Interview With The Vampire 2022 / Tropes I to Z

Tropes beginning with the letters I to Z for Interview with the Vampire (2022).

I-M

• I Am a Monster: Louis wrestles with this due to his Horror Hunger for blood upon becoming a vampire, especially after he nearly feeds on his infant nephew.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The Seasons 1 & 2◊ episodes are named after quotes from the Interview with the Vampire novel.
• Idle Rich:
  • Lestat is so incredibly wealthy that he doesn't have to work, and Alderman Fenwick (who's an affluent politician) notes that Lestat has a "seemingly endless supply of capital."
  • After Louis loses all of his businesses thanks to City Ordinance 4118, he can still afford to live in the lap of luxury without a job because "From 1912 to 1917, I made a mountain of money, enough to retire and be buried like a pharaoh."
• I Kiss Your Hand:
  • In the first episode, Louis kisses Lily's hand at the Fairplay Saloon, which is an unusual gesture for a john to do to a prostitute. However, he's a Closet Gay who's paying her to be his beard, so their interactions are platonic and he treats her more like an acquaintance.
  • In the second episode, Lestat (an old-fashioned Frenchman) kisses Florence's hand when he greets her on the front porch of her home.
• I Love You, Vampire Son:
  • Lestat not only loves Louis, he turned him specifically so he could have an eternal lover and companion. They both acknowledge that there's a vampire father-son dynamic (Louis: "I was a baby bird in Lestat's nest"; Lestat: "I put you on this Earth") in addition to their romantic/sexual relationship. Of course, it's a rather toxic love as a result. A TV critic from The Guardian had this observation:
    The amour fou ^note French for "crazy love" that flowers between Louis and Lestat — alternating between hungry desire, fussy annoyance and the flirty bickering that bridges the gap from one to the other — rehashes many of the film's insights about makeshift family units in the queer community, particularly in how a younger man can find both partner and father figure in an elder. (Lestat is, ultimately, a vampire daddy.)
  • Lestat transforms his mistress Antoinette into a vampire so that he can have a second immortal lover and companion. While it's evident that he loves Louis far more than Antoinette, Lestat's high sex drive and need for "a little variety" means that Louis alone isn't enough for him. In the climax of the Season 1 finale, Lestat intends to eliminate his vampire daughter Claudia (whom he despises and he's not attracted to her) and replace her with his latest fledgling Antoinette, who would serve as his second wife while Louis becomes his Gender-Inverted Top Wife in a Vampire's Harem.
• Immune to Bullets: Vampires cannot be killed with bullets. Alderman Fenwick shoots his gun twice at Louis, who doesn't even flinch, and the only thing that's damaged is his chic purple suit.
• Implied Rape: Although it's never shown on-screen and the word "rape" isn't spoken, it's strongly suggested that Bruce had sexually assaulted Claudia.
  Daniel: There are four pages torn out.
  Louis: I'll repeat myself. I will not exploit her.
  Daniel: Did she tear them out? Doesn't seem like something she would do.
  Louis: It's clear what happened.
  [...]
  Daniel: "Bruce walked back from the fire and leaned down over me and..." Torn out pages—
  Louis: (employs his People Puppets power on Daniel) Don't ask again.
  • In the sixth episode, it's alluded to, but not explicitly confirmed, plus Lestat uses a euphemism for rape, which is highlighted in bold.
    Lestat: Well, you wouldn't talk of it. Louis insisted I not ask. I love our family, but the rules are "no secrets." Fortunate for our family, when I put my mind to it, I can hear the thoughts of other vampires at a very great distance.
    Claudia: Bastard.
    Lestat: He thinks of you often. Bruce.
    Claudia: (crying) Fucking bastard.
    Lestat: I couldn't agree more. What he did to you was in very poor taste. Could you imagine if something like that happened to you again? Louis would never forgive himself. [...] Because if you try [to escape] again, Claudia, I won't snap your leg, defile your pocket, and zoom off on a motorbike.
• Impoverished Patrician: Louis' family used to be fairly wealthy, with a sugar plantation, but his father mismanaged it, so they were four months shy of bankruptcy when he died. This has forced Louis to provide through various legal and illegal business dealings.
• Indirect Kiss: In the third and seventh episodes, Louis and Lestat share a "cigarette kiss" by touching the ends of their cigarettes together. This was a metaphor for sex under The Hays Code.
• Instrumental Theme Tune: Daniel Hart's "Interview with the Orchestra" plays over the short title sequence.
• Internal Homage:
  • Episode 6: Similar to episode 1, Lestat is in a sexual situation with Louis and a woman, he asks "Do you like it?" about a piece of music that he composed, Louis then initiates sex with Lestat by kissing him, and there's neck-biting which leaves behind wounds.
  • Later, Antoinette suggesting that she and Lestat leave New Orleans and move to "New York, Chicago, Los Angeles" is identical to what Lestat recommended that he and Louis should do in episode 5. Lestat rejects Antoinette's wish because he won't abandon Louis for any reason, which mirrors Louis declining Lestat's idea because he absolutely refuses to go anywhere without Claudia.
  • Episode 7: Like in episode 5, Claudia is pushed against an armoire while being throttled by one of her vampire fathers.
  • For TV Insider's May 2024 exclusive digital cover, Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid imitate Louis and Lestat's Season 1 poster pose.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence:
  • In the first episode, Lestat has sex with Louis while also drinking his blood with his fangs pierced into his lover's neck.
  • In the sixth episode, Louis barges into Antoinette's house, interrupting her and Lestat in the midst of sexual intercourse. Louis argues with Lestat, pushes his naked boyfriend to the floor, shoves him against the dresser (Lestat's expression shows that he's aroused being manhandled by Louis in this fashion), kisses him, grinds their hips together to initiate frottage, stabs Lestat on his left side with his vampire fingernails, and bites his neck. While eagerly embracing Louis, Lestat is grunting in pain and pleasure as the camera pans away. In the next scene, Lestat's face, neck, left ear and right arm are covered with scratches, bruises and bite marks — it's evident that he and Louis had rough, angry sex.
• Intertwined Fingers:
  • In the series premiere, Louis and Lestat lace their fingers together with both hands immediately after their First Kiss, which adds an extra layer of intimacy during foreplay. The fingers of Louis' left hand and Lestat's right hand remain entwined as the latter initiates gravity-defying sex.
  • At the end of Season 1, Louis and Armand weave their fingers together while Holding Hands in front of Daniel during their Relationship Reveal.
• In the Blood:
  • Lestat acknowledges that he's cursed with his father's temper, who had beaten him when he was a boy. Later as an adult, Lestat physically abuses his boyfriend Louis and his vampire daughter Claudia.
  • Claudia takes after Lestat, her maker; they're both vicious killers, prone to histrionics, fond of jewelry, have fallen madly in love with a mortal, hold little regard for human etiquette (e.g. they're both rude at funerals), are stalkers, and on at least one occasion, are peeping toms. They both adore Louis and want him for themselves, plus they disapprove of him being a Vegetarian Vampire. Louis himself says that they are more like each other than they want to admit, and that they both like to identify and exploit each other's weaknesses.
• Jealous Parent:
  • In the fifth episode, Lestat (who has already been established as a Crazy Jealous Guy when it comes to his boyfriend Louis) becomes violent towards Claudia when she attempts to convince Louis to leave Lestat behind and travel to Europe with her to locate other vampires. Lestat now deems his vampire daughter to be a rival for Louis' love, and he treats her accordingly.
    Claudia: (telepathically) Come with me! Come with me, Louis.
    Lestat: Lou.
    Claudia: I thought I could live without you, but I was wrong.
    Lestat: (getting angry) Louis. LOUIS!
    Claudia: (telepathically) His love is a small box he keeps you in. Don't stay in it.
    Lestat: A thousand nights of sulking, and the first sight of her, YOU ARE JUST GONNA UP AND LEAVE ME?!
    Claudia: Please, come with me! Let's meet vampires worthy of your love!
    (Lestat then attacks Claudia and chokes her)
  • In the Season 1 finale, Lestat firmly believes that Claudia has ruined his relationship with Louis. ("Look what she did to us. She's corrupted everything.") Lestat's "solution" to their romantic woes is to get rid of Claudia for good. In other words, he views her as a platonic version of Murder the Hypotenuse.
• Kill the Ones You Love:
  • In the fourth episode, there's a case of Accidental Murder when Claudia drinks all of Charlie's blood during their make-out session. She's extremely distraught about the death of her First Love afterwards.
  • In the climax of the Season 1 finale, Louis lacerates Lestat's throat to escape from his lover's Domestic Abuse and to eliminate the threat to Claudia's life (Lestat had conspired to murder their vampire daughter). However, Louis is still in love with his (ex-)boyfriend, so he prevents Claudia from burning Lestat's body, which means the latter is Not Quite Dead.
• Kiss of the Vampire:
  • Louis finds Lestat biting him pleasing. However, this only applies to un petit coup ("the little drink"), as Lestat calls it, where he doesn't drain the person completely and heals the wound afterwards. Louis notes that it awoke feelings of intimacy within him despite the significant physical toll on his body.
  • Rashid briefly closes his eyes and grins while Louis is feeding on his blood, so it must be a pleasant sensation for him.
• Known by the Postal Address: In-Universe, Lestat's townhouse (which also includes Louis and Claudia as its residents) is located at 1132 Rue Royale ^note "Royal Street" in English, New Orleans. In Real Life, this is the address of Gallier House, a 19th-century historic house museum in the French Quarter, and the exterior of the set matches the actual building. The fictional townhouse having a genuine address adds a layer of realism because the audience can imagine that the vampire family used to live there.
• Kubrick Stare:
  • Towards the end of a "Family Portrait" promo, Lestat's menacing gaze at the camera during his close-up conveys that he's Obviously Evil.
  • Similarly, in the first 30-second TV spot for Season 2, Santiago seems to be glaring intimidatingly at the audience, and it leaves no doubt that he's a nefarious vampire.
• Large Ham: Has its own page.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the third episode, Daniel provides the perfect summary for the show when he tells Louis that the latter's revision of his romance with Lestat sounds "like you were locked in some fucked up gothic romance."
• Leitmotif: Claudia has her own eponymous theme, and variations of it are heard in her Emergency Transformation scene, "Charlie" and "Laudanum and Arsenic".
• Lesbian Vampire:
  • Gender-Inverted Trope. Most of the male vampires in Season 1 are attracted to men — Louis, Lestat, Armand. It's somewhat a Justified Trope when paired with I Love You, Vampire Son. Immortality can be lonely, and most vampires want a companion. So if you — just by chance — have one vampire who's a queer man, he may intentionally turn other queer men into vampires for romantic purposes. Bisexual Lestat seduces gay Louis and turns him specifically so they can be vampire husbands sharing Eternal Love.
  • Inversely, the one significant female vampire in the first season (Claudia) is straight.
• Living Lie Detector:
  • Because vampires are telepathic, they can sense when someone's lying. In the second episode, Lestat informs his new fledgling Louis (who doesn't yet know how to tap into this skill) that Finn is deceiving him.
    Lestat: He's lying, you know.
    Louis: He'll figure I'm a bean counter.
    Lestat: No, he wants the job so he can steal from you. Overcharge for drinks and women. Not enough for you to notice, but enough to make him "good extra," he calls it.
    Louis: And you know that 'cause you got in his head just now?
    Lestat: Vampires can read minds, mon cher ^note the masculine form for "my dear" in French.
  • There's a non-superpowered example with Daniel, who's an ordinary human. Because he's an award-winning investigative journalist, he has spent his entire career detecting inconsistencies and falsehoods, so he's able to read Louis, a 144-year-old vampire, like a book. Daniel swiftly picks up on any holes in the narration, and he challenges Louis about the so-called truth every single time something doesn't add up. Louis may be able to lie to himself, but he can't lie to Daniel, who has zero patience for the former's "bullshit" (as Daniel calls it).
  • Louis can usually access Claudia's thoughts (unless she puts up a Psychic Block Defense), so in episode 5, he knows her serial killing spree is far worse than how she's trying to depict it.
    Claudia: (pretending to sound feeble) I didn't mean harm, a-and the bodies are just preten—
    Louis: Stop lying, Claudia!
• Love at First Sight:
  • Lestat is utterly entranced when he first sees Louis, staring intensely at him. Lestat later discloses that he was captivated by Louis' beauty and noticed the sadness embedded in his features.
    Lestat: The first time I laid eyes on you, your beautiful face, I saw that sorrow. I did not know how it got there or why it was so voluminous. I can take away that sorrow, Louis.
  • Claudia is instantly smitten with Charlie when he first approaches her to check if she's alright after his horse is spooked by her presence.
• Love Doodles: In a "Dear Diary" promo, Claudia draws hearts around the name of her Love Interest Charlie.
• Love Floats:
  • In the series premiere, Lestat, who's very much in love with Louis, levitates himself and his lover off the floor while they're having sex.
  • In the sixth episode, it's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, but while Lestat is making love to Louis on their bed, their bodies hover just above the mattress.
• Love Is a Drug: One of the verses in "Come to Me", Lestat's Villain Love Song for Louis, is "I get intoxicated by the very air of you," and it's not an exaggeration to say that Lestat is addicted to Louis.
• Love Is Like Religion:
  • In the pilot, Lestat (a Hollywood Atheist) compares his Love Interest Louis to a saint.
    Lestat: I had planned to make a new life for myself in St. Louis. That was to be my destiny. And now I know I was right. Only it turns out the saint is not a city, but a handsome man with a most agreeable disposition.
  • Later, when Louis and Lestat make love, their hands are clasped in a prayer/supplication pose, and the Catholic Louis' eyes are raised to the heavens, which emphasize that Their First Time feels sacred to them.
  • Invoked by Lestat in episode 2 when he addresses his boyfriend as "Saint Louis."
  • During the honeymoon phase of their relationship, Louis (now a lapsed Catholic) felt a religious-like reverence and adoration for his lover Lestat.
    Louis: There was present a kind of worship on my part. The earth beneath me always felt liquid.
• Love Martyr: The core plot of the first season is the marriage-in-all-but-name between vampire lovers Louis and Lestat, with the latter being a Domestic Abuser. Louis does ultimately kill Lestat to get out of this relationship, yet he's still fervently in love with him and ensures that Lestat is Not Quite Dead. The Framing Device is Louis retelling the story long after the fact, and based on the events that occur, it's really hard to claim it's anything but a Destructive Romance, yet Louis recounts it more like a "fucked up gothic romance." He says point-blank to a skeptical Daniel, "I do not consider myself abused."
  Daniel: "He only beat me the one time, Officer. It's not his fault." Classic Stockholm [Syndrome], eh, Doc?
  Louis: Are we the sum of our worst moments? Can we be forgiven if we do not forgive others ourselves?
• Lover and Beloved: Louis describes Lestat as his mentor and lover, and the second episode focuses on Louis' experience as a fledgling vampire with Lestat (who is much older than him) as his teacher in vampirism while also being involved in what Lestat calls a "vampire romance." Tom Anderson lampshades this trope with a homophobic slur when he's chatting with Louis ("you and your fag pederast").
• Love Theme: The score was composed by Daniel Hart.
  • "In Throes of Increasing Wonder" (a shortened version plays over the end credits of the first four episodes ^note and the televised broadcast of the Season 1 finale, which used this piece instead of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" like in the AMC+ streaming edition) is the main love theme of Louis and Lestat, and variations of it are heard in the couple's romantic scenes, such as their first sexual encounter and when Lestat makes a Love Confession to Louis. The track "The Sun Gives Life to Everything But Us" is a playful, piano-only rendition of this theme, where Lestat brings Louis to the upper floor of his townhouse in a Bridal Carry and leads his beloved to their "marital bed" (well, coffin), with Lestat being very keen to consummate their Metaphorical Marriage.
  • "The World Is a Savage Garden" is Louis and Lestat's dating theme. It's the Background Music when they go on a moonlit walk just before Lestat's seduction of Louis, and an extended version is used for their date at the Don Pasquale opera.
  • "Come to Me", which features Sam Reid on vocals, is yet another love theme for Louis and Lestat; In-Universe, Lestat wrote it as a Valentine's Day gift for Louis. It plays when they passionately (and violently) reunite after being separated for six years, and an instrumental brass version is heard during their dance at the Mardi Gras ball where they're both lost in each other's eyes and share a Big Damn Kiss. It's also the Ending Theme of episode 6.
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places:
  • In the sixth episode, Louis and Lestat impulsively engage in unbridled, angry sex inside the house of Lestat's mistress (Lestat and Antoinette were in the middle of sexual intercourse when Louis barges into her bedroom). Both men kick her out of her own home so they can have some privacy!
  • In the seventh episode, it's mentioned that sometime around the late 1920s, Lestat and a Socialite from the Women's Opera Society had a quickie under the stairs of the lecture hall where her husband was onstage giving a boring speech on Don Giovanni.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: Lestat, a vampire who sadistically murders his human prey, wears extravagant suits (Florence even considers him to be overdressed), plus he lives in a splendidly decorated townhouse which is filled with luxury goods. Everything related to how he presents himself oozes elegance.
• Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple: Louis and Lestat are depicted as the "bride" and "groom" when Louis is held by Lestat in a Bridal Carry after their Metaphorical Marriage, plus Louis moves into Lestat's townhouse, which is analogous to a wife relocating to her husband's home after their wedding (this was standard practice during The Edwardian Era). Louis is younger, prettier and more slender of the two men, with his beauty being remarked upon In-Universe, whereas Lestat is more conventionally handsome with a square jawline and broader shoulders. During lovemaking, it's generally Louis who's the bottom and Lestat who's the top, and because the latter is mentoring the former in vampirism, Lestat and Louis are also Lover and Beloved. Although Lestat is only slightly larger and taller than Louis (Sam Reid is 178 cm / 5'10" while Jacob Anderson 175 cm / 5'9"), his vampire strength is much greater than that of his boyfriend due to Lestat being a lot older, so in a fight, Lestat can easily turn Louis into a bloody pulp, but the latter can't even leave a scratch on the former. Claudia dubs Louis as the "housewife" when she's irritated at how passive Louis is in the face of Lestat's more aggressive personality. There's also the gossip around town that Lestat is Louis' Sugar Daddy despite the latter being rich in his own right, a rumour that Louis never openly refutes even though it's emasculating for him to be perceived as the "kept woman." In the seventh episode, they dance together at the Mardi Gras ball with Lestat leading and Louis in the female position. Lestat intends to forge his own Vampire's Harem with Louis as the male equivalent of his Top Wife and Antoinette as his second wife, who was previously his mistress and whom Lestat has turned into a vampire.
• Meal Ticket: Despite the fact that Louis is independently wealthy, people gossip about Lestat being his Sugar Daddy ^note which is ironic considering that Louis inherited a sugar plantation, which is where the term "sugar daddy" was derived from, presumably due to the assumption that in an interracial relationship, the white man must be the provider, plus Louis lives in Lestat's townhouse. Antoinette has heard rumours at the Azalea that Lestat does everything for Louis. Alderman Fenwick insinuates that Louis is essentially a "kept man" when he says, "your pale lover, with his seemingly endless supply of capital." Grace wants the family mansion to be under her control without having to buy it from Louis at its full value because "You and your white daddy are doing fine in the Quarter. We can't pay you what it's worth, and you don't need the money." Oddly enough, Louis doesn't dispute the speculation, and Lestat has expressed more than once that he wishes to provide for his lover ("I have all the money we need," "We don't need the money [from the Azalea]").
• Meaningful Background Event:
  • In the seventh episode, blink and you'll miss it, but while Lestat is twirling Louis in the ballroom, there is a brief shot of Claudia in the background handing Tom Anderson the poisoned glass of whiskey.
  • In the final scene of Season 1, Daniel confronts Louis about being an Unreliable Narrator in the foreground while an out-of-focus Rashid stands behind them as he removes his gloves and contact lenses. Rashid then slowly levitates, which proves that he's actually a vampire in Human Disguise.
• Meaningful Name: The "Lion" in Lioncourt, Lestat's surname, is emblematic of his personality and looks. He's a ferocious apex predator with a mane of shoulder-length blond hair and a strong, elegant physique. He also sees himself as the king of his pride (or his "court," which is the second-half of his surname), which consists of his "lioness" Louis and his cub Claudia. Lestat is much more powerful than either his lover or his vampire daughter, and he keeps both of them under his control. A dominant male lion mates with several lionesses, and while Lestat Really Gets Around when he's single, for most of Season 1, he limits his additional sexual conquest to Antoinette, his mistress, so she's the other lioness. In the seventh episode, Lestat becomes even more leonine when he wishes for Antoinette (who's now also a vampire) to be part of his family by having her as his second wife, with Louis as his "Top Wife." In a pride, a lioness is restricted to mating with the dominant male, so this echoes Lestat's hypocrisy when he believes it's okay for him to cheat on Louis, but Lestat becomes a Crazy Jealous Guy when Louis has a sexual interlude with someone else, and he tells his boyfriend, "I don't like sharing." Louis subtly compares Lestat to a sun-ruled Leo, the astrological sign of the Lion, with "...the sun-hot ego of the vampire king."
• Metaphorical Marriage: Near the end of the first episode, Lestat turns Louis into a vampire, so now they're forever linked together through a vampire bond. Their Relationship Upgrade scene plays out like a macabre wedding. They're on the altar steps of a church with two (dead) priests present (including Father Matthias, who officiated Grace's wedding). Lestat proposes to Louis with "Be my companion, Louis. Be all the beautiful things you are, and be them without apology. For all eternity." Louis accepts and kisses Lestat. They then exchange blood in lieu of vows and rings. As much as two men can be in 1910, Lestat and Louis consider themselves to be married. In the second episode, they later go to Lestat's townhouse (which is now also Louis' home, much like how The Edwardian Era bride moves into the groom's residence after they tie the knot) to consummate their union, with Lestat holding Louis in his arms in a Bridal Carry as he walks up the stairs.
• Mind-Control Eyes: Whenever Lestat freezes time, the humans under his spell have cloudy eyes.
• Mind over Matter:
  • In the series premiere, Lestat closes the gates with telekinesis to prevent the priest from escaping.
  • In the Season 1 finale, Lestat (who's in a different room and cannot see the front door from where he's standing) shuts his eyes and concentrates to remove the doorknob so that Antoinette can enter his townhouse.
  • In the extended Season 2 trailer, Armand telekinetically drags Lestat backwards on the cobblestone street.
• Miss Kitty:
  • Miss Carol is the madam of the Fairplay Saloon.
  • After Louis purchases the Fairplay Saloon and revamps it as the Azalea, he promotes Bricktop Williams (formerly a prostitute) as both the madam and the bookkeeper of his new establishment.
• A Mistake Is Born:
  • Lampshaded by Lestat, who is Claudia's maker; in the fifth episode, he regrets turning her into a vampire, and tells her that she's a mistake.
    Lestat: (aggravated) You wanted her, you fix her!
    Louis: We're doin' this together.
    Lestat: Do you remember our life, how happy we were before her?
    Louis: Happy? We were not happy.
    Lestat: (looks directly at Claudia) An anvil, tied around our ankles, pulling us towards the pitch-black ocean floor.
    [...]
    Claudia: Make me one [immortal vampire companion].
    Lestat: Because you turned out so well.
    Claudia: 'Cause if you don't, I'm gonna go out there and find other vampires.
    Lestat: If you could find them, which you won't (grips her chin firmly), they would shred you to strips, because you are built like a bird, because you are a mistake.
  • In the seventh episode, Lestat once again brings up that "[Claudia] should never have been made, Louis. Look what she did to us. She's corrupted everything." He uses it as justification to murder her.
• The Mistress: For most of Season 1, Antoinette is this for Lestat, who is in a committed relationship with Louis. Whenever Lestat feels that Louis isn't paying enough attention to him sexually, he "entertains" and "amuses" himself with Antoinette instead.
• Mixed Ancestry Is Attractive:
  • Lampshaded by Lestat (who is a wealthy Frenchman in an era when France was still an active colonial power, which includes colonies in Africa) when he mentions that he finds what he calls cinnamon skin tone — a mix of African and European descent — attractive while gazing seductively at Louis, who is biracial and fits in the "cinnamon" category. Louis becomes even more desirable in Lestat's eyes when the latter learns that the former has French ancestry (Lestat is delighted that Louis speaks French and has a French name), so Louis' "exotic" quality is more "accessible" to Lestat. Lestat frequently compliments Louis' looks (e.g. "beautiful face," "pretty head"). This also extends to the biracial Lily because Lestat refers to both her and Louis as "misfit beauties." Lestat is madly (even obsessively) in love with Louis, seduces him, and then turns him into a vampire so that they can be companions for eternity.
  • In the third episode, Antoinette (a white American woman) has a flirty expression and smiles at Louis when she divulges, "I like burnished ^note copper, which is a medium brown, is a metal that is commonly burnished, so she perceives Louis as having copper-toned skin complexions."
  • While Lestat isn't sexually attracted to his vampire daughter Claudia (who is also biracial), he nonetheless uses similar terms to describe her as he does with Louis and Lily (e.g. "pretty little head," "belladonnic beauty").
• Monochrome Past:
  • The two "Family Portrait" promos and the accompanying picture are sepia-toned to reflect that Louis, Lestat and Claudia posed for the photograph in the early 20th century.
  • In the climax of the Season 1 finale, there's a muted variation during the Once More, with Clarity sequence where the Flashback snippets are moderately desaturated.
• Moody Trailer Cover Song:
  • The Season 1 SDCC trailer song is a slower, haunting cover of XTC's "Dear God" performed by Lawless and Sydney Wayser.
  • The Season 1 official trailer contains an eerie rendition of Nat King Cole's "Nature Boy".
• Mr. Fanservice: Lestat and Louis are portrayed by good-looking actors who are fit, and both characters have nude and Shirtless Scenes which are filmed with the Female Gaze in mind. Even when not stark naked, they are almost always dressed in beautiful period-accurate suits and outfits.
• The Muse:
  • Lestat's First Love Nicolas was the inspiration behind the song that he wrote which plays in his music box from France.
  • On the sleeve of the phonograph record of "Come to Me", Lestat's first composition in a century, his Valentine Day's message is "For Louis, My Muse!" Louis is Lestat's Second Love.
• My Card:
  • When Louis demands to know Lestat's name during their first meeting, instead of responding directly, Lestat pulls out a card with his full name printed in fancy gold letters and hands it to Louis.
  • In the second episode, the gullible tractor salesman offers his International Harvester Farmall business card to Lestat, unaware that the two potential customers are actually vampires who have selected him as food for the newly fledged Louis.
  • In the Season 2 trailer, Armand presents his business card to Louis, which features the address of the Théâtre des Vampires, and invites him to attend their next show.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The fifth episode does its own version of the scene from the Interview with the Vampire film where Lestat bites and drains Louis' blood without the latter's consent while flying up into the air, and then Lestat drops Louis from the sky, which leaves his victim close to death.
  • The sixth episode also recreates an aerial shot from the 1994 movie of the San Francisco Ferry Building's clock tower.
  • In a 20-second Season 2 TV spot, Lestat's hair is straight instead of being naturally curly, and his mane is almost identical to the hairstyle of Brad Pitt's Louis.

N-Q

• Named by the Adaptation:
  • In the original novel, the journalist Louis talks to is only called "the boy," only getting a proper name in later books. In this version, he's introduced as Daniel Molloy from the beginning.
  • The names of Louis' sister and mother are never mentioned in the source material. Their TV incarnations are named Grace and Florence, respectively.
  • Antoine, the musician who was turned into a vampire by Lestat in the The Vampire Lestat novel, remained unnamed until Prince Lestat. His Gender Flipped TV counterpart Antoinette Brown announces to the crowd at the Azalea her full name in her introductory scene in episode 3.
  • There's no vampire named Bruce (whom Claudia meets in the fifth episode) in The Vampire Chronicles, although their dialogue hints that he's Killer, The Leader of the Fang Gang.
  • The identical twins that Claudia offers to Lestat for feeding gain names in the TV adaptation: Matthew and Mark MacPhail.
• The New '20s: Daniel's second interview with Louis is being conducted in June 2022.
• Nice Day, Deadly Night: Once the vampire Lestat arrives in New Orleans, nighttime becomes a lot more dangerous for the city's residents because he usually hunts two humans each night. The health officials of 1910 mistake the rising death toll for a new type of bloodthirsty rat that causes a fever and drains its victims dry. The number of people who go "missing" climbs up even higher after Lestat turns Louis and later Claudia into vampires, and they dispose of their prey's corpses with an incinerator.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: The main vampire trio in Season 1. Lestat is the mean one, being a self-centered abuser who is often very cruel even to those he likes, albeit with Pet the Dog moments mixed in, who disdains humanity and loves to mess with his prey before murdering them. Louis is the comparatively nice one; genuinely kind to those he cares for and rarely goes out of his way to be cruel. He's also the only Vegetarian Vampire we've seen so far (albeit an on-off one, but he hasn't killed anyone in two decades by the time of the second interview), and he does have a guilty conscience for the humans he has killed. Claudia is in-between; she doesn't care about humans and eventually becomes a scheming Serial Killer, but she loves Louis and ultimately endures a lot for his sake, and even at her worst, she's still not as bad as Lestat.
• Nipple and Dimed: Despite its TV-MA rating, the televised broadcast omits female nipples (unlike the AMC+ streaming edition). All clips of a topless Lily which include her nipples are replaced by different shots of Lestat, Louis or a close-up of Lily's face. The snippets of the prostitute and Antoinette exposing their breasts to Lestat are edited out.
• No Full Name Given: Season 1 characters that the screenwriters haven't assigned full names to include Rashid, Doris, Fenwick, Matthias, Carol, Lily, Carlo, Damek, Claudia, Charlie, Bardeen, Bruce, Habersham and Magnus.
• Nostalgic Music Box: One of the few items that Lestat had brought over from France is an ornate music box which carries a lot of sentimental value for him. The tune it plays was written by Lestat and it's dedicated to his First Love Nicolas.
  Lestat: I composed it for a young violinist I once knew, a boy of infinite beauty and sensitivity.
• Not Afraid to Die: Louis is prone to depression, occasionally to the point where he sincerely wishes he was dead, although his Catholic upbringing presumably stops him short from actually committing suicide.
  • In the series premiere, Louis suffers from a nervous breakdown after the death of his brother Paul, and while confessing his sins to Father Matthias, it's plain that he wants to follow Paul to the grave. Louis is wracked with guilt and shame over his numerous failures, and it's important to note that this scene is Louis being the most honest with himself in all of Season 1. It's because he's so broken that he later accepts Lestat's offer to kill him as a human and be reborn as a vampire.
    Louis: I'm a drunk, Lord. I'm a liar. I am a thief, Lord. I profit off the miseries of other men, and I do it easy. Drugs, liquor, women. I-I-I-I lure them in and grab what they got, Lord. I take daughters with no homes and I-I put 'em out on the street, Lord, and I lie to myself, saying I-I'm giving them a roof and food and dollar bills in they pocket, but I look in the mirror, I know what I am — the big man in the big house, stuffing cotton in my ears so I can't hear their cries. And Lord, I dragged my family into this mess with me. I shame my father. I f— I failed my brother. I lost my mother and sister, and rather than fix it like a man should, Lord, I run like a coward. I run to the bottle. I run to the grift. I run to bad beds. I-I laid down with a man. I laid down with the Devil. And he has roots in me, all his spindly roots in me, and I can't think nothin' anymore, but his voice and his words! Please, help me! I am weak! I wanna die!
  • In the second episode, Louis is so profoundly upset and disgusted at himself after he almost ate his nephew that he's shedding Tears of Blood, and he encourages his lover Lestat to burn him alive and replace him with someone else.
    Louis: You should just throw me in the incinerator and make another [vampire companion].
  • According to Rashid in the fifth episode, Louis longs for death, so the memoir that Daniel will publish based on their second interview will mean that Louis will be slaughtered by other vampires. Louis doesn't deny it.
    Rashid: Well, what do you think will happen to Mr. du Lac when you publish this book, when the other vampires of the world get their hands on it? [...] They will make their way to Dubai. They will scale the sides of this building, force their way inside, and paint the walls with his blood. You are chronicling a suicide.
    Louis: Rashid is an opinionated young man. He lives to share these opinions, even when they are not solicited.
  • In the sixth episode, Louis is tempted to kill himself after Claudia catches a train to New York, although he ultimately doesn't go through with it.
    Louis: I teased the sun that night in Jackson Square. Thought about the walking cane and pile of ash they'd find in the morning. But Paul had forever ruined Grace's wedding night, and I would not do the same to Claudia on the anniversary of her escape. If I was to join Dante's Wood of the Self-Murdered, it would be another night.
• Obsession Song: Daniel Hart's "Come to Me" with Sam Reid as the vocalist contains a few verses which reflect how besotted Lestat is with Louis. The Title Drop occurs ten times in the lyrics, and it's a Call-Back to the pilot where Lestat (who was in full-blown Stalker with a Crush mode) psychically called out to Louis "Come to me/Viens à moi" repeatedly, paying no heed to the latter's insistence that he be left alone.
  Come to me
  I get intoxicated by the very air of you
  Come to me
  I'm so infatuated with the grand affair of you
• Official Couple: In Season 1, the primary romantic relationship is between Louis and Lestat.
• Off with His Head!:
  • Lampshaded by Lestat in the fourth episode when he informs Claudia about the fate of the aristocrat who originally owned the emerald necklace that he gives to her for her birthday (the incident may have occurred during the The French Revolution).
    Lestat: This was given to me by a marquis who was beheaded by a mob ten years after he gave it to me.
  • In the sixth episode, Lestat rips the head off of a train conductor and plays with it like it's a ventriloquist dummy.
  • In the Season 2 First Look Scene, a vampire in the background slices a man's head off and catches it like it was a football.
• One-Drop Rule:
  • Louis mentions that his family is mixed-race, and in former times were somewhat more privileged as free people of color. With Jim Crow, however, racist state laws apply no matter what, even when only one of his great-grandparents was entirely black. Louis just calls himself "Negro," the term used then, and the laws would have classified him as such.
  • However, it's worth noting that in the presence of his French boyfriend, Louis identifies himself as "Creole" in the second episode. He makes a point about how he and Lestat are labelled in America ("Colored. White.") and France ("Creole. French.") based on their race. While America's one-drop rule means that Louis' French ancestry is completely ignored, in France, he is more likely to be recognized as biracial, and thus he would be called Créole rather than Nègre. Lestat certainly views Louis as Creole because the latter's mixed heritage is a turn-on for him.
• One-Eyed Shot:
  • The set of "Vampire Eyes & Fangs" promos feature one-eyed shots of Claudia, Lestat and Louis.
  • A Season 1 vertical digital billboard focuses on Louis and Lestat's right eye.
  • In the seventh episode, there's a close-up of Louis' left eye as he watches a Newsreel about Adolf Hitler.
• One True Love: Lampshaded by Louis when he refers to Armand as "the love of my life," and it's important to note that he never told Lestat "I love you" directly. Armand is extremely devoted to Louis because "I care for him more than he cares for himself." By 2022, their ongoing romance (a minimum of 49 years) has lasted a lot longer than Louis and Lestat's relationship (which was just over 29 years).
• On the Next: With the exception of the Season 1 finale, each episode on the AMC+ streaming service includes a preview for the next episode. However, this doesn't apply to the AMC channel's telecasts.
• Open Relationship Failure: Lestat and Louis are vampire lovers who plan to spend eternity together. Lestat initiates the open relationship because he believes "a little variety" will prevent their romance from going stale (never mind that they've only been together for barely six years when he makes this suggestion). Both men end up being very jealous about their partner's other paramours, although this is noticeably for different reasons: Lestat is jealous of Jonah because he knows Louis has genuine feelings for his Old Flame, while Louis is furious partly due to Lestat lying multiple times that his affair with Antoinette is over.
• "Open!" Says Me:
  • In the third episode, when Levi attempts to stop Louis from entering the mansion, the latter simply kicks open the front entrance.
  • In the sixth episode, Louis also bashes the door down of Antoinette's house by kicking it.
• Our Vampires Are Different: The show's vampires follow some of the baseline rules, but not all of them.
  • A Wooden Stake through the heart won't kill a vampire.
  • Silver, religious objects/sites and garlic/onions are harmless to them.
  • They can move freely because Must Be Invited, Cannot Cross Running Water and At the Crossroads don't apply.
  • Vampires have reflections, they cast shadows, and their photos can be taken (e.g. Tom Anderson keeps a photograph of Louis and Lestat in his desk drawer).
  • Although undead, their heart still beats (a vampire's heart rate will even match that of their beloved's), and they still draw breath (according to Claudia, Louis and Lestat's breathing become synchronized after spending an hour alone together).
  • Sunlight is fatal to vampires, but they eventually become immune to it if they live long enough (e.g. Armand is just over five-hundred years old and can stand in direct sunshine with no issue).
  • Unlike Anne Rice's vampires, the TV incarnations can eat human food even though they don't like the taste. The latter can also physically have sex, while the former cannot.
• Overcrank:
  • The unedited version of the "Family Portrait" promo (it's in full color instead of sepia-toned, there are no close-ups, and there is no Background Music) was filmed in slow-motion to illustrate the otherworldly nature of the vampire family.
  • In the climax of the pilot, the priest is running away very slowly from Lestat's Super-Speed perspective.
  • In the second episode, the beginning of the scene where Louis and Lestat walk the streets of New Orleans shortly after the former is turned into a vampire is slowed down to convey that Louis is high on Lestat's vampire blood.
  • In the seventh episode, when Louis and Lestat share a Held Gaze and a Big Damn Kiss during their waltz at the Mardi Gras ball, the slow-motion makes the sequence seem dream-like to accentuate that they're both head-over-heels in love with each other.
• Parents as People: Both Louis and Lestat in regards to Claudia:
  • "Daddy" Louis loves Claudia unconditionally, dotes on her, spends quality time with her, and tries to steer her on a path where she can retain some of her humanity. But this leads to him babying her and not being fully aware of what she is capable of or how ruthless she can be. And as Daniel points out, he ultimately chooses Lestat over her by not letting her burn his body, and when she keeps insisting on it, Louis lashes out at her and pins her by the neck to the armoire. Louis himself in the present day is ashamed of all the ways he failed as her father.
  • "Uncle" Lestat, although he ultimately saw Claudia as a means of keeping Louis with him, genuinely cared for her in the beginning; he gave her nice clothes and gifts, taught her to drive, defended her behavior at Louis' mother's wake, and he acknowledges that she is a "prodigious killer." However, his callous handling of the Charlie incident, their too-similar natures, and Lestat's jealous temper destroy any chance of a real father-daughter relationship. By the time episode 5 starts, any affection that existed between them is gone, and they only see each other as obstacles for Louis. However, invokedWord of Saint Paul from Sam Reid is that Lestat, in his way, does love Claudia and is proud of her for outsmarting him and killing him.
• The Peeping Tom:
  • Louis has an inkling that Lestat might have spied on him and Jonah when they were at the bayou together (where Jonah had performed fellatio on Louis) when he spots Lestat's muddy boots at their home. Lestat admits the truth the next night by repeating what Louis had told Jonah about their relationship ("[Lestat] is a lot. It's not perfect.").
    Lestat: What can I say? I'm a lot. I'm not perfect.
    Louis: (scoffs) I knew it. I knew you were there.
    Lestat: Yes.
    Louis: You're jealous?
    Lestat: Yes. I don't like sharing.
    Louis: What about Antoinette?
    Lestat: It's different. I don't have feelings for her.
    Louis: He did me some face, and I drove him home.
    Lestat: I HEARD YOUR HEARTS DANCING!!
    Louis: You watched the whole thing like some creeper!
  • Claudia, who is ignorant about sex (Lestat remarks that she's too sheltered), curiously observes a young couple engaging in foreplay, and even delays her feeding because she's so intrigued by what they're doing. When the two lovebirds realize that she's watching them, they abruptly stop, and the man asks, "You gonna stand there watchin', little girl?" With nothing more to see, Claudia pounces on him and messily slurps his blood.
  • Claudia mentions that her uncle at the rooming house used to watch her pee when she was a child.
• People Puppets:
  • With his vampire powers, Louis causes Daniel's right arm to shake uncontrollably in a painful manner (presumably made worse by the latter's Parkinson's disease).
  • Lestat makes a man at the cinema slap himself continuously.
• Performance Artist:
  • In various Season 2 promotional materials, Lestat performs onstage in a French play during the late 18th century, and he fits the camp stereotype for male actors because he's a flamboyant bisexual Drama Queen.
  • In Season 2 promotional materials, Santiago is the Théâtre des Vampires master of ceremonies and thespian who gives grandiose introductions to the spectators, is over-the-top when he consumes his victims onstage, and during rehearsals, he'll throw a hissy fit (and toss away the script) if he disagrees with the direction of the show.
• Period Piece: Although the Framing Device takes place in 2022 (which is the same year the series premiered), the majority of the screentime consists of Flashback sequences that span over various decades of the 20th century: The Edwardian Era, The Roaring '20s, The Great Depression, The '40s and The '70s. In Season 2, there are also past scenes set in the late 18th century based on clips from two trailers, plus there's a poster for a French play dated 1795,◊ which is in the middle of The French Revolution (c. 1789-1804).
• Perma-Shave: If a man is clean-shaven when he's transformed into a vampire, the lower half of his face will always be smooth because he'll never grow new hair again, as demonstrated by Armand.
• Perma-Stubble: If a man has stubble when he's transformed into a vampire, his facial hair is immutable because he'll never be able to get rid of it or grow new hair again, as demonstrated by Lestat and Louis.
• Pink Means Feminine:
  • While digging through a box for his cassette player, Daniel removes a pink teddy bear and a pink bicycle helmet which used to belong to his two daughters when they were children.
  • Claudia is a girly girl with a pink coffin and some of her clothing is pink (she has at least two different pink dresses, a pink cardigan, pink overalls, a pink-and-white checkered shirt, and pale pink pyjamas).
• Playing with Fire:
  • After Daniel drops the 1973 cassette tapes of the first interview into a trash can, Louis lights them on fire with his vampire abilities.
  • A Season 2 clip shown at the 2024 AMC Upfront event affirms that Armand possesses the fire gift because he can generate flames from the palm of his hand.
• Posthumous Character:
  • Magnus killed himself in 1794, 228 years before the start of the series.
  • Nicolas died about a century before the first 1910 Flashback scene.
• Power Floats: According to Louis, it's mostly the oldest vampires who develop the cloud gift, which include Lestat and Armand. In behind-the-scenes footage from Season 2, a blond vampire who resembles Santiago flies over a street in the 1940s. Vampiric flight is discussed in episode 6.
  Daniel: [Lestat] could fly?
  Louis: Yes.
  Daniel: Like Superman?
  Louis: Not like Superman. Superman is a fictional character.
  Daniel: But in the air, with a "fuck you to Newtonian physics" flying?
  Louis: He said it was more like floating, arising at will, propelling in a direction by the decision. He called it "the cloud gift."
  Daniel: (to Dr. Bhansali) Hey Doc, did you know there's a flying vampire apocalypse coming your way?
  Louis: Most vampires do not possess the cloud gift. With a few exceptions, only the most ancient of us have it.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Claudia is fourteen (and played by an eighteen-year-old ^note Season 1 was filmed in 2021, so Bailey Bass was 18 at the time) when she's turned in this version, as opposed to being eleven in the 1994 film and five in the book; this was due to New Orleans having very strict child labor laws that wouldn't allow the show to use an underage actor for the amount of work that the role required.
• Precision F-Strike: Several f-bombs are dropped in every episode, including in French (e.g. Va te faire foutre aussi! ^note Go fuck yourself, too! and Putain de merde! ^note Fucking hell!).
• Pretty Boy:
  • Louis is a slim, very handsome man with fine features (which includes Puppy-Dog Eyes and a long neck◊) who can sometimes appear boyish,◊ sports a small goatee, and dresses in very dapper clothes. This results in Love at First Sight from Lestat, as he's smitten by Louis' good looks, complimenting Louis about them at length with adjectives like "beautiful" and "pretty" (plus being biracial only attracts him more). When Claudia is rescued from a burning house by Louis, she believes that he's a beautiful Black angel. In 2022, Louis' movements are very graceful and fluid, with his gait being reminiscent of a retired dancer's.
  • Armand is a young-looking, doe-eyed, gorgeous man, with luscious curls, dainty features, a slender build, and is always clean-shaven. Daniel disparages his prettiness by referring to him as "the rent boy." In the Season 2 First Look Scene, Louis flirts with Armand and tells him "You carry yourself well," and "Been thinkin' the same about you [that you're also alluring]. Been thinkin' about you often."
  • Lampshaded by Lestat in the pilot when he says that his First Love Nicolas was "a boy of infinite beauty," and he indirectly compares him to Louis, the latter being acknowledged as pretty In-Universe. Moreover, Joseph Potter appears to be in his early-to-mid 20s when he was cast ^note in the summer of 2023, his agency lists his playing age as "16 to 25 years", is boyish-looking, curly-haired, and has large eyes.
  • Lampshaded by Lestat in the second episode when he describes the most attractive human man at the bar as "the prettiest girl at the party," and he understands why Louis wants to target the sailor because "I admire the aesthetic."
  • In 1973, Louis retains his habit of heading "Straight to the prettiest girl at the party" because he makes a beeline for the 20-year-old Daniel when the latter enters Polynesian Mary's (a gay bar), and Louis immediately flirts with the young man. Daniel is curly-haired with a round face and soft features, and Louis' Affectionate Nickname for him is "boy," which highlights his youth.
• Previously on…: With the exception of the pilot, all episodes include a recap.
• Product Placement:
  • In the first scene of the series, the General Electric logo is visible in a close-up of Daniel's cassette player boom box.
  • In the sixth episode, Daniel drinks two cans of Star Cola, a popular soft drink produced in the United Arab Emirates.
  • In 1973, Louis pays for his and Daniel's drinks at Polynesian Mary's with an American Express card.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: After being credited as a guest star for the first six episodes, Assad Zaman is listed as a main cast member in the Season 1 finale, his name appearing in between Bailey Bass and Eric Bogosian.
• Property of Love: There's an Inverted Trope and a same-sex variation with Louis desperately wanting to liberate himself from being Lestat's love slave. The second episode foreshadows that Louis will become trapped in this role with a subtle reference to A Doll's House ^note "They'll seat us late, and we'll miss Nora's entrance with the Christmas tree", which is about a woman named Nora who is treated like a doll rather than a person by her husband Torvald, and she yearns to be free from the stifling constraints of her marriage. Lestat views Louis as his most prized possession ("[Lestat's] love is a small box he keeps you in"), and he throws a jealousy-fueled tantrum if anyone else touches his favourite toy ("I don't like sharing"). When Lestat feels that Louis doesn't love him enough in the climax of episode 5, Lestat smashes his pretty doll against the walls of their home, which shatters Louis both mentally and physically (Lestat did indeed shatter a few of his vertebrae). Afterwards, Louis lives with the constant threat that Lestat will batter him again if he doesn't satisfy Lestat's need to be adored. It's later invoked In-Universe that Louis is Lestat's slave. In episode 7, Louis is resolved to break free from Lestat's Gilded Cage ("the dollhouse"), especially after he learns that Lestat will modify their relationship into a Vampire's Harem by adding his newest fledgling Antoinette as his second wife (and thus Louis becomes Lestat's "Top Wife"). Louis is truly Lestat's property at this point because he gets absolutely no say in this decision, and Louis would never tolerate having to live with Antoinette, whom he abhors due to jealousy, so Louis kills them both.
• Psychic Block Defense:
  • Claudia can shield her thoughts from Louis when he telepathically inquires about the identity of Charlie, the young man she has a crush on.
    Louis: Who's Charlie?
    (Claudia gasps in her mind)
    Louis: Claudia, are you blockin' me? This is your father speaking.
    (Claudia smiles when she realizes that Louis can't read her mind)
  • Louis is also unable to access Claudia's thoughts during her 7-year-long absence, so he doesn't know where she has gone or what she's doing.
    Louis: [I was] sending out telepathic thoughts of remorse in every direction. But [Claudia] had shut her mind off to me for some time then.
  • Discussed by Armand and Louis in the Season 2 First Look Scene.
    Armand: [Claudia is] Particularly skilled at blocking her thoughts. You must work harder on that. I could help you hone that skill.
    Louis: Oh yeah? That'd be great.
    Armand: Good. Because I do believe I felt some trepidation when the name Lestat was uttered.
    Louis: (scoffs) Who?
• Psychic Powers:
  • Lestat is capable of telepathy, stopping time, making someone fall asleep at will, levitation, telekinesis, Mind Control and moving people like marionettes.
  • Louis acquires telepathy as well after becoming a vampire, at Lestat's instruction, and he's also shown as capable of pyrokinesis and controlling people's limbs.
  • Claudia gets telepathy like Louis after her transition into a vampire. She's also capable of preventing other vampires from reading her thoughts.
  • Bruce can hear Louis psychically calling out to Claudia.
  • Antoinette gains mind-reading skills after she's turned.
  • Armand has the cloud gift and telepathy (in the Season 2 First Look Scene, he tried and failed to access Claudia's thoughts because she's adept at shielding her mind, but he was able to sense Louis' trepidation when he mentioned Lestat's name).
  • In the Season 2 First Look Scene, Santiago utilizes his telepathic ability on a guard.
• "Psycho" Strings:
  • In the second episode, staccato violin notes in a minor key stress that Louis has cast aside all rational thought by succumbing to both his vampiric thirst for human blood and his wrath at Mr. Carlo's patronizing You Are a Credit to Your Race treatment by exsanguinating him to death. Lestat would later admonish Louis for his recklessness in murdering an alderman's assistant.
  • In the sixth episode, a discordant violin melody in a minor key underscores Lestat's Tranquil Fury at Claudia, whom he catches on a train bound for New York, for running away from home for the second time. His stony exterior belies his turbulent temper because he coerces her to go "Back in your cage, sweetheart," or else "I'll turn your bones to dust." Claudia and the audience never doubt for a second that Lestat will hack her to pieces if she doesn't obey him (especially when he has just lopped off the head of a train conductor).
  • In a Season 2 promo with close-ups of Armand, Louis, Lestat and Claudia baring their fangs, the repetitive violin tune of the appropriately-titled "Comfortably Disturbed" by Mel Wesson & NineOneOne heightens the sense of danger emanating from these bloodthirsty vampires.
• Quaking with Fear:
  • In the climax of episode 1, Louis is visibly trembling with terror when Lestat growls, "I'm not the Devil. You were wrong about that." Louis doesn't understand yet that Lestat is a vampire, but he still knows that he isn't human, and Louis being Catholic means that he naturally assumes that a supernatural creature who mauls a priest to death with his fangs must be demonic.
  • In the fifth episode, Claudia — whose leg has just been broken by Bruce — is shaking like a leaf in the last shot we see of her before the scene cuts.
• Queer Colors:
  • In the Season 1 "Tonight" promo, the gay Louis and the bisexual Lestat are bathed in pink and purple lighting, which are traditionally associated with queerness. These colors emphasize that the series is a Queer Romance with Louis and Lestat as the Official Couple.
  • In the 1973 Flashback of episode 6, the bead curtains◊ at Polynesian Mary's (a San Francisco gay bar) are illuminated with pink, purple and blue lighting (otherwise known as bisexual lighting) as the 20-year-old Daniel approaches the bar stool. He's a regular at Polynesian Mary's (the bartender addresses him by his diminutive "Danny"), and his positive response to Louis' flirtation and invitation to the latter's apartment ("I mean, if something happens, you know, I'm cool") suggests that Daniel may be bisexual.

R-S

• Race Lift:
  • Louis in the TV adaptation has been changed to a black Creole, who was originally a white Creole in the source material. The character is played by biracial British actor Jacob Anderson, who is of Afro-Caribbean and English descent.
  • Claudia as well is played by biracial actress Bailey Bass, who is a Belarusian-Russian/African-American, while the character was originally white.
  • The show's Armand, who was Caucasian in the books, is portrayed by Assad Zaman, a British actor of Bangladeshi heritage.
• Ready for Lovemaking:
  • In the second episode, Lestat anticipates consummating his Metaphorical Marriage to Louis, so he quickly strips off all of his clothing, lets Louis appreciate his nude, muscular figure for a moment before settling down inside his coffin, and then entices Louis to come over with "It's okay. You can be on top." Louis confirms to Daniel that he and Lestat made love in that coffin.
  • In the sixth episode, Lestat is lying naked in bed in the Ponchatoula hotel room while waiting for his mistress Antoinette to join him, and it's implied that they have sex off-screen.
• Reality Has No Subtitles: Throughout Season 1, AMC doesn't provide translations for some non-English words/sentences, which includes French, Russian, Uzbek, Hindi, and Latin.
• Really 700 Years Old:
  • Lestat is 149 going on 150 years old when he's introduced back in 1910 (the series begins in the early autumn of that year, and his birthday is in November 1760), but only appears to be around 33-34, depending on the month he was transformed into a vampire in 1794 (Sam Reid was 34 during Season 1's principal photography in 2021).
  • In 2022, Louis is 144 years old (the second interview takes place in June 2022, and he was born on Oct. 4, 1877, plus Daniel affirms that he's 144 in episode 7), but looks just the same as he did when turned at age 33 in 1910 (Jacob Anderson was 31 at the time of filming).
  • Claudia has the worst experience, being physically stuck as a 14-year-old girl forever (although she's portrayed by 18-year-old Bailey Bass), as she complains.
  • Armand is 514 years old in 2022, but he seems to be only in his 20s (his actor is 31-year-old Assad Zaman ^note he mentions in this interview that he was 4 years old when the Interview with the Vampire movie was released, so he was born in 1990).
• Really Gets Around: Lestat is very horny and openly admits that he actively seeks out the pleasures of the flesh. In his first scene with dialogue, he boasts about emptying a bank vault "sampling" numerous New Orleans women of various skin tones. He's obsessed with Louis and seduces him. After Louis ghosts him after Their First Time, Lestat turns his attention to a prostitute named Lily, but he later murders her when she fails to be a Replacement Goldfish for Louis. Although Lestat's promiscuity tones down after he and Louis enter a committed relationship, he still craves "a little variety," so his wandering eye lands on Antoinette, who becomes his mistress. In the late 1920s ^note most of the seventh episode is set in early 1940, and a lady from the Women's Opera Society tells Lestat "it has been over a decade", he had pulled the wife of a scholar under the stairs during her husband's dull lecture on Don Giovanni, which strongly implies that Lestat and the woman had a quickie.
• Record Needle Scratch:
  • In the fifth episode, Flanagan and Allen's "Underneath the Arches" is playing on the gramophone, but it suddenly halts when Lestat lifts the needle from the record. It's an aural cue to viewers that shit is about the hit the fan in this scene.
  • In the sixth episode, Louis listens to Lestat's song "Come to Me" (which Lestat had sent to him as a Valentine's Day gift) on his gramophone, which features Lestat's mistress Antoinette as the vocalist. The tune isn't even halfway done before a fuming Louis removes the needle from the disc, grabs the record and storms out the door. After six years of giving Lestat the Silent Treatment, Louis is finally going to confront his boyfriend.
• Recurring Dreams: In the fourth episode, Daniel mentions to Louis that he had been dreaming about their first meeting in 1973 at Polynesian Mary's ever since Louis mailed to him the cassette tapes of their first interview. In the sixth episode, viewers finally get a glimpse of their shared past after Daniel falls asleep due to his medication.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over:
  • In the second-half of Lestat's "Vampire Fangs" teaser, he's standing in the dark while his face is illuminated by red light, which is an early clue that he's the Big Bad of Season 1.
  • Both the Title Sequence and the Episode Title Card are black and red to reflect that this series is about vampires, who are (mostly) malevolent, nocturnal creatures who murder humans to drink their blood.
  • The Season 2 posters for Claudia◊ (who is dancing in front of corpses) and Armand & Louis◊ (the bottom section of the artwork gives the impression of vampire fangs) adopt the red-and-black palette to highlight the characters' predatory natures — Claudia presumably exsanguinated all the people sitting in the background, and Armand is "pursuing" Louis romantically (so this is the second time Louis is being "chased" by a love-struck vampire).
• Redheads Are Ravishing: Downplayed Trope; Louis falls for Lestat, whose wavy-curly locks have a strawberry blond tint.
• Red Light District: In Real Life, Storyville was the red-light district of New Orleans from 1897-1917. In-Universe, Louis owned several brothels in the area before they were shut down by City Ordinance 4118. In 2022, his second interview with Daniel opens with them discussing this trope.
  Louis: So it followed the only place in New Orleans a gentleman of my complexion could do a righteous business was a neighborhood called Storyville.
  Daniel: That was the old red-light district, yeah?
  Louis: 20 blocks of drinking, gambling, and gluttonous whoring.
  [...]
  Daniel: You were a pimp.
  Louis: The product was desire, and it came in as many forms as there were ways to move it. Of the two dozen sporting houses on Liberty Street, I owned eight of them. Modest in proportion to the venues on Basin Street. What they lacked in size and elegance, they more than made up for in efficiency and reputation.
• Religious Vampire: In Anne Rice's world, religion is not off the table for vampires. The story includes both religious and nonreligious vampires, and both tell us something about who a character is as an individual — vampires are not merely nonreligious by default. Lestat is a Hollywood Atheist, which ties into his disdainful, amoral, and hubristic character. Louis was raised Catholic and appears to have become disengaged with his faith after entering a relationship with Lestat; it's one of the multiple ways Louis adapted to Lestat's preferences. Armand is a practicing Muslim, and while we don't see enough of him to get a full picture, his faith seems to be a grounding influence on him.
• The Renfield:
  • In 2022, Louis has a loyal human servant named Rashid who acts as his personal assistant.
  • Damek permits Louis to feed on him on a regular basis.
• Replacement Goldfish:
  • Disturbingly subverted with Lily in the first episode, a prostitute whom Lestat spent more time with when he realized that Louis was avoiding him after he and Louis had sex for the first time. While Lestat places Lily in the same category as Louis in terms of their looks (they're both biracial "misfit beauties," as he calls them), he must have found her personality sorely lacking because in his words, she "proved herself a poor substitute." Louis later discovers that Lestat had murdered her.
  • Lampshaded by Claudia in the fifth episode when she concludes that Lestat and Louis had turned her into a vampire so that she can take Grace's place after witnessing from afar the other woman disowning her brother Louis. (Claudia's belief is erroneous because she was a band-aid baby to save Louis and Lestat's crumbling relationship, but since they never told her this, she does her best to understand their reasoning on her own.)
    Claudia: But today at the cemetery, I finally understood something so obvious, which I pondered for a decade why they made me: to be Louis' sister.
  • In the seventh episode, Daniel infers that he's a replacement for Lily, the prostitute whom Louis had habitually paid to simply chat with him when the latter was human. Louis doesn't dispute it.
    Daniel: 144 years of life, and you're still Louis the pimp, paying a whore to sit in a room and talk with you. [...] Ten million dollars. That's my whore number.
• Reunion Kiss:
  • In the third episode, it's revealed that Louis and Jonah had a Childhood Friend Romance when they were teenagers, but later on, the only jobs Jonah could get were outside of Louisiana, so they lost touch for years. When they briefly reunite in 1917, they share a long, tender kiss at the bayou.
  • In the sixth episode, after spending six years apart, Louis demonstrates his willingness to take Lestat back by initiating an ardent kiss, which the latter readily welcomes.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Just like in Real Life when Season 1 first aired, the COVID-19 Pandemic is still ongoing in the June 2022 scenes.
• The Roaring '20s: The Jazz Age officially began in 1917 with the release of the first jazz record, which matches the year of the past events in the third episode. The forth episode is set in 1917-1923, while the fifth one covers 1923-1930, with the final year overlapping with The Great Depression.
• Ruder and Cruder: The Interview with the Vampire novel doesn't contain a single f-bomb, but Season 1 has several in each episode.
• Rule #1:
  • Lestat and Claudia's "Vampire Rules" promos contain a set of rules that fledgling vampires should abide by and facts that they should know.
    • Lestat's list:
      Rule 1 — Cleanliness is key.
      Rule 2 — Live off the blood of the living.
      Rule 3 — Let the food come to you.
      Rule 4 — Stay out of the sun.
      Rule 5 — Vampires can read minds.
      Rule 6 — Suck it.
    • Claudia's list:
      Rule 1 — Your maker can't hear your thoughts.
      Rule 2 — No secrets between family.
      Rule 3 — Human food tastes like chalk.
      Rule 4 — Don't overindulge.
      Rule 5 — Don't eat cops.
  • In the sixth episode, Louis and Claudia impose several conditions that Lestat must follow in order for him to be accepted back into their family. Viewers don't get to hear the first three requirements.
    Louis: Rule number four.
    Claudia: Kill Antoinette.
    [...]
    Claudia: I'm not your child anymore. That's rule number five. I'll be your companion, your sister.
    Lestat: It's not as simple as choosing a new family configuration. "Now I'm your cousin." "Now I'm your aunt." I am your maker!
    Claudia: But not my uncle or my daddy. I'm your sister or that's the door.
    Louis: Rule number six. No lies, and that includes lies of exaggeration and of omission. For instance, if you can fly, tell us you can fly.
  • In a Santiago-centric TV spot, he instructs Claudia on the Laws of the Vampires.
    1. Each coven must have its leader.
    2. The Dark Gifts must never be given to children.
    3. No vampire may ever destroy another vampire.
• Rule of Symbolism: Has its own page.
• Satellite Love Interest:
  • Levi is a Flat Character whose role is limited to being Grace's fiancé/husband.
  • Antoinette's sole importance in the story is that she's Lestat's mistress. Outside of that, we don't really know anything about her other than she's a singer.
  • Although Jonah gets a little bit of a backstory (unlike Antoinette), his main purpose is to establish that Louis has loved another man before Lestat, as Jonah is Louis' childhood sweetheart, and they still harbour feelings for each other at least two decades later.
  • Charlie is a horse carriage driver whom Claudia has a crush on, and not much else can be said about him.
• The Scapegoat:
  • Florence blames Louis for Paul's suicide even though Louis didn't do or say anything that would make Paul jump off the roof.
  • Lestat blames Claudia for his and Louis' relationship deteriorating even though most of it is fully Lestat's own fault.
• Scars Are Forever: Daniel has a round scar on the right side of his neck which remains visible 49 years after Louis had bit him there and nearly exsanguinated him to death for being "disrespectful" while high on drugs.
• Scream Discretion Shot:
  • In the fourth episode, the camera faces Louis and Lestat when a trumpet player across the street squeals "No!" in pain several times as Claudia mangles him.
  • Later, Lestat kills the undertaker off-screen, so viewers only hear the victim's yelps before he dies.
  • In the sixth episode, Claudia is startled by the sound of the train conductor screaming and the loud thuds as he's being slammed against the baggage car. It's only after Lestat kicks open the door that she realizes that he has ripped the man's head off.
  • In the Season 1 finale, Louis murders the MacPhail twin who wasn't poisoned by Claudia, but the audience doesn't see it happen. Lestat (who's in a different room and was expecting to eat both twins) is surprised when the young man cries in agony.
  • In the Season 2 First Look Scene, the camera is focused on Armand and Louis flirting outside of the de la Croix estate as the screeching humans inside the mansion are being feasted upon by the vampires of Armand's coven and Claudia — not all of the deaths are visible on-screen.
• Screaming Woman:
  • In the third episode, a female pedestrian shrieks at the top of her lungs when she sees Alderman Fenwick's eviscerated corpse hanging from the gates of St. Louis Cathedral.
  • In the fourth episode, the girlfriend of Claudia's victim screams in terror as she runs away from her boyfriend being butchered.
  • In the seventh episode, the sole human woman at the after-party feast screeches her head off several times before Lestat exsanguinates her to death.
  • Later, Antoinette wails in agony as she's being engulfed by the incinerator's flames.
• Second Love:
  • Lestat is Louis' second love, the first man he has developed romantic feelings for since his childhood sweetheart Jonah, who had to move away from New Orleans to find work.
  • Louis is the second person that Lestat has fallen in love with after Nicolas, who died a long time ago.
    Lestat: Nicki passed on after he and I parted ways. It took me over a century to try again. (looks directly at Louis)
  • Armand is "the love of my life," according to Louis, who believes the third time's a charm after his relationship with Lestat falls apart.
• Secretly Dying: Daniel has a sub-variant of Parkinson's disease. Only his family and doctor know about it, so he's irked that Louis has somehow learned of it.
• Secret Relationship: Due to being an interracial queer couple, which is doubly illegal and taboo given the story begins in the early twentieth century of Louisiana, Lestat (a white Frenchman) and Louis (a black Creole) carefully keep the fact that they're lovers a secret (albeit many realize it) from all but a few (obviously their vampire daughter Claudia knows). Once, a police officer discovers that they have only one bed in the house and threatens them with a five-year term in prison for a "crime against nature" due to this, but doesn't do anything further.
• Secret Room: In Lestat's townhouse, the coffin room is adjacent to the master bedroom, but it can only be accessed by pressing a hidden button on the fireplace.
• Serial Killer:
  • After accidentally killing Charlie, her First Love, Claudia becomes mentally unstable and murders at least 56 people, even taking trophies from them and keeping a Kill Tally.
  • According to Lestat, his maker Magnus was a serial killer who targeted young, blond, blue-eyed men with an athletic build.
    Lestat: His name was Magnus. He took me from my room in Paris, as I kicked and screamed. He kept me for a week, locked in a room full of corpses... some freshly killed, some bloated and black. But they all looked like me... my coloring, my physique. My own eyes staring back at me from rotting faces. He fed on me every night. And then he put me back in the tower with the look-alike corpses. I thought for sure I'd be one of them, but instead he turned me into this. [...] I cried. I called to God. I didn't want this.
• Series Continuity Error: In the fifth episode, the gravestone commissioned by Grace establishes that Louis' birth date is Oct. 4, 1877 (which must be the correct year because he was 33 years old when he was turned into a vampire in late 1910, plus Daniel says that Louis is 144 in June 2022), yet in the seventh episode, he informs several would-be victims that he was born in 1878.
• Setting Update: The past scenes in the book begin in 1791, but in the series, they start in 1910. The show also invents a second interview between Daniel and Louis, so the Framing Device is set in 2022 (the COVID-19 Pandemic is ongoing In-Universe) instead of 1973.
• Sexual Euphemism:
  • In the first episode, while confessing his sins to Father Matthias, Louis relies on a horticultural analogy when he divulges that he bottomed for Lestat when they had sex, and even hints that his lover has a large penis (which Lestat asserts in episode 5). Louis compares himself to the soil while Lestat is the plant that's "sprouting" within him.
    Louis: I-I laid down with a man. I laid down with the Devil. And [Lestat] has roots in me, all his spindly ^note which is a synonym for "long" roots in me!
  • In the third episode, after being Mistaken for Gay by Antoinette, Lestat alludes that he's bisexual and promiscuous with music terminology. She then implies that she also shares his sexual orientation and is attracted to women (alongside men).
    Lestat: Still, what do you imagine confines us to a single note? Why not a chord? Why not a cluster?
    Antoinette: Oh, see, I'm the same. I like all sorts. I like soft hands.
  • In the fourth episode, Lestat uses arithmetic — a topic that most people would consider to be utterly unsexy — as a metaphor for sex when he attempts to teach Claudia about what humans do at a Make-Out Point.
    Lestat: This is what the meat calls a "lover's lane," and by my estimation, no blood is sweeter. Young people, swollen with passion, denied spirits by this senseless prohibition, park along this lonely stretch to contemplate that most mysterious of mathematical equations — how one plus one becomes one.
    Claudia: They come out here to do math?
    Lestat: You've been too sheltered.
• Sexy Discretion Shot:
  • In the third episode, Lestat kisses a topless Antoinette while holding her thigh when the scene cuts.
  • In the sixth episode, a fully-clothed Louis and a nude Lestat are immersed in violent foreplay, and the camera pans away from their frenzied reunion to a crying Antoinette smoking a cigarette outside of her own home.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Both Louis and Lestat are affluent men who wear impeccable suits (and the occasional tuxedos) throughout the past scenes of Season 1; all the suits in the show were made by seamstresses and were fitted to their actors.
• Shirtless Scene:
  • Lestat and Louis are bare-chested whenever they undress, either for sex or while they're getting ready for bed (well, coffin) and they choose not to wear an undershirt or a pyjama top underneath their robe.
  • Jonah is shirtless when he performs oral sex on Louis at the bayou.
  • In a Fan Disservice example, after Louis' beating from Lestat, he lies shirtless in his coffin in episode 6's opening, presumably because clothes would irritate his wounds.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• The Show of the Books: This television series is an adaptation of The Vampire Chronicles.
• Sickening "Crunch!":
  • In the second episode, viewers hear the sounds of bones cracking when Lestat crams a dead priest into a sarcophagus that's too short for the corpse.
  • In the fifth episode, although we don't see Bruce's foot hit Claudia's leg, the snap of broken bone is unmistakable, so it's understood that Claudia is now crippled and cannot run away from her assailant.
• Silent Treatment:
  • After Claudia runs away from home in the fifth episode, Louis blames Lestat for being the cause of her distress due to the latter's "sadistic" (as Louis calls it) parenting style, so one of the ways he punishes his boyfriend is by ignoring him. It has gotten so bad that a miserable Lestat, who's burning a playing card with a lighter, wonders out loud if Louis would pay any attention to him if he set himself ablaze.
    Lestat: I sit there thinking, "Light yourself on fire, see if [Louis] would notice."
  • In the sixth episode, Louis doesn't speak to Lestat for six years after suffering a vicious battering from him.
    Lestat: If you want me to go away, just say so. I'll obey you. I'll leave your life forever.
    (Louis says nothing)
    Lestat: This silence is cruel. And you were never cruel, Louis.
• Simple Score of Sadness:
  • In the second episode, a slow, melancholic version of Daniel Hart's "The Drum Was My Heart" is heard during the final two scenes, which has a lone violin for the melody and a piano for the bass. In 1916, this musical cue represents the end of the honeymoon phase for Louis and Lestat's Common Law Marriage because cracks have begun to appear, while in 2022, the dessert is the same one Daniel had when he proposed to his first wife Alice, and his tone of voice while he's reminiscing suggests that he misses her (or at least misses how happy they were at the start of their engagement).
  • In the third episode, Hart repeats the convention of a solo violin with a piano bassline to convey sorrow for the track "My Very Nature That of the Devil". Louis is haunted by his mother's belief that he's the Devil as his remaining links to humanity are forcibly severed. His family are scared of his strange comportment and unearthly powers, so they want nothing more to do with him, and his businesses have ceased operations because of the enforcement of City Ordinance 4118.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Sam Reid, who has second billing, is absent from the Season 2 SDCC trailer; there's only a painting of his character Lestat at the end. Reid did film scenes during Season 2's principal photography, and a promotional image◊ of him dressed in 18th-century finery was released, so presumably the producers didn't want to spoil too much about Lestat's role after his Not Quite Dead ending in Season 1.
• Sleek High Rise Apartment: The moneyed vampire couple Louis and Armand reside in a Dubai penthouse apartment that is the most desired real estate in the United Arab Emirates, and the Al Sharaf Tower is sufficiently tall that the edifice sways by design. The living room is vast and it has many windows, so Louis and Armand have a wide view of the cityscape. The décor is in the minimalist style and the walls are adorned with fine art, such as Francis Bacon's triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion.
• Smoking Is Glamorous: Antoinette is The Chanteuse in the early 20th century, so smoking is part of her glitzy image.
• Smoky Gentlemen's Club: Tom Anderson hosts an informal one at the Fairplay Saloon in the form of a private poker game where he invites a handful of (mostly) white, upper-class businessmen and politicians to discuss commerce as they smoke, drink and bet while playing cards. Louis later takes up the mantle after he buys the Fairplay Saloon from Tom and changes its name to the Azalea.
• The Smurfette Principle: In Season 1, Claudia is the only major female character, and Bailey Bass is the lone woman in the main cast.
• Solar and Lunar: Louis' Season 1 character teaser and "Tomorrow" promo include a crescent moon embedded within a stylized sun in the corners of the border, which symbolizes that Louis spends almost all of the pilot as a human (sun) before being turned into a vampire (moon). It's also emblematic of how Louis clings to remnants of his past humanity despite his vampirism.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • In the climax of episode 5, the beautiful, lush melody of Daniel Hart's "Vicious" contrasts the horrendous Domestic Abuse that unfolds on-screen when Lestat savagely batters Louis until his boyfriend is at death's door.
  • In the Season 2 First Look Scene, the Background Music is the second movement of Alberto Ginastera's "Four Dances" from Estancia; the delicate notes of the ballet suite juxtapose the vampire coven's mass murder of the de la Croix family and their guests.
• Southern Gothic: Season 1 is a gothic romance about two vampires, and the past events take place in New Orleans during the early 20th century. It's a city rife with racism (there's racial segregation) and murder (because vampires eat on average two humans a night, Lestat alone has killed more than 21,000 people from the early fall 1910 ^note the autumnal equinox was Sep. 23 in that year, so presumably he arrived in New Orleans around then to Feb. 6, 1940). The decay is represented by the de Pointe du Lac sugar plantation, which was once prosperous, but is no longer profitable by the time Louis inherits it. The voodoo practitioners who live near the vampire family try to curse them by placing Voodoo Dolls inside a circle of brick dust on the doorstep of their home.
• Speech-Centric Work: Because showrunner Rolin Jones (a 2006 Pulitzer Prize finalist) and most of the screenwriters are playwrights, the series is quite dialogue-heavy, which includes long monologues.
• Stalker with a Crush:
  • It's heavily implied that Lestat had stalked Louis after being mesmerized by the latter's beauty, and he basically admits to doing so ("I've been watching you for some time now, Louis"). It's not a coincidence that Lestat had arranged to be in Lily's company, as he's aware that she acts as The Beard for Louis. Lestat kissing her, running his hands along the seams of her dress, and outbidding Louis for her time were done deliberately to provoke him. Lestat also must have heard Tom Anderson inviting Louis to a private poker game because Lestat managed to get a seat there, which provided a second opportunity for him to socialize with Louis. At Paul's funeral, Lestat warns Louis that he doesn't take kindly to being avoided, and when the latter tries to find refuge at the church because he wants to be free from the Devil's voice inside his head (which is actually Lestat's repeated telepathic attempts to summon Louis to him), Lestat pursues Louis and directly confronts him in person. Lestat clearly doesn't respect Louis' wish to be left alone and won't take no for an answer. In the 2022 scenes of the series premiere, Louis describes himself as the prey while Lestat was the predator who was hunting him, a sentiment that any victim of stalking can relate to.
  • With the revelation in the third episode that Lestat had covertly followed Louis and Jonah to the bayou and proved himself to be a peeping tom, it confirms just how warped Lestat's infatuation with Louis is.
  • Bruce had trailed Claudia for some time before he introduces himself to her. After she rejects his advances, he breaks her leg, and an Implied Rape ensues.
    Bruce: You've been sloppy out in Jefferson City.
    Claudia: How long you been followin'—
    Bruce: You shouldn't dump bodies in the Missouri. Even if you weigh 'em down with rocks, river's too fast. I find you build a shallow grave, sometimes a prairie wind'll catch, burns faster.
    Claudia: How long you been—
    Bruce: About five, six colleges or so.
    Claudia: How'd you do it?
    Bruce: I had good ears when I was alive. Got great ears now. Heard your name in the air. Somethin' about the way it sounded. (whispering) Clau... di... a...
• Stalker without a Crush:
  • In the fifth episode, Claudia stalks both Lestat and Louis, which is why she knows that Lestat has an ongoing affair with Antoinette, and later she spies on Louis when he meets Grace at the cemetery.
    Claudia: I spend time following Louis and Lestat now that I am my own woman, with no obvious sense of why I follow them, other than meaning slowly disintegrates without them, my companions in immortality.
  • In the sixth and seventh episodes, Antoinette trails both Louis and Claudia to monitor their psychic communications, and she later reports her findings to her lover Lestat.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Sung twice with the verse "Like star-crossed lovers" in Lestat's Villain Love Song "Come to Me". In his lyrics, Lestat conveniently glosses over the fact that he's a Domestic Abuser and poetically depicts himself and Louis as lovers doomed by fate like the eponymous characters from the French play Pelléas et Mélisande.
• Stealth Hi/Bye:
  • Thanks to his Super-Speed, Louis seems to appear out of thin air in the third episode when he shows up at Alderman Fenwick's house. Fenwick is so startled that he gasps and drops his glass of Atherton whiskey.
  • In the fourth episode, Lestat sneaks up on the newly fledged Claudia with his Super-Speed and greets her with "Bonjour." She reacts with surprised delight and asks, "How did you do that?"
  • In the seventh episode, from the perspective of the man with blood cancer, Lestat abruptly materializes next to him (he never saw Lestat pass through the front gate), so naturally the man is a bit perturbed by this.
• Stealth Insult:
  • In the fourth episode, Louis intimates that Lestat is too old to understand adolescent behaviour when he makes the observation "Tu as oublié ta jeunesse!" (French for "You've forgotten your youth!" ^note which is the exact translation, although the on-screen caption offers the more wordy "You've forgotten what it's like to be young!") Lestat feels insulted and swears in French.
  • In the fifth episode, when Claudia exclaims to Louis, "Let's be vampires worthy of your love!", her underlying message is that Lestat is not a worthy romantic partner to Louis. Lestat — who is absolutely besotted with Louis — is so offended that he goes berserk and suffocates Claudia by squeezing his hand around her throat.
  • In the seventh episode, Lestat and Claudia are watching a Newsreel about Adolf Hitler, and after Lestat compliments the look of the Nazi uniforms (he's a Sharp-Dressed Man who adores fashion), Claudia insinuates that he's a dictator in their own home.
    Lestat: They may be nasty little beasts, but they do have excellent tailoring.
    Claudia: Well-dressed tyrants. Where have I seen that before?
• Stronger with Age:
  • Lestat is significantly more powerful than Louis and Claudia because he's 117 years older than his vampire son and lover, and 143 years older than his vampire daughter. The analogy Lestat uses is that he's the Beauceron (a French herding dog) while his fledglings are lambs.
  • Lampshaded by Armand when he explains to Daniel why he's immune to sunlight, unlike most vampires.
    Daniel: But I saw you standing in the sun.
    Armand: As we age, the sun loses its power over us. What's a mediocre star to a 514-year-old vampire?
• Suddenly Shouting: Lestat has a habit of raising his voice when the conversation had been calm.
  • In "...After the Phantoms of Your Former Self":
    Lestat: Well, I like to do it. I enjoy it.
    Louis: Well, I don't. You don't have to humiliate him.
    Lestat: WELL, I DON'T SAY THAT YOU HAVE TO ENJOY IT!
  • In "Is My Very Nature That of a Devil":
    Lestat: It's different. I don't have feelings for [Antoinette].
    Louis: [Jonah] did me some face, and I drove him home.
    Lestat: I HEARD YOUR HEARTS DANCING!!
  • In "Like Angels Put in Hell by God":
    Lestat: Move your pawn. Finish the game.
    Claudia: Good night, Lestat.
    Lestat: (hits the table) FINISH THE GAME!!
• Sunglasses at Night:
  • After his transition into a vampire, Louis always sports sunglasses during the evenings when he visits his family at the mansion to hide his vampiric green irises (his eyes used to be brown when he was human).
  • In the Season 2 First Look Scene, Armand wears sunglasses at nighttime to conceal his orange vampire eyes.
• Super-Senses: Vampires gain heightened sight, smell, and are even capable of hearing people's heartbeats. It turns out vampires' telepathy also works on this principle, by literally hearing thoughts (Lestat says that, as with hearing heartbeats, they're people's brains at work). However, a vampire's sense of taste is severely diminished. Louis imparts to Daniel that human food tastes like "paste, chalk, soap" to him. Claudia used to enjoy eating macarons, but after her transition into a vampire, only human blood tastes sweet to her palate.
• Super-Speed: Vampires can move from one end of a room to another in a blink of an eye. Louis swims faster than he drives.
• Super-Strength: All vampires are much stronger than humans, and that includes Claudia, who's at a disadvantage because of her adolescent body, but she can still take down human males who are bigger than she is, like Chief Bardeen. Lestat tears off the head of a train conductor with just his bare hands.
• Super-Toughness: With the exception of being beheaded, vampires are unaffected by physical damage inflicted by humans. A mortal Louis stabs the vampire Lestat several times in the back, but this doesn't stop or even slow down the latter in any way. After receiving the Dark Gift, Louis becomes Immune to Bullets.
• Switching P.O.V.:
  • In the fourth episode, the Flashback scenes are from Claudia's perspective instead of Louis' because Daniel reads passages from her diary. For the rest of Season 1, Daniel gets a combination of Louis and Claudia's viewpoints.
  • The extended Season 2 trailer confirms that Armand joins the interview, with Daniel stating to his audio recorder, "Session ten, the vampire Louis and the vampire Armand." The events of the late 18th century are narrated by Armand.
• Sword Cane: Louis owns a cane with a concealed knife that he unsheathes thrice on-screen. In the series premiere, Louis intimidates Paul by placing the blade against his brother's chest, and later, Louis stabs Lestat several times in the back. In the Season 1 finale, Louis slits Lestat's throat.

T-Z

• Table Space: In episodes 2, 5 and 7, Daniel conducts the interview with Louis in the latter's dining room, and they sit at opposite ends of a long table while eating their meals. The distance between them is symbolic of Daniel being naturally wary of a vampire who nearly drained him to death 49 years ago for merely being a Vampire Vannabe while high on drugs.
• Tagline:
  • Season 1: Who wants to live forever?◊
  • Season 2 has three, and they're all in French: La mémoire est un monstre◊ ^note Memory is a monster, La famille est un monstre◊ ^note Family is a monster, and L'amour est un monstre◊ ^note Love is a monster.
• Talking in Bed:
  • In episode 6, Louis and Lestat do the vampire equivalent when they discuss Claudia's refusal to genuinely get along with Lestat (who had bashed Louis senseless in the preceding episode) as the couple settle in their coffin.
    Lestat: I am all sincerity and humility, I cannot wear it any longer.
    Louis: She's just stubborn.
    Lestat: She is a wall. The cliffs at Étretat.
    Louis: She's grown very protective of me. That's what this is. It's why it's hard.
    Lestat: She came back altered when she left us. There's a darkness in her that wasn't there before.
    Louis: Give her a little time.
  • Later in a Ponchatoula hotel room, Lestat and his mistress Antoinette converse about their relationship while in bed.
    Lestat: That's why I need you. You fortify me against [Louis and Claudia]. You're like me. You like to laugh.
    Antoinette: You make me laugh all the time. (kisses Lestat) We should go away, Lestat. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles.
    Lestat: You want to be a movie star?
    Antoinette: Well, now that I'm dead, I can be whoever I want. I've been working on a new name. What do you think of Marie Lepère?
    Lestat: Don't be ridiculous. There's no place for me other than New Orleans.
    Antoinette: New Orleans? You got me stashed away here at Ponchatoula, how am I supposed to make a career here?
    Lestat: (grabs her throat) I seek refuge from complaints when I visit you, dear.
    Antoinette: I know that, but promises were made.
    Lestat: And promises will be kept. (releases her throat)
    Antoinette: I am withering here, Lestat. Who's gonna hire a singer who don't sing, who's a cripple? (removes her glove to show her maimed hand)
    Lestat: (turns his head away) No. That's what gloves are for.
    Antoinette: I know. I didn't mean to make you mad. I love you, Lestat.
    Lestat: I love you, too.
• Tantrum Throwing: In the extended Season 2 trailer, a wrathful Louis hurls a cup of blood at The Storm on the Sea of Galilee painting by Rembrandt van Rijn that's hanging on his dining room wall.
• Tears of Blood: Vampires cry tears of blood, as shown whenever they get overly emotional.
• Technicolor Eyes:
  • A Season 1 horizontal digital billboard displays Claudia's eyes as pink.
  • After being turned into a vampire, Claudia and Bruce have reddish-orange eyes.
  • Armand's vampiric irises are orange.
  • For TV Insider's May 2024 exclusive digital cover, Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid were briefly given yellow irises shortly after the "Paris Is Burning" caption appears to promote Season 2.
• Telepathy: All vampires can read the thoughts of humans and their own kind (with the exception of their own maker and fledglings). It's an extension of their Super-Hearing, as explained by Lestat when he teaches Louis how to access this power.
  Lestat: I want you to peel away every sound until you find his heartbeat. Now hold the heartbeat. You hear his lungs leaking and flooding air? His mind is just another bodily sound.
• Thunder Equals Downpour:
  • In the pilot, thunder suddenly rumbles at the end of Paul's funeral which is then quickly followed by torrential rain as Louis walks towards the Fairplay Saloon.
  • In the fifth episode, the audience hears the thunder just before we see an especially wet and windy storm when dock workers discover 56 mutilated corpses floating in the river.
• Time-Shifted Actor: Daniel is portrayed by Eric Bogosian when he's 69 years old and by Luke Brandon Field when he's 20.
• Time Stands Still:
  • During the poker game in the first episode, Lestat stops time with his vampire skills so that he and Louis can have a private conversation. (While Lestat does have Psychic Powers, this is not a case of People Puppets because the whiskey being poured into a glass is "frozen" while the poker chips are suspended in mid-air.)
  • In the fifth episode, Lestat halts time at the speakeasy so that he and Louis can make a quick exit.
• Title Drop:
  • In "In Throes of Increasing Wonder...":
    Louis: I saw [Lestat] sitting a length away from me... radiant. And we sat there for some time... in throes of increasing wonder.
  • In "... After the Phantoms of Your Former Self":
    Lestat: You're not one of them anymore, fledgling. You chase after phantoms of your former self.
  • In "Is My Very Nature That of a Devil":
    Louis: When your mother sees the Devil in your eyes, it's a hard assessment to abandon. Am I from the Devil? Is my very nature that of the Devil?
  • The sixth episode includes the Villain Love Song "Come to Me" where the title is sung ten times.
  • In "The Thing Lay Still":
    Louis: This horror that had been Lestat... I stared helplessly at it. The thing lay still.
• Tranquil Fury:
  • In the third episode, Louis is inwardly seething with homicidal anger at Alderman Fenwick for outlawing colored businesses in Storyville, but outwardly, he's cool as a cucumber when he confronts the racist politician in the latter's home, right up until the moment he cuts off the man's ear. Louis is also completely nonchalant when Fenwick shoots him twice in the chest, and he even says, "I'll let you reload."
  • In the sixth episode, when Lestat confronts Claudia on the train, he seems calm on the surface and never raises his voice, yet aggression underlies his every word and gesture because he's incensed that she has abandoned their family once again. Although no physical violence occurs between them in this scene, Lestat is nevertheless dishing out psychological violence on Claudia in a conversational tone, which includes a death threat.
• Translation Convention: In the Season 2 SDCC trailer, Santiago addresses the Parisian crowd in English when he should be speaking in French.
• Transparent Closet: In the second episode, Louis' mind-reading of his mother reveals that she's well aware that he's gay in spite of him being closeted. His sister's words later indicate she knows as well. Presumably living with Lestat and spending so much time with him would have made them realize if nothing else. In the third episode, Antoinette let it slip that the employees of the Azalea gossip about Louis and Lestat being a couple. Alderman Fenwick has figured out that the two men are together because he refers to Lestat as Louis' "pale lover," plus he has heard that there are "weird goings-on at their Sodomite townhouse." In the seventh episode, Tom Anderson calls Lestat "your fag pederast" while talking to Louis, and Tom surmises correctly that Lestat is the Lover and Louis is the Beloved in their Lover and Beloved dynamic.
• Traumatic Haircut: In the extended Season 2 trailer, Madeleine is screaming while her hair is being cut, which indicates that it's being done against her will.
• True Blue Femininity:
  • As the matriarch of the de Pointe du Lac family, Florence is attired in a navy blue dress with gold buttons when she and her family dine with Lestat at their mansion.
  • The lone human female at the vampire family's after-party is a Socialite garbed in a fancy pastel blue gown.
  • Claudia's baby blue costume◊ at the Théâtre des Vampires make her look girly, diminutive, and doll-like.◊
• Twofer Token Minority:
  • In the series, Louis is both gay and a black Creole.
  • Jonah is also a homosexual African American.
  • The show's Armand is queer (his precise sexual orientation isn't stated in Season 1, but he and Louis are in a committed relationship), and his actor is of Bangladeshi ancestry. Armand is also Muslim, although his status as a religious minority only applies to when he used to live in Paris and San Francisco, not his current residence in Dubai.
• Understatement:
  • In the series premiere, Lestat informs Tom Anderson that "I came to my wealth honestly and at great sacrifice." We learn in episode 6 that the vampire Magnus had kidnapped the human Lestat from his room in Paris, imprisoned him a tower full of corpses that resembled him physically, fed on his blood nightly for a week before transforming him into a vampire against his will, and then gestured to a large pile of money which served as an informal inheritance to his newborn fledgling before committing suicide by tossing himself into a fire.
  • Lestat is enraged that Louis had ghosted him after Their First Time, so he warns his lover, "I don't take kindly to being avoided." Lestat murders Louis' beard Lily, intrudes on the funeral procession for Louis' brother Paul, breaks Finn's arm when he intervenes to separate Lestat from Louis, sets Louis' Catholic church on fire, and kills two of its priests so that nobody (not even God — Lestat is a Hollywood Atheist) can stand between him and his beloved Louis.
• Unnaturally Blue Lighting: The front gate of Lestat's townhouse is pastel green, but in the "Louis at the Front Gate" and "Season 1 Character Quotes" promos, the blue lighting makes the gate appear blue.
• Unreliable Narrator: Has its own page.
• Unusual Euphemism:
  • In episode 1, Lily refers to Louis and Lestat's one-upmanship as "The gentlemen are swappin' andouille sausage recipes."
  • In episode 4, Claudia jots down in her diary that her vampire dads have "a funny way of being nice to each other" after she saw Lestat sensually touch Louis' shoulder.◊
• Vampire Bites Suck: Vampires biting humans they don't care about is quite painful, to judge by their victims' screams.
• Vampire Dance: In the seventh episode, Louis and Lestat waltz together in French period costumes at the Mardi Gras ball. There's also a brief shot of them dancing◊ in the fourth episode during Claudia's birthday.
• Vampires Are Rich:
  • Louis and Lestat both have sizeable incomes. This allows them to enjoy a very comfortable, opulent lifestyle in New Orleans, and they're part of the city's high society. Louis owns his family's mansion (his household is served by at least one maid, a butler, and presumably a cook), and Lestat's magnificent townhouse has many rooms and a large courtyard. While getting to know her new vampire dads, Claudia observes that "Uncle Les and Daddy Lou were rich. They had nice clothes and a nice auto carriage." (This scene takes place in 1917, when only the wealthy can afford to own cars.) She later writes in her journal that "you wouldn't believe how time flies when there's people to eat and money to spend," and summarizes her vampiric existence as "Kill, spend, kill, spend."
  • Louis and Armand reside in a spacious penthouse apartment in Dubai (it's located in "the most desired real estate in the country") with human servants, and one of the artistic masterpieces hanging on the walls is Rembrandt van Rijn's The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, a stolen painting worth around $100 million. Daniel observes that it costs a fortune to maintain such a high level of privacy.
    Daniel: And you've got your own hangar at the airport, privileges on the Royal Meydan Bridge, and zero presence online. [...] I know the Emirates are big on privacy, and that's probably important to you, but I gotta ask, what does it cost, this haven't-aged-in-half-a-century, killer-views-in-all-directions anonymity?
    Louis: Quite a lot.
  • Averted with Bruce, who once worked in a car factory owned by Henry Ford when he was human, and vampirism hasn't improved his economic situation because when Claudia meets him, he's a vagabond who aimlessly travels from place to place on his motorcycle.
• Vampires Own Nightclubs: Not precisely, although Louis owns several brothels and gambling dens, which allows him one more excuse to operate after dark since that's when they get most of their business.
• Vampires Sleep in Coffins:
  • At the vampire family's townhouse, Lestat, Louis and Claudia sleep in coffins during the daytime.
  • Averted with Louis in his Dubai penthouse because its shielded windows block sunlight.
    Daniel: That's the sun out there. Where's your coffin?
    Louis: You're standing in it.
  • Also averted with Armand in 2022 because he's a Daywalking Vampire thanks to his advanced age. The Season 2 Special Preview affirms that he and Louis sleep in a bed.
  • In the extended Season 2 trailer, the Théâtre des Vampires coven rest in coffins.
• Vampiric Draining: Vampires sustain themselves by exsanguinating humans, or animals if they're a vegetarian, although the latter option isn't healthy because it's subsistence living.
• Vegetarian Vampire: By 2022, Louis has become one, only feeding on animals, donor blood, or volunteers like Damek and Rashid. He claims not to have killed any human since 2000. Louis also had a stint of vegetarianism from 1917 to 1937 where he limited his diet to animal blood (the one blip during this time period is when he drained Alderman Fenwick to death, a racist Asshole Victim). However, it ended when Lestat and Claudia convinced him to resume eating humans after they criticized Louis for his air of superiority for being a vegetarian. In the Season 2 First Look Scene, Louis was a part-time vegetarian by the time he arrived in Paris in the 1940s because he explained to Armand that "I feast human every other night."
• Vice City: Louis and Daniel discuss how New Orleans in the 1910s was the perfect home for a vampire; it was a port city which boasted a very exciting nightlife, and since most people were expected to spend the day sleeping off the previous evening's entertainment/damage, no one questioned someone like Lestat (and later Louis) only socializing at night. Lestat also notes "the laissez-faire attitude of the local police force," meaning law enforcement is rather lax.
• Villain Love Song: Daniel Hart's "Come to Me" was sung by Sam Reid, and it's Lestat's love song for Louis. Lestat had composed it as a Valentine's Day present and an Apology Gift for his boyfriend, whom he's trying to win back after assaulting him.
  Come to me
  And let my ever-loving arms surround you
  Come to me
  And let my infinite embrace confound you
  We'll mourn each other
  Like star-crossed lovers
  Your Pelléas, my Mélisande
  Oh, come to me
  Come to me
  
  Come to me
  I get intoxicated by the very air of you
  Come to me
  I'm so infatuated with the grand affair of you
  We'll ruin each other
  Like star-crossed lovers
  Your Pelléas, my Mélisande
  Oh, come to me
  Come to me
  Come to me
  Come to me
• Villainous Face Hold:
  • In the climax of episode 5, after raining blows on Louis and dragging him across the floor, Lestat roughly grasps his boyfriend's swollen, bloody face as he forces him to stand up. Lestat's clasp remains tight when he makes Louis look at him, then at Claudia, and back to him before he bites Louis' neck. Because the taste of Louis' blood is intensely Hemo Erotic for Lestat, this is a vampiric form of marital rape, so Lestat's hand clutching Louis' cheeks and chin magnifies the disconcerting intimacy of this heinous act.
  • Near the beginning of episode 7, Lestat briefly holds the face of an encyclopedia salesman he has kidnapped and restrained while taunting his victim with "Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk. There's three of us you must provide for tonight."
  • Shortly afterwards, Lestat performs the same gesture on the man with blood cancer just before he bites his neck and then snaps it.
• Visual Pun:
  • In the pilot, Lestat succeeds in seducing Louis and sweeps his lover off his feet... literally.
  • The Season 2 promo "Portrait of a Former Flame" features a painting of Lestat (who is Louis' ex-boyfriend) engulfed in flames.
• Voluntary Vampire Victim:
  • Damek permits Louis to drink his blood directly from his neck.
  • Rashid willingly submits to receiving a Kiss of the Vampire from Louis. Rashid even stuffs himself with honey and pineapple for days before offering himself to his boss in order to make his blood taste sweeter.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot:
  • In the Season 1 finale, the MacPhail twin who was poisoned by Claudia pukes as Louis corners him and his brother.
  • Later, Lestat retches up blood twice as the paralyzing brew of laudanum and arsenic (which he had ingested by consuming Tom Anderson's tainted blood) courses through his veins.
• Voodoo Doll: In the sixth and seventh episodes, some of the locals leave behind voodoo dolls at the center of a circle of brick dust in front of the doorstep of the vampire family's townhouse to curse them, believing that its residents are demons because they haven't aged in decades.
• Waistcoat of Style: In the early 20th century, it was standard practice for men to don vests with their suits, and the ones worn by Louis and Lestat (who are Sharp-Dressed Men who appreciate fashion) are especially dashing.
• Weakened by the Light: Most vampires (with the exception of those who are ancient like Armand) can only stand in direct sunlight for a few seconds before their flesh starts to char and crumble. Louis gets around this in Dubai by having specially shielded windows for his penthouse, and in 1910s New Orleans, he and Lestat have the excuse of being expected to do their business at night rather than during the day.
• Wham Line: At the end of the Season 2 SDCC trailer, Claudia asks Armand about the identity of the portrait that hangs on the wall of the Théâtre des Vampires ("Who's that handsome man on the wall?"), and Armand answers "Our co-founder, Lestat de Lioncourt," which is a shocking revelation to viewers who haven't read the books.
• While Rome Burns: In the Season 2 First Look Scene, Armand and Louis are casually flirting while there's carnage and property destruction nearby. It was Armand who unleashed his coven of vampires on the de la Croix family and their guests, and since he doesn't partake in the feeding frenzy (his reply to a curious Louis is "I am now where I most want to be"), it seems Armand selected the large estate as a hunting site to distract his coven and Claudia so that he can have some private time with his new Love Interest.
• White Male Lead: Averted in the series because Louis, the lead character, is a black Creole instead of a white Creole like in the novel.
• White Shirt of Death: Subverted Trope when it involves vampires dressed in white.
  • In the second episode, Louis ruins his swanky white suit when he murders Mr. Carlo for uttering offensive and racist "compliments"; this results in the latter's blood being smeared all over the front of his outfit.
  • In the climax of the Season 1 finale, Lestat, Louis and Claudia's elegant white costumes are splattered with the blood of their human victims at the after-party feast.
• Wicked Cultured: Lestat is a ruthless vampire who's very passionate about fine clothing and the opera, he's also a musician and a composer, plus he's multilingual (he speaks French, English, and Italian). Subverted in episode 5 when Louis (a Bookworm) accuses Lestat of just reading the first ten pages of every book so he can appear to be cultured.
  Louis: (while reading a novel) Flaubert's style is so dense. The absence of metaphor is so striking.
  Lestat: (scoffs) You sound like every pompous Sorbonne student I've ever eaten.
  Louis: (stops reading to look directly at Lestat) Should I do like you instead? Read the first 10 pages of every book, pass myself off as cultured? Use my middling command of literary canon to impress some hapless human I'm gonna kill in a few hours anyway.
• Wipe the Floor with You:
  • In the climax of the first episode, after Father Matthias is attacked by Lestat, there's a trail of blood which leads from the confession booth to the pews, so the latter had dragged the former across the church's floor before lacerating his prey's neck with his vampire fangs.
  • In the fifth episode, after Lestat bashes Louis against the walls of their house like a rag doll, his vampire fingernails pierce the underside of his boyfriend's chin like hooks, and then he drags the gravely injured Louis across the floor, which leaves behind a long trail of blood.
• Wolverine Publicity:
  • The ABC ^note the Australian network, not the American one TV & iview Season 1 trailer lists Sam Reid's name first before Jacob Anderson's even though the latter has top billing because Reid is more famous in his native Australia than Anderson due to starring in The Newsreader, the ABC's most-watched drama program in 2021 which won the AACTA Award for Best Television Drama Series. Furthermore, Reid's character Lestat precedes Louis in the network's Season 1 characters teaser.
  • In one of the four Season 2 posters,◊ a close-up of Sam Reid's face takes up most of the space while Jacob Anderson is fairly small in comparison.
• Writers Cannot Do Math:
  • In episode 2, Lestat asserts in 1916 that "I have two centuries walked this Earth," but he was born in 1760, so he has been alive/undead for just over a century and a half.
  • In episode 4, during January 1923 ^note episode 5 lists Florence's date of death as January 19, 1923, Claudia is mistaken about her own age because she claims in her journal entry that she's 18 years old when she's in fact 19 (her birth year is 1903) and will become 20 later.
  • In episode 6, on Valentine's Day 1937, Louis reminds Lestat that Claudia is "coming up on 33." This is wrong because Claudia was born in 1903, so she's already 33 years old in this scene, and she'll turn 34 later in the year. Louis should've said "She's coming up on 34."
  • Episode 5 establishes that Louis was born on Oct. 4, 1877 (that's the date engraved on the family tombstone that Grace had added below their mother's name), which is accurate because his transition into a vampire occurred in late 1910 at age 33. However, the screenwriters forgot this two episodes later because Louis states that he was born in 1878 and is 61 years old on Feb. 6, 1940 when he should be 62, and Daniel later mentions that Louis is 144 years old in June 2022, which matches with the Oct. 4, 1877 birthday.
  • In episode 7, while remembering events from the autumn of 1939, Louis tells Daniel that Lestat was "148 years the blood-drinker." This number is incorrect because Lestat received the Dark Gift in 1794, so he had been a vampire for 145 years.
• Zero-G Spot:
  • Lestat and Louis have sex in the pilot while the pair are floating vertically just above the ground. Louis doesn't quite put 2 and 2 together and realize Lestat has flying powers in general, and is later surprised by this.
  • There's a brief moment in the sixth episode where Lestat and Louis levitate horizontally over their bed during lovemaking.
• Zombify the Living: The series features the vampirism variety where the transition from living to undead occurs while the person is on the threshold of death, and is therefore technically still alive (albeit barely). The show's Louis doesn't lose consciousness after he consumes Lestat's vampire blood, unlike in the 1994 movie where that incarnation of Louis actually dies and temporarily becomes an inert corpse before waking up as a vampire. Louis details in episode 2 how it felt for his human body to adapt to vampirism:
  Louis: (in 2022 narrating to Daniel) Bliss was merely a stage in my transformation. Pain followed, a seizing and unrelenting pain, through which I would pass before my apprenticeship began.
  Louis: (in 1910 while struggling to walk) What's happening?!
  Lestat: Your body is confused. Your lungs feel like water, your heart, fire. You feel as if you're dying, because you are.
  (Louis vomits)
  Lestat: And then there's the retching.

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