‘The Gloomy Girl Who Sighs A Lot?’ ‘Yeah’

Welcome to my blog; a place dedicated to the world of fiction airbender//child of Apollo//all pronouns Mostly atla, pjo, lotr, heartstopper, dnd, ofmd theatre & everything else I’m obsessed with

[biglawbear]

I finished reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time in my life. With all of *vague gesture at everything* this going on.

I Am Not Okay

[biglawbear]

You have to understand. I watched the movies maybe once as a kid when they came out twenty years ago. I've somehow avoided learning like anything about these books my entire life. Literally everything about these books was a complete unknown and surprise to me. Totally blank slate going on. I barely even knew how it ended.

Holy shit.

[biglawbear]

Frodo didn't complete his task. Sam literally carried him up Mount Doom. And when he got to the end, he couldn't throw the Ring away.

But for Gollum biting it off with his finger, it wouldn't have been destroyed.

So Frodo's journey saved the world nonetheless.

And it broke him.

It was too much for him to bear. He could no longer live in the Shire or live in Middle-Earth. He wasn't of the world anymore. He had to go to the Undying Lands.

He took on the task that no one else would. He saved the world. Everyone got a happy ending. Aragorn became King, Sam rebuilt the Shire, Merry and Pippin became heroes. They all lived in renown.

But Frodo had the hardest task of all. No one else would do it. A simple hobbit who came by the Ring by chance. Not a King, not an immortal. Not a wizard. No power save his will and his friends. And he did it and saved everyone.

And he never got to rest. He never got to remain in peace. The task destroyed him. It was too much.

But there was no other way. Nobody but a simple hobbit could bear the ring all the way to Mount Doom and resist its power so long. Not a man, not an elf, not a wizard; they would have succumbed. Gandalf knew this, which was why he chose the hobbits in all his designs.

It's amazing that one of the precedent setting works in the fantasy genre holds up so well because it subverts what ultimately became the genre's core tropes. The hero was not the King, or a chosen one. In fact, the hero not being the King was a key point that allowed Aragorn to distract Sauron and allow the task in the first place. The hero was someone unassuming but courageous, who did the thing because no one else would, even though it was just by chance he came upon it.

But Frodo couldn't resist the Ring completely. He wasn't superior to anyone else in that way. And in the end it left him broken. The burden crushed him. No one else could do it, and in the end, he couldn't either. He wasn't so special that he was invulnerable.

I'm not okay. Holy fuck you guys.

[biglawbear]

It's been a week and I'm still not over this, I'll never get over this.

Something that I've been thinking about, as I struggle with depression and anxiety and *another vague gesture at everything* is that LOTR does not criticize Frodo for being broken. It does not shame him or deny him what he needs.

The task was too much and it broke him and that's okay. His friends nonetheless take care of him and let him go with understanding. The book doesn't treat it as a bad thing.

This seems to be a theme throughout the books. The characters rest and heal. They spend time recovering in Rivendell, Fangorn, Lorien, Ithilien. It's treated as good and necessary. They don't heroically endure endless torment from the second they set out until they're done.

And in Gondor's march from Minas Tirith to Mordor, Aragorn recognizes that some of the very few men he's taking with him don't have the heart to go to battle against the Enemy. And he says that's okay. He gives them other tasks the they can do. They hold other strategic points. They aren't shamed for not going all the way, or kicked out, or told that they aren't manly or whatever. Their limitations are recognized and respected. The task was too big and it was okay that they couldn't do it.

I don't know man. I've held on through some absolutely crazy shit. White knuckled through mental health crises when my doctors were begging me to take a break, to go to the hospital before I hurt myself. My therapist has tried to slow me down and tell me that I've been going through it and it's understandable that I am feeling some kind of way. Even one of my colleagues remarked that I've had an absolutely fucking wild career and that I've seen more as a lawyer of seven years than she has as a lawyer of forty. But I've gotten it into my head that I have to be strong, I have to be independent.

Fuck me, man, I'm currently white knuckling through life and hanging on by a fucking thread. A few weeks ago I was about an hour away from checking myself in to a mental health facility until my best friends swooped in to help me. And then I went right back to work.

And then I read this book. This fucking brilliant and beautiful book written by a man who had seen the horrors of war and spilled it all over the page. And I read it for the first time as an adult with full understanding and experience of what it all means. And it hits me like a fucking truck.

And it says that you can't endure everything. That at some point you need to rest and heal. That if you take on too much you will break. And that all of that is okay.

How am I supposed to move on with my life after reading this?

[maiisbored]

Some random lyrics I wrote for Ed:

Your black cravat is now hanging around my neck

The satin feels as gentle as the words you said

Makes me want to take a leaf from your book instead

Could I be soft?

Could I cry in front of you?

Could I tell you my silly schemes and broken dreams and not feel the need to run to

The old cold ways that I’m used to

[bayetea]

I've seen Poasts dunking on annabeth for basically sucking at being the leader of the botl quest and with some credit to that point it is absolutely true that she messed up and made some bad/dangerous/questionable choices whilst occupying that leadership role i.e. her attitude in the sphinx scene perhaps being the most egregious offense, being not only an act of self-sabotage but an act that immediately results in the violent endangerment of her friends (see: hubris, specifically her excessive pride)

but to the point of annabeth floundering on this quest (never mind the immense psychological torment of the botl prophecy, which predicts "a child of athena's last stand" and a "fate worse than death" for a person she loves), I think it's important to note that the labyrinth quest was straight up impossible to complete in the beginning, and the same cannot be said of the quest for zeus' bolt, the quest for the golden fleece, or the quest to rescue annabeth and artemis. in this way botl's difficulty level is distinct from all previous adventures in the series. if a quest leader's role is to take charge and guide the direction of the quest itself then she absolutely could not have succeeded in that role because it's impossible to navigate the labyrinth without the aid of a god (i.e. hephaestus' spider, hera's blessings), ariadne's string, or a clear-sighted mortal. percy blows up in a volcano and grover and tyson go missing on annabeth's disaster quest in part because she simply did not have all of the tools she needed in order to succeed (hera even says to her face that percy holds the key to this quest, not annabeth; it wasn't without additional guidance that percy could even realize what hera was referring to)

the hopelessness of annabeth's efforts is something the audience can infer from the beginning, and it's the reason why percy expresses doubt in annabeth's stubborn commitment to her fruitless attempts at coordination. at one point she even resorts to using math as a navigation tool, to using numerical logic for a maze that defies all logic - she was desperate, but she really was trying. this is very in-character for her; we have more than a few in-text indications in botl that annabeth is at least subconsciously aware that she won't be able to figure out the labyrinth, but as shown in the sphinx quote, she's wisdom's daughter, and she won't shy away from a challenge and she doesn't want others to know that she's struggling. she's a perseverant girl even to the detriment of herself and others, and it wounds her deeply to acknowledge and openly admit that she's incapable of doing something, to admit that she requires the aid of another to achieve her goals (see: hubris)

so, incomes rachel to do just that, and annabeth loses her goddamn mind over it

her reaction to rachel is interesting because it's more complicated than mere romantic jealousy. just like the sphinx scene, annabeth's animosity towards rachel is, aside from her reservations about having a mortal on a dangerous demigod quest, straight up illogical behavior. everything about her unwillingness to let rachel on the quest is wholly inconducive to its successful completion. the issue isn't solely that rachel is a romantic rival and thus she doesn't want to be anywhere near her (though it is undeniably one core influence - the botl love triangles aren't just pointless drama, they're very important to the overall story); rachel essentially becomes the new leader and guide of the labyrinth quest, replacing annabeth in that role - annabeth, the girl who struggles with feeling important, who seeks glory and fame for her greatness, who covets opportunities to exercise her skill, all of which is evidenced by her character's desires which had been hitherto set up throughout the series:

^from the lightning thief

^from the sea of monsters

^from the battle of the labyrinth

so I love the botl quest being the one that annabeth of all people gets to lead because it's the perfect obstacle for her character. she wants to prove herself, she believes that she is capable of impossibly herculean feats and then the first quest she gets to lead is impossible to lead without the aid of the last person in the world she wants to accept help from. truly the best kind of conflict to throw at a character like her

and if we can go back to ttc and remember when athena looked directly into the camera and told us that fatal flaws are dangerous but can still be good in small doses then we can discuss the role of annabeth's hubris a bit more effectively. I bring this up because I've also seen people upset that annabeth isn't "punished" or condemned enough by the larger narrative for her hubris/that her hubris wasn't "corrected" or "overcome" sufficiently, and I see where this idea comes from but I think it overly conflates that which is the standard character flaw in general literature with fatal flaws (hamartia) as they exist in tragedies, especially greek tragedies and aristotelian philosophical frameworks

(mini-tangent: literary scholars have been debating over the meanings and purpose of hamartia for a hot minute and especially in the twentieth century and beyond; I won't get into it here but check the tags of this post for a tiny bit more detail on this if you're interested)

the fatal flaw is not necessarily constructed as a lesson that the hero learns from or a stain on their character that can and should be washed away with effort, it is better envisioned as an everlasting flame inside the body that burns and dooms the hero once it grows too large. notably this "flame" cannot be evicted from the hero's interior because it is so innate, particularly as rick employs said device in pjo: annabeth states that hubris is the flaw of children of athena, bianca states that holding grudges is dangerous for children of hades, as though their godly ancestry had predetermined their characters from the moment they were born. this has its root in the issue of the unchangeable nature of fate vs. the agency and free will of humanity that the first 5 books like to play around with

literary scholar ac bradley discusses hamartia in his famous writings on shakespearean tragedies - which are, yes, shakespearean, but I'm not going to waste time building a venn diagram to show the key differences and similarities between greek tragedies and shakespearean tragedies (feel free to google that if you're interested in this subject); instead let's just take a brief look at how he characterizes the dramatic literary device that is the "fatal flaw" (hamartia):

(if you're a shakespeare scholar and my mentioning bradley just sent shivers down your spine don't worry I'm very aware of his Flaws and using his readings sparingly)

"his weakness or defect is so intertwined with everything that is admirable in him". I'm going to bring this up again later so put a pin in this quote

you may have already noticed that I've said nothing about hoo or mark of athena so far and I think I have to disclose that this is intentional; there are many good reasons why many readers do not consider hoo to be a worthy successor to the first series. this post is not for my criticisms of rick's approach to fatal flaws and annabeth's character in hoo (though believe me I have plenty of those), so we're just going to ignore hoo with regards to discussion of annabeth's hubris here. back to pjo

botl is the book where annabeth's hubris truly sets fire to the page. her eventual acceptance/tolerance of rachel represents the beginning cooldowns of the worst effects of her fatal flaw. the most notable interaction where annabeth recognizes her own hubris and keeps it at bay is when she finally accepts in tlo that she cannot change luke or save him from his tragic fate. the death of silena and luke's role in that event is what finally cements this conclusion, something that she's been unable to accept for years, something that her siren vision in som told us she desired so extremely. she really believed that she'd be able to save him, as though she, once again, believed that she was capable of impossible feats like changing luke's fate (see: hubris!)

re: the issue of "is annabeth sufficiently corrected of and condemned for her flaws by the narrative?", I want to raise a counterpoint that might help reshape this mindset: do we believe that arachne deserved her terrible fate as punishment for her hubris? I don't even like the pjgg/pjgh books but percy himself sure didn't think so in his greek gods narration, where he tells us outright that he doesn't agree with the "preachy moral" of arachne's story:

so it's all the more appropriate that, towards the end of botl, percy expresses a really interesting idea that moves in conversation with pjo's overarching thematic commitment to breaking from the cycles of suffering seen throughout greek mythology and tragedies. do our flaws have to be extracted from our bodies? do flawed beings have to be punished like arachne? pjo lands on a more hopeful, freeing, and malleable conclusion: annabeth's hubris, like percy's own loyalty, can be maddening, it can be dangerous, it can be managed, and it is "so intertwined with everything that is admirable" in her

percy likens annabeth's hubris towards the sphinx to her ability to confidently defy the queen of the gods, even though hera helped out both of them significantly during the quest - because honor and subservience to the gods is not superior to either of their individual principles. in a more ancient tragedy or parable, they would have been punished narratively for this kind of behavior. annabeth can stand up for nico and go against hera, functionally her own patron goddess during botl, because of this stubbornness that's rooted so deeply in her identity. this scalding flame inside of annabeth doesn't need to be extinguished

[edwarbteach]

JUNE THE THIRD, AN EXCELLENT DAY!

[astro-can]

process of elimination

[stars-bean]

Some Like It Hot (1959) dir. Billy Wilder

[anyroads]

#someone pointed out once that he chose his female name because he liked it#whereas the other man just picked the female version of his existing name#because it was easier and that was his main concern#lot of interesting gender stuff going on here

Oh yeah there was a lot of "Hayes Code be damned, all of us making this film are queer/friends with queers and we're going to have some fun with gender identity" in this film. That's why it still holds up. It's not a story based around getting a laugh out of dressing men up as women so they can be clowns - there's an integrity to the cross-dressing. Daphne is an identity Jerry realized he had when he put on a dress. Every time he chooses to keep his wig and outfit on and maintain his feminine mannerisms while alone with Joe, it shows his comfort in this identity, and it elicits laughter from the audience through the dialogue, ie. the audience isn't laughing at the fact that a man is in a dress, but at the characters as fleshed out characters and human beings. The laughter comes from the situations the characters are put in and their reactions to them, not from a parody of womanhood presented through a male perspective. Similarly, Osgood's classic line at the end of the film is an affirmation that he likes Jerry as he is, even if he's Daphne. It's a way of getting the audience to say, "this is fine, we're comfortable" through laughter to something socially unacceptable in its time.

Joe's masculine identity, meanwhile, is used to highlight his misogyny and force him to understand it (and the same with Jerry, but as he's less of a womanizer, there's less of a point to be made with him). In a world where men and women often had separate social circles that overlapped only when romance was on the table, putting a man like Joe in a female space where he's privy to the conversations and emotions that his actions elicit gives him a lot to contend with and understand because he can see the consequences of his actions as raw pain and secondhand, instead of as anger being spewed directly at him. Again, the joke isn't that he's a man in a dress, or that he's parodying womanhood, it's that as a selfish misogynist he's put in situations where he's forced to empathize with the experience of womanhood in order to convincingly enact it for his own safety.

There's a whole lot more to unpack in the metaphor of these two men having to pass as women because their lives are at stake if they don't.

[hi-im-dazey]

Okay so for one of my screenwriting and film studies sections I wrote a paper comparing the language of clothing and feminism from Wilder in two of his films, The Apartment and Some Like it Hot.

Now I am not going to spew out a wall of text on the subject or anything, but I did want to point out that he did not just "sneak things by" the code, he actually deliberately REFUSED to abide by it at all for this film, he willfully refused to even apply for the certification, he knew it wouldn't pass, and he knew he wouldn't bend to let it pass.

He and the studio took a gamble that a Wilder-Curtis-Lemmon-Monroe flick would do box office and get play without the "seal of approval" from the code folks.

And he was right.

[animationsource]

[aformofenergy]

Remember this, Zuko.

3x21, 2x07, 3x09, 2x01, 2x17, 3x16, 3x08, 3x18

[cadaverkeys]

genuinely one of my favourite details about Bram Stokers Dracula that isn't really transferred to the pop culture is that vampires have irridescent eyes, they appear brown at a glance, however when light is reflected on them they seem to go red!

[cadaverkeys]

another thing that pop culture latched onto is this idea that you might use a wreath of garlic bulbs to ward off a vampire, however, in the book there is a popular use of garlic blossoms rather than the bulbs. i think these are a lot prettier and way more versatile for stylisation! you could have a garlic flower crown.

[cadaverkeys]

also like the cowboy part can we please stop omitting the fact that there is a real ass cowboy in Bram Stokers Dracula and hes from real ass Texas and he has a fucking gun and he tries to fucking shoot Dracula

[morcian-draws]

Boyfriends 💖

[hiperfixationqueen]

Oh how I miss them

[spankerella]

Happy Lizard Fashion Day to those who celebrate.

[maybemacdc]

quiet mornings

[nalyra-dreaming]

Lestat de Lioncourt doesn’t want fans. He needs them. And quite frankly, he'd be offended by the mere 20 extras in attendance at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on this beautiful spring day in April. So it's a good thing that Lestat is nowhere to be found… at least not really.

At Entertainment Weekly’s cover shoot, those background actors, dressed in all black, fill the stage of the Brooklyn venue as they wait for The Vampire Lestat leading man Sam Reid and his costars Eric Bogosian, Jennifer Ehle, and Jacob Anderson. Even though they all play vampires on the hit AMC series, they're mostly human today. There are no fangs, no crazy contacts. But Reid does manage to find a good pair of sunglasses. And that's all he needs to channel the 265-year-old vampire desperate for "billions" of fans.

As he puts on the glasses, you can see his body language change. Reid might exit through the doorway to his mark, but Lestat saunters back into the room. In a matter of seconds, the kind Australian actor is gone, his sweet demeanor replaced with Lestat's supernatural confidence. His chest is out, his arms swing as he becomes more fluid, his walk somehow telling everyone else just how unimportant they are compared to him. The fans grabbing for him? Yeah, he deserves them.

After all, as Lestat himself says in the upcoming season, "It's my era. I'm a rock star now."

Digital Cover: The Vampire Lestat

When Interview With the Vampire returns for season 3 (June 7), it's now titled The Vampire Lestat. Named after the second book in Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles series, the show is switching perspectives. Long gone are the days of Louis' thoughtful, dramatic voiceover. Now, you're inside Lestat's head. And you better buckle up.

"It's tonal whiplash in the most intentional way," says Jacob Anderson, who plays Louis de Pointe du Lac.

Reid admits, "It was very overwhelming to read. I was anxious because it's such a huge departure."

Sam Reid photographed exclusively for Entertainment Weekly.

Taiye Godbody

For showrunner Rolin Jones, his philosophy is simple: "Adapt or die." It's been that way from the start.

"When I pitched the show, they wanted to know: What do five seasons look like? What do eight seasons look like? So this has been in my head for a little bit," Jones says.

But there was no guarantee that they'd get to tell this story.

The series is an adaptation of Rice's massively popular book series, which launched in 1976 with Interview With the Vampire, and has sold more than 150 million copies. Many know the 1994 film adaptation starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, but would an AMC series that tap danced on the line between dramatic and cheesy find an audience?

Jacob Anderson as Louis on 'The Vampire Lestat'.

Sophie Giraud/AMC

"It's a very, very thin line. It could topple over at any second," Jones says. "We knew we were gonna write the show in a certain way and you needed actors who were confident enough to take this prose that could go horribly wrong and ground it and make it feel like it's everyday speech."

Those actors included Anderson and Reid, whose Louis and Lestat would be the love story at the center of all the madness.

"I had heard that they were going to make it again. I had hoped that I would get to audition for it, but I had no clue that it would be adapted in such a way," Reid recalls. "I had no thought that it would be done so eloquently, with such extraordinary writing."

Sam Reid and Jacob Anderson photographed exclusively for EW.

Taiye Godbody

Anderson admits that it all clicked "as soon as me and Sam started to work together. Because the show is so much, particularly the first season, about their relationship."

And with a month of prep in New Orleans before filming began in December 2021, the actors were able to spend time together and build the foundation of the toxic (and intoxicating) relationship at the center of the show.

"The important thing was whatever they did before they got on camera," Jones says. "They did very smart work. Something special happened there. Whatever they complete in each other's lives in terms of friendship, that's the f---ing gas that makes this show go."

Jacob Anderson photographed exclusively for EW.

Taiye Godbody

For two seasons, that relationship has fueled an unpredictable journey as Louis recounted his life to journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian). There was love, heartbreak, death, rebirth, and so, so much blood as the show brought Rice's vampiric lovers to life (or, more accurately, death).

"I'd be looking online, or looking at what people were saying. There was just so much trepidation and anger about what people wanted, and what they were expecting. It became very overwhelming, because it was a new experience for me, to have that level of anticipation," Reid says. "When I watched episode 5, I remember that music and how traumatizing that episode was. I was like, 'Oh my God, this is quite an astonishing show.'"

Eric Bogosian as Daniel on 'The Vampire Lestat'.

Sophie Giraud/AMC

As the series found its fandom, it launched its second season and gave viewers much more insight into the world of Louis and his longtime partner, Armand (Assad Zaman), building to the ultimate betrayal: After decades believing Lestat wished him dead, Louis realizes his former lover actually saved his life and that Armand had directed the very play that led to his surrogate daughter Claudia's (Delainey Hayles) death. As Louis enacted his revenge on the members of the Théâtre des Vampires, Armand made one more move: He turned Daniel into a vampire.

And that brings us to season 3, where Bogosian jokes, "I was just ready to start biting people."

Eric Bogosian photographed exclusively for EW.

Taiye Godbody

The Vampire Lestat picks up following the success of Daniel's book. A very pissed off, very snotty Lestat is determined to share his side of the story and correct quite a few things. As the immortal says, he's doing a "rewrite," and he's doing it in the form of a documentary about his new tour — because, you know, he's a rock star now.

"We thought, 'What's the worst thing we could do to Lestat to put him through the ringer?' Force him to be a rock star in 2025 when no one gives a s--- about rock & roll," Jones says with a laugh.

Sam Reid as Lestat de Lioncourt on 'The Vampire Lestat'.

Sophie Giraud/AMC

The first surprising twist in Lestat's journey? Reid didn't sing in his initial audition.

"Rolin originally had envisioned that Lestat would be an orchestra conductor," Reid says. "When I was doing season 1, he was like, 'Start learning the piano, and you should start studying conducting, because that's where we're going with the character.' I was like, 'I really think he's got to be a singer.' That's what [series composer] Daniel Hart had always envisioned too. Then I think Rolin, I don't know when it happened for him, but it definitely clicked at a certain point. He went full in."

And he does mean full in. If the show is putting Lestat front and center, it "should feel like Lestat front and center. That dictates form. Honestly, it was rock & roll. Safety was not really an option," Jones says.

Sam Reid photograhped exclusively for EW.

Taiye Godbody

So, they tossed safety out the window, grabbed some leather pants and lots of eyeliner, and started digging into all that is Lestat de Lioncourt. And there's a lot, starting with Lestat's human life.

"He never really got a life," Reid says. "He stayed at home. He didn't really do much. His mother took control of his life, made him become something. As soon as he has the glimmer of individual impetus, of being his own person, of working out what he might want in the world, he's ripped away and turned into this whole other thing. Then his whole life has been about justifying his existence as this creature of the night. I think, like so many people, he does just want to be loved."

'The Vampire Lestat's new trailer teases his glamorous, blood-soaked rock star era: 'This is my reckoning'

'The Vampire Lestat' boss reveals Louis' 'heartbreaking' expanded role (exclusive)

As Jones puts it, "If season 3 is sort of attacking the id of Lestat, we disassemble a lot of stuff that's inside him. That's what's exciting about the structure of it: It starts out with all the armor upfront, and then we just start smashing away. It definitely is the biggest swing of the three years, there's no doubt."

Jennifer Ehle as Gabriella on 'The Vampire Lestat'.

Sophie Giraud/AMC

The person really trying to disassemble Lestat's thoughts and get to, dare he say it, the truth? Daniel. But don't expect the two to have a pleasant chat over coffee.

Lestat and Daniel are like when "an irresistible force hits the immovable object," Bogosian says. “The very first time I sat and listened to Louis, it was mesmerizing. There was always this confluence that was happening as we went along and we learned things together. That never happens with Lestat. He considers Daniel an annoyance."

And then there's Lestat's mother, Gabriella (Gabrielle in the books). Ahead of her series debut, fans got a taste of Gabriella's relationship with her son in the trailer, when the two kiss. Yes, you read that correctly. Lestat and his mother (played by Jennifer Ehle) have a… special relationship.

Jennifer Ehle and Sam Reid photographed exclusively for EW.

Taiye Godbody

"The first scene we shot together was Lestat covered in blood, and then we're making out," Reid says of adding Ehle to the cast. "It was a bit of a 'Hello.'"

But Jones assures fans they're not doing incest just to do it, because, as he says, that'd be "boring as s---."

Instead, "We thought she was a really fascinating, interesting character. She's not there just to plug in why Lestat is so messed up as he is. We made the challenge of like, 'Okay, we'll do that, but you're gonna understand it. Whether or not you like it, you're going to understand it.'"

Ehle believes that when Rolin Jones calls you, you say yes — especially when the role is as delicious as this one.

"Gabriella's unique in this world because she had absolutely no agency and no power whatsoever in her real life," Ehle says. "She was married so young, to a horrible man, and very isolated in a country where it wasn't even her first language. She's then liberated and given complete and utter freedom. It was interesting to play both sides, the abused woman who was deeply unhappy and then to become somebody completely liberated and ruthless. A monster, but a completely liberated monster."

Jennifer Ehle photographed exclusively for EW.

Taiye Godbody

Reid adds, "She has a real cruelty to her. She just does it so beautifully. I think you really understand Lestat better. I think you feel like you get to know him so much more through his relationship with his mother."

As the show explores what makes Lestat tick, Louis will get a new story, one that strays from the source material. Jones felt he had to give Anderson more to do — and the same goes for Delainey Hayles, whose Claudia is back this season, though the "how" is being kept in a locked coffin. (Jones will say that the haunting of the muses is coming "like a f---ing freight train.")

What we can say is that Louis isn't quite done grieving his daughter just yet.

"Claudia is playing on Louis' mind a lot, and that's something he'll never heal from," Hayles says. "The grief is part of him."

Jacob Anderson photographed exclusively for EW.

Taiye Godbody

It was a concept that Anderson wasn't sure about sinking his teeth into when Jones first mentioned it.

"I feel like they so beautifully encapsulated Louis and Claudia's relationship [in season 2,] and I felt like I and Louis got a really definitive sense of closure. And Rolin kept saying to me, even while we were shooting season 2, he was like, 'No, no, there's more there.' And I was like, 'I don't think there is, Rolin.' It took some convincing to get me on board."

Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.

Jones understood the trepidation.

"It could be a real reboot," he says. "But when we looked at the last image of season 2, we said, 'Seems kinda cute and cuddly, doesn't it? It seems very neat.' We were always looking for, 'How do we drive him back to Lestat?' So we had to put him through something."

What exactly they put him through, we can't reveal. But as Anderson adds, "I was shocked. He's having a really, really rough time."

Sam Reid and Jacob Anderson photographed exclusively for EW.

Taiye Godbody

As for Louis' relationship with Lestat, the two aren't on good terms when the season starts, because as we mentioned, Lestat is pretty pissed about the book. ("It would be weird if he's not,: Reid says.) But the thing about vampires? They have all the time in the world.

"In terms of Louis and Lestat, they're definitely on separate tracks at this point. But I would say that nobody will guess what's gonna happen next," Anderson says.

After all, this entire season has been a surprise to everyone involved.

"The day I arrived, they were on location and I snuck in," Assad Zaman recalls. "I met the band that day and got to watch a little and I was like, 'Oh my God, this is a completely different world. This is so bizarre. Brilliant, but bizarre.' It did feel like a new show, but that's exciting."

Assad Zaman as Armand on 'The Vampire Lestat'.

Sophie Giraud/AMC

Speaking of Zaman, fans will get to see his Armand through Lestat's lens this time around.

"It's fun to play the more irritated gremlin Armand that Lestat knows rather than the very put together, charming Armand that you see in season 2," Zaman says. "I think Lestat's Armand is a little more desperate and empathetic and slightly irritating."

If it's not clear at this point, everyone and everything has a bit more of an edge this time around.

"It has that third album flavor to it," Anderson says of the season. "We did the debut, we showed all our tricks and everything that we'd learned up to this point in our life. Second album was, 'We better really show up now.' And then third album's like, 'Anything goes.'"

Eric Bogosian, Sam Reid, Jennifer Ehle, and Jacob Anderson photographed exclusively for EW.

Taiye Godbody

In some ways, the risk taking has been built into the fabric of the show.

"The borderline cheesiness, or the thing that could go too big, helps us be singular," Jones says, noting that the show lives in a world where "there's some really dumb s--- next to some really smart s---."

Plus, there's freedom in knowing nothing — besides Lestat, of course — is perfect.

"There's no season where everybody loves 100 percent of our choices," Jones says. "It is built, actually, for this sort of unease and unsettlement."

But the one guarantee?

"They’ll never think we were boring."

— src EW

[texasbama]

(x)

[byronicbisexuals]

Sam Reid and the rest of the cast for the Entertainment Weekly

[xxsunnyphoenixx]

ARMAND FANS WAKE UPPPPPPP

[annabelle--cane]

stop. analyse that text through the lens of its author's intentions and original historical context. okay now take the author out back and kill them dead and analyse that text as though it were published by your mutual yesterday and is in direct conversation the contemporary discourse that's most relevant to your life. okay now pick your favorite angle of interpretation and come up with the strongest possible argument against it. now imagine that the text is your best friend and that it means you well and that you naturally give it every benefit of the doubt because you're on its side and you want the best for it. now imagine that the text wants you dead and it'll eat you if you don't eat it first. now pretend that you found this text locked away in a cave with no evidence of when or where it came from and you have to divine its meaning solely through its internal coherence and nothing else. okay now address the elephant in the room aspect of the text you've been ignoring because you find it boring or confusing or uncomfortable and become the number one expert on it. now spend forty minutes assigning all the characters dnd classes with at least three sentences of reasoning each. okay now do the cha cha slide.