and I think it was like three or four seasons of Breaking Bad that hit Netflix. And then all of a sudden it was like the biggest show and everyone was like, well, I have to watch this season live. So I will subscribe to AMC. And that is certainly what they're hoping. I watched the first two seasons of interview with the vampire on Netflix. So now I'm watching the song is a real thing. So we're hoping that is what will happen here. Let's go down to our opening snapshot.

Wonderful. Okay, episode one, Detroit. Most, though not all of the episodes this season appeared to be named for stops on the tour, so that's fun. We spent two nights in Detroit as you talked about. Bad Idea. We'll talk about it. Directed by Craig Zisk, who also directed, among other things, Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape, My Favorite Episode of Inner Your Vampire Season 2.

Unbelievable. My favorite episode of, like, television that came out that year. Just an incredible episode. And so he takes on a really challenge in this episode. there's like there's an immediate change of tone. Yes. An immediate change of style. You know, so this like reinvention that you're talking about is not just in the name,

but in the entire sort of ethos of the show. Yes. This episode written by the showrunner Roland Jones and Hannah Moskowitz, just a few table-setters before we get into the deep dive. I personally find myself, and as you know, I love accent work. Yeah. I love Sam Reed. I mean, hard not to.

Asla Statt, I find my... myself in desperate need of closed captioning this season. The, you know, the score, the rock score, the rapid fire patter of this show. Yeah. The, like, really funny jokes that are just almost tossed away often by Sam Reed. The accent, which I love Sam Reid's Australia, by the way of, you know, France accent. I'm a big fan of it. But he's now our narrator. Right. And so it's not just Lestat when he's talking, but all of the narration is no longer Jacob Anderson's very clear narration, but there is this accented narration, and then there's just like rock and roll, chaos going on. And I'm old, so. I mean, same. You know, and Jennifer Ely shows up

and she's doing a very special accent as well. And so like, this is a closed, for me, closed captioning required experience. And I will say a lot of the initial little reaction that I saw on the subreddit last night was people saying, I couldn't really understand what was going on sometimes. So, Because of the subtitling, need for subtling, or the moving through time or the LSD hallucinogenic aspects. Maybe all of the above. And I think that's, like, I think that's a very, I think that's a fair response. I loved this episode. Yeah.

Did you like this episode of television? I did. I really enjoyed it. I had a great time with it. I did have a few. I needed to watch it more than once to, like, fully. And I watched it the first time without subtitles just to kind of like take it in and full. You know, the right away we opened with the.

opening credits. They're fun. They're funky. It was, I liked it as kind of like a declaration of intent, which tracked very well with what came in the episode, this like our version of kind of an LSD, a hallucinogenic kind of experience. And also just to signal this is a new thing, this is the next chapter, the next iteration. But also it was a little bit of a signal of like pay attention, right? You're going to be, and then you have the introduction in short order. We're moving through time. We'll go through the entire episode like you said in sequence and chronological quarter. But we open with the auction, we move back to Detroit. We move back further from there to the Halloween formation of the band, which is like a prior timeline. Obviously, we're glimpsing

a ton of stuff from the past, these moments from Lestat's history beyond that. Especially at the end when Lestat is tripping, then he, like, he as a narrator. And I want to talk about this. You know, like, when Louis was our narrator in season one and Daniel eager journalist that he was was like, you know, and that sounds like this, and let's get ahead and all the sort of stuff like that. Yeah. And Louie in season one says, racing ahead again, Mr. Malloy, let the tail seduce you just as I was seduced, right? He's like, I'm going to tell this slowly and in order.

And let's that's like, where was I? Was I fucking in the elevator? Was I fighting upstairs? No, that didn't happen. Yeah, that was later. You know, like, he's chaotic sort of ADD and then like, you know, further impacted by the drug trip. Style of narration is a non-linear style.

How do you feel about that? I love it. I think that it is maybe there is a beat of acclamation that is required, but I think we will be rewarded for acclimating. Yes. Because there is like, and you know, we'll hit these in context as we go, but there are multiple, like, deeply prophetic harbingers throughout the episode. Signs and portents, would you say?

And I would also say, portents and signs. Wow. That's a call. That's an in-joke, folks. You've got to check out five years more on their pods to understand what that means. This sense that all of these horrors and atrocities await,

you know, Daniel coming in, along with Sam from the theater troupe, incredible stuff, to help in the Fangangang, hallway fight one of the examples, and I love the way the stat was like, you know, Daniel, he really, he saved me, and that was great, but like if he hadn't, Maybe all of these other people would have been okay.

Was that good for humanity at the end of the day? Oh, boy. That's not great. And there are other notes earlier as well. So it kind of, I think, heightens and enhances that, even just the auction, this estate to give away. There's this like, well, several of our main characters are grievously injured. Yeah. And also, like, is he dead? What's going on with our kind of stat?

If this stuff is being sold at auction for these price points, et cetera. And what has happened that he is clearly like a key driver of? So that is very interesting. But I think because we talked about this a little bit in season two, and this is delving even deeper into this kind of like core impulse and how the text is structured. The question of like who is a reliable narrator, who is the author and arbiter of history,

can you trust another person's account of your experience in your life? But also, like, can you trust your own account? Your own recollection. Because your own memory is deeply flawed, and that is just inherent. and the longer you're alive, presumably the harder it becomes, to hold on to any strand of your experience. So the fact that this for LaSat, it's like fractured and messy and there's exciting pops of color. And then he'll say, like, this is sort of the fun that I like to sing about in my song, Longface.

And you're like, wait, but part of the reason to write the song is to like, there's a therapeutic, cathartic act of creation and connection. And unearthing of memory. Yes. That's a big part of, you know, his freak out that happens, actually before he drinks the drugged blood. But that freak out is a huge indicator for what this process is for Lestat in the book and here in the show, which is just sort of like, you know, Louis proclaims to remember things, but there were things that he didn't know about and also things that because he's not a human, but like has a, you know, a flawed man-loat. like brain, you know, is going to be informed. And the show's constantly engaging with that informed by his own biases or self-edits or whatever the case may be.

And for LaStat, in this situation, it's so interesting because, you know, the format is replacing Daniel Maloy as writing a book, that premise with Daniel Maloy is directing a movie. And inside of that, Laestat is narrating the failures, this, this. project that he is pressed into vinyl that's at auction that we're listening to. Yeah. With like edits to be taken out later also still in there. Also there's the great song project, the album that he's working on, like all the music he's creating.

So there's these various expressions of artistically, how do we encapsulate a life, how do we tell a story? But he is sort of characterized as omniscient narrator in the failure. in the failures sequence, which means the show gets to follow characters outside of scenes that Lestat was present for. Right. So we could presumably follow Louis a bit this season

or Daniel when he's not with Lestad or what is Armand up to or all these other things without Lestat having to be there. So when you make it an omniscient narrator, does that make it more reliable and accurate or are we now just getting the very seemingly unreliable emotional

encapsulations of Lestat about things that he wasn't even witnessed to. To me I think it feels like more likely to be the latter because that's part of I think what the thesis of the show and how it's adapting this is like interested and again I don't really have the

frame of reference for how central that is in the book but this idea like Lestat saying okay first of all this is a hysterical episode of television Yes. Like, and again, the jokes are just like often tossed out mumbled away.

Yeah. And you only catch them on like the second or third watch. Yes. So I'm, you're cracking up. There is such a wry wit and like the humor that is simultaneously, you know, and again, sort of for the character, 265 years, definitionally like eternal and universal in a sense and then hyper attuned and specific to the moment that he's chronicling. That's all great. I think this idea of like, okay, the stretch where you go.

The bugstore scene was so funny, just like Chef's Kiss Wonderful. Yeah. He's back at his flat. Scrawling, you know, fact-checking in real-time this account, when a superfan at the concert comes sometime after to get him to sign the book, he scrolls. Lies. Lies, right? So this idea, the compulsion to correct the record, to me for list, very relatable, right, in general, like, oh, that's, that I'm misunderstood. Right.

This is a very human impulse. Right. for the immortal staff. Yeah. But the idea to say, like, I am misunderstood in a public fashion. I am misunderstood by the person who's supposed to understand me the best. So I will correct the record in a way that, of course, misunderstands everything else just through my lens and, like, with my thumb on the scale,

is perfect. And so the idea to do it simultaneously through the music itself, like even the name failures. Well, what are the failures? The attempt to be a rock star or the stories that he's chronicling. Or everything that comes after. Yeah. And then the documentary. to bring in Daniel to say, like, okay, the way that I will, and a very fun, like, you know,

I heard you requested me like as absurd, right, the idea that like the one person who can undermine the sanctity of the interview with the vampire text is the author of it, that there will be like a sanctioning and a, there's a more like valid quality to Lestat's tale if Daniel is there to help author it. There's such a consciousness. engine driving those choices that as a result, how can we expect the account to be reliable? Accurate. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's interesting. Obviously, like, what we do as podcasters is a mere drop in the bucket compared to, like, the rock star list at. But it is such a weird thing to have a semi,

semi sort of like public facing job. And occasionally things like get surfaced to me from the internet that are just completely untrue about me that people say with such conviction. And I'm like, where did you get that conviction? That you're like, well, Joanna feels this way or Joanna did this or Joanna. And I'm just like, that's just like not true. Not true. And I don't refute it because it's just sort of like what's the point. But it's such a weird space to be in.

And again, this is like a very small fraction of like this. No one's ever written a book about me obviously. But like, why would they? But. Yeah. But it's such a fucking weird experience that people speak with such certainty, absolute untruths about you. And like for for LaStat, are there things that are factually untrue when he's like, my hair never fucking look like that, how dare you, or whatever the case may be?

But then there's also sort of like characteristically, is this how you actually saw me? Right. Is that actually what you thought my interior life was like, you know, at the end of the day? Last thing I want to talk about before we get into sort of this more chronological thing is the overarching idea of musical numbers is storytelling, right? So this is Daniel Hart gave this great interview where he was talking about the creation of the songs. And we get three songs in this episode specifically, Long Face, which was the first one that they released. All Fall Down, which is on the opening credits, was also on a couple trailers. And then Black Liquorish, which is the song that he.

He has the freak out during and has the big violin solo. This is what Daniel Hart said. Songwriting is one of the main ways in which he, Lestat, stays connected to humans in season three. Humans write a lot of songs about love, and we write a lot of songs about loss, and Lestat has loved a lot and lost a lot. The songs feel very specific to Lestat now.

And he talked about the process of it, how he was in the writer's room from the beginning of the season, and how he was writing the, he wrote the songs, the music and the lyrics, but collaboratively with Roland Jones, who is the showrunner, he would, like, come in and say, like, offer up ideas for lyrics that would be references to things that happened in previous seasons, or he's just like, Roland Jones has just been thinking about the psyche of LaSotte

for, you know, maybe his whole life, who knows, you know? And so he's just sort of, like, inside his head. And then with Sam Reed as well. Like, he's like, I collaborated with Sam Reed, who's, like, been playing this character for so long. And so I just think that, like, I love these songs. Not everyone is loving the songs, but I love these songs. And I just think that like, I just think the opportunity to sort of pour over lyrics and try to like really parse what's going on here.

One of my favorite things is black licorice. Where means exactly what you think it means is one of the recurring lyrics in that song. So what could that mean? A lot of people think it means Louis Dick. You know, that could be what it is. But, like, it's just fun to get to parse and explicate these lyrics and have this extra added layer of ability to crawl inside of a character like Lestat. Right. I love this.

First of all, if anyone has not checked out the incredible fictional bands episode that you did. Yes. Last week. Treat yourselves. Wonderful stuff. And, like, the whole discussion of fictional bands, obviously. But the opening stretch on kind of, like, what is required to? to do this well in the potential.

It's funny because I had been thinking, too, about the comedy comp, and then obviously you all talked about that. There are multiple moments in this first episode where, with Longface, especially, but in general, it's incorporated into the text, this lampshading of, like, does this suck? And I thought this was very smart because there's enough, first of all, it allows for us to track some sort of musical progression. Maybe that's going to be in the venue size.

You know, one of the moments that really made me chuckle, was the tour bus. Can't wait to discuss the setup, but the tour bus, the tour bus driving through Dad had Detroit past Ford Field. And Daniel's like, this is where the Detroit Lions play. So it's an NFL stadium. This is like a huge stadium, right?

I think he quoted like 60,000. The face tattooed balloons. He's like, post on jelly roller in there and you're like at an 800-scene venue. You know, so there's that aspect of it. How big is the band's stature, the celebrity, but also just what is the quality of the music? And if you watch the first episode

and you think the music is incredible. credible, then you get to be enraged on Lestat's behalf. But if you don't feel that way about it, then there's cover to say, it's very clever. Allow your relationship to the music to evolve over the course of the season. It's super smart. And they've been doing that in the entire lead-up to this. As they've released these musics, these music, as they've released these songs, they all come with these fictional lighter notes written by Lestat, where he's just sort of like, Daniel Hart, what a hack, this sucks. Are you kidding me? You know, so like the does long face suck being like text of the episode is really funny. I think also all of the like Daniel Malloy skipping the concert

and saying like I just Spotify T-Rex, you know, same thing. And I love T-Rex. So I'm like, yeah, no wonder this music's working for me. T-Rex is one of my favorite bands. But like, you know, just talking about like how derivative, if you think it's derivative, a character in our show thinks it's derivative. If you think it sucks, a character in our show thinks it sucks. You know, if you think it's funny that Lestat is playing such small clubs, we can talk about it. I think it's for budgetary reasons, but we've invented story reasons why... There's a character beat. We've rented story reasons why that's true, you know?

And so I think that's just like... I think they've thought of everything and covered it from every angle. And in terms of just the choice to present... And obviously, I understand that this is canon, this is from the text, but to present Lestat as a person literally taking center stage. Yes. Right? A musician.

Now, this is what we'll talk about the scene where Baby Chanks discussed the yearning tendrils the need for millions, nay billions, right? Will that top up your heart? This is like, how many people leads to a podcast for me to feel like? Millions, nay, billions! Tune it. Give us the fire stars! You know, this like just makes perfect sense, right? The idea that Lestad is a character who needs to be in the thick of things, needs to have people looking at him, needs to be in front of the microphone, under the spotlights, couldn't be us, you know, needs everybody not just to look at him, but to know what he thinks. That's the extra element of it that's like, yes, and adore him and worship him and chase him down.

And I love the like, well, it's the description like the body burlesque, right, this idea that he is embracing the fact that he can play with, okay, is it true, is it a lie. I know we'll talk about that more as we go. But just that in general, like, okay, he could have been an actor. He could. He could, yes. He could have pursued fame in all forms. And he has. And he will hopefully will continue to, I don't know.

music, to be the front man, to be the person crafting the lyrics and then expressing them in this public way, music and I have never written a song, but I have listened to many. Would you like co-writing credit on Santa Came on a Dragon? That's all the chance. I would never deign to claim credit, but I'm happy to consume it. Incredible stuff. The act of songwriting has always struck me as this fast, it's like so personal. and internal, right? You were putting down these like innermost thoughts, but the desire is to forge something that other people can put their own experience onto. Yeah. Right. And so like, Lestat wants all of these people to listen to it and adore him, but like he wants Louis to hear that

song. He knows he will. And so that is embedded into the act of creation as I will share my innermost thoughts and desires, but I know that you will be there to receive them. And I think, you know, one of the runners in this episode is this text exchange that he's sharing with someone Mois et me and you. And the whole time, you know, plenty of us think it's Louis.

I thought it was Louis. I definitely thought it was Louis. I thought it was Louis, but I was watching with someone who knows the books better than I do. And she's like, I think this is a fake out and it's going to be Gabriela.

And then it was. And I was like, oh, damn, got to read these books. And I have since. But you won't fool me again. But the remoteness, the chilliness that we get from

Gabriela in just this episode that's sort of like, I'm here, I'm suffering, the like toxic sexual relationship when he needs, you know, mothering inside of this moment, that hole in his heart, you know, that needs topping up. Like, this is a right off the bat, early explanation for why Lestat is the way that Lestat is because his mother is the way that his mother is. That is literally his mother who we meet at the end, just in case you were like, oh, did they literally mean mother? Yes. I have some questions. Gabriela is his mother and his lover and his fledgling.

Sounds great. This episode is brought to you by Target. All right. Drop two of the Pokemon and Target 30th Celebration Collection is finally here, including limited edition pennants and life-sided puzzles of your favorite Pokemon. We've got the Pikachu puzzle, and it is just over a foot tall. Adorable. And our side-up pennant, that's going up on the wall.

Now that drop two is out in the world, it's your time to discover all the other exclusives in the Pokemon and Target limited time collection. Calling all trainers, explore now at Target.com. Should we get into the deep dive? Let's do it. All right, so as you mentioned, we open with all of these ominous hints of what's to come, right? Louis is hobbling on a cane, missing at least part of his leg. We see like a prosthetic ankle.

So we don't know how much of his, you know, lower extremities are missing. Armand has lost an eye. Lestat is nowhere to be seen. And here are some of the quotes we get. consequent global catastrophe. Worrying. The failures. The regretful dead and the traumatized still alive.

And the very specific attempted extinction of the Y chromosome. So these are the hints we have. There's some kind of global catastrophe. Many people died and the people who live through it are scarred. Yes. And they tried to kill all the dudes. It's worrying. It's not great.

It's such a doomed note to start on. And this is kind of like the brilliance of the show and the way that it is crafted and scripted because you go right from that line. And I am not saying that the attempted extinction of the Y chromosome across continents was all my fault into the signature humor of, no, that would suggest a level of self-importance that even I'm not comfortable with. But upon reflection, yes, I made a contribution. And it's just like that's the show and miniature to me.

So yeah, that opening auction, first of all, that sideboard was sick. Oh my God, it was beautiful. Can you imagine? Were you more interested in the port? Absolutely not the port. The decanted blood. Sounds right. I'll take the port.

You could take the blood. We could go in have these on the sideboard. What do you think? I definitely think we could outbid the entire Talomasca, for sure. So there's port, the blood of Lestat, right? The decanted blood, we should know that that is incredibly potent. powerful shit. That, you know, no wonder there's a bidding war here.

Fun, fraught looks between Louis, between Armand, and between Ragland James, who's here, who we met in the previous season played with the great Justin Kirk here representing the telemaska. The fire stunt. Yeah, that was good. The Banksy move from Listott, incredible brady, pissing people off. And I just love how, like, delighted Louis is by this move from Listott. Loved it.

Fantastic stuff. We talked about this sort of idea of the omniscient narration, but I just wanted to add to that idea of sort of like who's telling the story and under what sort of level of reliability or authenticity. We talked about this a little bit in, I think, our summer hype, but this idea of like we're meeting the realist dot kind of for the first time ever on the show, despite spending two seasons with him because every time we've seen him with one exception before, has been either Armand's recollection or Louis' recollection.

Not just the sort of like dream ghost version that we meet in season two, but like every, you know, with the with the fuckass bob haircut, like every, and no scars on his chest, like every version of Lestat we've met has been a recollected version of Lestat, right? Except for in the end of season two, when Louis goes to New Orleans, then we're outside the story that he's telling Daniel. And that's like the real estate. As Lissat, who's like broken down and humbled and stuttering and upset and all this sort of stuff of that. So Lestat in his full, you know, brat princiness, this is our real introduction to him. And that's so exciting for a character that we already love and a performance we already love.

But it's like, here's the real me. Do you still love me? Right. Well, and like I love, you know, as you know, I love stories like this, like the affair. Unfortunately, Roshamon or the equally important Showtime series, The Affair. Oh, God, great stuff.

I mean, it wasn't, but I enjoyed it. Which aspects of this true or at least Lestat's version of himself are like more flattering? And which will be less flattering. Like when someone else holds an image of you in their mind or their heart, is it cruel?

is it charitable? Is it both? When is it one or the other? And what sort of like messy blend? I think that's going to be like really interesting and fascinating to track. And also just like with Louis Armand and Raglan there, you know, we end. We leave that sequence without knowing who won the bit. Yeah.

So who's listening to this? Right. Yeah. And you know, it's very fun to know that Lestad is speaking directly to that buyer, right? Yeah. You know, a privilege. Yeah. their wealth and the choices they've made about how to spend their money.

But like, okay, is it, is this purchase being made out of a desire for, like, proximity and closeness to someone who is maybe, like, gone missing? Is it out of a desire to, like, know and understand glean intel? Is it a desire to protect, right, to keep this information out of other hands, some combination of no idea, looking forward to finding out? Really intriguing, opening note. I will return to this. scene I'm most excited to return to in the book spoiler section. So we will talk about in the book

spoiler section. Okay. But there's a lot of fun stuff happening here for people who have read the books. Okay. We go now to Detroit night one. This is the long face performance. Yes. It's spring 2025. The voiceover lets us know we're in the second Trump administration with the A Great Nation was making itself great again, again. The show rules. So good. This is like an adaptive change that I think is really interesting because in the book, the Vampire Laostat awakens. He's been underground, like, sleep, you know, in a long sleep. Sounds great. And he's awakened into the 1980s by music. Music wakes him up. Hearing the, like, sort of loud rock music of the time is sort of like what brings, and he's like, what's all this? What's happening in humanity? And he's, like, delighted by what he finds.

And so there's this passage from, there's like this prologue. And then we get into sort of of the autobiography backstory stuff. But this prologger where he's talking about waking up and finding his band and his assessment of the 80s. And it's really interesting because I'm like, is this what Anne Rice thought of the 80s when she wrote this book?

Quote, the simplest people at this age were driven by a vigorous secular morality as strong as any religious morality ever known. The intellectuals carried the standards. But quite ordinary individuals all over America cared passionately

about peace and the poor and the planet as if driven by a mystical zeal. Ah, the 20th century. Ah, the turn of the great wheel. It had outdistance my wildest dreams of it this future. It had made fools of grim prophets of ages past. I did a lot of thinking about this sinless secular morality, this optimism. And then here's like the key line. This brilliantly lighted world where the value of human life was greater than it had ever been before. When you compare the, that Lestat waking up to the world and he's like, you know, very Jack Skellington, what's this, what's this, you know, like what's happening here? Compare it to Lestat later talking to Daniel.

Yes. Yeah. And he says, the dark, dreary industrial world has finally submitted to automation. Laborers stand in their doorways hitting their pipes as their children half pipe in their drained, empty swimming pools. Drugstores locked up baby formula and shaving cream while sacks ate Barneys. And someone told everyone that Lululemon, I believe that's how he pronounced it, Lulu Lema, was sexy. Facts are irrelevant.

Frual stride. And here's the key quote, and the value of human life, it has never been more arbitrary. David, Freddie, Prince Rogers, they're all gone. And the lights on Tete's era has dimmed, fire coming on the hill, watering moving in on Nantucket. No more safe spaces. It's my era now. So this list out just reads the modern world. fill.

Yeah. And so I just find that the, you know, that direct opposition of the value of human life has never been more arbitrary versus the value of human life was greater than it had ever been before in the 80s. And I'm curious if this is like, I mean, I think it would be really hard to have a character in 2025 look around America and say, we're really doing it. We're doing great. So, like, is this just reflecting the realities of the culture right now?

Though I think plenty of people would look around the 80s and say, like, what the fuck is going on here. So, like, is that just sort of, like, the people who are writing the show are like, hey, man, we couldn't do this wonder celebration. So we did this really fun and funny, like, reading 2025 to Phil. Yeah. Or is there something more interesting to you, Mallory, as a non-book reader, to, like, a list out who's not, you know, excited and inspired by the world, but is, like, frustrated and

disdainful of the world. Yeah. An interesting question. I think this felt right to me for a few reasons, I guess. I think what you already said, like it would just be, even in a show I love, I think, like, disqualifying to say like, here we are in this moment in time and everything's great. There's a way maybe with a really like hedonistic, narcissistic character that you could position it as like, I am unaware of the plate and turmoil around me that would be a commentary of a different sort.

I think that would actually be like a valid way to structure the show. But what does it mean to be immortal and what does it mean to have lived for nearly three centuries? I think if you are a character who, even if you've spent like a chunk of that time buried underground and you miss certain things as he reminds us in this episode and I'm sure it will again and has before, you've lived like a lot of life, right? And for Lestat, I really loved the conversation with that. Can we call them conversations? the exchanges. Yeah, like one of the things that baby Jenks said to him about, like you're like a wet clothes and a coin up dryer.

You know, this idea that on the one hand, he is a character who has directly experienced a witness more of history than almost anyone, yes, anyone around him in any room he's ever going to be in. And also, who finds himself caught in these loops where no matter what is happening around him, as these patterns that repeat, including this, like, need to be adored, need to be loved, and also, like, a capacity to love deeply in turn, right? So that's really interesting, like, what is constant for him and what is shifting and how is he responding to the world around him.

But I think, like, a character who considers, who simultaneously has, like, a lot of insecurity and doubt and shame and also considers himself so superior. A god. To look around in, like, the digital era and say, like, gods aren't swipes just was perfect, I thought. Like, that was great. And so, you know, so much of black licorice, like the TikTok references and things like that, like, what would it be like to have lived for all this time and then look around and just see everybody staring at their phones instead of like drinking up literally or figuratively the deliciousness of life around them? I just think it's really interesting. I'm curious to see what feels like it varies, maybe city to city, place to place. Like how much are the spots he's in, actual characters? And yeah, Detroit, I think Detroit is a fascinating choice. This is no shade on Detroit. But like, Detroit for a long stretch was like being used in every sort of like horror movie as a stand in for sort of like a crumbling American city. Obviously like an industry town that had its industry sort of cut out from underneath it. One of my favorite vampire stories, only lovers left alive is set in like a really crumbling Detroit, you know. And so like I think Detroit as emblematic of that moment or finding ourselves in in the American experiment.

is really interesting. And I think that, like, specifically when Lestat in the book talks about what he loves about the 80s, he talks about, among other things, sort of like the sexual hedonism and the gender fluidity of the world that he finds. And he's just sort of like how exciting, like bisexuality is, you know, is being celebrated. Men have long hair again and are wearing fun fashion again. And, you know, like all the dreariness of the more conservative decades that I live through are gone and were in this like hedonistic celebration. And so for TVLostat to say, to mention David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and Prince as like these three people who are these three sort of like, you know, pantheon of of of rock royalty as specifically in that sort of like gender fluid queer space as like they're gone. what has taken its place is, is that era over with the absence of those titans inside of our

world? A question with asking, is there room for a Lestat to step in? Mm-hmm. Who's to say? The first show we get of Sam Rhee, because Lestat is not at the auction, so the first shot we get of Lassad in this series is the hand coming out into the spotlight grasping the microphone. Right. And I was wondering if this was a...

A book reference because in his prologue to the vampire to the vampire Lassat, Lassat says, the only consistent indication that I'm not human is my fingernails. It's the same with all vampires. Our fingernails look like glass. And some people notice that when they don't notice anything else. And so to see his nails, those unusual lee pressons that they make all of the vampire characters wear wrap around the microphone. Obviously inside of the show, they've got strange eyes as well. That's another indicator for us.

But like to be like here. And inside of this, as you mentioned, this really fascinating, he's a vampire, pretending to be a human, pretending to be a vampire, this sort of like performative vampirism charade. I think it's so interesting to start with this like undeniable indicator that like this is something inhuman is grabbing the microphone here. I love it. Fantastic. What do you think of the scars? Like, how did you think he looked? What did you think of the scars on his chest?

Of everything we see here? What do you think? I mean, obviously we had been exposed to this. You know, in the trailers, we got to see the first, the release of the first images, the first glimpse at Comic-Con last summer when I got to, like, feel you quiver beside me. With an anticipation. Very, very meaningful experience. You know, he looks unbelievable.

It's like, it takes zero effort to convince yourself that the throngs would show up to, like, Not millions, not billions, but thousands. 800 would film that venue every night to just watch him. And that when he, you know, crowd surfs, they would delight in touching him and that they would be so enraptured and swept up in the experience that they wouldn't notice as he levitates back on stage. Which was a fun detail because of that kind of like, kind of like, you know, collective delusion, even though a lot of the people there are there because they're true believers, right? like who believes who doesn't, who is easy to trick and deceive, who is even paying attention. That's like an interesting thing to ask about people in that room, but just sort of like where we are as a society more broadly. It was interesting to think back to like Santiago and season two.

And, you know, all of the things that they were doing on stage were real, but they were counting on the audience believing it was a trick. You want to be fools. Yeah. On our minds for many reasons, the prestige, which I know you'll bring up later. Like, that's just really fun as a commentary about like what people are like ready to. receive and how. So I love that. And yeah, he just, he looks believably like a rock star. Yeah. Also, I mean, like the filmmaking in the sequence when like the whole world flips upside down, you know, so he's, he's crowd surfing, but like the whole vision is flipped.

The godlike adoration, you know, his self-proclamation that he is a god. And you have this like, you know, him Christlike, you know, sort of stretched out on top of the adoring. throngs here. Naturally, I named the band after myself. Great. So good. The scars on his chest, I think, are really interesting because, you know, no mention of the scars on my chest either when he's talking to Daniel about sort of the accuracy

of Louis' depiction. We get a couple mentions here. Yeah, you kill some wolves and fall in love is a line. I killed a pack of wolves when I was immortal. I'll most likely tell you about that later as I let it define me for a time. It's so funny. If I wanted to find me for a time, killed me. It's so funny because that's making fun of the book.

Like, that's the show that loves the book, but is making fun of how often Louis thinks of himself as the wolf killer. But so here are these scars on his chest from this, like, traumatic experience that happened to when he was still mortal. And I just love that they're here. They're absent from Louis's depiction. Perhaps because, like, oops, they forgot to put him on his chest in season one. But then it just, like, becomes, like, a plot line. They're absent from the depiction. but it's this constant reminder that Lestat carries of his once pervious flesh.

Like his vulnerability is immortal. The first line of the book, The Vampire Lestat is, I am the vampire Lestat, I am immortal, more or less. And so I just think him walking around with this reminder of his vulnerability is an interesting part of that character. I love that. And it's interesting to think, like, did Louis not share that? Did Daniel not consider it worth mentioning? Right. Right. There are like a number of different potential explanations. I like your idea that maybe they just didn't have the prosthetic scars ready to go. That's a fun, fun thing to think about. But they can cover it. And they can cover why his hair looks different. You know, like, they can just cover a bunch of stuff by saying, like, it was an unreliable narrator. Yeah, exactly. Or there's like, you know, a more deeply psychological reason to skip it. But then you see his, you see Gabriella show up at the end. And, you know, he's in tatters, right, after the fang gang, uh, fang fight. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, that sequence is a good reminder that, like, vampires can be. Yeah.

Destroyed, right? And killed. And like, so when he, when we're like a force to confront the fact that he is in this really perilous state, then we see his face. It's all cut. It's all swollen. And like, then she. swipes. God can be swiped, I guess, and moves her finger over his cheekbone and just heals it. And it's like, yeah. So then the scars, you really, I think even if you don't have the context of the book, you understand that they must have come from a different, a different time, which was, yeah, all of the wolf mentions throughout were very tantalizing. The wolf killed it. Um, you open with long face. Shitz Creek very, Shitz Creek's very own, Noah Reed. Oh my God, this was Patrick himself.

Absolutely thrill for me. As a real Schitzker. Creek lover, but a Patrick lover in particular. The second I saw him, Adam and I were talking about this last night, because I was like, did you clock immediately that it was Patrick? Because with the beard and the different hairstyle, it took me a minute, but there was, like, there's something so cherubic and recognized a little about his sweet face. And I was like, am I suddenly just like thinking of Tina Turner for any specific reason? You know, no, I'm thrilled that he's here.

And I love the discussion you all had on the pod last week about filling the band with musicians. Musicians. Shout out the moment where we can see Salamander, the bassist in the background of a shot, just getting a blowjob in the middle of a crowded room. Yep. Wonderful stuff. Also, when the stat charges across to the band for the first time,

and he's like, more frequent showers, maybe? It's wonderful. So funny. We meet Larry Alex, Salamander, who's a show creation, but is, as I mentioned in that previous podcast, played by the literal music supervisor of the show. Great stuff. And T. tough cookie as the band Satan's Night Out, Satan's Night Owl,

Satan's Night Out who become the vampire Lestat. We get that, and I talked about this on the previous podcast, we get that La Marcia's riff, the beginning of Longface, which I absolutely love, which made me think of the Beatles, but also like, you know, of course, Lestat, French boy that he is, is like, we're going to put LaMassias at the beginning of our hit song Long Face. Does it suck? know, does it suck? What do you think? What do you think? Does it suck? I love it.

Thank you for the feedback. Yeah. So, like, eventually we will see in night two, Detroit, don't stay too nice in Detroit, but in night two to Detroit, we will see, you know, like ghosts in the audience, essentially. But here we've got, like, more immediate threats. The camera crew is there. Two members of the fan gang are there. Tim and Russ. Did you think Russ looked a bit like Caras Swisher? Oh, I see it. I didn't think that, but now what you're saying it.

Love it. Wow. And then the fan who's clutching Daniel's book is also in the audience here. Right. And then Lustod just lays out AMC's season three marketing plan, like beat for beat. Quote, we dropped songs on the streams and booked intimate venues to induce what Jen snoo called FOMO. They came for cosplay, left converted, and I baptized them the beautiful unwell. And yes, you can buy a beautiful unwell baseball cap on the AMC store.

Baseball cap. I like it. Makes me want some Tarek Scuble commentary while they're still in Detroit. It may be some, though I would need them to move forward in time. I definitely know exactly what you're referencing here. Detroit Tigers? Yeah. One of the best pitchers in baseball. Currently a big topic of conversation is where will he get traded? Will it be a dreaded outcome for the rest of baseball fans? The Dodgers are the Yankees. Does another team have a chance of getting in there? Do the Orioles want him? They can use them. Okay. Not their ear. No, it is. I think it is there. year. Oh, they're doing well. We've been doing well. I mean, currently at the moment of this recording, four games under 500, but only a game out in the wildcard, folks. The American League is a mess. Anything can still happen. That's exciting. Been doing well the last couple weeks. It's all happening. I just want to shout out the glitter on him. Great. Absolute shit, Edward Cullen. Fuck you, glitter

vampire. I don't care for Twilight, and I care a lot about this glittery vampire. Is that bloody pre-cum on his pants as he like says I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming at the end of like, he's thrusting. And then this little, yeah, this little like stain starts to spread on the front of his pants. I think definitely. I think the fact that we cut back to it multiple times and a close crop made it undeniable. Just a deep and abiding appreciation for this show and the way that it's crafted. And just happy that we get to share it together. To the visual effects department, the practical effects department. the costume department.

I mean, that goes right into a little draining both ways. You'll have to guess who gets the fang and who gets the vodka bottle. And yes, it's a vodka bottle. So just a very dick-centric stretch for Lestat.

And who are we to complain? Not I. The documentary inside the failures project reveals itself as soon as we're off stage, we're in the black and white view of the camera. And that's a fun cue for us is like, we know now

what's documentary footage, what's not with the black and white? sort of handheld that we get in the hallway. And again, this is another like directing challenge because you're making the show and then inside the show you're making this like documentary at the same time. Yes.

It's a really fun way to include Daniel Malloy in the story because he's not in the book The Vampire Listad. And they're also finding ways clearly to include Louie and Louis is not really in the Vampire Listot. So like I would not want to seize him without Eric Begozion and Jacob Anderson. So I think it's like incredibly smart.

I think the documentary is taking the place not just of the Lestat writing his own autobiography, which is what he does in the book, but also as part of his like launch as a rock star career, he says to his lawyer, Christine, like, fetch me the greatest filmmakers from around the world to shoot me some music videos for MTV. And it's just sort of like, that's not really, TRL's not really happened. Not that it was in the 80s, but like, you know, we're not really like a music video, unless you're Taylor Swift really or a few other, Sabrina Carpenter, like, we're not really in like a music video-centric time in our, in our musical careers, I think. It's Spotify's dreams. The Swedes did not ask me to say that.

Speaking of it, Christine's here. Welcome to the show, lawyer Christine. What did you think of her? Very intriguing and tantalizing introduction. Yeah. The Corvallis Paperwork Exchange. She has just an amazing Dick Pills line. LaSat has that moment where he's like, should I just go up and fuck her? Like, this is a number of little nuggets throughout the episode that she's kind of like a background and like tangential figure throughout the episode, but in a way where I think you're like, okay,

a person who is in the room for this many meaningful moments is going to have a larger role to play, I assume. So I'm intrigued. Who knows he's a vampire and who doesn't know that he's a vampire, right? Because like the band of the band of the, doesn't know until the end of the episode that he's actually a vampire. But Christine certainly seems like she knows. And I think it's interesting, like his entourage here, we have lawyer Christine, we have D. Farma, who is a show-invented character, but really fun, especially when she's doing

her affirmations facing the wall at the end of the episode. Incredible. And Dr. Farid, who we met in season one, is here as part of the entourage, among some other people who are taking various showers inside of the tour bus and stuff like that. But I think it's really really, you know, fun to have this entourage around the band and these various characters to flesh out the world here. I also love the phrase he uses here when he talks about the documentary. He says, bootless errand, which is not a phrase that I was aware of, but is a great, beautiful, evocative phrase. And I don't know, I just love discovering new language. Same.

That's great. And even, like, one of the things I love about the show, you have the capacity to discover new, beautiful phrases. It's great. Also, you can hear a phrase that you've heard a thousand times. It could sound like the first time you've heard it. Like, when I was sat in the same stretch as like, I've seen a rough cut of the documentary, truthful and daring. Like, just something about the way he said it was so specifically a stadion. I just said it was great.

Oh, oh, and this is also where he says maybe this is why this is set in 2025 to go back to your prior prompt. specifically so that it had to be a contemporary story so that we could hear him say Redite Redite. Redite. Redite. Discord.

Redite. Redite. I think an ongoing You know section we should do in these recaps is like Lestat pronunciation corner

because Redite is so good incredible. But nothing tops Lulimón for me. Lillimot was really funny but like Redite was very good. Reddy was unbelievable. This is where we meet

Yarda Kloppik who is a show invented character, the double of Lassat. Were you also thinking about the prestige when we met him? Yeah, in part because of the like you take one of the most handsome people alive and you just make them look kind of astonishingly doofy. Yeah, like something's a little off with the teeth and then also just the first glimpse and then, you know, because he's like, you forgot a contact. So something looks like really uncanny about his face. His hair is different. We get the line from the narration. This is another way for Lestat to prop himself up, right? Like he's three inches shorter.

You know, it's all very good. But then that question of just like, well, okay, so they're sending him out so that he can be photographed. Those photographs will then be uploaded to Redite. But it is to provide cover so that Lestat can be a vampire and go suck people dry and kill legions and be undetected. But like, will there be a more specific reason to have that character in the show? And as I mentioned, like, explaining how his nights go?

Yeah, as I mentioned, it's not a book character. So, like, there are already some fun, which we didn't talk about in this other section. There are already some fun theories about what, why they came up with this guy and what he's doing here. And I think the show is always thinking, which I really admire about it, in the long term. So, like, casting someone like Justin Kirk to play Raglan James who, like, shows up for, like, two scenes in season two. And, like, one scene thus far this season, but, like, is a character that matters. And so they're like, we want to cast Justin and Kirk as that character in the hopes that we get. to the point in the story where it matters that Justin Kirk is playing that character.

And like for someone like LaStat, seating in all of his like musical stuff in the earlier seasons when we see him like playing the piano, playing like the New Orleans jazz in season one or his like opera music critique in season, you know, like he is this like when he freaks out about the Aitone notes that he's hearing from Satan's Night Out across the street, they're lucky he didn't kill them because he killed people who. who displeased him musically in season one. So I just like that they're always planting these seeds because they have the shape of the full narrative

and they're like, let's not cause problems for ourselves down the road. And so like this to me, I think, if the fan theories are right, is an elegant solution for something coming down the road. But we'll talk about that. The Contessa versus the useful idiot. Contessa was historic. That was so good. So, so, so good.

Daniel is the fucking best. Eric Bogosian so good. And how do you feel about vampire Daniel versus human Daniel? Like what differences are you seeing? Like, what are you enjoying here? I think part of what I love about Daniel in this form is that he feels completely the same to me in a way that it feels exactly right. Like he was always such a dick and always found a way at a position. himself even when in the room with a vampire who could destroy him at a moment's notice,

even when he was facing his like health challenges, right? Even when he's like, okay, you burn my laptop. Part of, and I like the really liked the phone call between Louis and Lestown. He was like, I don't know about the cloud because as you recall, I was like, what about the cloud? It burned the laptop. Yeah. It's just, you know, the fact that like Daniel is a character who always thinks he's the

smartest guy in the room and can, it's like this guy was made to be a vampire. He was made to navigate life in this superior fashion. I really liked, you know, the exchanges where Lestat has that, like, moment where he's basically like, you know, when you finish, like, working through your transformational trauma, and Daniel's like, I don't have any. And I believe both either, neither all, like, that he's full of shit. And of course he does, because how could you not? And part of the way he navigates life is to say, I'm good, dude, like, focused on your own shit. And then he's going through his version of that. And of course, when we got to see, like, his flashbacks and his trauma, like, realize what, you know, horrible things he had suffered through.

We learned a lot about Daniel in season two through that lens. I also believe that Daniel is, like, I'm fine. And I have no trouble adapting to this, like, new life because it's a life I was always meant to live. And for decades have maybe wanted to live. So it's been great. Just a treat. I love your point about, like, the fact that, you know, he's been. much time masking, like, his MS symptom, you know what I mean, just sort of like hiding that he was

going through this, like, painful health crisis, sets him up for someone to hide these things that are going, he's going through. But, like, if you think about someone like Claudia or even Louis, this idea of like the first, the first few years of being a vampire. She's very hard. You know, emotionally tumultuous, among other things. And so, yeah. And he's out there given interviews, you know, on the nightly news. We saw at the end of Csia, too, how well that was going. Not great. I do want to read this past from the book because I think what's so interesting about

this idea that, like, we'll talk about this more when we do our disclosure day pod, but I think this description of how people reacted to a book purporting that vampires are real, it felt so accurate to me, just sort of like they looked down at their phones and said, huh, and kept scrolling. God will not be swiped. But, like, you know, I was just sort of like, yeah, you know, that's kind of, because Didn't the government say there were UFOs, like, two years ago? We were all kind of like, huh.

Right. Interesting. It's like kept going. I feel like that happened. So anyway, this is, this idea that Lestat, you know, in Anne Rice's version, the book comes out and people think it's fiction, right? Mm-hmm. But it's an opportunity that Lestat sees that Louis has presented him with to, like, sort of like, come out. out in a certain way, like come out of the shadows, right?

Yeah. So this is the quote from the book. And it didn't matter, they didn't believe it. It didn't matter that they thought it was art. The fact that after two centuries of concealment, I was visible to mortals. I spoke my name aloud. I told my nature I was there. But again, I was going further than Louis.

His story for all its peculiarities had passed for fiction. In the mortal world, it was safe as the tableau of the old Teartre de Vampier in Paris, where the fiends had pretended to be actors, pretending to be fiends. pretending to be fiends on a remote and gas-lit stage. I'd step into the solar lights before the cameras. I'd reach out and touch with my icy fingers, a thousand warm and grasping hands. I'd scare the hell out of them if it was possible

and charm them and lead them into the truth of it if I could. So, like, it's interesting because in the book, Lestat is, like, upset with Louis, of course, upset with the depiction of the book. Sure. But he's also, like, but also excited about the opportunity that this presents for him to, like, live his more authentically true self. Right. To a degree, he's still performing vampirism, but it feels closer to him than anything he's

been able to do before to be his authentic self and flout the fourth law of vampirism. What do you think about this? I'm interested in this, like, the idea that this would be kind of a constant push, pull, and a struggle, you know, that you would want to be able to live, like, openly, freely. Yeah. obviously, of course, makes sense and is a very, like, potent commentary for various people and navigating circumstances in life in different moments and time. I think also the idea that, like, people who are inside of your community being the ones to say to you, like, you shouldn't

do this. Like, I liked the moment when Lassat was like, it's 2025, you know? Like, if we can't, like, live freely and openly and be who we are, Yeah, what are we doing? And so, of course, that also felt like a reason to say, like, you know, to have the MAGA reference where, like, there is so much progress in society and, like, a real progressive embrace of, like, identity. And then that is surrounded, people who want to, like, tell you not to be who you are, which, of course, is, like, horrible and deeply lamentable. So Lestad is a character who is navigating his version of that feels, like, really appropriate. I, you know, I think also just in more, even just like a more kind of core level, like you're not going to tell me what to do. In any respect, you're not going to tell me what to do. It just feels like a central strand of DNA. Part of why I'm really interested in his mother answering the story, like what is that dynamic? But then if we think, and we have this through line of these texts and I like you definitely thought it was Louis.

I had a voice in my head that was like, do they want us to think it's Louis? we see this iPad fight with Louis, and that was in the past, and then he's gone out to do this thing and kind of like craft his own story in a moment in time where Louis's narrative is really dominant. Would they be texting?

Would they, like, be on a break? You know, maybe it's not, but I was like, it's probably Louis, like that kind of yo-yoing back to each other feels like their relationship. But then there was that moment where, like, because we see, you know, the common technique of like popping the text bubbles

on the screen. Right. But then there's one stretch where we're looking at his phone screen. First of all, that treated us to the incredible, like, let me find exactly what it was. And you are far from the things of man and then his reply is New Jersey. No, no. It's just incredible stuff. But the message he doesn't send is it's been too long, I need you, I'm struggling. And he deletes the, I'm struggling part. It's very Shane Hollander of him. Quite, quite. But so the idea that, like, part of LaStat's relationship to the world and the people around him is to say, I am undeniable, and, like, you will regard me. And then part of it is, like, I have to delete this text because just like everybody else, mortal and mortal, whatever. I can ask for help. I don't know how to ask for help. And I don't always even know when I need it. And sometimes I do know I need it, but I don't know how to find it. And so, like, this all just feels like very kind of potently entwined. I love that. Yeah. And I mean, obviously, there's. trying to lead us down that road because the texting is happening when Daniel's like,

have you heard from Louis? Yes. You know? And so, of course, we're meant to be like, oh, he's hearing from Louie right now, but he's not telling Daniel and all of this stuff. And Daniel's like, you won't reply to my text. He doesn't engage even with my telepathy. But that's interesting too.

It's like, is Louie? Because at this moment in time, you'd be inclined to think, Lestat maybe he doesn't want to talk to Louis. And Louis would be like, I'm sorry. Right. But if Louie's not answering Daniel, well, because. You just like you weren't supposed to publish this.

I bring your laptop. For a reason. And like your apology is not sufficient. So they're all just kind of mad at each other because of the book or is there something else beyond that? Or your drama. Delicious. Daniel, as you say, same as it ever was, like still employing some of the same journalistic techniques, like the repetition of questions. Yes.

Did you eat the baby? Did you eat the baby? Here we get the rule of three we get. Did you stutter as a child? Yes. Three times. in this episode. And like, it's funny the second time

and then it's really funny the third time as like a sort of, I just tore a bunch of vampire's heads off their bodies. Like, did you stutter as a child, you know? Well, and I think especially because Lestat is, he really prides himself on being the one to like kind of, he's the puppet master in any conversation. Like the Joey Chestnut moment in that exchange is very emblematic

of like, no, I'm going to disarm you, not the other way around. But when Daniel first asked the did you stutter question, question, we can see and Daniel can see and clock. It hit. It hit. So then, of course, he's going to keep poking that wound because he knows the wound is there. Yeah. As always, I have notes on Daniels journalistic practices, but he's observant.

He's observant. And he's like, this is like his version of the hunt. He's on the hunt for blood, and the blood is like your emotional truth, and he will find it and suck you dry. The, what do you think of the type? So, like, the frame narrative of the failures, you know, the narrative. that we're listening to. Yeah. We get this sort of like reminder of it constantly of like you're listening to, you know,

diss to side B of the failures. The voice here is Canadian filmmaker Guy Madden. I don't know why. I'd be curious why they picked that voice. He's credited as the voice of failure. But what do you think of this like intermittent interjection or reminder of, you know, we're not cutting back to Louis and Armand in their, you know, know, in Dubai. Right. But we are getting these constant reminders that the story we're watching is a

story we're being told. Yeah. Is that useful to you? Or how do you feel about it? Or does it feel distracting? How do you feel about it? I didn't think it was distracting. Yeah. I think it like kind of connects to what we were talking about earlier, just about the nonlinear nature and who's account we're hearing and where are we in time and even that like opening note of we begin in the middle. Just like we're not, we're not on solid ground and we don't have sure footing. The thing that we have as a reminder that we don't have sure footing, which is its own anchor. Effective as a way to just say like, all right, we're the wet clothes too. Like, we're spinning two, you know, which I like. We are the wet clothes too. All right, Montreal. I am he, he is me.

Yeah, this was amazing. I just want to know, so one thing on Lestat's apartment here, among other Gorgeous. Print. Yeah, absolutely gorgeous. Among other pieces of art around, he's got a print or the real thing, who's to say? It looks too small to be the real thing, actually. Of Mungerite's The Lovers, which is a very famous painting of two people with sort of like sheets wrapped around their face and they're like kissing each other, but their faces like shrouded in these sheets. And it depicts like sort of this inability to actually like connect with someone, right?

Like what are the things, what are the barriers between people as? they strive for intimacy. And it made me think of this later when baby jinx is on the ceiling. A normal sentence, I just said, why are you so sad? Thousands of fans loving you. I want millions. And that'll top off that heart of yours. Billions. Then why you always got to make it so hard for someone to give it to you, right? This is Lestat's problem is like how much he wants intimacy, but how much he's just sort of wrapped up in that sheet anyway and can't actually connect with people. And isn't this just the experience of being alive, folks? Or undead.

Or alive or undead. Real like Chuck and the pie maker vibes. Yeah. Saran Wrap. Saran Wrap. But Magritte did it first. I want a version of the famous painting that is pushing daisies. Fan artists.

You have your task. Lestat says he's eating trust fund babies. Fucking trust fund babies. Which is very different. The Lestat we meet in the Anne Rice book, I don't need to read this. passage, but like, he has adopted a Dexter-esque, a serial killer who only kills serial killers ways, where he's like, I'm only eating evil people. I'm only eating bad people. I'm on the hunt for people who have done evil things that are unrepented about it, and that's why

I'm eating. Okay. Is the Lestat? That is not. No, no, no. There's no indication that that is how this version of Lestat is moving through the world, which I think is interesting. Mm, good eating from Louis on the iPad.

Wonderful. Also, they just like bringing Louis in via. iPad here so that he can listen to the tune before he gets the balloons. Nice as a balloon and then the balloons popping on. Wonderful. Who among us has not been like entrapped by an iPhone like who has not accidentally given a thumbs up or like Zoom meeting when you did not mean to give a thumbs up? Or you write huge and the phone's like huge? Is that what you meant? That happens to me a lot. I know. What's up with that? Someone is just like dramatic gaps marks, you know? We get the bookstore scene, which is amazing, which they released before the season started.

I'm pretty sure that the bookseller here, the book clerk here, who's talking about how much she loves Armand, is a reference to a fan who posted like a very viral TikTok about going to the Louvre and skipping right past the Mona Lisa to go see Armand's painting at the Louvre. And I just think that's a really sweet tribute to a fan to like sort of write them into the show. I think it's really sweet. I love it. Real Deborah, Ava, like, are we sure the Mona Lisa is good? Hacks finale stuff there as well. Hacks finale? Great.

Very emotional. Very good. Very emotional. Yeah. I'm sad that shows over. It's nice when a show can, like, end and say the thing it wants to say at the end. Beautiful stuff. On the bookstore scene, I've told you before in our gift spot pods that my husband

Adam, who has read these books, unlike yours truly, thinks that the show is like one of the, which he had not watched it either. We both watched it because you just thinks. it's like one of the best things on TV and adores it. I like almost had to pause the episode to be like, are you okay? Like do you need a minute? Do you want to become a member? No, thank you.

What is so funny. Which was hysterical? No, thank you. This is great stuff. No, yeah. He's in full tantrum mode. Like from the moment he finds out of the book, you know, all through this Montreal sequence, no one is safe.

Booksellers. The turquereders who show up as characters from interview with a vampire. The like, your camera's not pure. accurate to the little Louis there. The allergies are delusional. Yeah, to the little vampire Armand. The Armand through line, like the books, the bookseller's talking about how Armand is so much more interesting and wonderful.

The trick-or-treaters, the tattoo in the fangangang fight at the end. It's like constantly being surrounded by people who are like, the person you resent is like my true north and I think you're. The way that's amazing. The Lestat was like in the midst of this fight, holding his own or fucking up or whatever, but like feeling a certain kind of way about it. And then as soon as he sees that tattoo, he's just like, are you fucking kidding me? That's so good.

Unbelievable. Then we get the Lestat ranting, as you already mentioned, like as he's going through the book. Is this what it looks like when you go through your text? Do you also use multiple highlighter colors and tabs and underlines as you annotate? I do like to highlight, you know, lines when I'm reading for pod prep, specifically. and also just for pleasure. I like to mark a passage. Color coding, I save for pod prep documents.

That's for the Google Docs of the spreadsheets. And you are prodigious. I do love a color code. We're doing a rewrite. So good. Great stuff. Lilo, not harlequin as a reference to the role Lestat was playing on a very significant night in the past.

We saw him as a harlequin in Armand's recollection, but I love the fact that Armand is like he was playing a harlequin and like Lestat is so offended that he got that so wrong. Mallory, as an editor, how do you feel about Daniel's master? We get a snippet of Daniel Malloy's masterclass and he says, your editor is your priest?

How did you feel about that? He also said your sources or your sharpest, which like all of these things are true, but I don't think Daniel believes them. Daniel Malloy has never once taken a note from an editor. I feel sure.

I feel sure. In the Google Docs era, Daniel is like the hits ax instead of check on the track. A track changes? It just rejects every single change. All the time. I feel sure.

I agree with you. The fact that, I mean, I love the, I love when he breaks in. You already mentioned breaking into play the guitar over Larry's attempt to play the guitar. He plays the note that he thinks he should be playing. Snaps the car. But then says, I'll replace it in the morning. You'll get a replacement in the morning. But the vision of, and this actually made me think of Giles, the vision of.

the vision of the vampire Lestat clutching a bowl of trick-or-treat candy the vampire Lestad. Incredible. I thought of the Giles' candy bowl too. Did he go to the CVS himself and pick out this assortment of candy? It's a pretty good assortment of candy.

Yeah. And I just love that Lestat is going to be rude to children. You'll take whatever I can give you! Yeah. But he did buy the candy and he did answer the door when they came knocking. Incredible response. So first seeing them, like, oh, hello.

Yeah. So the peanut allergy kid, so we, you know, it could be any number of things. It could be sickers. It could be peanut M&Ms. It looked like there were some peanut M&M's mini packs in there. But the kid is like, I'll take a mounds. Now, as you know, mounds, one of my favorite Halloween candy options. So I was like, this guy gets it about Lestat.

Then he screamed at the children and told them their allergies weren't real and I was like, I have some notes. But purchasing the mounds. No, I think you got the top-tier candy. Wonderful. I saw some Reese's product in there. like he was really doing it. Great stuff. The hotel's called the Dracula's daughter,

and they carry vampons. Vampons. Incredible. Oh, my God. Soak up your dark gift with vampons. Is that your tagline? Yeah. What's yours?

I love it. Oh, God. Drain the tension away with vampons. With vampons. Oh, man. Lestat. Okay, so we get this like,

that's why these movie producers hired you, Daniel Molloy, Vampire Slayer. They said you requested me. Who are these movie producers? Who is making this movie? Why are they making this documentary?

If it wasn't Daniel's idea, who's idea was it? Is it Lestat's idea and he sort of like moving from behind the scenes or like is the telemosca making a documentary? Like, who's doing this? Who's the they? So inside of this episode, I think we're like meant to believe that LaStat is trying to engineer all of this so that he can get his, he can commit to the record his account and he can have his direct one through his songs and then the one that Daniel has like added this extra degree of credibility to.

The liner notes. Liner notes. It would be really interesting if it was Talamazka or some other body that was seeking some level of control. And like, you know, one of the things, obviously we have the Fang Gang. We have the Justin Kirk's character is here. Obviously, Daniel's here. We have various figures, even just in the auction, the line of, like, you know, this note about discretion.

And the implication. We weren't here. Yeah. And, like, whichever organization you represent is kind of little moments to remind us there might be all these other, like, figures and shadowy bodies. So all sorts of possibilities. But, like, I liked that there was the return of the kind of, like, structural apparatus of the hearing the different voices. who are saying like the fourth law and all this, and he's not even like writing about us.

He's writing about himself, which we got a very memorable, and I kind of instantly iconic version of in the season two finale with Louie leading to him leaning forward. I was like, oh my God. He's like, come get me. Incredible. So for Lestat, for us to get a version of it there, it's like just these reminders that there are all these other forces out there

who have the thing that they either want or they want to protect a preserve and shield. So there could be any number of answers at this point. There's also when baby Jenks is on the ceiling. Yes. She's like, they're coming. Yes. And I don't know, first of all, I don't know if that baby Jenks is meant to be like real in some way.

Right. How prophetic are the prophecies here when she's talking about he'll die, he'll die, he'll die bad. Like I don't, I don't know. Like if that's meant if we're meant to take that as like as law. Right. Because like it's like a hallucination or is it actually baby Jenks? But what the fuck does baby Jenks know, you know at the end of the day? And then when she says they're coming, does she mean the fangangang or does she mean some other they?

Right. You know? Right. She's got that interesting tattoo on the back of her neck. Yeah, the line about like, I'm getting married, but I'll never forget you. And this, like, and then he has the honey trap line. So there's, yeah, what does she know? Is she connected to?

Yeah, I think she's a, what I've determined after watching the episode a couple times. I mean, you know, there's clues from the books and whatever, but this is not. a thing that that character does in the book at all, the Baby Janks character who's 14 in the books and they aged her up. But like, because, um, that she's there and she takes all those drugs intentionally so that Lestat will bite her

so that Lestat will be incapacitated on drugs so that the fan gang can fuck him up. Right. So when he says honey trapping baby Janks, that's what he means, that she was there to like drug him by proxy. Yeah. Back at the Dracula's daughter.

Yes. Home of Bampons. I can just see it. You know those, like, I mean, especially when you're in an L.A. hotel, the, like, weird offerings they have at the mini bar. Oh, sure. Yeah. Where they're like, here's five kinds of lube. Yeah.

Or Vegas. Oh, I've never been to a Vegas hotel. Oh, boy. Okay. Well, you could either go to a Vegas hotel or I could just send you an incredibly memorable clip from the most recent season of DRAC to survive as part of my ongoing pursuit to get you to watch DRAC to survive. How's it going? where George Russell, not well, because you've yet to watch a single second of it. But I did text you about Lewis Hamilton's dating.

You did. So another podium for Lewis this weekend in Monaco. He finished second great stuff. Kimmy won again. Five wins in a row for Kimmy. Mercedes is running away with it. Another DNF for Orlando. Tough times for Papaya Hive and every F1 fan.

It's not a Mercedes fan. Very tough. But there's a great drive to survive scene where George Russell and Poto Wolf, the incredible accomplished and handsome team principal of Mercedes are discussing the intimacy kids offerings at Vegas hotels fantastic great stuff um Lestat here the Dracula daughter is playing sad boy guitar yes and still texting his mom who's also his lover and also his fledgling um as we hear those international voices sort of behind him the they're talking about Lestad's need for the limelight's need for the Lime line

and how this breaks the fourth great law. We already got this from Armand in season two because when Armand was talking about first meaning Lestat and seeing him play, not the harlequin, in the theater, and Armand's like, both has like a massive boner for Lestat and thinks he's the hottest thing ever. And it's also like, what the fuck? Armand at that point was like living grubby in the shadows.

And he's like, what are you doing up here on stage? And this is a quote from that season two episode The fourth of our great laws was writ No vampire shall ever relieve his true nature Reveal his true nature to a mortal And let that mortal live And here he was prancing and preeding In front of 500 mortals a night

Like some patronized, tarded up dervish Using the dark gift for what? His vanity? His heresy? So that's the same Like Lestat's stage career You know at that point in history and his stage career now, same as it ever was, to a certain degree. That's sort of like longing for affirmation and adulation.

And he will break whatever vampire law he needs to to get there. There's a blockout. Yeah, yeah. Is this a supernatural blackout? What do you think? So the text we get about this is the rapture has descended upon Detroit. It seems reasonable to assume that there is some vampiric cause behind this or connection to this, especially given like the fangium.

The regionals. Tim and Ross, the regional's was hysterical. Really funny. Real, like, top-tier diminishment from Lestat there. You know, I'm international, I'm global. Yeah. You're regional. Tough.

Local talent. Trying to make a name for themselves. They kind of go out of their way to, like, outline the local geography and, like, you know, you want to see a real vampire bar and come to this town, and we've got our feeding farm beneath the floorboards and just this sense of, like, what is. But then, of course, Lestat is moving. I also just loved in the text, his descriptions of where he was using European cities that have American correlaries to Geo-Kate. That was really great. But yeah, it seems like there's a supernatural cause to this, right?

Must be. Stay tuned to find out. Okay. Detroit Night 2. Yeah. Black Lickrish. We see Lassat playing the violin. This is a key aspect of his musical journey. If you remember from season two. and he talks about, I think he talks about Nikki in season one, but Nikki, who was like his first paramour who we met in the flashbacks in season two, Armand sort of like kidnapped him from the street, and then they like took him to his creepy little den, and they all fed on him and stuff like that.

Nicky's Lestat's, like first love, and he was a violin player. He died as they talk about in season two. And Lestat teaches himself violin, like tribute to Nikki or whatever, but like him playing the violin is a key part of, It would be ridiculous to have Lestat the rock star and not have him play the violin. And I just think I love the way that Daniel Hart has incorporated it into this song and hopefully some of the other songs. Did it to you sound like the police song, do, do, do, do da da da, da, this is what I say to you. Okay.

I mean, I think Lestat would be the first to admit that that was an inspiration here. Great stuff. That we had this breakdown. What did you make of this breakdown that happens before the drug blood? Like what we get a description, which I can read or not, but like there is no comp for this in the book so I can't really explain it. So what was your impression of what was going on that other than his like tambourine-based frustrations at Larry, what's going on that Lestat has this? Check up the tambourine. Breakthrough moment.

I did not like totally understand what was going on here. I think that, you know, the way that the embrace at the end, because he's seeing, you know, his various muses, as he calls him, these key loves and figures and people who he's had a connection to across time and lost across time. Like, my music wrapped itself around me like a jungle snake constricting its prey in a lifetime of blood bartering,

overwhelmed the temporal lobe. muses appeared in my mind, and then the now around me, memories taking their turn, blood in, blood out, hammering away at the performative vampire persona persona persona-cracked. We love to wear it like armor kind of thing, great. The bridge buckled. The bona fide vampire emerged center stage. It was I who had been adequate. It was I who had been holding us back and now exposed with the raw under the white hot lights. My bandmates began to feed. And that sound I had been grinding them for finally unleashed a euphoric gridingness spilling into the crowd. into their bodies enveloping the venue. I did not understand what caused that. I thought that the sentiment expressed was really interesting, but I didn't quite understand what the trigger. Me neither. Was in this like we're engaged in combat over like who gets this solo

and then he kind of falls to his knees and is in this like state. Yeah, I didn't. I wasn't totally following that. I was reminded of when Louis is turned in season one episode one. And this is how he describes it. The blood, it came as a dull roar. at first and then a pounding, like the pounding of a drum growing louder and louder to some enormous creature was coming through a dark and alien forest, a huge drum. And so I was like when

it was like the jungle snake wrapped itself around me. I was thinking about that like alien forest line. But I don't have like a great explanation for what's going on here. I'm not mad about it. I just don't really fully understand it. But this idea of like he gets these flashes, right? We see Louis as we first met him in the audience, you know, like Louis season one in the audience. We get flashes of things, scenes we'll surely see in more depth as the show goes on. But we see characters like Magnus, who is his creator or Nikki or Gabriela, et cetera, his mom, et cetera, his lover, his fledgling. For the Lestat in the book, this was like sort of a stated intention for why he was doing this music tour in the first. place and why he was writing this book is, I wanted my band and my book to draw out not only Louis,

but all the other demons that I had ever known and loved. I wanted to find my lost ones. Awaken those who slept as I had slept. Fledglings and ancient ones, beautiful and evil and mad and heartless. They'd all come after me when they saw those video clips and heard those records, when they saw the book in the windows of the bookstores, and they'd know exactly where to find me. So that version of Lestat is intentionally drawing out who's out there. Ghost in his memory or physical actual ancient vampires who might be sleeping around the world. What can his music woke him up? What can his music wake up as he goes forward?

Well, I guess there's like a little bit of that. I mean, there is a version of reading this where it's like, Lestat is just as big of a Patrick from Schitt's Creek fan as we are. Like, you know. He's like, I have never thought of that Tina Turner song. same way again. Simply the best. Your portrayal of the emcee and cabaret, you've changed my life. Who among us, you know?

The idea that he's been saying to Larry, pick up the tambour and you put down the guitar, let me shine. And then because Larry has like stubbornly in a very Lestat-esque way refused, and he's like, this is my moment. I will. Well, Larry's like, I used to be the front man of the bands, by the way. And Lestat knows that and has like remarked many times with the episode on his jealousy, right? like that he wants to strangle him,

like the way he wants to strangle that he's choking the neck of the guitar and he wishes that it were his neck. The idea that he kind of like has to for a second, very organically, stop resisting and just sort of succumb.

And then is like swept up in the power of not just the music but the way that the crowd who has assembled is actually swept up in it too. I don't know if the band. Yeah, the rendering like totally captured that,

but I think that idea tracks. Yeah, I love that. Honey Trap and Baby Jinks. We've already talked about her. Anything else you want to say about this like overdosing baby jinks on the ceiling, train spotting baby moment that we get inside of this episode? This is just all really entertaining and good. You know, the close up of the cocktail, the drug cocktail tabs on her on her tongue.

Obviously, we get a number of like incredible lines from Lestat describing this cocktail blend inside of his blood after. I particularly liked the callback to like when he's basically like, you know, yeah, a vampire of my stature should be like a little bit more on guard for the blood poisoning stuff. But like I have fallen, I have, yeah, pull me once. Yeah.

Pull me once was so great. I liked when he goes in and goes into the locker room or the locker room, the dressing room. And it's like, who's OD? Every hand is off. Oh, man. It's really good. To be clear, when Daniel walks in and he sees D's snorting Coke.

Yes. D's role, and Roland Jones has said this about the role she plays in the band. She's either the social media manager or the way they get their drugs. So essentially, Daniel walks in, sees her snorting cocaine, and then we see later that he has bitten her. So, like, that's how he can have some cocaine is by biting, drinking her blood. that's full of cocaine. So that is a role that DeFarma

fulfills inside of the entourage. So she certainly seems to know that vampires are real. Yes. I mean, Christine does. So it's really just like and the doctor,

Dr. Fareed certainly does. So it seems to be just the band that is in for a bit of an waking at the end of the episode. Seems like maybe they should have noticed too.

Well, in the book he like tells them and they're like, that's hilarious. You think you're the vampire list at. We get it, dude. You're a vampire. And then they're like,

oh, you're actually. a vampire. Wow, wow, wow. But yeah, Dee and Daniel just being like raising their hands was really funny. Very good. The overdosing, all the profound things she says to him on the ceiling. But yeah, there's just like comedy wrapped inside of like incisive psychological commentary and wrapped inside of like a prophecy. Yes. Of death. This is some great fantasy television shit. Loved it. Immortal property. So the party that takes place at the hotel that leads up to the fan gang fight at Dracula's daughter. Yes.

There's a step and repeat that the band and then eventually list out in his pink silk blouse and pink corset. Yeah. Giving them the pussy cat is what he says it, which is just... Give the Papps my pussycat iconic. Incredible. Are you going to say that next time someone makes you when you're a moderator, step on a step and repeat? I hate a step and repeat.

I mean, we have been talking about purchase. sing some suits too. So, okay, when we get our like, not my color, but our full suit lamb on. You can pull it off. The pink silk? I don't think so. Definitely. But the separate, it says

Dracula's daughter in the name of the hotel, and then it says immortal properties. And this is not a book thing, so I don't know what this is, but it feels like something. You know? So is this the they? Oh, yeah, I like it. Right. And who is that just a cover for another thing? Right. What do you

excited to track throughout the season of Mortal Properties or Vampon usage? Vampon usage or wigwatch TM with Joanna Robinson TM for BabyLestot. Whigwatch is going to be a little tough this season. I love you show. I love this show more than any other show. I have some wig questions. Oh, God. You mentioned the drug lines. The drug line that I love the most was when he says MDMA and LSD, the Torval and Dean of Hallucingengenics. Torval and Dean are British ice skating duo over. from the 1980s. And it's just like a very specific,

I like, I word searched it in the book just in case it was like something that he talks about in the book that's set in the 1980s, but it's not. It's just sort of like the writers are really funny.

The Torval and Dean of hallucinogenic. Fantastic. Incredible. Daniel's still trying to get his, what did you make of this scalpel conversation? Baby Jane's calling Listout the scalpel.

He's like put it on the t-shirts. A very Mallory Rubin put it on the merch moment. Just a lot. just like us. Yeah. Does he actually have merch unlike us? You've already said that the answer to the question is yes.

He does have merch. I did buy a t-shirt. Oh, delightful. Maybe I'll buy one too. You know, I love merch. I liked this description, and I felt fitting that he embraced that description because there's like part of the scalpel is, you know, I feel equipped to say this as somebody who had never seen a second of VR, but has watched two seasons of the pit.

Yeah. Precision. Right. Precision. the deliberate intentional cut. But I think also that's how LaSat is embracing and positioning the label. I think obviously like when you hear it as a viewer in the show, what I see in my mind's eye is just like a knife, a carnage,

like a knife cutting through and all the damage that you can do. So it feels like another version of this like, well, wait, how are we seeing ourselves? Who are we telling people we are? What do they see, et cetera? But put it on the merch is just great stuff. Also, like when Baby Janks, this is just real like Baby Janks poet stuff, he has the heart in his mouth and he's like, do you want to fuck? And Ross and all is like, yeah, bitch, so good.

Very Band-Aid of her, I think. But like, I think that also just like the way that like, again, the writing of the show just, you know, scratches some itch inside of my brain that I love so much. Like when we get the whole eco-urinal thing and, and. learning about vampire, you know, anatomy and how, like, the blood urine. And he's like, never told you about that, did he? Yeah. And he's like, we chardonnay it. And all three vampires had their glass of chardonnay ready to, like, throw it.

I don't, you know, hobbits and dragons and gmail.com. Why chardonnay, cousin? I know. I know. Got to rewatch sideways. See what notes are in there to apply to this lesson. Pino noir. Yeah.

So, like, the shardinning, but so, like, when he says, what would the scalpel do between this, that, and basically it's like fuck some people in the oven, but like in the oven, in the elevator. But, like, he's also fuck people in an oven. He would. But he's, like, referring to himself as the scalpel immediately. He's, like, adopted this branding. And then he's like, I'll chardonnay these regionals. You know what I mean? Like, the way that he's just, like, picking up the specific language of the scene that he is in his drug-inducet is careening through is just fantastic.

The cuts that we get. in this drug, you know, like, he's dancing in the club and he sort of like shakes his head down and shakes it back up and he's on stage and then shakes it down again and he's in the club. Or when he's like spinning, there's like baby Jenks, but there's also Louis and his like, I just poisoned you, you know, New Orleans wig and stuff like that. So just sort of like those glitches in time and glitches in place were just really fun for me. In terms of like self-edit on the failures vinyl. Yes.

Editorial wags of an insane person, note to self-exam. edit that out in the final version. So what do you make of that? Like, what do you make of this is not the final version of the fit? Like, someone forgot to take out. And then why would Lestat, he certainly said plenty of other insulting things about Louis' depiction of him. So why would editorial wags of an insane person be beyond the pale and not want to make it

into the mix there, you know? I mean, it's funny. Hysterical. I read that as even, Lestat clock that that was he was telling on himself. Like it's too, it's, he's describing himself. And so it's too uncomfortable. Like, you don't want to give your, uh, audience a reason to think that about you. Right. So edits, these are the editorial wags of an insane person. It's like anyone hearing him say that, I was going to say, that's what you're doing. These are the editorial

lag. I'm an insane person. Um, I do think the fact that note to self-edit that out in the final version that it is in there, as you noted, that gets the theory brain going of like, well, does that mean he did you just forget? Did he forget? Is he not around to edit it out? Interesting. All right. In the lead up to his scrap with the regionals,

Lestat mentions the queen's blood a few time. Yeah. And then later he says, IMF International Monetary Fund. IMF freezing your accounts because you have the blood of a patricidal queen inside of you. I don't think this is a spoiler to say

because he's talked about this. In season two, he says to Armand and Louis, I have the blood of Magnus and me. that's his maker, Magnus Burned. I have the blood of Akasha in me. And in reference to Armani says, he doesn't know who that is. But we do.

That's the queen of the dam. Akasha of the queen of the damned. Right. The name of the second book. And so when he says, I have the blood of the queen inside of him, he's talking about Akasha. Right. Who has been cast.

Tricidal queen. Right. And is in the show. Yes. Exciting. Exciting. Um, Akasha. All right.

What the queen's blood does, we can all find out together. But, you know. He has it inside of him. All right, after party on the asshole floor. So good. You mentioned this incredibly random line that Christine gets, but I just love it. So I'm scoring dick pills and Mogadishu

for a UN peacekeeper when inwalks Stuart Copeland of police fame, wearing a covey and a mouthful of ammo. Christine, you icon. I want to hear all of her stories. Incredible woman. Unbelievable. I love that line.

And it's just like a random throwaway line that they wrote for Christine. I just think it's... I love that. show. It's so good. Will we get like a theater of the absurd Rosencranton Gildenstern are dead, like Christine accounting? Christine's

POV of an episode? I would love that. That would be amazing. I would love that. Hierarchy of vampiric pleasure from Lestat. This was historic. Murder, then draining, then the petite coup, a little sim. Then fucking baby Jangs D and a bellman in the elevator. That's the hierarchy. Do you think Lestat should put immortal erection on the merch as well as the scalpel? merch I would buy.

Yeah. Must that immortal erection? I have an immortal life and I carry with it an immortal erection and I am not ashamed of it.

Sex is fun like the fun I sing about in long ways. It's the extra beat and it just seals it it's so, so, so, so good. Does that song suck?

Went to looking back on it does suck. I have some residuals coming in actually. Incredible. And like this was a really this was great because the description

is like you're just like you have a feel yourself smiling as you watch this and listen to it. The cuts to the elevator sexy. And then like there's like a subliminal weird cut. There's a cut to the vodka bottle. Yes. And there's a lot about it that seems like thrilling and very sexy. And then there's a lot that seems really tiring. And then later he's like, my sex legs. Like I can't fight the bang gang. I'm like, yeah, that looked exhausting. I know you pushed all the buttons. There was like a lot going on. It's just all very great.

But another way to say, you know, like Louis, when he's talking about. talking about Louis, like this, it tipped around vampire sex, didn't it? You know, this like, well, what are you going to get from me that you didn't get from him? You got the urinal sequence now, this. And then carnal pleasure is essential to a vampire survival, if only to keep times baggage from burying you. So, again, it felt like a little microcosm of the show where there's something like really kind of hot and fun and like a night out of the club about the sequence, but then there was something really like poetic about it. Like, why do you do these things because they feel good, but also to distract yourself for just like eight floors of buttons

from thinking about how miserable you are. Well, and we get this, in among all the like sexual flashes that we get of like Nikki, et cetera, et cetera, we get like a flash to a fight that he and Louis had in New Orleans. And so it's just sort of like when he says like to distract you from, it's like this is the pain that he's trying to avoid. So let's just like marinate in the pleasure instead. The fan gang tooth team. The tooth team.

Tooth team might have been my favorite about tooth team. That's so good. Also, like, when Lestan is at the urinal. And Tim is, like, making a snide remark about Russ being non-binary, like the they-them. And he's like, oh, but still it is respectful. Like, silence at a urinal. Yeah.

I just thought that was really good. Incredible. But here comes Daniel Malloy and Sam, the vampire, who is. daft punk, I guess. I guess. Enter. They get a great, like, low camera, sort of, like, heroic enter, and they, you know, and then Daniel gets to drop his iconic line,

and then he just gets to, like, fuck up a bunch of people. We get to see Eric Bogosian. Decapitator with, like, a string. Yeah. Wonderful. Really, really, really great. And then were you a stutterer as a child? This was a really fun action sequence. We love a hallway fight.

We do. We love a hallway fight. I love the Lestat has that line about something, constraining architecture or something, like confining architecture. Dragging his face to knock the drywall off the wall there. That was really great. But I like that it's mixed in with the action and all of the intentionally disorienting cuts. We have this, like, I thought appropriate and write the bit of narration from him.

Like there are plenty of things that he says that are sort of, you're like, okay, like, sure. But, you know, when he's like, I was just singing my songs and fucking my food. Like, what about all these other people? Like, what did Louis do? Like, this book, it wasn't on me. I didn't do this. I didn't put this out into the world in the first place. And, you know, it's always nice when we have an excuse to think about either Portnoy's complaint or Tommy Nara's fucking an omelet in season two of Landman.

So thanks for that, Lestat. Thank you always. But, you know. You love talking about Portnoy's. I sure do. And Landman, two of my favorites, two sacred texts. Collecting fledgling like they were LeBububu. The Bubu.

What was better? Lémon or LeBububu. All just, for me, Redidid was the best, but like they're all just fantastic. But yeah, he's like, Louie out at us already. Why is everyone mad at me? And of course, we know that they were all mad at Louis too, but I just, it's a good note. And then, of course, the way he's like mocking their platitudes, platitudes and their self-importance. Their sense of self-importance before he's just completely undone by the tattoo and then rescued.

Really, really good. What does this mean? And once you reveal yourself, you have to be on all the time and remember every face you've ever met. And everywhere you go, everyone remembers the thing they said to you in the room that you share. And we pan. Basically, we get like a moment, a beat of like all these people now know that this is who I am. So like, is that like the area of kill list? What do you mean on all the time?

Once you reveal yourself, you have to be on all the time. I mean, it's, yeah, I don't know. maybe like just tracking them, making sure they don't reveal more to other people than you reveal? Like are these all people that he has to kill now? Yeah.

Or do you have to perform vampirism in a certain way? You do now feel the burden of having to like be the vampire because you have revealed yourself as a vampire. Yeah, to live up to a certain image.

Blood, it's funny because I'm a vampire. All right. One more ominous portent for the road. Yes. As you mentioned. But then maybe more of the world would still be alive

if Dan had not rallied his army downstairs. Also shout out of Lostat calling him Dan, which is not something Louis ever dead. It was Daniel. Amazing. And he's like, Dan. I think it's fun. A hotel in Windsor, Canada. Yeah. And in conclusion, incest.

Yes. Yep. It's not much a reveal, I guess. I know it's a common gossip now. The first thing one thinks about when my name comes up, I assume a privileged individual such as yourself enjoys a little dirt in their sandwich. Fledgling. Love her. So to be clear, because she's a fledgling, that means he made her. Right. So that's his mom, Gabriela.

Yes. who he also fucks who he also turned into a vampire will this you don't have to answer this question because hopefully this will be clarified

in the canon of the show in time did they were they fucking before they were vampires or is the idea that like once you become a vampire you are removed from yourself

in a way that would make this a little less Damon the her and all dreaming about eating out his mom or Jimmy and Boardwalk actually fucking his mom. Spoiler.

Or any other wonderful bit of Sunday night prestige TV incest that you might want to reference? We could go with Rome, though that's siblings, of course, not a parent-child. That's a more limited text, thankfully. Thanks for this complete rundown of incest on HBO. I definitely at one point during a House of the Dragon Run for sure made like just a... I was alarmed to be able to make a pretty long list just off the dome. Well, let's add the vampire list at that. Yeah, tune in to find out.

Okay, so I'm expecting clarity on that front. Will we get it? I don't know. I hope so. But yeah, this was a, you know, this was a surprise to me. Here she comes, Jennifer Ely of Pride and Prejudice fame or anything else that you prefer to think. The original Callan Stark on Game of Thrones from the Lost Pilot. That's right.

We should say. The stutter returns. Yes. As soon as he sees his mom, the stutter comes back. And we heard him stutter at the end of season two when he's talking to Louis. Right. So, yeah, and then they fuck. So that's the vampire list.

Anything else you want to say? Seems like a perfect place to end the episode. I think we really did it. Or the non-spoiler section of the episode, I should say. I can't wait for episode, too. Oh, I know. So excited. I know.

Sunday. So these episodes will come on on Mondays. That's right. So that's exciting. Book spoiler section. If you don't want to know what you don't know, leave. Okay, this is what I'm so excited to talk to you about. Okay.

I feel like I caught something on Google that I didn't understand that might be this. Does it have to do with Justin Kirk? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I was like, I don't know what this means at all. I don't want to wait for Joanna to spoil me, not the internet. Exactly.

All right, the tale of the body thief. Yeah. Let's start. and Raglan James switch bodies. Yeah, okay. So. When? How?

Why? So, Lestat is at his... Lestat is bored and Ragland sort of tricks them into doing this. Okay. So we should be assuming, based on that, that the Raghlin at the auction is actually Lestat. You don't have... That is not automatically... Okay, but that's a theory.

However, if you go back and rewatch that scene based on that... Yeah. Basically every time they say the vampire Lestat, the camera cuts. to Justin Kirk. And he's like... And he's like, who me? Yeah. He walks up the aisle with his head like tilted up in a very Sam Reed way and then he twirls on his foot around in a very Sam Reed as Listott way.

Yeah. I not only think that that is Listott. Yeah. In Justin Kirk's body. Yeah. But I think Louis knows that that's Listott based on the looks that Louis gives to Raglan inside of that scene. He should be able to like sense him, right?

based on their connection and like... Well, but because he made him, they don't have like the psychic connection necessarily. So like, but should Armand be able to tell? Does Armand know, you know, et cetera, et cetera? I don't know. But I definitely think that that, so I do think Lestat is in the room. Yeah.

I think Lestat could not resist showing up to his own funeral essentially. But he's in a mortal body. That's a mortal body even though it's the personality heart mind of Lestat. Okay. So his, so the tail of the body thief is sort of. about Lestat trying to get that body and no vampire will turn because of the events of what happens

of the Queen of the Damned, which I don't need to get into. But like, no vampire will turn him in that body to a vampire. So he's Lestat as a mortal. Okay. So is he after that blood because he can use that,

his own blood, to turn himself, I think. Oh, interesting. But then will he be in Justin Kirk's body forever? He can't get Sam Reed's bodyback? Or is this why we have double? This is why we have a double. But the double is...

Because Lestat is put into a... I have not read this book. Yeah. I've read two books in the last couple weeks. I did not read The Tale of the Body Thief. Yeah. My understanding is that he gets put into a different mortal body. And I think the reason that they have put Sam Reed in this double body is so that they can...

And he'll, like, fix his teeth and, like, grow his hair out. He'll get some invisible line and a little perm. And so that they can have Sam Reed playing Lestat and not have to, like, cast another person to play him. His eyes will change once he becomes a vampire. Yeah, exactly. solved it solved it great

but it's really I mean what about the three inches oh it's gonna be tough lifts well he's he's packing a vodka bottle elsewhere

he's got plenty of inches to spare um that's just really fun this idea that like list out is actually in that scene yeah

and book readers know but non book readers or people who aren't Googling around don't know you know um

in terms of like faces in the crowd while performing yeah um that's how So Magnus turned Lestat, like he came to, he would come to Lestat's performance and sit in the audience and stare at him and he was like enraptured by him and his performance. So this idea of seeing a face in the crowd is a very like his original trauma sort of because it was quite traumatic.

He described it in season one how he was turned and I presume we'll see it in this season. But like his transformation trauma. His transformation trauma. But yeah, Magnus was a face in the crowd. And the way he described like the long face. I don't know if that that's necessarily about Magnus, but it's similar to the way it's described in the book. There's sort of like the dark pits of his eyes and the way his faces.

And Lilio, he is performing as Lilio when Magnus comes to the theater to turn him. So that's like a very like specific to his origin story, his trauma inside of that. What about the wolves? The wolves. He killed Dave Wolves when he was immortal. Just with his blake bare hands? And he wears a coat. He wears a coat that has a wolf fur on it, the wolf killer quote, Coat. Not nice.

And Magnus calls him wolf killer. I think you might refer to himself as wolf killer as well, but Magnus calls him wolf killing. That sounds like Lestat. Hot. The killer's had too. Yeah. Yeah. We got that real like look at that.

Okay. So in the books, Baby Jinks is a vampire already at 14. She's a member of the fan gang. Okay. She's not a vampire hair because Lestat would know. She's immortal. Right. Immortal.

But perhaps she's about to be transformed. Okay. Um, killer is Bruce, who is the vampire who assaulted Claudia. Oh. So is that plot line going to be brought into here as the regional vampires? Is that how we, as I know Delaney's in this season, the actress who plays Claudia. So I know I assumed, I thought it was going to be like flashback. Right.

But like, how are they going to use her? And then is that a way to get, like, Louie into this story? You know, because of his feelings about that and stuff like that. But like, so her, like, I'm getting married. Like, it feels very like the gorges Buffy Vampire Slayer. Like, is she going to get married to Bruce? And is that going to be the continuation of that story? Ooh, disturbing.

Yeah. Should I not have ended on that note? Remember how Justin Kirk is probably list at? That's so fun. And again, that's why you cut. You cast Justin Kirk for that role so that you can get an actor who can like study Sam Reed and like do his mannerisms. But as Justin Kirk. Really fun.

Love it. Sad, we only have six episodes left. I don't know. I don't know how much of Queen of the Damned we're going to get this season. Like I, you know, as you said, they've cast the actress. Right. So will that just be, it's like, will that be the rebrand for like next season? It could be a Queen of the Damned season or, and then are you going to get a tale?

the body thief season? Are they just going to do each book as a season or what? I don't know. What if they start putting coal in a Star Wars story after all of these rebrands?

Anne Rice's Immoral Universe presents Yeah. The Body Thief Colon. A Star Wars story. Alistad and Louis story. I love it.

I love it. All right. Well, we did it. So what a joy. I'm really excited to do this show with you. Same. I can't wait.

I'm excited to you overheat in this code every week. So, What's the strategy? My wolf killer coat? Are you taking it? Like, is it joining you on the commute? Are you keeping it here?

No, it'll be over there by the furry that we made Kai wear for the PrestiGTV podcast. It'll be here waiting for me. I would say, like, aren't you afraid that it could be, like, someone could abscond with it, but the fact that the furry remains still there. The furry is still there. The furry, which is true. You could put it on our, uh, our little rack of murder. I would never dare to mess with the set deck.

I don't think anyone wants this coat. I don't think anyone's stealing it. Absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much. It goes all the way down to the floor. Okay. Thank you to. Yes.

Jacob Cornett. Thank you for the Giles stickers. Carlos Chiroboga. Scott Lee. Arjuna-Rong-Powl. Show me a dinner on. Squad. Our own fan gang.

Our own fan gang. Thank you so much to vampires. Yeah, sure. To vodka bottles? I mean, yeah, quite. To Torval and Dean and to Mallory Rubin. We'll see you soon. Bye.