Series / Interview with the Vampire (2022)

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Who wants to live forever?

"Fifty years later, you talk like he was your soul mate, like you were locked in some fucked up gothic romance."

— Daniel Molloy

Interview with the Vampire is a Gothic Horror-Queer Romance television series which premiered on Oct. 2, 2022 on AMC ^note although subscribers of the AMC+ streaming service could watch the pilot three days early. It is an adaptation of The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice.

In the summer of 2022, dying journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) is summoned to a penthouse apartment in Dubai, where he is reunited with Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson), an immortal vampire that he tried to interview 49 years earlier, with limited success. Now Louis is offering him another interview, recounting the full story of how he was seduced and turned by the French vampire Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), and of their complicated romantic relationship.

Along with Mayfair Witches, the show is part of what AMC is promoting as the Immortal Universe.

Although Season 2's principal photography was disrupted on July 13, 2023 due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, it was announced on Aug. 31 that AMC had made interim agreements with the union specifically for three of its shows (including IWTV). Filming resumed in Prague on Oct. 2 (the production also shot in Paris during the first half of November) and the European segment was completed on Nov. 27.◊ The New Orleans portion wrapped up on Dec. 8.◊ Season 2 will air on May 12, 2024.

On Apr. 17, 2023, AMC announced a short-form Spin-Off series entitled◊ Night Island which is based on the Interview with the Vampire and The Queen of the Damned novels. The official synopsis describes the island as a secret vacation hideaway for the undead that is owned by a reclusive young billionaire known only as "Armand."◊

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This series contains examples of:

#-D

• The '40s: Most of the past events in the Season 1 finale take place in 1940. The Paris scenes in Season 2 are also set in this decade.
• The '70s: One scene in the sixth episode is set in 1973. A behind-the-scenes snapshot from Season 2 posted on the official Immortal AMC Twitter account confirms that it will continue Louis and Daniel's first interview storyline in this decade.◊ Luke Brandon Field (who portrays the young Daniel) appears in the first 20-second Season 2 TV spot and the extended trailer.
• Absurdly Sharp Claws: Vampires have razor-sharp fingernails that serve as claws, and they use them to mutilate their human prey.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Lestat's father had beaten and starved him simply because he had studied religion at a monastery and wanted to become a priest.
  • Claudia mentions in her journal that her "mean old auntie" (who was her legal guardian because Claudia's mother had died in childbirth and her father had abandoned her) had beaten her.
  • Although Lestat seems fond of Claudia at first, it becomes clear that he mainly sees her as a means to an end to keep Louis by his side, and when she no longer fulfills this purpose, he doesn't feel much responsibility towards her. After the incident with Charlie in episode 4, he's through playing "Uncle Les" and doesn't hide his disdain for her, being physically rough with her and outright calling her "a mistake." In episode 6, he threatens to kill her if she runs away from home again, and in episode 7, he plans to murder her so that Lestat has no more competition for Louis' affection.
  • Louis doesn't harm Claudia for the most part, but there is one notable exception: in the Season 1 finale, he slams her against the armoire while tightly grasping her neck — which is identical to what Lestat did to her in the fifth episode.
• Adaptational Diversity:
  • In the books, Louis was white and born in France in 1766. In the show, he is a black man born in New Orleans in 1877. The TV version also makes him explicitly gay, whereas the character in the source material had feelings for a woman named Babette Freniere.
  • Claudia also becomes a black girl, while she was white originally.
  • In the novels, Armand was Caucasian and an Eastern Orthodox Christian, while his TV counterpart is Muslim and played by an actor of Bangladeshi descent. The character's exact ethnicity is not specified in Season 1, although there's a hint that he might be a Crimean Tatar.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • In the Interview with the Vampire novel, Armand's role starts in the second-half of the story, but in the TV adaptation, his opening scene is in the pilot (albeit in Human Disguise as Rashid).
  • Dr. Fareed Bhansali first appears in Prince Lestat, the eleventh installment of The Vampire Chronicles. On the show, he's introduced in episode 6, which isn't yet halfway through IWTV, the first book of the series.
  • The casting of Joseph Potter as Nicolas in Season 2 (which covers the second-half of the first novel) means that the TV character's debut is half of a book earlier than expected. His literary counterpart's sole appearance is in The Vampire Lestat, the second installment.
• Adaptational Job Change:
  • In the novel, Louis was an indigo plantation (and slave) owner, but his TV iteration was a pimp who owned several brothels and gambling dens before City Ordinance 4118 closed down Storyville.
  • The original Antoine is a musician (specifically a pianist and violinist) and composer, whereas the Gender Flipped Antoinette is a lounge singer who doesn't play any instruments or write music.
  • Although Dr. Fareed Bhansali is a medical doctor in both the books and the show, working as the personal physician to the deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates (and his other client definitely isn't the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac) is unique to the TV character.
  • In the source material, Madeleine is a dollmaker, whereas her TV counterpart is a dressmaker.
• Adaptational Location Change:
  • In the Interview with the Vampire novel, Lestat transforms Louis into a vampire at the latter's indigo plantation outside of New Orleans, but in the TV series, this event takes place in the city proper at St. Augustine Church.
  • The book version has Louis and Claudia dump Lestat's body into a swamp at the bayou, whereas on the show, the latter ends up in a landfill outside of New Orleans where he eats rats instead of alligators to survive.
• Adaptational Nationality:
  • In the novel, Louis was born in France and later moved to the French colony of Louisiana, and when he was turned into a vampire in 1791, it was still under French rule, so he had spent his whole human lifespan as a French citizen. In the TV adaptation, Louis is an American who was born in New Orleans in 1877.
  • The show's Antoinette Brown, the Gender Flip of her book counterpart Antoine, is American instead of French.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • Because of the change to Louis' ethnicity on the show, he has brown eyes as a human, but as a nod to his book counterpart, his irises become green after his transition into a vampire.
  • The raven-haired Antoine from the books has been Gender Flipped into a blonde Antoinette for the TV adaptation.
  • Also as a consequence of Race Lift, Claudia is a brunette with brown eyes (although they gain a reddish-orange hue after she's turned) instead of a blonde with blue irises like in the novel.
  • The original Daniel is described as having ashen blond hair and violet irises, while the show's version is green-eyed and the 1973 Flashback reveals that he was a brunet when he was younger.
  • In the source material, Armand has auburn curls and dark brown eyes, whereas the TV iteration has black curls and orange irises as a vampire.
  • In the book, Santiago has black eyes, whereas the TV character has bright lime green irises.
  • The literary Madeleine is violet-eyed while her TV incarnation possesses hazel irises.
• Adaptation Expansion: This version of the story takes advantage of material from subsequent books in The Vampire Chronicles, and also adds some backstory for Daniel and how he met Louis.
• Adapted Out: Babette Freniere, a character from the Interview with the Vampire novel, has been excised from the TV series. The only detail that survives is her surname, which was transferred to Levi, Grace's husband.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head:
  • In the second episode, after Louis joins Lestat in feeding on the blood of the tenor, Lestat tenderly holds Louis' head as a gesture of intimacy.
  • In the sixth episode, Lestat delicately runs the tips of his fingers along the top of Louis' hair as they nestle together in the latter's coffin. Because Lestat nearly killed Louis in the previous episode, he's attempting to prove to his boyfriend that he can be gentle and caring.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • In the second episode, we learn that Lestat's nickname for Louis is "Saint Louis," which is a Call-Back to the first episode where Lestat explains that he originally intended to start a new life for himself in St. Louis, but ended up staying in New Orleans because he experienced Love at First Sight when he saw Louis. He also calls Louis "mon cher" ^note the masculine form for "my dear" in French multiple times, and once Claudia joins their family, he calls her by various pet names like "ma petite" ^note the literal translation is "my little one" (feminine form), although it can used as the equivalent of "my sweetheart" and "ma chérie" ^note the feminine form of "my darling". Furthermore, in a 5-second Season 2 TV spot, the hallucination of Lestat greets Louis with "Bonjour mon amour" ^note "Hello, my love", and because this manifestation of his ex-lover is based on Louis' subconscious, it suggests that Lestat had referred to him as "mon amour" when they were together.
  • Louis likes to call Daniel "boy" because the latter is much younger than he is, and Daniel was a 20-year-old Pretty Boy when they first met at Polynesian Mary's in 1973, with his youth being appealing to Louis, who started flirting with him shortly after Daniel entered the bar. Louis came up with it ("Get the boy whatever he wants") after Daniel rejected his initial attempt to use his diminutive "Danny" like the bartender does, and Daniel accepted being addressed in this manner. However, when they see each other again in 2022, Daniel is 69 years old, and he's offended ("I'm not your fucking boy") when Louis mentions the old nickname ("I think it best we start when our boy's had a rest"). Although Louis is careful not to bring it up again when Daniel is awake, he can't resist saying it after his guest falls asleep ("I think the medication has overwhelmed our boy"), and he means it fondly because he requests that Rashid fetch a blanket to keep Daniel "warm with his dreaming."
• Age-Gap Romance:
  • Related to the Setting Update. In the novel, Lestat was born in 1760 and Louis in 1766, giving them a 6-year age gap, and they met in 1791. In the show, Louis is born in 1877, they meet in 1910... but Lestat was still born in 1760, giving them a 117-year difference. Vampires get Stronger with Age, so this means Lestat is much more powerful than Louis.
  • Lestat's mistress Antoinette (who becomes a vampire by the sixth episode) is roughly a decade younger than Louis (she seems to be about 30 years old in 1917), so the age gap between her and Lestat is even greater than the one between Louis and Lestat. The original Antoine is 82 years Lestat's junior.
  • The age difference between the show's Armand (who was born in 1508) and Louis is 369 years, which is an even larger gap than in the books (286 years).
• Age Lift:
  • Louis is 111 years younger on the show than in the novel; he was born in 1877 instead of 1766.
  • In the TV adaptation, Antoinette appears to be around 30 in 1917, so her birth year is in the late 1800s. Antoine was born in 1842 in the source material.
  • The original Claudia was born in 1789, but her TV counterpart is 114 years her junior, being born in 1903.
  • In the books, Dr. Fareed Bhansali was an adult when he received the Dark Gift in 1986, whereas his TV iteration is in his mid-to-late 30s in 2022, so the latter was born in the mid-1980s.
  • In the series, Armand is 28 years younger than the book character, as his birth year is 1508 instead of 1480.
• All Gays Love Theater:
  • The bisexual Lestat is a big fan of the opera, and he often takes his gay boyfriend Louis on dates to watch live performances. They've seen at least one play off-screen, which is A Doll's House ("They'll seat us late, and we'll miss Nora's entrance with the Christmas tree"). Lestat also used to socialize with the Women's Opera Society. The Season 2 SDCC trailer reveals that he was the co-founder of the Théâtre des Vampires, plus two other trailers show that he was a Performance Artist during the late 18th century.◊
  • Louis enjoys the theatre, but in episode 1, he acted dismissively and disinterested about it to his family when Lestat brings up that they attended Iolanta together — to a brief surprised expression from Lestat. Louis was firmly closeted and in denial at the time, and is deliberately trying to avoid this trope's implications. Louis and Lestat discuss it after the dinner.
    Louis: You sayin' I got shame?
    Lestat: The lie you told about leaving the opera house early. You were near weeping when the curtain fell. Why hide that from your family?
    Louis: Don't everybody need to know what I do.
    Lestat: Dishonesty breeds dishonesty.
    Louis: They sit in judgment. Paul is the only one to say it to my face, but I know my ma and Grace think it, too.
  • At the end of Season 1, the queer Armand (who hasn't explicitly identified his sexuality in Season 1, but he and Louis are in a same-sex relationship) lets Daniel know that he was once part of the Théâtre des Vampires. Armand's Season 1 promotional image features the sock and buskin (otherwise known as the comedy and tragedy masks) to showcase that he was acting as Louis' human servant in front of Daniel, when Armand is actually an ancient vampire who is far more powerful than Louis.
• All Take and No Give: Louis and Lestat's relationship overwhelmingly takes place on Lestat's terms. Louis turns into a vampire for Lestat, losing his life and his ties with his family. He moves into Lestat's house. He disengages from his Catholic faith. He tries to be a vampire after Lestat's model despite having a private distaste for it. The closest thing to a counter-example is the decision to adopt Claudia — something Louis wanted and Lestat did not. But even then, the impetus for it to actually happen — Lestat doing the turning — happened per Lestat's decision. Lestat would claim that even with all of Louis's sacrifices, he still ultimately suffered more in the relationship because he loved Louis more than he was loved in return.
• Always Identical Twins: Grace's two daughters and the MacPhail brothers are identical twins, and both pairs of siblings wear matching outfits to further accentuate their sameness.
• Ambiguously Human: In the fourth episode, Rashid says some odd things that could hint to being older than the young man seems, including "electronic mailbox" (the term "e-mail" was coined by CompuServe in 1981) and "Dubai is a child" (Dubai was founded in 1833). Daniel's notes even catch and comment on Rashid's strange choice of words. In the 1973 scene of the sixth episode, Rashid appears the same as he does in 2022, so he's definitely not a regular human. The Season 1 finale affirms that he's a 514-year-old vampire named Armand.
• Ambiguous Situation: Louis has always suspected that Lestat had a role in Paul's suicide. (Before he died, Paul did divulge to Louis that "...[Lestat is] the Devil. He's here to take souls. He told me so. He spoke to me without moving his lips.") Although Lestat vehemently denies any involvement, he's manipulative and dishonest whenever it suits him, so the jury is still out on whether he's guilty or not.
  Louis: Did you have anything to do with Paul's death?
  Lestat: No. I would never hurt your brother.
  Louis: It's just something I always—
  Lestat: Never, Louis.
• Anachronic Order: The story constantly jumps back and forth between the past and the present.
• And Starring: The end credits have "And Eric Bogosian."
• Animated Credits Opening: The Season 1 title sequence is a computer-generated animation which features the black silhouette of two cityscapes against a sunset-red sky: the top upside-down one is New Orleans (temporarily changed to San Francisco for episode 6) while the bottom right-side up one is Dubai. As the cityscapes move away from each other, the tallest buildings vaguely resemble vampire fangs.
• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: In a Santiago-centric TV spot, he teaches Claudia that one of the vampire laws is "No vampire may ever destroy another vampire."
• Appliance Defenestration:
  • In the Season 2 First Look Scene, on the upper floor of the de la Croix mansion, a chair is thrown at a closed window (presumably by a vampire while attacking a human) and the glass shatters on impact.
  • In the Season 2 trailer, Madeleine hurls a flat-iron at her store window after a swastika is spray-painted on it.
• Art Deco: After Louis buys the Fairplay Saloon and rebrands it as the Azalea, he updates the décor to art deco style with flashy, geometric patterns, which includes the design of the front entrance◊ and the pillars.◊
• Art Nouveau: Most of the furnishing in Lestat's townhouse is in the art nouveau style with flowing, naturalistic flourishes, such as the intricate Victorian wallpapers, the light fixtures, the fireplaces, the capitals on the columns, the bed, the bedroom lamps, and the nightstands.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Louis feeds on the racist Mr. Carlo (Alderman Fenwick's assistant), which results in the latter's death, after Carlo subjects Louis to an extremely condescending case of You Are a Credit to Your Race.
  • Louis slaughters and consumes the blood of the bigoted Fenwick mostly for approving laws that destroy colored businesses in Storyville, but also for his racially prejudiced opinions on Louis.
  • Tom Anderson is homophobic because he refers to Louis and Lestat as "you and your fag pederast," plus he mockingly guffaws at them when they kiss at the Mardi Gras ball. Lestat gleefully murders Tom during the after-party feast.
  • In the Season 2 First Look Scene, Armand decides to put the de la Croix family and their guests on the menu for his hungry vampire coven because they were war profiteers during World War II, becoming prosperous dealing in the black market while the rest of their countrymen were barely surviving on ration cards. What ensues is a massacre on the de la Croix estate, and presumably no humans are left alive.
• At the Opera Tonight:
  • The first opera Louis and Lestat attend together is Iolanta. Louis is so dazzled by the performance that he was "near weeping when the curtain fell," while Lestat prefers to study the gorgeous facial features of his Love Interest despite being an opera aficionado.
  • The couple later see Don Pasquale at a more upscale, formal venue (they dress in tuxedos instead of suits) and Lestat pays for a private box, but the big downside is that black people are barred from entering unless they're a servant of a white person, so Louis must pose as Lestat's valet. Although they were impressed by the soprano Sofia Consoli, their date was marred by the tenor who portrays Ernesto, whose singing was out of tune throughout the show. Lestat decides to punish the tenor by making a meal out of him.
• Audience Surrogate: Daniel is a stand-in for the audience whenever he brings up the fact that Louis is an Unreliable Narrator (the latter even acknowledges "And you can imagine what time's inevitable hammer does to the minute details"). Daniel has doubts about the veracity of Louis' second account in 2022 because it's so dissimilar to the first interview in 1973, so viewers must also ponder if Louis is indeed painting a "more nuanced portrait" of the past, if he is being deliberately dishonest and editorializing as accused, or if the additional 49 years have further muddled his memory.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • In the first episode, Grace is so sick and tired of Louis and Paul's daily arguments at the breakfast table that she wishes she could have a quiet breakfast. She gets exactly that in the worst way possible because both of her brothers die by the end of the climax — Paul to suicide, Louis to vampirism. Being an undead vampire means that Louis can never join Grace for breakfast ever again because sunlight would destroy him.
  • In the fifth episode, Claudia wants to find other vampires and experience a romantic relationship. Unfortunately for her, the first vampire she meets aside Louis and Lestat is a creepy, violent stalker named Bruce who takes full advantage of the fact that she is, in Lestat's words, "built like a bird."
• Beneath the Mask:
  • Because Louis is a gay African American in 1910, he has to put on a different façade depending on whom he's interacting with, and having to do this on a daily basis is detrimental to his mental health. Lestat is infuriated that Louis is whittling himself away by pretending to be something he's not.
    Lestat: This primitive country has picked you clean. It has shackled you in permanent exile. Every room you enter, every hat you are forced to wear — the stern landlord, the deferential businessman, the loyal son — all these roles you conform to and none of them your true nature. What rage you must feel as you choke on your sorrow.
  • Towards the end of the honeymoon phase of their relationship, Louis was concealing from Lestat the full extent of how uncomfortable he was with vampirism.
    Louis: And I was still very much under [Lestat]'s power. We would drain the tenor for hours that night. Lestat completely enthralled. Myself, pretending to be. Afraid to disappoint. Lestat was wrong. I was never going to be a natural. I was never going to savor the aftertaste. I was a shame-ridden second, a... a fumbling, despondent killer, a botched vampire.
• Beta Couple: It's unveiled in the Season 1 finale that Louis and Armand are lovers in 2022, and according to the extended Season 2 trailer, they've been a couple for 77 years.
• Betty and Veronica: For Lestat (the "Archie"), the black-haired, dependable Louis is the "Betty" (he's basically a "Househusband" — as much as a man can be in the early 20th century in a same-sex relationship — who's happy to raise their vampire daughter Claudia, although his brooding can put a damper on Lestat's enthusiasm) while the blonde, sultry Antoinette is the "Veronica" (Lestat deems her as the fun one because "You're like me, you like to laugh"). Lestat wants to have his cake and eat it, too, so there's no reason for him to choose between them, so he cohabits with his boyfriend at his townhouse, and retains Antoinette as his mistress, whom he visits when things are difficult at home. In the Season 1 finale, Lestat decides to elevate Antoinette (who has been his lover for 23 years and is now a vampire) to his second wife while Louis will be his male Top Wife in a Vampire's Harem. Even in this scenario, Louis is marginally the "winner" because Lestat loves him a lot more than Antoinette, but Louis certainly doesn't feel like he has won because he despises his romantic rival and wishes she was dead. Louis was already conspiring with Claudia to murder Lestat for his Domestic Abuse, so the latter imposing this outrageous new family arrangement makes it even more unbearable for Louis, so to be free from Lestat's control and to protect Claudia's life (Lestat plans to do away with her to make room for Antoinette), the "Betty" kills both the "Archie" and the "Veronica."
• Big Bad: Lestat is the main villain of Season 1. He's a Domestic Abuser and an Abusive Parent, and by episode 7, his lover/vampire son Louis and his vampire daughter Claudia are captives in his Gilded Cage.
• The Big Easy: In Season 1, almost all of the Flashbacks (with the exception of the Ponchatoula hotel and the San Francisco gay bar) take place in New Orleans. In the early 20th century, it was a Vice City with brothels and gambling dens. Jackson Square is featured prominently, gumbo is served for dinner at the de Pointe du Lac mansion, Lestat's townhouse is located in the French Quarter, there's a jazz funeral, a couple of scenes are set in the bayou, and of course, there is a Mardi Gras ball. It's an ideal place for a vampire, according to Lestat.
  Lestat: The life of a vampire has its challenges and its rewards, but I think New Orléans, with its music, culture, cuisine, shipping yards, conventioneers, thrill-seeking tourists far-flung from their homes, the laissez-faire attitude of the local police force... (chuckles) Oh, yes, the perfect setting for a vampire home, a vampire romance.
• Bilingual Bonus: The following are translations of non-English words/lines of dialogue where Reality Has No Subtitles (or the on-screen caption is misspelled, mistranslated, or isn't in English).
  • In the pilot, Louis threatens Paul with "I'll bleed ya like a cochon ^note misspelled as "kochon" in the official English subtitles," which is French for "pig."
  • In the second episode, after Louis says "Fuck you" to Lestat, the Frenchman's reply is "Va te faire foutre aussi!", which means "Go fuck yourself, too!"
  • Damek asks Daniel in Russian, "So, are you new to Dubai? Been here before?"
  • In the fourth episode, Louis pleads with Lestat to turn a dying Claudia into a vampire because "She's only a kid," and Lestat utters, "C'est impossible. Elle est trop jeune." ("It's impossible. She is too young.")
  • Rashid ends his Muslim prayer with "Asr namozi," which is Uzbek for "Afternoon prayer."
  • Lestat curses "Putain de merde" ("Fucking hell") while teaching a reckless Claudia how to drive.
  • Near the beginning of episode 5, Lestat speaks a few French words that aren't translated into English.
    • "Bon." ("Well.")
    • "Ça suffit!" ^note The "Ça" is misspelled as "Ca" in the official English-language subtitles. ("That's enough!")
    • "Voilà, comme j'ai dit." ^note The "j'ai" (used for past tense) is incorrectly listed as "je" (used for present tense) in the official English-language subtitles, and Lestat clearly says "j'ai" (not to mention that "dit" is the past tense conjugation). ("There, like I said.")
  • Later, Lestat is so fed up with Louis harping about Claudia that he cusses, "Bordel de merde. Il me chie dans la malle jusqu'au cadenas!" ^note The expression is normally "Il a chié dans ma malle jusqu'au cadenas!", but this old-fashioned phrase had already fallen into disuse by the turn of the 20th century, so it seems that Lestat has put a slightly different spin on it. ("For fuck's sake. He shits me in the trunk up to the padlock!")
  • In the sixth episode, Louis and Dr. Fareed Bhansali exchange their farewells in Hindi, which translates as:
    Louis: Goodbye, Dr. Bhansali.
    Bhansali: Until we call again.
  • It's extremely difficult to discern Lestat's explosive rant because his voice is drowned out by the radio at maximum volume, so this is the best guess: "Comme enfant, comme adulte, comme toujours, c'est de ta faute, Louis! C'est le résultat du compromis!" ("As a child, as an adult, as always, it's your fault, Louis! This is the result of compromise!")
  • Rashid's Latin phrase is "Trubidis rebus ad infinitum." ("With things that are noisy to infinity.")
  • In the Season 1 finale, just before Louis slices Lestat's throat, the latter tells his beloved, "I'm happy it was you, here with me... à la fin." ("at the end.")
  • In the Season 2 First Look Scene, "We own dominion" is not the correct translation of Armand's "Elle est à nous la propriété." What he said was, "The property is ours."
• Bisexual Love Triangle: Lestat is bisexual and he has both a husband-in-all-but-name and a mistress. He's happy to keep both of them, so conflict arises between Louis and Antoinette, who are jealous of each other. Louis wants Lestat to kill Antoinette, while she hopes that Lestat will abandon Louis and go with her to another city. Lestat does neither because he only cares about his own selfish desires. In the Season 1 finale, Lestat decides to form his own Vampire's Harem by upgrading Antoinette (who is now a vampire) to his second wife and Louis has the dubious privilege of being his Gender-Inverted Top Wife. Antoinette is amenable to this new arrangement because she'll get to live with Lestat and become a member of his family, but this is an even worse hell for Louis, who is already tormented by Lestat's oppressive Domestic Abuse and is trapped in a Gilded Cage. Desperate to escape from Lestat's tyranny, Louis murders both his lover and Antoinette.
• Blatant Lies: Has its own page.
• Bookworm:
  • Louis often reads books, which is his sole pastime. When he's severely depressed in the fifth episode, reading is his only source of comfort because he buries himself (both literally and figuratively) in French literature. By 2022, he has followed Daniel's journalistic career for the past 49 years, which includes reading the latter's autobiography.
  • As a fledgling vampire, Claudia loves reading so much that she sometimes "talks to books" (i.e. writes in her diary) because she regards them as her friends. When she's older, she travels to numerous university libraries for seven years to do extensive research on the origin of vampires. In the sixth episode, she studies the European cities that she plans to visit while in her coffin.
• Boy Meets Ghoul:
  • Lestat, a handsome vampire, falls madly in love with Louis, a human, and the former courts the latter for a few months before they share their First Kiss and Their First Time. A few weeks later, Lestat proclaims his love for Louis and he proposes that they enter a Common Law Marriage of Eternal Love. Louis expresses his assent by kissing Lestat, their Official Kiss being their final intimate act before Lestat turns Louis into a vampire.
  • The cute vampire Claudia becomes enamoured with a young mortal man named Charlie. He gives her a bouquet of chrysanthemums, they eat ice cream sundaes on their first (and only) date, and then they canoodle in his carriage. Their romance is short-lived because Claudia has a voracious appetite and never learned moderation, so she consumes all of Charlie's blood until he dies.
• Bridal Carry:
  • In the second episode, a same-sex variation occurs when Lestat carries an injured Louis bridal-style up the stairs of what is now their home (the townhouse is owned by Lestat, but Louis becomes its second resident after Lestat transforms him into a vampire). The bridal carry obviously symbolizes that they're essentially married, as much as two men can be in 1910.
  • In the Season 2 trailer, Lestat carries a dead man in this manner during the late 18th century.
• British Brevity: Season 1 consists of a mere seven episodes, while Season 2 is planned to contain eight.
• But Not Too Gay: Downplayed Trope. Although the story is a Queer Romance and the Official Couple Louis and Lestat share two sex scenes while naked in Season 1, they're far fewer in number, shorter in length and tamer than the heterosexual sex scenes in the other AMC Immortal Universe show Mayfair Witches. In the latter, there's thrusting when Rowan is having sexual intercourse with her male lovers, but there's no thrusting with Louis and Lestat, so the penetration during anal sex is merely implied. It's very plain when comparing the two series that the bigwigs at AMC are far less comfortable with depicting sex between two men than between a woman and a man.
• Call a Human a "Meatbag":
  • The vampire Lestat's designation for humans is "the meat" because he hunts them every night, so naturally he views them as his "savory inferiors." He also compares human prey to red wine grapes (he occasionally serves human blood in wine glasses), and his descriptions of them are meat-like:
    Lestat: A young Tempranillo, fleshy and tart. A Primitivo, hints of iron, rather plain otherwise. A pair of oak-aged Cabernet [Sauvignon], thick-skinned and chewy.
  • After draining Father Matthias to death, Lestat belittles him as a mere "pig vessel."
  • Lestat dubs the human thief that he has incapacitated in an alleyway as a "criminal biscuit."
  • As a young fledgling vampire, Claudia refers to human blood as "kill juice" with her Uncle Les' encouragement, and she notes that "You suck 'em like frog legs."
• Calling Parents by Their Name: Starting from the final scene of the fifth episode, Claudia addresses Louis only by his given name instead of "Daddy Lou" because she wants to be treated like his sister (and they are technically vampire siblings because Lestat is their maker) instead of his daughter. However, it's Zig-Zagged when she interacts with Lestat because she switches between using his name and "Uncle Les."
• Camera Abuse:
  • In the pilot, Lestat pounces on a lamplighter and his prey's blood splashes on the camera below.
  • Later during the climax, after Lestat murders a priest by punching right through the latter's head at high speed, some of his victim's blood and brain matter land on the camera lens.
  • In the Season 1 finale, as Claudia raises her head after she's done feeding, some of the dead man's blood hits the right side of the screen.
• Canon Foreigner: Season 1 characters that are unique to the TV adaptation include Finn O'Shea, Doris, Alderman Fenwick, Bricktop Williams, Father Matthias, Miss Carol, Tom Anderson, Jelly Roll Morton, Lily, Levi Freniere, Mr. Carlo, Damek, Jonah Macon, Charlie, Chief Bardeen, and Deputy Habersham.
• Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them:
  • In episode 2, Lestat tells Louis that he's very difficult to live with and it drives him nuts, but he wouldn't change a single thing about his lover.
    Lestat: No one as angry, as stubborn, as unaccommodating, as maddening—
    Louis: Sound like trash to me.
    Lestat: As loving, as dedicated, as thoughtful, as imperfectly perfect as you've become. You're a challenge every sunset, Saint Louis, and I'd have it no other way.
  • In episode 6, Louis ultimately takes Lestat back six years after the latter savagely attacked him, acknowledging that despite the pain his boyfriend had caused him, their "vampire bond" is difficult to break. In episode 7, Louis lampshades his love-hate relationship with Lestat:
    Louis: I wanted him dead. I wanted him all to myself.
  • A Season 1 Loustat promo invokes this trope with the caption "When you love your partner, but also want to kill him."
• Captain Obvious:
  • In the second episode, just after Louis pukes as he adjusts to his new vampire body, Lestat unnecessarily adds, "And then there's the retching."
  • Invoked by Jonah in the third episode after Louis notices his military uniform.
    Louis: You're enlisted?
    Jonah: Ain't you good at noticing what's plain?
  • In the fifth episode, after Daniel is attacked by Louis' People Puppets skill because he wouldn't back down about the missing pages in Claudia's diary, Rashid elucidates why Louis reacted the way he did, as if Daniel didn't already know.
    Rashid: Mr. du Lac occasionally finds it difficult to talk about Claudia.
    Daniel: (has a "No shit, Sherlock" expression as he glares at Rashid) Got that.
• The Caretaker:
  • Louis is responsible for his mentally ill younger brother Paul after promising their dying father he would look after him.
  • In episode 6, Claudia takes care of her older vampire brother Louis (she no longer wants to be treated as his adoptive daughter, and they are siblings in vampire terms) after he's thrashed to a pulp by Lestat. She even develops a vampire form of physical therapy to help Louis regain his mobility.
    Louis: A few shattered vertebrae, a punctured lung... blind in one eye for five weeks. Two months, was it? [...] Excruciating pain was the proof I was still alive. [...] [Claudia] dedicated all her energy to my rehabilitation.
• Carpet-Rolled Corpse:
  • In the second episode, after Louis is done feeding on the tractor salesman, Lestat rolls up the dead man inside a red carpet rug that he'll later discard as he ponders on a replacement.
    Lestat: For our next carpet, I'm thinking Persian. Arabesque maybe. Certainly need a more efficient way of ridding the waste.
  • Lampshaded by Louis in the seventh episode when Daniel inquires as to how he and Claudia disposed of Lestat's body.
    Daniel: So what did you do with it?
    Louis: We wrapped him in a carpet. We threw him in a trunk, and left him out with the garbage.
• Cast Full of Gay: By the Season 1 finale, only one of the five ^note Assad Zaman was given a Promotion to Opening Titles in episode 7 main characters is obviously heterosexual (Claudia). Louis is gay, Lestat is bisexual, Armand is queer (his sexual identity isn't spelled out in Season 1, but he and Louis are a same-sex couple) and Daniel is Ambiguously Bi. Both Armand and Daniel are explicitly bi in the books.
• Casual Kink:
  • Downplayed Trope in episode 2. When Louis uses his Super-Strength to push his lover Lestat away from him, the latter flies across the room and hits the wall. Lestat lets out a pleased, surprised gasp and is midly aroused by his newborn fledgling exerting his vampiric force against him, which hints that Lestat is into BDSM. It foreshadows what occurs four episodes later...
  • In episode 6, Lestat is revealed to be a masochist when it specifically comes to his boyfriend Louis because he's extremely turned on when Louis is physically aggressive towards him — with Lestat being naked and Louis is fully dressed — and injures him during sex. This thoroughly goes against Lestat's predatory, sadistic and domineering nature, so it proves how much he loves Louis that he feels sexual pleasure when Louis "claims" his body by inflicting wounds and humiliating him — Louis is after all hate-fucking Lestat in the home of Lestat's mistress!
• Chroma Key: The film production company Folks created the visual effects for Season 1, and this video demonstrates some of the digital work it did to remove the green screens and replace them with other images.
• Cigar Chomper: Tom Anderson is frequently seen smoking a cigar, which denotes his status as an affluent, but sleazy businessman who later becomes a politician who accepts bribes.
• Cigarette of Anxiety:
  • In the second episode, at the bar of the opera house, Louis is apprehensive while puffing on a cigarette as he watches Lestat lavish fake praise on the tenor. Louis dislikes killing humans, so he dreads the outcome that Lestat will eat the man for dinner later that night.
  • In the sixth episode, Lestat is noticeably agitated while smoking in the Ponchatoula hotel room, as he finds it difficult to deal with Claudia sniping at him and Louis' perpetual brooding.
• Climactic Music: The score was composed by Daniel Hart.
  • In The Climax of the series premiere, the unsettling notes of "Permanent Exile" echo Louis being very disturbed when Lestat unveils his true vampire nature for the first time; the latter butchers and exsanguinates Father Matthias with his fangs, and then he slaughters a second priest by ramming his fist at Super-Speed through the man's skull.
  • "Laudanum and Arsenic" is the Background Music in the second-half of the Season 1 finale climax, and it's a dramatic track that builds tension in a scene where two pairs of vampires face off against each other: Louis & Claudia vs. Lestat & Antoinette.
• Closet Gay:
  • Louis had to stay closeted in 1910 New Orleans, and notes how while you could be many things openly then, a gay black man wasn't one of them.
    Louis: My business and my raised religion were at odds, and the, uh... latencies within me, well, I beat those back with a lie I told myself about myself — that I was a red-blooded son of the South, seeking ass before absolution.
    Daniel: And you maintained this delusion how exactly?
    Louis: A particular woman who worked for the competition.
  • Unlike Louis, the bisexual Lestat isn't ashamed of his attraction to men, but he too must be cautious about not appearing too lovey-dovey around Louis to avoid scrutiny. He courts Louis as a friend, and later deflects Paul's homophobic insinuation about their relationship with a lie. While waiting for the Don Pasquale performance to start, Lestat's pinky finger discreetly caresses Louis' in lieu of actually Holding Hands; that brief moment of physical contact is the upper limit of what Lestat dares to do with his boyfriend in terms of public displays of affection. After Deputy Habersham warns them that "crimes against nature" carry a five-year prison sentence, it's Lestat who tells Louis that they should lay low while they're under suspicion. At Jackson Square, Lestat silently mouths the words "I love you" to Louis because it's too risky to even whisper it, let alone say it out loud.
  • The homosexual Jonah must keep his fondness for Louis under wraps when they're in front of others. They greet each other as old friends, not as former lovers, which contrasts Lestat openly necking his mistress Antoinette. When Louis asks Jonah, "You ever think about those old days when we were kids?", Jonah visibly becomes tense and stays silent because he knows that Louis isn't just talking about when they were innocent children, but also when they had a romantic/sexual relationship as teenagers. They later go to the bayou for a tryst because it's secluded and very dark at night (and thus it's unlikely they'd be spotted by prying eyes — well, other than Lestat's), and it's hinted that it was routine for the adolescent Jonah and Louis to come here to have sex.
• Color-Coded Characters:
  • In 2022, Louis' wardrobe consists exclusively of black and grey apparel.
  • In 2022, Rashid is only ever seen in black clothing.
• Common Law Marriage: Both homosexuality and interracial marriages were unlawful in the early 20th century Louisiana, so no legal options were available to Lestat and Louis to formalize their union. They make do with an impromptu Metaphorical Marriage, consummate it, and then Louis moves into Lestat's townhouse (during The Edwardian Era, it was typical for a newlywed woman to leave her family home to settle in with her new husband) where they live together like a married couple. Although they're in a committed relationship and acknowledge that they're a family, they never refer to each other as either "husband" or "spouse" in Season 1.
• Compartment Shot:
  • In the first scene of the series, the camera is inside Daniel's mailbox when he unlocks it to take out the package that Louis had shipped to him.
  • In Season 1, there are a few shots which are from within the incinerator, such as when Lestat opens the lid in episode 2 just before he and Louis toss Mr. Carlo's corpse inside, in episode 4 when Lestat forces Claudia to stay put and observe Charlie's body being charred by the flames, and in episode 5 when the police inspect its contents.
• Content Warnings:
  • The first episode ends with a list of suicide prevention resources because of the scene where Paul purposefully falls to his death.
  • The sixth episode opens with a content advisory for domestic violence; in an odd case, it wasn't so much for the content of that episode but the one prior to it which caused a great deal of controversy for not including a warning due to Lestat brutally pummeling Louis in the climax.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In the second episode, the scar tissue on Louis' left hand means that it still hasn't fully healed from his Self-Mutilation Demonstration to Daniel in the previous episode.
  • Finn's arm is in a sling because Lestat had injured it in the series premiere after the former prevented the latter from harassing Louis in the funeral procession. Lestat smugly inquires, "Is it healing properly? You might need a proper doctor, my friend."
  • In the seventh episode, Tom Anderson has an X-shaped scar on the left side of his face because Lestat had scratched it there with his vampire fingernail in the fifth episode when he stopped time at the speakeasy.
• Coordinated Clothes: Because of institutionalized homophobia, Lestat and Louis can't be too blatant about the fact that they're a couple in public, but Lestat subtly defies society's restrictions by having identical tuxedos made for himself and Louis, so any observant spectator at the Don Pasquale opera or passerby on Rue Royale during 1939's New Year's Eve celebration can easily deduce that the two men are together based on their matching attire.
• Couldn't Find a Pen:
  • In the second episode, Lestat scratches his own index finger and uses his own blood to mark the places on his Don Pasquale music sheets where the tenor sings off-key.
  • In the Season 1 finale, Claudia jots down in her journal Lestat's final words ("Mets-moi dans mon cercueil, Louis, Louis" ^note French for "Put me in my coffin, Louis, Louis") with his blood by dipping her pen into a wound on his neck.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Lestat has been infatuated with Louis from the instant he felt Love at First Sight, and this leads him to be obsessive and possessive of his lover, as he goes to extreme lengths to try to either keep him or win him back.
  • Lestat murders Lily after Louis avoids him for an extended period of time in order to isolate him emotionally, therefore making a vulnerable Louis more receptive to the idea of becoming Lestat's immortal companion.
  • Lestat is insanely jealous of Jonah, an Old Flame of Louis whom the latter continues to harbour some feelings for based on Lestat's observation while he was stalking them, "I HEARD YOUR HEARTS DANCING!!" (Probably the only reason why Lestat didn't Murder the Hypotenuse is because he knows Jonah will be shipped off to France for World War I soon, so he figures Jonah will likely die there.)
  • The sheer intensity of Lestat's love for Louis is unhealthy, and this quote from the third episode sums up the former's mindset.
    Lestat: I did it for Louis. I do everything for Louis.
  • Although Lestat initially refuses Louis' request to transform Claudia into a vampire because "Elle est trop jeune" ("She is too young"), he does the wrong thing anyway (not to mention that she didn't consent to it) because he realizes that creating a daughter is the only way to ensure that Louis — who was about to abandon Lestat — will stay with him.
  • When Claudia announces that she has returned home after a 7-year absence just so that she can take Louis with her to Europe, Lestat — who is now also a Jealous Parent — is boiling with rage because he feels that she's stealing Louis from him, so he strangles her. When Louis comes to her defense, Lestat totally loses control because it's solid proof that Louis loves Claudia more than him. Lestat then beats the crap out of Louis for not loving him enough, and since nothing else he has tried has worked, a desperate Lestat resorts to a horrific level of violence to scare Louis into submission.
  • Considering that Lestat is the definition of Evil Is Petty, it's quite remarkable that even after he finds out about Louis and Claudia's plot to murder him, he still desires to keep Louis as his lover. Lestat is so head-over-heels in love that he'll never willingly let Louis go even when his boyfriend wants to kill him, so Lestat directs all of his vindictive fury at Claudia, placing the blame squarely on her for the disintegration of his romance with Louis. Lestat conspires to bump off Claudia not just to punish her for her betrayal, but also so that Louis will love him and only him (at least according to Lestat's warped sense of logic). Regardless of how Louis feels, if Lestat's scheme had succeeded, it would be impossible for Louis to escape his clutches because Antoinette — who is now a vampire and can read Louis' thoughts — can alert Lestat to anything and everything Louis is thinking.
• Creepy Jazz Music: In a Season 2 promo with close-ups of Claudia, Louis and Lestat, "Ballet in the Attic" by Mel Wesson & NineOneOne sounds like a distorted version of the type of jazz/ragtime music that Jelly Roll Morton played at the Azalea. It's a reminder to viewers that although Louis and Claudia have freed themselves from Lestat's Gilded Cage to travel across Europe, they're nonetheless haunted (whether literally or figuratively) by what occurred in New Orleans during Season 1, plus it's a nod to the show's Southern Gothic roots.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Inverted Trope because Lestat was a villain in Season 1. In the first 30-second TV spot for Season 2, Louis (a lapsed Catholic) sees a deceased Lestat lying on the ground with his arms outstretched and his legs extended while close together, which imitates the crucifixion pose. Lestat abruptly comes back to life (which alludes to Christ's Resurrection) and then stands in front of Louis.◊
• Cultural Posturing:
  • In the series premiere, the Frenchman Lestat outright calls America a "primitive country." He regards his homeland to be more civilized, cultured and sophisticated because (by European reckoning) it's far older than the New World. The Kingdom of France was founded in the year 987 ^note although one can go back even further to the establishment of West Francia in 843 as the birth of the French nation, while the USA became an independent country in 1776, plus France was still a colonial power in 1910, whereas America wouldn't attain superpower status until after World War II.
  • In the second episode, it's Played With when Lestat brings up that he used to despise the English language, but he later became enamoured with it.
    Lestat: When I first started learning English, I abhorred it. Every word felt like a doorknob falling out of my mouth. Chapeau is a hat, étoile was a star... But when I started dreaming in English, that's when I embraced it. And now, I have English consonants to thank for this astonishing jawline.
  • Later, Lestat — who is a great admirer of European classical music and opera — has a mocking facial expression when he tells Florence (an African American) "I see you have a banjo band in your front yard," so he considers banjo music (the banjo was invented by African Americans) to be inferior.
  • In the third episode, while reading a newspaper article at Jackson Square, Lestat idealizes New Orleans when it was under French rule, but Louis, a black Creole, points out to his boyfriend that France was just as terrible as the USA in terms of how slaves were treated.
    Lestat: There's a column in here about the history of this lovely square. It says that the man who designed it did so after the Place de Vosges in Paris. I can see that. Used to be called the Place d'Armes. I prefer that, don't you? The Louisiana Purchase was signed here. Penny-wise, franc-foolish.
    Louis: Say anything about how they used to take runaway slaves, cut their heads off, and pike 'em on the iron gates as a warning?
    (Dramatic Pause)
    Lestat: I'm only halfway through, let's see.
• Daywalking Vampire: Vampires who are several centuries old develop immunity to sunlight, with Armand being the prime example.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Hardly a scene passes where Daniel isn't dropping caustic remarks, especially when he's taunting Louis.
  • Lestat has a witty remark for every occasion, particularly in regards to Louis and his angst about his new vampiric nature.
• Deal with the Devil: Multiple mortals believe that Louis, Lestat and Claudia must have made one due to their immortality and eternal youth. Some even ask for details on how it works.
  Tom Anderson: Where do you meet the Devil, and what are the terms of the agreement?
• Death Glare:
  • In the fourth episode, Lestat gives the undertaker a sinister "I'm going to kill you" look before exsanguinating him to death.
  • In the fifth episode, after Louis is Bitch Slapped by Daniel, the former scowls at the latter while barely restraining his homicidal instincts, as he doesn't want a repeat of their first interview where Louis nearly took Daniel's life in a fit of (unjustified) rage.
  • Later, there's an ominous close-up of Lestat shooting daggers from his eyes when he sees Louis and Claudia hugging after she returns home after seven years away. Lestat is both a Crazy Jealous Guy and a Jealous Parent, so he hates it that Louis is very affectionate towards their vampire daughter, but his boyfriend has withheld love and sex while she was gone.
  • At the end of episode 5, Claudia has a rather fierce "If looks could kill" expression when she glares at Lestat for nearly killing Louis.
  • In the sixth episode, after Lestat notices the voodoo doll inside the circle of brick dust in front of his doorstep, he glowers menacingly at two women who are walking across the street while assessing if they're a potential threat to him and his family. One of the ladies is so spooked that she warns her friend, "Don't look [at him], Eunice."
  • In the seventh episode, there's a murderous glint in Lestat's eyes when Tom Anderson cracks up at the idea of Lestat wanting to be Raj, the King of Mardi Gras.
• Decapitation Presentation:
  • Lampshaded by Louis in episode 3 when he asks Lestat if the newspaper article he's reading mentions that the heads of executed slaves were piked on the iron gates of St. Louis Cathedral.
  • In the sixth episode, Lestat holds up the severed head of the train conductor he has just murdered so that Claudia can see it.
• Decapitation Required: In the seventh episode, Louis discloses to Daniel that Lestat had once confided to him on a blood-drunken night in Baton Rouge that decapitation is a surefire method to kill vampires.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: In Louisiana during the early 20th century, there is institutionalized racism and homophobia in the form of racial segregation, anti-miscegenation and anti-homosexuality laws. Louis is an African American, and as a second-class citizen, his options are very limited — the only section of New Orleans where he's permitted to own and operate his own business is in Storyville, but he loses that in 1917 when City Ordinance 4118 shuts down all colored businesses, and to add insult to injury, he's prohibited from buying property in the French Quarter because of his race. The French Opera House on Bourbon and Toulouse forbids non-Caucasians on its premises with the exception of servants, so Louis can only gain entry by acting as a valet to Lestat, a white man. While talking with Jonah, a fellow black man, Louis mentions that they live in a country which makes them use the side entrance. In a streetcar, Louis and Claudia (a black woman) must sit in the back. Louis and his boyfriend Lestat are a same-sex and interracial couple, so their romance is felonious twice over, so this forces them to remain in the closet. Deputy Habersham attempts to intimidate the pair when he informs them that they could spend five years behind bars for "crimes against nature" after he notices that there's only one bed in their master bedroom.
• Destructive Romance: Daniel describes Louis and Lestat's romance as an abusive one, labelling it as "classic Stockholm [Syndrome]." Lestat is a classic example of a Domestic Abuser, and Louis is a victim of intimate partner violence who still loves his abuser. The last few episodes of Season 1 play out the "cycle of abuse" — tension culminating in an incident of abuse (Lestat almost killing Louis), followed by apologies (Lestat is thrown out until he grovels and is allowed back home), reconciliation, a calm "honeymoon" phase, until tension starts to mount again. There's an uncomfortable scene in episode 6 where Louis is Unfocused During Intimacy because he doesn't actually want to have sex, but he's so frightened that Lestat will punish him again for not loving him enough that Louis simply lies on their bed and lets Lestat have his way with his body. Louis later has a bout of suicidal ideation when he imagines himself as a pile of ash because he dreads returning to the "crypt" of the "undeserving Lestat." By episode 7, Lestat has enclosed Louis in a Gilded Cage and keeps his lover on such a tight leash that the only escape route that's available to Louis is to murder his boyfriend. Louis almost does, but his love for Lestat is stronger than his hate, so he's unable to perform the final step, which is to burn Lestat's body. Louis flees to Europe, but Lestat is Not Quite Dead.
  Daniel: You took Lestat back.
  Louis: The vampire bond. There is no human equivalent.
  Daniel: Lover, murderer, maker. [incredulous] invokedYou took him back.
  Louis: It's a bond that can never fully be severed. A bond like that makes you believe there are only two of you on the planet.
• Disappointed in You:
  • During their second chess match in episode 6, Lestat (who taught Claudia how to play the game) is unimpressed by her strategy.
    Lestat: The Dutch Defense. Stonewalling again. You've become quite predictable, my sister, disappointment.
  • Louis is Lestat's protégé in vampirism, and the latter is exasperated by his fledgling's refusal to embrace his vampire nature, which includes not consuming a sufficient amount of human blood as part of his daily diet. The following exchange in from episode 7.
    (Lestat is about to refill Louis' empty wine glass with human blood from a decanter)
    Louis: I've had my fill.
    Lestat: (scoffs) Louis has never honored the blood as he should. (tersely) Blame the teacher, not the student.
• Disapproving Look:
  • In the first shot of the dinner scene in the series premiere, Paul glowers◊ at Lestat when he observes him smiling at Louis. The homophobic Paul suspects that Lestat's affection for his brother goes far beyond mere friendship (and his instincts are spot-on — Lestat intends to seduce Louis after the dinner).
  • In the second episode, Florence has a displeased facial expression because she doesn't like how Louis presents himself, as she believes it's a telltale sign that he's gay.
    Florence: (in her mind) Look at his nails. He's getting his fingernails done. And the glasses? Some fashion certain men like him do. Lord. (sighs out loud)
  • Later, at the posh opera venue where black people aren't permitted inside unless they're a servant, an elderly white couple look down (both literally and figuratively) on Louis from the upper floor because they're racist and don't like seeing non-Caucasians in their midst.
  • In the third episode, Louis scowls at Lestat and Antoinette fooling around because he's understandably resentful that his insensitive boyfriend is seducing a woman right in front of him.
  • At the beginning of episode 5, Daniel is visibly annoyed that Louis is performing a Kiss of the Vampire on Rashid (who's enjoying it thoroughly) with slurping sounds because he understands they're engaged in a vampiric sex act, and they're essentially forcing him to be a voyeur. It's distracting Daniel from his meal (he has a plate of food and a nearly empty mug of tea) and his study of Claudia's journals, so he glares at Louis and Rashid, hoping they get the hint to stop.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • In 1973, Louis nearly killed Daniel after the latter merely asked to be turned into a vampire (apparently he was under the influence of drugs at the time, which Louis himself had provided), and Daniel was saved only because of Armand's intervention. 49 years later, Louis is still pissed off about it because he becomes irate after listening to the cassette recording of their argument and the subsequent attack, and he accuses Daniel of being insolent — as if that somehow justifies his homicidal outburst.
    Louis: (hostile tone) You were disrespectful.
    Daniel: I was high.
  • Lestat murders an Italian opera singer simply because he sang poorly, and humiliates him first to boot, which Louis dislikes.
• Disrupting the Theater:
  • In the fourth episode, Lestat, Claudia and Louis are laughing their heads off while watching Nosferatu (which is not a comedy), irritating the other people in the theater.
  • In the seventh episode, Lestat and Claudia rudely chat in their normal voices during a Newsreel screening at the cinema. An annoyed moviegoer shushes them twice, so Lestat activates his People Puppets ability to force the man to slap himself silly. Claudia giggles in amusement.
• Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe: Alderman Fenwick is a pipe smoker (as seen in episode 3), which differentiates him from Cigar Chomper Tom Anderson, because Fenwick is older, more serious, and wields more political power than anyone else at the informal Smoky Gentlemen's Club.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Has its own page.
• Domestic Abuse:
  • In episode 5, Claudia attempts to persuade Louis to leave Lestat and go with her to look for other vampires. In anger at what he sees as her taking his love away from him, Lestat grabs Claudia by the neck, causing Louis to tackle Lestat and the two men fight. After smashing Louis against the walls of their home, Lestat gains the upper hand, and he sits on top of Louis, punching him repeatedly. Lestat then drags Louis outside by his chin with only his sharp vampire fingernails, and flies with Louis into the air. After asking Louis to say he'll never love him, Louis just yells for Lestat to let him go. Lestat does so, and Louis suffers a long and agonizing fall. Taking away all the fantasy/vampire elements, the entire scene is basically an abusive husband/boyfriend assaulting his partner within an inch of his life. What makes this situation even more frightening is that Lestat claims that he had restrained his violent impulses in the past, which means that he wanted to beat Louis many times before.
    Lestat: (to Louis) I fought myself a million times, fought my nature, controlled my temper. I never once harmed you.
  • Overall, throughout the show, Lestat is very emotionally abusive and manipulative, isolating Louis from his friends and family, cheating on him, love-bombing him, and stalking/watching him without his consent. Claudia has observed that Lestat keeps Louis on a tight leash.
    Claudia: (telepathically to Louis) His love is a small box he keeps you in. Don't stay in it.
  • Lestat is also abusive towards his mistress Antoinette. In episode 6, while they're in a Ponchatoula hotel room, his fangs have left behind two large puncture wounds on her neck, but he doesn't heal them with his vampire blood, so he's treating her worse than Louis after Their First Time (where Lestat put in the effort to mend the injury he caused). After Antoinette asks, "How am I supposed to make a career here?", Lestat abruptly puts his hand around her throat and replies, "I seek refuge from complaints when I visit you, dear." He somehow persuaded her to cut off her finger so that he can fake her death in order to win back Louis — who is Antoinette's romantic adversary — and for her trouble, she now has a maimed right hand that she must conceal with a glove ("That's what gloves are for," as he callously tells her). She then meekly says to Lestat, "I didn't mean to make you mad," which sadly illustrates that Antoinette is thoroughly under his thumb.
• Double Entendre:
  • In the second episode, Lestat informs Louis on the latter's first day as a fledgling vampire that he needs to rest during the daytime, but there's only one coffin in the townhouse. Louis initially refuses to do so, but then Lestat strips naked and allows Louis to get an eyeful of his body before entering the coffin. Just before Lestat lies down, he adds, "It's okay. You can be on top."
  • Later, Louis is surprised to learn that vampires are telepathic, so he asks Lestat in a playful tone, "And you gonna sit on that skill for how long? You gonna make me beg?" The naughty smirk on Lestat's lips indicates that he's imagining Louis begging him in their boudoir for a different type of skill (they're in a Lover and Beloved relationship after all, with Louis as the subordinate partner).
  • In the seventh episode, after Claudia elaborates on how they will trap their would-be prey inside their home after the Mardi Gras ball, Lestat's left hand grabs Louis' butt and pulls his boyfriend closer to his chair. While glancing hungrily up at Louis, Lestat utters in a seductive tone, "And let the flesh instruct the mind." Lestat is ostensibly telling Claudia that they'll let their thirst for human blood dictate their actions during the feast, but it's also plain that he's ravenous for Louis' body and wishes to take him to their bed.
  • Later in the Season 1 finale, a blood-starved Lestat is attired as a French king at the Mardi Gras ball, and when he's introduced to the MacPhail twins, he expresses his literal hunger with "The king finds himself suddenly famished," only to turn around and see Louis in his French duke costume for the first time. Lestat is gaping at his gorgeous lover as if he's tempted to "devour" Louis right there and then.
• Double Meaning:
  • Lestat tells Louis and Lily that he disembarked in New Orleans because of the music and dancing, "but then there was food." While the local cuisine was served at this public gathering, as a vampire, Lestat would've eaten a couple of humans that night for his meal.
  • Because of the homophobia which existed in 1910, Lestat can't overtly flirt with Louis during their first meeting, but he still conveys his interest in roundabout ways. Lestat is outright leering at Louis and speaking with a sultry voice while recounting how he had "sampled" many New Orleans women, including those with "cinnamon" skin tones. Lestat is subtly expressing his desire to "taste" Louis because the latter is a "cinnamon" Creole. Later, when Lestat says that he and Louis are "Destined to be very good friends," what he really means is that they're "Destined to be lovers."
  • While reminiscing about a young violinist he once knew, Lestat describes him as "a boy of infinite beauty and sensitivity" as he looks Louis straight in the eye and hands him a drink. It's apparent that Lestat deems Louis to be equally beautiful and sensitive as the violinist.
  • Whenever Lestat and the topic of home (e.g. "I said to myself, 'Lestat, unpack your trunks, you're home'"; "Yes, I feel quite at home here") or New Orleans (e.g. "[Lestat] was in love with my city and wanted to know everything he could about it"; "There's no place for me other than New Orleans") are mentioned together, it indirectly points to Louis — not New Orleans — being Lestat's beloved home. Episode 7 features Lestat soulfully monologuing about New Orleans to Louis on the balcony, its connotation being that Louis is the product of the environment he grew up in, and Lestat finds him beautiful because of it.
    Lestat: There's not an inch of this city that wasn't built from the fierce wilderness that surrounds it. Hurricanes, floods, fevers. The damp climate on every painted sign, every stone facade. High windows, through which enameled bits of civilization glitter. Silhouettes emerging, wandering out to catch a silent flash of lightning. The silky warmth of summer rain. Desperately alive... and desperately fragile.
  • In the sixth episode, Lestat is looking at a dog when he says, "Back in your cage, sweetheart," but the person he's truly addressing is Claudia, who is a stowaway on a train heading to New York. He won't allow her to leave New Orleans because he's concerned about Louis' deteriorating mental and physical state, so he has boarded the baggage car to forcibly take her back home.
  • In the seventh episode, Louis quips, "The king's hair (heir) has betrayed the king" when he spots Lestat's discarded powdered wig, who is garbed as a French king at the Mardi Gras ball. Louis can be regarded as Lestat's heir because he's Lestat's vampire son (the French monarchy had practiced Salic law, so women were excluded from inheriting the throne), and Louis is indeed conspiring to murder his despotic maker during the after-party feast.
• Dramatic Pause:
  • In the first episode, the dinner conversation at the de Pointe du Lac mansion comes to a halt after Paul demands to know what Lestat's intentions are towards his brother Louis. As Lestat struggles to think of a reply that would diffuse Paul's homophobic intimation, the only sound that can be heard is the faint chirping of the crickets outside.
  • In the first scene of the third episode, both the Background Music and the dialogue stop for two seconds after Louis informs Lestat that Jackson Square used to be the site where runaway slaves were decapitated and their heads were placed on the iron gates as a warning.
  • In the fifth episode, the Background Music becomes quiet after Claudia blurts out that Lestat is cheating on Louis with Antoinette, and no words are exchanged for several seconds.
• Dramatic Shattering:
  • In the sixth episode, Louis confronts Lestat about the song the latter wrote as a Valentine's Day present because he's so offended that Lestat's mistress Antoinette sings it. Louis drops the record in front of them to demonstrate his hatred of it and the disc shatters. (Please note that this is not an example of Vinyl Shatters because the scene takes place over a decade before large-diameter vinyl records were mass-produced, so the phonograph record is made of shellac.)
  • In the first 20-second Season 2 TV spot, part of the bookshelf in the library of the Dubai penthouse is destroyed, and numerous shards of glass land on Daniel.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • In the pilot, Paul commits suicide by jumping off the roof of the family mansion on the morning after Grace's wedding.
  • In the sixth episode, Lestat recounts to Louis and Claudia that his maker Magnus had died by throwing himself into a fire.
• Due to the Dead:
  • In the first episode, the de Pointe du Lac family arrange a jazz funeral (which is traditional in New Orleans) for Paul, and the procession walk along the streets of the city until they reach the St. Augustine Church cemetery, where Paul's body will be interred in the family mausoleum. It's followed by a wake, although this is not shown on-screen.
  • In the fourth episode, Grace and Levi host Florence's wake at the de Pointe du Lac mansion. There's a funeral scheduled the next day, but the audience never sees it.
• Dying Candle:
  • Implied Trope in the set of "Countdown to Season 1 Premiere" promos when Claudia, Lestat and Louis blow out their individual candles. As vampires, they eat humans, so many people will be killed throughout the series because of their blood-drinking.
  • In the climax of the Season 1 finale, the flames of all the candles in the candelabrum are snuffed out when Lestat leaps over the table to attack Tom Anderson, which signifies that all the humans inside the townhouse will soon die at the hands (or more accurately the fangs) of Lestat, Louis and Claudia.

E-I

• Eating the Eye Candy: There are plenty of moments when Lestat is mentally undressing Louis with his eyes. Lestat is bisexual and licentious, so he often throws lustful glances to whomever he finds attractive.
• Eat the Rich:
  • In the seventh episode, most of the guests that the vampire family invite to their Mardi Gras ball are the elite of New Orleans, and several human prey are selected for the after-party feast, where Lestat, Louis and Claudia literally eat the rich.
    Lestat: Well, this idea of yours, what kind of a party did you imagine?
    Claudia: A ball. A lavish, decadent ball.
    Lestat: To what end?
    Claudia: We invite the most beautiful, the most gluttonous, seduce a choice few for a feast to remember.
  • In the Season 2 First Look Scene, Armand targets the wealthy de la Croix family and their guests as food for his vampire coven because of their war profiteering during World War II.
    Armand: The estate of the family de la Croix. Whilst their countrymen clutch ration cards, they've made quite a killing manipulating the black markets.
• The Edwardian Era: The Flashback scenes of the first episode are set in 1910, while the second episode covers 1910-1916 ("Here I was, six years [Lestat's] pupil"), with the last two years overlapping with World War I.
• Eiffel Tower Effect:
  • The San Francisco scene in episode 6 begins with Daniel lighting a cigarette in front of the Golden Gate Bridge.
  • In the first 15-second TV spot for Season 2, an illuminated Eiffel Tower is in the background just after Louis says "Paris."
• Ending Theme: A shortened version of Daniel Hart's "In Throes of Increasing Wonder" plays during the end credits of the first four episodes (plus episode 7 for the televised broadcast), which is one of the Love Themes for Louis and Lestat. (For some odd reason, the one for episode 2 has a different key signature — i.e. a different pitch — than the others.) It's notable that this show's 73-second closing theme is much more substantial than its 23-second opening Theme Tune because the former is connected to Season 1's Official Couple and is 50 seconds longer, whereas the latter is the sound of an orchestra tuning up (and therefore not directly linked to the main characters).
• Episode Tagline:
  • In the second episode, Louis says "He had a way about him" thrice to underline to Daniel how he was very much under Lestat's power in their Lover and Beloved romance.
  • The sixth episode features the word "endure" no less than six times.
    Lestat: I have a capacity for enduring.
    Claudia: I'm enduring.
    Louis: And so I endured my way home.
    Lestat: We endure each other for Louis' happiness.
    Louis: You threaten a life which will endure 'til the end of the world.
    Claudia: I am done enduring.
• Episode Title Card: Each episode is preceded by its title in red font over a black background.
• Eternal Love:
  • Lestat desires to have Louis as his eternal companion, and the latter accepts to be turned so that they can be together forever. However, their vampire romance comes to a bloody end after 29 years (late 1910 until Feb. 6, 1940).
  • Because Lestat has a high libido and enjoys "a little variety," he transforms Antoinette (who was his mistress for 23 years) into a vampire so that he can have a second immortal lover, with the aim of founding his own Vampire's Harem. However, Louis is thoroughly fed up with Lestat's Domestic Abuse and infidelity, plus he has zero interest in becoming Lestat's "Top Wife" and having to share his boyfriend with a woman he detests, so Louis (with Claudia's help) kills both Lestat and Antoinette.
  • By 2022, Louis and Armand (an ancient vampire) have been in a committed relationship for 77 years, and the former even calls the latter "the love of my life."
• Ethereal Choir: In a Season 2 promo with close-ups of Louis, Lestat and Armand, the Background Music is "Forever Crossing Over" by Mel Wesson & NineOneOne, and the eerie-sounding choir underscores the otherworldly nature of all three vampires.
• Europeans Are Kinky:
  • By the standards of 1910s America, Lestat (a Frenchman) being a bisexual libertine would be regarded as kinky, and he identifies his sexuality as "Non-discriminating." He lives in a Transparent Closet with Louis (a black Creole), and being a same-sex and interracial couple was scandalous at a time when homosexuality was a crime and interracial marriage was illegal in most states, including Louisiana. Not surprisingly, people gossip about Louis' "pale lover" and "the weird goings-on at their Sodomite townhouse" behind their backs.
  • It's lampshaded by Jonah, a gay African American, who has heard that Europeans display more liberal attitudes towards sex.
    Jonah: And most of why I signed up is I kept hearing something about something they call "European sensibilities." They care less what you look like or who you're lookin' at.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Lestat is a malevolent vampire who cherishes his mother, his First Love Nicolas and his Second Love Louis.
  • The sadistic vampire Claudia genuinely loves her adoptive father Louis, as well as her maker Lestat before his extremely harsh Tough Love parenting destroyed the bond they once shared. Claudia also seems to want to find and form relationships with more vampires.
• Even the Guys Want Him:
  • The bisexual Lestat is enthralled by Louis and praises his good looks, telling him that he's "a handsome man" with "such a pretty head" and a "beautiful face."
  • Lestat describes Nicolas as having "infinite beauty."
• Event Title: Interview with the Vampire is Exactly What It Says on the Tin; journalist Daniel Molloy interviews the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac.
• Everybody Smokes:
  • Because most of the past scenes are set in the early 20th century, the main characters Louis and Lestat are heavy smokers, alongside supporting characters like Tom Anderson, Alderman Fenwick, and Antoinette, plus countless background extras. Doris works as a cigarette girl at the Azalea in episodes 2 and 3, and Tom boasts about the high pile of money he made supplying the military camps with cigarettes.
  • In 1973, a 20-year-old Daniel lights up a cigarette in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, and the gay bar Polynesian Mary's is very smoky because many of its patrons are puffing for their nicotine fix (and presumably marijuana as well — Daniel did say it was a good place to score drugs).
  • In the Season 2 SDCC trailer and the First Look Scene, Armand smokes in the 1940s.
• Everyone Looks Sexier if French: How do you make an alluring vampire even sexier? Make him a French vampire, bien sûr ^note of course! Lestat is a Frenchman who speaks English with a French accent, which imbues his baritone voice with a seductive quality, and he occasionally includes French words and sentences (Lily remarks that Lestat's French "sure sounds nice"). He also embodies the French stereotype of being extremely romantic and debauched, so this magnifies his sex appeal. In Season 1, Lestat is the most overtly sexualized character because he has the most nude and Shirtless Scenes.
• Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry:
  • Lestat frequently adorns his fingers with large, ostentatious rings because he enjoys being flashy and flaunting his old world affluence.
  • In the fourth episode, because Claudia is the daughter of a moneyed vampire couple, she wears an ornate floral-patterned gold headband studded with pearls for her 17th birthday party, and Lestat's gift to her is an emerald necklace that once belonged to a marquis. She's wowed by it, but the chain is too long for her, so Louis assures her that they'll find one in her size.
  • In the sixth episode, after Claudia tosses Antoinette's scorched finger into the fireplace, she slips on the dead woman's silver ring which features a big flower design (petals, stem and leaves) embedded with red gems on to her own thumb and admires its beauty.
  • In the seventh episode, while performing on the Krewe of Raj float, Lestat sports a shimmering tiara and necklace as part of his Marie-Antoinette Drag Queen getup in order to appear more queenly.
• Evil Is Petty: Lestat says he gives death "to those deserving," but in truth, he kills people over what he perceives as slights against him or things that don't warrant such an extreme reaction, such as humiliating and killing an opera singer for having a subpar voice. Claudia uses this against him in the first season finale, poisoning Tom Anderson's blood as she knew Lestat would murder him personally for making a rude comment towards him.
  Claudia: Always the petty slights with you, Uncle Les.
• Exact Words: In the sixth episode, both Louis and Claudia insist that Lestat has to "Kill Antoinette" if he wishes to live with them again. We learn in the next episode that Lestat did indeed murder his mistress, but only so that he can turn her into a vampire.
• Extremely Short Intro Sequence: It's only about 23 seconds in length.
• Eyebrow Waggle:
  • In the series premiere, Lestat wiggles his eyebrows after he psychically asks Louis, "And do you think two pair will win the hour?" It's his playful way of letting his Love Interest know that he'll help Louis win money from the racist jerks at the poker table by Fixing the Game with his Time Stands Still powers.
  • In Santiago's character teaser, he raises his eyebrows while looking at the audience, which hints that he's a mischievous Performance Artist while onstage at the Théâtre des Vampires.
• Eye Colour Change: When a human becomes a vampire, their eyes may change during the transition. Louis and Claudia's eyes were brown when they were mortal, but their vampiric irises are green and reddish-orange, respectively. However, this isn't a universal phenomenon because Antoinette retains her blue eyes (they're just a more vibrant shade of blue) after she's turned.
• Fade to Black: 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) Dissolves into a black screen at the end to differentiate it from the two edited versions which Fade to White.
• Fade to White: Both "Family Portrait" promos end with a white screen to represent the camera flash.
• Faking the Dead:
  • After Bruce became a vampire, he pretended to be dead so that he could return to the United States from Copenhagen and avoid being scorched by sunlight.
    Bruce: Faked my own death. Shipped back on a boat in a coffin. Got to hear my own funeral. Only a couple dozen people showed up, most didn't have much to say. Started talking about the weather a few minutes in. Almost got myself buried alive. Poor fella diggin' my grave lies restin' in the family plot.
  • In the sixth episode, Lestat brings home a local New Orleans newspaper with the headline "Singer falls asleep smoking, found dead in her home" with a picture of Antoinette beneath it, and wrapped inside is her bloodied, singed, severed finger. He offers these items as proof to Louis and Claudia that he has fulfilled their stipulation that he murder his mistress if he wishes to be part of their family again. However, because Claudia has a habit of stalking Lestat and doesn't trust him, she convinces Louis to accompany her after Lestat leaves to go hunting (or so he claims). They both find out that it was all a ruse because Antoinette is still alive, and Lestat has secretly stashed her away in a Ponchatoula hotel where he continues to visit her on some nights.
• Family Drama: Episodes 4-7 center on a dysfunctional vampire family which consists of the couple Louis and Lestat, and their adoptive daughter Claudia. Claudia is subjected to parental abuse from Lestat (and Louis is guilty of this on one occasion), Lestat almost kills Louis in an incident of intimate partner violence, Lestat plots to murder his fledgling Claudia, plus Louis and Claudia attempt to commit Patricide against their maker Lestat.
• Fangs Are Evil: Vampires use their fangs to bite and/or tear into the neck of their human victims, and they typically exsanguinate their prey to death.
• Fantastic Drug: Vampire blood has drug-like qualities. In the second episode, Louis vividly elucidates to Daniel (a former substance abuser) the sensations he felt on his first night as a vampire with his maker's blood coursing through his veins.
  Louis: Lestat's blood was giggling inside me, teasing my senses, illuminating the district with overwhelming detail, as if I had walked my entire life as a dead man, and now dead, could finally receive the secrets of existence.
  Daniel: You were fucking loaded.
  Louis: Beyond articulation.
• Feeling Your Heartbeat:
  • In the series premiere, after Lestat heals the wounds on Louis' neck from his Kiss of the Vampire, Louis slowly moves Lestat's hand across his bare chest until it rests over his heart. Combined with their Held Gaze, having Lestat feel Louis' heart beating enhances the tenderness shared between them after Their First Time.
  • In the fourth episode, Lestat briefly rests his hand on Louis' chest where the latter's heart is during Claudia's birthday party. It's a simple gesture that helps Lestat feel close to his boyfriend.
• Female Gaze: Lestat and Louis are subject to this whenever they're shirtless or nude, the most notable example being the first time they have sex where the camera is quite close to their naked bodies as it moves.
• Fingore:
  • Lampshaded by Jonah in the third episode when he recounts to Louis that he had witnessed his co-worker lose three digits in a workplace accident.
    Jonah: A gunpowder mill in Delaware. Fella working next to me blew off three fingers. I saw enough.
  • In the sixth episode, Lestat has his mistress Antoinette cut off a finger to fake her death, as Claudia and Louis demanded her demise in exchange for Lestat being allowed to come home.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: Lampshaded by Daniel in the extended Season 2 trailer when he asks Louis and Armand, "Are you two going to finish each other's sentences for the whole session?"
• First Love:
  • While not explicitly stated, it's very likely that Louis and Jonah, Childhood Friends who developed a Childhood Friend Romance during their late adolescence, are each other's first love, especially when one factors in the racism and the homophobia of the late 19th century. Although their paths diverged for many years, their feelings for each other are still apparent when they meet again in 1917 when Louis is nearly middle-aged, which demonstrates how intense their emotional attachment was during their youth because they're both still carrying a torch at least two decades later.
  • Charlie is Claudia's first boyfriend and the first guy she has fallen in love with.
  • Claudia refers to Nicki (a diminutive for Nicolas) as Lestat's first love.
• Five-Finger Discount: In the Season 2 Sneak Peek Clip, Claudia steals a man's wallet from his coat pocket without him noticing.
• Flash Step: Part of the basket of vampiric powers. In the first episode, it's shown from Lestat's perspective as he does it to a deacon who saw him kill the priest. The deacon's panicked running is shown in slow motion, while Lestat's leisurely walk after him is shown at regular speed, more than fast enough to catch him and punch through his skull.
• Flashback Cut:
  • In the sixth episode, there are two snippets from episode 5 when Louis recalls Lestat dropping him from the sky while he and Daniel discuss the cloud gift.
  • In the Season 1 finale, a brief clip of Lily from episode 1 is seen when when Daniel concludes that he's a Replacement Goldfish for her because Louis is once again "paying a whore to sit in a room and talk with you."
• Fleur-de-lis:
  • Lestat's Season 1 character teaser and "One Week" promo feature the fleur-de-lis in the corners of the border to indicate that he's from France (and if the series adheres to book canon, it also alludes that he's a French aristocrat). Moreover, combining the thumbnails of two Lestat-themed Instagram posts from the official Immortal AMC account forms a fleur-de-lis design◊ on the ornamental fence.
  • A fleur-de-lis motif serves as the background for the titles and captions of the show's TV spots and trailers because a few characters and the story have a connection to France: Louis is a Creole with French ancestry and a native of New Orleans (which was colonized by France), Lestat is a Frenchman, Armand was The Leader of the Parisian vampire coven, and most of the Season 2 Flashbacks are set in Paris.
• Flipping the Table: In the extended Season 2 trailer, a murderous Louis flips over his table where he and Daniel are conducting the interview in 1973, which knocks over the latter's portable tape recorder and a few beer bottles.
• Flirtatious Smack on the Ass:
  • In the fourth episode, there's a blink-and-you'll-miss moment when Lestat briefly performs the finger-brushing variant on Louis' bum just as he approaches his boyfriend from behind in the second coffin room scene. Lestat is signaling to Louis that he would like to have sex as soon as Claudia has settled into her coffin, and Louis smiling at the touch means that he feels the same way.
  • In the seventh episode, as the vampire family delineate their plan to lure their would-be victims to their home for the after-party feast, Lestat does a variation on pinching by abruptly squeezing Louis' derrière and then tugging his lover next to him. Lestat's hand remains clasped on Louis' rump for the rest of the scene, and he's making it crystal clear to his beloved that he's fantasizing about doing something much more intimate with Louis when he murmurs huskily, "And let the flesh instruct the mind."
• Flowers of Femininity: Claudia's Season 1 character teaser, "Two Weeks" promo, and all three of her "Dear Diary" promos have a flower in the corners of the border to denote that she's the sole female member of the main cast.
• Foil: Daniel has been married twice, and so has Louis (metaphorically speaking). Daniel has two daughters who don't speak to him — they're lost to him. Louis has one daughter whom he has also lost. The details of their biographies seem broadly similar. However, Daniel is reasonably upfront about his life and seems to have processed it, while Louis is a tangled up mess of denial about his.
• Forbidden Love: Homosexuality and interracial marriages were against the law in the early 20th century Louisiana, so Louis (a black Creole) and Lestat (a Caucasian) must keep their same-sex romance a secret, and they behave platonically while in public. Their immense wealth does provide them with some degree of protection from the authorities, although Deputy Habersham threatens them with a five-year jail term after he discovers that there's only one bed in their boudoir.
• Forced Sleep:
  • In the pilot, while in a threesome with Louis and Lily, Lestat uses his vampire powers to put Lily to sleep so that he can have Louis all to himself.
  • In the extended Season 2 trailer, Armand has the ability to make everyone sitting at the dining table lose consciousness with his Psychic Powers.
• Foreign Cuss Word: There are a few French expletives courtesy of Lestat.
  • "Va te faire foutre aussi!" ("Go fuck yourself, too!")
  • "Putain de merde!" ("Fucking hell!")
  • "Bordel de merde. Il me chie dans la malle jusqu'au cadenas!" ("For fuck's sake. He shits me in the trunk up to the padlock!")
• Foreign-Language Tirade:
  • In the series premiere, when Paul inadvertently sets off the staunch atheist Lestat's Berserk Button by inquiring about the latter's Christian background, Lestat's diatribe eventually switches to French as an indicator of just how pissed off the Frenchman is, although Louis interrupts him before Lestat can finish his sentence.
    Lestat: J'espère que cela satisfera les oiseaux perchés dans le cage de votre es[prit]—! ^note The direct translation is "I hope this will satisfy the birds perched in the cage of your mind!", although the on-screen caption has "I hope that satisfies the birds perching in your mind's cage!"
  • In the sixth episode, Lestat reverts to his native tongue when he blusters at Claudia for not wanting to finish their chess match.
    Lestat: COMME ENFANT, COMME ADULTE, COMME TOUJOURS, C'EST DE TA FAUTE, LOUIS!! C'EST LE RÉSULTAT DU COMPROMIS!! ^note "As a child, as an adult, as always, it's your fault, Louis! This is the result of compromise!"
• Foreshadowing: Has its own page.
• Framing Device: The outer story involves Daniel interviewing Louis for the second time in 2022, with Rashid as the latter's personal assistant. The inner story is a Flashback of Louis' life in the 20th century, focusing mainly on his interactions with his lover Lestat and their vampire daughter Claudia.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • In the fourth episode, the first of Claudia's diaries that Daniel picks up has a tiny sneak peek for Season 2:
    Paris, November 14, 1945: We've arrived in Paris, what a relief! My whole dead self feels revitalized head to toe. We might be outsiders to both humans and Parisian life, but I do appreciate both now with such fervor! Granted, I've never hated my body [unclear]
  • In the fifth episode, the raccoon that was rummaging through the townhouse's Mess of Woe later ends up dead.◊ Louis, a Vegetarian Vampire, presumably drained the animal to death.
  • Later, Claudia's journal entry◊ offers viewers a glimpse into her mindset before she heads back home.
    Dear Diary, I'm going back to the house. I've decided I'm ready for whatever Lestat has to say. And I can leave right away and take Louis with me. Wouldn't that be wonderful? I am excited to see him again. And I realize I was a handful all those years. But will Louis even travel with me? I don't know if he even wants to leave Lestat even though he causes him great pain. I just know he and I would have so much fun together. And anything I learn about vampires I want to share with him. He has been sheltered by Lestat for so long! I want to open his eyes! We can learn about our kind together and maybe find some.
  • The title sequence for episode 6 is slightly different than the others because it includes an upside-down Golden Gate Bridge◊ to indicate that there's a scene which takes place in San Francisco.
  • In the seventh episode, eagle-eyed viewers can spot Antoinette in the streetcar◊ two seats ahead of Lestat in her Sweet Polly Oliver ensemble.
  • Later, two pages from◊ Claudia's journal◊ contain a small preview for Season 2:
    Left page: Dear Diary, I have been planning the trip out in my head. When we get to Europe, we aren't going to look at any of the touristy sights. We are instead going straight to the Black Sea and then on to the Carpathian Mountains. Those are the places I've been reading about in the books I've brought with me. We had to leave so much behind, but I brought those books. Louis doesn't care much about what he calls [unclear] for old [unclear]
    Right page: Friday: Louis has been increasingly anxious and morose because of what we did. He says he's never known fear like that in his life, like he felt before we left, the vulnerability, the sheer terror. And he says, there's no relief from it now that we're on our way. Even though he's miles away from Lestat, whose body is bled dry and rotting in a garbage dump. Sometimes, Louis can't break free from his grasp. I can practically see Lestat in front of me, hanging in the doorway, because he's the subject of all Louis' thoughts.
• French Accordion: The "Loving Lestat" promo is set to accordion music to enhance the fact that the character is French.
• Furnace Body Disposal: In Season 1, Lestat, Louis and Claudia routinely dispose of their victims by tossing the corpses into the incinerator, which cremates the remains, and the resulting ash makes it easy for the vampire family to get rid of the evidence of their crimes.
• Gay Euphemism:
  • In the second episode, the homophobic Florence has inferred that her son Louis is in a Transparent Closet with Lestat, and she derides the latter's style while barely tolerating his presence.
    Louis: You remember Lestat.
    Lestat: Madame de Pointe du Lac, all the kindness for the invitation.
    Florence: I don't remember inviting him, but please, take your overdressed self and have a fine time.
  • She's also judgemental about Louis' appearance.
    Florence: (in her mind) Look at his nails. He's getting his fingernails done. And the glasses? Some fashion certain men like him do. Lord. (sighs out loud)
• Get Out!:
  • In the third episode, Grace yells this after she and her two daughters are almost hit by the front door when Louis kicks it open with his vampiric Super-Strength.
  • In the fourth episode, after Claudia gets her own bedroom, she becomes very territorial about it (as is the case for most teenagers), so when Lestat passes through her open door and leans against the doorway, Claudia exclaims irately, "You have to knock first! Out! Out! Out!", and she even throws an object at him.
  • In the fifth episode, while rebelling against her vampire dads, Claudia shrieks at the top of her lungs "GET OUT OF MY ROOM!!" at a Glass-Shattering Sound level.
  • In the sixth episode, Louis orders Antoinette to "get the fuck out" of her own home so that he and Lestat can have sex in her bedroom. She turns to her lover Lestat for support, but his eyes are transfixed on Louis, and since his love for his boyfriend far outweighs what he feels for his mistress, Lestat also commands her to "Leave."
• Gilded Cage: By the Season 1 finale, Lestat's sumptuous and comfortable townhouse is a suffocating prison for both Louis and Claudia. Lestat rules his household with an iron fist, and he doesn't permit either his boyfriend or his vampire daughter to depart without his approval, under the threat of excessive violence for Louis and death for Claudia ("I'll turn your bones to dust"). In the previous episode, when Lestat intercepts Claudia as she was attempting to flee to New York by train, he even refers to their home as a cage: "Back in your cage, sweetheart."
  Louis: Add to the toxic air a new ever-present paranoia. [...] We were compelled to sleep in the same chamber together again. [Lestat] would have it no other way. We would spend our hours enduring, with little pretense of getting along, locked together in hatred. He would have it no other way.
• A Glass of Chianti:
  • In the second episode, Lestat slits the tenor's wrist while holding a gold-rimmed wine glass underneath it to collect the dripping blood, and then he takes a sip like he's savoring a Luxurious Liquor.
  • In the seventh episode, Lestat drains the blood of an encyclopedia salesman into a decanter, and then pours it in crystal wine glasses for himself, Louis and Claudia in their opulent dining room, a Vampires Are Rich version of a family dinner. They generally don't drink blood in a fancy setting (they typically go out to hunt), but the pretty glassware in this scene accentuates how Louis and Claudia are confined in Lestat's Gilded Cage.
• Good-Looking Privates:
  • At the beginning of the third episode, Lestat is briefly distracted from the newspaper article he was reading when two soldiers walk by, and he stares at them appreciatively.
  • Louis admires his Old Flame Jonah in military garb: "Good fit, this uniform."
  • Lestat, who had stalked Louis and Jonah and heard the abovementioned line, expresses his jealousy the following evening by inviting a few dozen soldiers to their home. (Lestat's attitude towards Louis in this scene can be summarized as, "So you like men in uniform? Now you have more than you can handle!")
    Louis: (angry) What are you thinking?
    Lestat: Well, I thought we could have an orgy. You can fuck them, and I can eat them.
    Louis: Get 'em out of here.
    Lestat: Well, now that I know you have a type, I thought you'd be pleased.
• Gothic Horror: Season 1 is a gothic romance which centers around the twisted love story between two vampires.
• Gratuitous French:
  • As a Frenchman, Lestat sometimes peppers his English with French words and sentences. Louis, a Creole, does as well, albeit rarely.
  • In the seventh episode, Claudia has one line of dialogue in French: "[La] Musique française pour les mains françaises." ("French music for French hands.")
  • In the Season 2 First Look Scene, the Parisian vampire Armand converses with Louis mostly in English except for when he responds to a compliment with "Merci." In the Season 2 trailer, Armand instructs Louis to "bring the petite ^note the feminine form of "little" beauty."
• The Great Depression: This is the setting of the Flashback scenes in the second-half of the fifth episode (1930) and all of the sixth episode (1930-1939).
• Green-Eyed Monster:
  • Lestat is extremely possessive of his lover Louis, and he's brimming with jealousy whenever he suspects Louis loves someone more than him. In the fifth episode, it becomes increasingly clear to Lestat that their vampire daughter Claudia is first and foremost in Louis' heart, and Lestat goes ballistic when she's determined to have Louis accompany her to Europe. In retaliation for what Lestat interprets as Claudia robbing him of his beloved, he attempts to asphyxiate her, and when Louis intervenes, Lestat brutally assaults his boyfriend. In the Season 1 finale, Lestat decides to eliminate Claudia once and for all because in his twisted mind, she's the source of all the problems he's experiencing with Louis. After she's gone, Lestat believes Louis will finally give him all of his love.
  • A jealous Louis — who appropriately has green irises — has loathed Antoinette from the get-go because she's sleeping (and later falls in love) with Lestat. In the third episode, Louis is hoping that it's her corpse inside the incinerator ("She burn quick?"), and he's very disappointed to learn that the victim is a dentist from Tallahassee ("So you didn't kill her"). In the fifth episode, Lestat is well-aware that Louis wants Antoinette dead because he attempts to appease his boyfriend with "I'll kill her soon" after Louis discovers that she has been Lestat's mistress for the past six years. In the sixth episode, "Kill Antoinette" is one of the conditions that Louis imposes on Lestat if the latter wishes to cohabit with him again. In the Season 1 finale, Claudia incapacitates Antoinette, and Louis then puts her inert body into the incinerator. They're both calm as they watch a shrieking Antoinette (who has suddenly regained consciousness) being burned alive.
• Guyliner:
  • In the seventh episode, Lestat and Louis both sport eye makeup at the Mardi Gras ball to add authenticity to their 18th-century French period costumes and powdered wigs.
  • In the Season 2 SDCC trailer, the male actors and musicians at the Théâtre des Vampires wear eyeliner while performing on stage.
  • Similarly in two Season 2 trailers, Lestat's eyes are rimmed with eyeliner while acting in a play at a French theatre during the late 18th century.
  • In a Santiago-centric TV spot, he has blue eye makeup during Louis and Claudia's trial.
• Hair-Contrast Duo: Louis has black hair whereas his boyfriend Lestat is blond; the former has a more docile and restrained temperament, while the latter is more assertive and flamboyant.
• Hallucinations: In the extended Season 2 trailer, Louis hallucinates Lestat, and he tells the latter, "You're not here, I'm just fucked in the head." In a 20-second Season 2 TV spot, Daniel outright asks Louis if he's schizophrenic due to these visions.
• Has a Type:
  • Louis is enticed by men with curly hair: he has fallen in love with Jonah, Lestat, and Armand, plus he flirted with Daniel in 1973.
  • When it comes to men, Lestat has a weakness for those of "infinite beauty and sensitivity," which applies to both his First Love Nicolas and his Second Love Louis.
• Hates Being Alone:
  • In the pilot, Lestat reacts very poorly when Louis ignores him after the first time they make love. Lestat inappropriately brings up a lover's spat during a funeral procession for Louis' brother of all people, being totally inconsiderate of the fact that Louis is in mourning, so the last thing the latter wants is to deal with Lestat complaining about feeling neglected.
    Lestat: I wait on my balcony every night. You've been avoiding me. [...] And I don't take kindly to being avoided.
  • In the second episode, Lestat opens up to Louis about how terrified he is of being alone over long stretches of time.
    Lestat: There is one thing about being a vampire that I most fear above all else... And that is loneliness. You can't imagine the emptiness... A void stretching out for decades at a time. You take this feeling away from me, Louis. We must stay together and take precaution, and never part.
  • It's taken to a violent extreme in the fifth episode when Lestat's volatile mind snaps after Claudia declares that she only came back home to bring Louis on her trip to Europe. Lestat then brutalizes Louis and drains part of his blood to weaken his lover even further so that Louis can't physically go anywhere.
  • In the sixth episode, Lestat discloses to Louis and Claudia that after Magnus had turned him, he had to figure out vampirism on his own because his maker had committed suicide, and it contributed to his abandonment issues.
    Lestat: No grand history of vampiric origins or physiology, no rules, no counsel. Just a sweeping hand to a pile of money and the sight of him throwing himself into a fire. And then I was alone. [...] It's why I don't particularly like being abandoned.
• Hates Their Parent:
  • Lestat detests his father, whom he characterizes as a vulgar man with a temper, for beating and starving him when he was a boy in order to dissuade him from joining the clergy.
  • In episode 5, Claudia has grown to loathe her vampire dads for giving her the Dark Gift and reading her journals without her permission. She lashes out at them with "I hate you both!" and later runs away from home.
  • It's hinted in episode 7 that Daniel's daughters hate him because they refuse to have any contact with their father.
• Headbutt of Love:
  • In the first episode, Louis and Lestat press their foreheads together immediately after their First Kiss to maintain physical contact since their mouths are no longer touching. Although they're engaging in foreplay, this affectionate gesture stems from emotional intimacy, so it's understood that they're in love in addition to lusting after each other.
  • In the second episode, in the wide shot of Louis and Lestat exsanguinating the tenor together, Lestat leans towards his lover so that their foreheads are touching, and he reinforces their physical closeness by cradling the back of Louis' head. They're doing the vampire equivalent of Sweetheart Sipping, so Lestat is reassuring Louis that he adores him in spite of their bickering earlier.
• Healing Factor:
  • In the second episode, when the vampire Lestat is bare-chested, we can see that his back is perfectly healed (there isn't any scarring) from the multiple stab wounds that were inflicted on him by Louis a few hours earlier.
  • In the final moments of her mortal existence, Claudia is covered with life-threatening burns to her body, but after her Emergency Transformation into a vampire, the scorches on her skin are mostly gone by the time she explores Lestat's townhouse. There's only some scar tissue on the left side of her face.
  • Discussed in episode 4 when Lestat cautions Claudia about her careless driving; even though vampires live forever, acute injuries require months to heal.
    Lestat: Putain de merde ^note French for "Fucking hell", steer, steer.
    Claudia: Ugh, but we're immortal!
    Lestat: You can still smash your pretty little head and then take long, dull months to recover. Eyes on the road.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack:
  • In the second episode, the newly fledged vampire Louis is famished for human blood, so as he's staring at the tractor salesman's neck at the bar, his Super-Hearing becomes fixated on his prey's pulsing heart rate.
  • In the third episode, Louis begins to listen closely to Alderman Fenwick's erratic heart rate after the latter deprecatingly says, "And your pale lover, with his seemingly endless supply of capital." The sound continues for the rest of the scene, and the rhythm varies depending on how the fearful Fenwick is reacting to Louis.
    Louis: Why is your heart beatin' so fast?
  • In the seventh episode during the tram ride scene, as Claudia psychically tells Louis, "You spend an hour alone with [Lestat] and you're breathing in sync together," the sound of heartbeats becomes mingled with the dialogue, although it's not made clear whose it belongs to. It may be Lestat listening in on Louis or vice versa, or it could be Louis and Lestat's hearts thumping together as one because they're vampires in love.
  • When Louis and Claudia enter the venue for the Mardi Gras ball, they are overwhelmed by the heartbeats of the guests because they had starved themselves of human blood for three consecutive nights before the event.
    Louis: The blood was everywhere. The veins and arteries of a few hundred hearts ringing out like air raid sirens, drowning out the rhythm section of the hired band.
• Held Gaze:
  • After their first bout of lovemaking, Lestat and Louis stare deeply into each other's eyes, which conveys that they both felt a profound emotional bond beyond the physical act. The pupils of Lestat's vampire eyes are blown wide, and he's gaping at Louis with pure, unadulterated awe, as if Louis was the most beautiful creature who has ever walked the Earth.
  • The couple share another gaze as they dance together at the Masquerade Ball in episode 7, which culminates in Louis kissing Lestat.
• Hemo Erotic:
  • Downplayed with Lestat because he usually doesn't derive sexual pleasure from drinking blood, but the one big exception is when he feeds on Louis, whom he's in love with. It's evident from Lestat's soft moans that tasting Louis' blood is a very sensual experience for him. Furthermore, when Louis consumes Lestat's blood as part of his transformation into a vampire, Lestat appears aroused (orgasmic, even) with a slack jaw while panting, his gaze fixed on Louis. Lestat clearly enjoys both the sensation and the sight of Louis sucking on his blood. Lestat then collapses on to the floor while still breathing heavily in a manner which resembles a Post-Coital Collapse.
  • The same applies to his fledgling Claudia, who is only turned on when she's exsanguinating her boyfriend Charlie, as demonstrated by her pleased moans while they're making out in his carriage. However, because she lacks self-control, she ends up killing him unintentionally.
  • In the Season 2 SDCC trailer, Santiago seems to be moaning in pleasure when Claudia drinks blood from his wrist. The other members of the Théâtre des Vampires participate in a blood-sharing orgy.
• Hide Your Otherness:
  • Louis doesn't want his family to know that he's a vampire, so he dons sunglasses when he visits them at the mansion to conceal his green vampire eyes (they were brown when he was human).
  • While posing as the human Rashid, the vampire Armand wears brown contact lenses and gloves to cover up his vampiric features, specifically his orange irises and razor-sharp nails.
• Hiding Behind the Language Barrier:
  • During Lestat's (a Frenchman) first meeting with Louis (a Creole who knows French), he speaks a few sentences in French which are for Louis' ears only, so Lily doesn't understand the parts of the conversation that Lestat wants to keep private between himself and his new Love Interest. Lily asks Louis for a translation, but he refuses.
  • In the fourth episode, Lestat and Louis argue in French so that Claudia doesn't know exactly what they're discussing about her. She scribbles in her diary that "Fighting sounds funny in French."
• Historical Domain Character: Jelly Roll Morton was a ragtime/jazz pianist and composer (one of the songs he wrote was the "Wolverine Blues"). He's a background character in the series premiere (he's playing the piano at the Fairplay Saloon just before Louis meets Lestat for the first time). In the third episode, he works for Louis at the Azalea, and Morton gets into a disagreement with Lestat in front of the audience after the latter criticizes his piano playing for being repetitive.
• Holding Hands:
  • Averted in the second episode when Lestat is unable to join hands with Louis at the opera even though he really wants to, but the rampant homophobia in 1916 means that all he can do is brush his pinky finger against Louis' for a few seconds.
  • In the Season 1 finale, Louis and Lestat walk hand-in-hand from the balcony to the ballroom of the crowded Mardi Gras ball venue because they're coming out of their Transparent Closet.
  • Later, Louis and Claudia hold hands in solidarity as a screeching Antoinette is being consumed by the incinerator's fire. They both wanted her dead for a long time, so this gesture is their unspoken "We finally did it."
  • At the end of Season 1, Louis and Armand clasp each other's hands in front of Daniel to make it clear to him that they're a couple.
• Hollywood Kiss: Most of the first season smooches between Louis and Lestat are closed-mouth, and their Big Damn Kiss in episode 7 is especially neat, pretty and romantic, but there's one major exception that averts the Hollywood standard. For the couple's Slap-Slap-Kiss / Reunion Kiss in episode 6, Louis sticks his tongue into Lestat's mouth before locking their lips together◊ (so their actors Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid actually performed a French kiss on set). Because this scene is about the Interplay of Sex and Violence, Louis and Lestat's kiss is meant to be filthy, desperate and lustful.
• Horror Hunger: Louis is pretty repulsed after being turned and drinking blood. He's especially appalled at nearly having fed on his infant nephew due to his thirst.
• Hotter and Sexier: In the source material, vampires have metaphorical sex. On the show, they have literal sex. Part of this is probably a Pragmatic Adaptation, because while metaphorical sex works in a book, it's much harder to convey on-screen. Another likely reason for the change is Sex Sells.
• Househusband: Louis is the "feminine" partner in the Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple dynamic that he has with his boyfriend Lestat, so his role within their household is fairly similar to a traditional housewife. Louis is extremely devoted to their vampire daughter Claudia, with a doting parenting style that could be described as "motherly," and raising her is the greatest joy in his life. The fifth episode suggests that their townhouse becomes a Mess of Woe after Claudia abandons them because Louis is too depressed to do any housework ("...ignoring all other duties of the role Claudia once mocked me for — the unhappy housewife"). In the seventh episode, after Lestat kills a man with blood cancer, he orders Louis to tidy up ("Clean up the mess and come to coffin").
• Hypocrite:
  • In the second episode, a bloodstained Lestat lampshades this after he butchered two priests: "I recognize the hypocrite I am, emphasizing cleanliness after I overindulged."
  • Later, Lestat denigrates humans for their primitive mindset: "Every human thought boils down to three things... I want food, I want sex, I want to go home. [...] Dull, monotonous [...] the petty musings of meat." However, Lestat himself is engrossed by food (he enjoys hunting, torturing and eating humans in an "extravagant" manner), sex (he's so lecherous that he's habitually banging someone, whether it's his boyfriend Louis, his mistress Antoinette, prostitutes, or a member of the Women's Opera Society) and home (which he equates with Louis, whom he's besotted with and always longs to return to him) on a daily basis. As a vampire, Lestat is higher up on the food chain, but his psychology is just as simplistic as his "savory inferiors."
  • In the third episode, Lestat is having an affair with Antoinette and admits that he likes "a little variety." Louis is angry and hurt ("Aren't I enough?") by his boyfriend's promiscuity, and he clearly prefers to be in a monogamous relationship, but he's willing to accept this arrangement as long as he can sleep with others as well. Lestat reluctantly agrees (it's obvious from his facial expression that he's NOT okay with it), so Louis has a sexual interlude with Jonah, his Old Flame. The next day, an infuriated Louis discovers that Lestat had followed them and watched them be intimate. Lestat then confesses that he doesn't like sharing and pathetically attempts to defend his own infidelity with "It's different. I don't have feelings for her." Lestat tries to depict Louis being with Jonah as intolerable because they still share some emotional connection, and he's hysterical when he shouts, "I HEARD YOUR HEARTS DANCING!!", but the fact of the matter is that Lestat doesn't want anyone to go near Louis.
  • In the fourth episode, Lestat insists that there are no secrets within their family, yet he becomes crotchety whenever Claudia inquires about his past or the history of vampires. She confides to Louis that it bothers her that Lestat keeps a lot of information hidden from them.
    Claudia: Uncle Les got secrets.
    Louis: How you figure?
    Claudia: He don't give good answers to questions, sits on the truth like it's his chair or somethin'. I thought we weren't supposed to keep secrets.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

J-Q

• 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.
• 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, 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).
  • 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 two Season 2 trailers, 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 a Théâtre des Vampires 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-Z

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
  • 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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"Was it raining, Louis?"

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