After much fucking about, Lestat hit his find out era. In episode 7, titled “The Failures,” while a decapitated Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) is tortured by a bitter Armand (Assad Zaman), Lestat is forced to face his past. We finally see the long table teased all season long in the opening credits.
Earlier this year, Reid came by Mashable’s studio for a Say More interview, where he talked Claudia, Magnus, and much more. Now, he and Mashable Entertainment Editor Kristy Puchko reconnected for a postmortem of the Brat Prince’s finale.
Who are the Failure Finders at the long table?
At the head of the table sits Lestat’s maker, Magnus (Damien Atkins). Then around the table, his fledglings, Nicolas “Nicki” de Lenfent (Joseph Potter), Louis, Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle), Antoinette (Maura Grace), and his bandmate TC (Sarah Swire). But no Claudia (Bailey Bass).
As Lestat’s severed head is dying, who are these figures? Are they ghosts of those he’s loved? But how so, when some are still alive? Are they the voices in his head? Something supernatural from the savage garden?
“I don’t think [Lestat] knows.” Reid told Mashable, “But he knows that they are coming. The whole season’s been set up for this sequence. [In episode 1] Baby Jenks says, ‘You know, they’re coming for you.’ Who are they? And then Magnus in the car [in episode 3] is like, ‘At the long table, we eat your soul.’ So, he knows that they are coming — the long table is coming.”
He went on, “I think when Lestat arrives there [at the long table], because [he is] a supernatural being, there’s a lot of space to accept a lot of unknowns very quickly. So that’s what Lestat’s going through.”
“For me, as the actor trying to understand these kinds of things,” Reid continued, “the whole framing device of this season is Lestat accepting and acknowledging failure. This is a character who continually brushes off every kind of trauma that he has experienced and refuses to fully engage with them. You can see that he’s cracking under the pressure and the weight of them all.”
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Reid then referred to the season’s narration, Lestat’s story told by him across a series of recordings he calls “The Failures.” He explained, “[Lestat] is making this recording for a very specific person, or whoever wins it at the auction. But you know, I think he thinks it’s a specific person. And he is explaining to them this is how it felt at the time.”
Lestat performs on the long table in “The Vampire Lestat.”
Credit: AMC
Compared to Interview With a Vampire‘s first two seasons, The Vampire Lestat has felt chaotic, leaping around in time and tone, with Lestat raging, laughing, provoking, and even contradicting himself. Reid said this reflects Lestat’s choosing to deflect over confronting his past and his psychological pain. “That’s why the episodes feel like an assault,” he said, “and why certain things don’t feel like they’re fully investigated, because at the time he was not investigating [them].”
“Even at the long table he fights them, the Failure Finders,” Reid said. “These key figures of his life, those who he loved the most or were so defining in his life, continually and persistently tell him that he is a failure.”
Reid continued: “So, what are they? I mean, it’s open up to so much interpretation. I think the key thing about the season, though, is really setting up the concept of the soul. The soul does exist in our world. So are these [Failure Finders] the souls of the people who are there? I don’t know. I think the long table version of these characters are more heightened. I mean, long table Louis is such a heightened, angry figure. So I don’t know if they are the real people. They might be the figures of Lestat’s guilt and shame that he carries, [showing] how he feels they feel about him. [That] is probably the most accurate.”
“Take it as you will,” Reid offered. “But I would say that it’s more likely this is what it feels like inside the physical head [of Lestat]. That this is what he’s fighting on a daily basis — is that everybody thinks he is a failure. He thinks he is a failure in the eyes of the people whom he should have helped and loved the most.”
Reid went on to connect Lestat facing his failures (and Failure Finders) to the final reveal of the season: the ravaged world, from which he records his album “The Failures.” Reid said, “That leads him to acknowledging that he is responsible for the destruction of the world.” Then he teased, “And then the subsequent decisions that he makes after that, which, you know, are for a later time.”
What’s next for Lestat? Reid teased a few clues.
The Vampire Lestat is now streaming on AMC and AMC+.
