so you know how everyone points out that bailey bass’ claudia looks very much like a mix of louis and lestat, despite obviously not being their biological child? something i’ve always thought is that delainey hayles’ claudia, while still sharing enough visual similarities with bailey’s claudia to make the recast believable to viewers, seems to look a little bit less like lestat and little bit more like louis. they have more similar chins, lips, eye shapes, and brow bones than even louis and bailey’s claudia did, and this feels very intentional when you consider that in season 2, louis and claudia’s relationship takes a much stronger focus than the triangular dynamic between louis, claudia, and lestat. lestat is still present in the narrative, but moreso for louis than for claudia, and this is reflected in her appearance
perhaps it can be said that louis remembers claudia looking more like him after they left lestat to travel across europe together, when he started seeing her as his sole companion until, of course, armand came into the picture. maybe he sees his own features reflected in her more strongly in his mind during the parts in his memory in which she is more strongly acting as his sister rather than he and lestat’s daughter; the parts in which he is trying and failing to forget lestat, the way a single parent may try and fail to forget their child’s other parent and begin to grow resentful of the features of that other parent every time they see them in their child
while the recast itself was not planned, who they recasted claudia with always felt intentional to me. the casting directors so easily could’ve picked someone who just looked like as much like bailey as possible and called it a day— and that still could’ve worked considering the show’s themes of memory being an unreliable thing—, but they chose someone who shared features with both bailey bass and jacob anderson. they chose someone whose appearance would tell the viewer that something about louis and claudia’s relationship has changed after lestat’s absence, that louis now views claudia as more of an extension of himself than ever. i’m fascinated to see how this will work in the vampire lestat with delainey returning as claudia in lestat’s memory, and what that means for how he views her, too
