- Watch "The Vampire Lestat: After Dark"
on AMC+ or wherever you get your podcasts.
- Previously on "The Vampire Lestat"...
- The collection has been named "The Failures."
- That's why these movie producers hired you,
Daniel Molloy, vampire slayer.
- They said you requested me.
What happened at age 9?
- I was taken to see witches being burned at a stake.
It's what moms did with kids before LEGO and Peppa Pig.
- Ready to eat your own?
- What is with the tan, Dan?
- I'm seeing someone.
- The Vampire Armand, the love of my life.
- More deaths than births.
It's happening, Daniel.
- The Great Conversion, it's real.
- Your music speaks to them.
They long for a communion.
- You're the one putting the show together?
50,000 of us.
- They're coming from all over the world.
- Find someone else to swindle.
- He's the one coming around here doing all this with me.
I look like her. I look just like her, don't I?
- We eat your soul at the long table.
- If it was just the two of us again, could be nice.
- Could be.
- You'd be a head mounted above a coven toilet
if it weren't for me.
- You assume death at decapitation.
["All Fall Down"]
♪
- ♪ I'm the little killer ♪
♪ I'm the lonely one ♪
♪ I'm the chill creeping up your spine ♪
♪ Telling you to run ♪
♪ I'm a hanging shadow ♪
♪ I'm a lost love ♪
♪ I'm the past and the future ♪
♪ The last of the sutures, the cooing dove ♪
♪ We're the rock and rollers ♪
♪ We're the good time ♪
♪ We're the heart pumping blood ♪
♪ We're the face in the mud ♪
♪ We're this stupid rhyme ♪
♪ Bang, bang - ♪ Bang, bang ♪
- ♪ Bang, bang - ♪ Bang, bang ♪
♪ All fall down ♪
♪ Burn the ground ♪
♪ All fall down ♪
♪ Burn the ♪
♪ Bang, bang - ♪ Bang, bang ♪
- ♪ Bang, bang - ♪ Bang, bang
- ♪ Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang ♪
- You are listening to "The Failures"...
[record scratches] Album 57, Side A.
- Could be nice, says Louis.
Could be, I say.
And our hands touch.
I am staring at Alex in his plastic Dracula mask.
And then I think, why is he here?
And then the world pivots.
And I see stars in the sky.
Boots upside down.
My blood, a half-painted moon.
And then I'm dreaming.
[gentle music]
[birds chirping]
I'm walking a path.
I am listening to hidden birds in a forest
and transcribing their chatter into music on paper.
It's the same dream I've been having
since I finished the album and faked my death,
except now I'm hungry and it's daylight all around.
And as I'm a vampire, confirmed by the glass nails
on my fingers, I should be burning,
but I'm not.
The birds' music becomes repetitive.
And then the forest goes quiet.
No birds singing.
I am left with my hunger,
a feeling like my stomach is eroding from the inside.
And then, as if the forest has heard my thoughts,
a murder of waiters carrying silver-domed trays
take over my path.
- Come now, Lestat.
No falling behind.
[laughs]
- And I follow my hunger into the wood.
[distant horns honking]
And I begin to hear sounds of a city,
and that little song they play for the blind
at crosswalks throughout Montreal
carries my hunger to the table of my youth,
where my selves sit with the abbot of Haute-Loire...
- Circles us as God...
- Instructing from my father's chair.
[distant horns honking] [bright melody playing]
- Encircles us with his love.
- The hood?
- Limits our view and cuts out the world
so we gaze ahead towards God.
- And the length of our habit trips us up
and gets in our goddamn way.
- [laughs]
- Lestat. - Lestat.
- Have a seat, Lestat.
- There's seven waiters and only four of us.
both: Have a seat. - Have a s--
[stammering]
Seat. Seat.
[platters clattering]
- The light's gone out of your blue eyes.
all: As if all the summer days are gone.
- Course 187, the soul.
[eerie music]
- [humming and vocalizing]
♪
- [gasps, gurgling]
- I have been enduring intense conversations
with myself in the three years since our companionship ended.
And as part of that journey, I wish to say something
from the deepest regions of my soul.
- Ar--
- Two grievous lies, gross betrayals.
The first is a well-trod pit of hot coals
I blistered my feet on for 77 years.
- Arm... [gasping]
- I chose my coven over you,
lured you into a production of a play,
in which your death would act as the grotesque climax.
The coven was twisting my arm, but...
- Ar...
- I took aesthetic pleasure
in making your death visually exhilarating.
- ...mand.
- All of which was made worse by our heady lovemaking
throughout this period of betrayal, and...
the second.
- [gasping]
- I shamefully took credit when Lestat saved your life.
- Where am I?
- That lie bound you to me, and it lay like a corpse
in the boiler room of our companionship.
Many times, I told myself the lie did not matter
because what we had built,
a love that served as a bunker against time,
was weightier and more consequential
than the lie, but it wasn't true.
- Can't move...
- The lie did matter because the corpse was there,
calling forth the facts.
- Can't move my body.
[gasping]
- And as for the many boys
you drugged, drained, and lay with,
I feigned resentment when, in fact,
I welcomed your straying
because your guilt in their aftermath
bound you to me all the more tightly
and allowed me my hours of observation with Daniel.
I told you I loved you, but did I?
Hmm? Did I?
Or was it a clinging to the underside
of anyone who would help me survive?
And when I look back on who I've deceived,
how I've deceived, how easy it was
for me to lead a cult for 400 years,
to burn in ritual any who broke the archaic laws
we lived by, I--
I think I might be a room without walls,
floors, a ceiling.
An infinite nothing.
Also, yes.
I put the Fred Steins in your photo collection
just to fuck with your head.
And that is my full and heartfelt "Armends."
Now...
♪
It's your turn.
- I am the chair, the maker,
the Vampire Magnus.
Fledglings, state your names for the record.
- The Vampire Nicolas de Lenfent.
- The Vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac.
[typewriter clicking] - The Vampire Gabriella Vecce.
- The Vampire Antoinette Brown.
- The Vampire TC.
- And where's Claudia?
- She said all she needs to say to you is what she said.
- Her actual words were,
"Fuck him, fuck y'all, go burn
like that dumb nine-fingered bitch, Antoinette."
- [laughs]
- Antoinette, hello.
- Don't you "Antoinette, hello," me.
- Restrain yourself, Ms. Brown. [typewriter chimes]
- So... I'm dead.
[typewriter clicking]
This is death?
My father's ugly table in your shitty tower?
- Dying.
This is you dying.
- This is the reminiscence, the deliberation
and mastication of the early risings
and nightly failures of the vampire.
- How? - "How" is not his name.
His name is Lestat.
- How did I die? - I'ma type Lestat.
- Dying.
Not yet dead.
- Wasting time.
Much like you've wasted your lives.
- Could be nice. - Could be.
Hands touch. [typewriter chimes]
- Second time's the charm.
- Keep typing, Ms. Brown.
[typewriter clicking]
- So you're all here to judge me.
- We are the failure finders.
Judgment comes from God, Satan, the Simulation.
We don't know. No one ever tells us.
And yet here we are on course number 205.
all: The soul.
[laughter]
- [laughing]
[somber music]
This is a dream.
[laughing] I am not here.
- You are here.
- And also in a bowling ball bag
walking west on Avenue Van Horne.
- [laughing] A bowling bag.
[laughter]
- And also lying on the sideboard
in the back room of a butcher shop.
♪ ♪
- It's November 1st.
- All Saints Day, a Saturday morning.
- Which means we won't be disturbed,
as it's an observant butchery, and it's their Shabbos.
All the shops along this avenue are closed.
- And anyone who might possibly think of coming to your rescue
is asleep.
- [snoring]
- Or otherwise engaged.
- [gurgling]
♪ ♪
- [sighs]
I was hoping time and perspective
would have made you eager to repent.
- Don't care. - My blunder.
I haven't properly laid out your predicament.
- [gasping]
- This is your sundered head.
And this is your petulant body.
And this is the glorious air between
on which the two of you still manage to communicate
a good 2 hours and 12 minutes since uncoupling.
- I don't care.
- If you weren't Lestat's progeny,
this would not be happening.
You would be dead, which is why
this is being live-cast to a very important room
gathered in Budapest.
- [groaning] - You are special, Louis.
- Fareed.
- Yes, our former doctor,
back in research where he thrives,
studying us, analyzing us.
But was he doing that all along?
Hmm? In Dubai?
- See you, Fareed.
- In Lestat's bus?
- I don't care.
- He will say he was not here.
And if you reconsider your amends and survive,
you most probably won't remember him.
Or this.
- [gasping]
- Don't print the obituary just yet.
Getting some much needed rest before the big concert,
aren't we?
I backdoored myself into his band,
enjoyed ruining for the sake of ruining.
- [groaning]
Where is his--
- Where is his--where is his--
where is his head?
It's with my companion.
- Snuck out before the wife woke up, did you?
- Told me to take my head
as far away from her body as I could.
- Well, never question the boss.
What size shoe?
- 10 1/2.
- I think you know you've wronged me.
And I think you know the specific ways
in which you've done it.
- Don't care.
- Yes, you seem to be caught in that sentiment.
Regrettably, your maker's body has not induced you to own it.
So one additional motivation.
[metal scraping] - [groaning]
- We broke in yesterday afternoon,
glamoured the kindly brisket-carving butcher
early home to Shabbos.
We owe him new knives and a deep clean.
You may own the night, Louis,
but you're as kosher as clams casino.
Also, we brought her.
- No, no, no. - Waitress, sister, daughter.
- No, no. - None of those things.
- No, no, no.
She didn't know.
Armand!
[moans] - [screams]
- Setting aside opinions of the coven master in place,
his destruction of the children of darkness was...
- Impulsive, reckless.
- Overdue.
- Thank you.
- His abandonment of the Paris coven?
- Selfish, cowardly.
- Generous to a fault.
- I did what my maker showed me,
throw money at the problem and run away.
- Magnus gifted you immortality.
Magnus gifted you boundless lucre.
- Magnus speaks in the third person
when he's on the back foot.
[laughter]
- Fledgling Lestat gave meaning to his players
and absconded with it when he ran.
A failure of leadership.
- The plays ran for a century and a half.
- That's longer than "Wicked."
- Course 214, the soul.
- Why is he the chair?
- I am your maker!
- I knew you for a week.
What do you know of me?
"Ask for it, wolf killer, and you shall love forever."
I refused!
- Consent is a 20th-century concern.
- Showed me a coffin, some money.
Told me to scatter his ashes.
And then he lit himself on fire,
dancing as he burned!
[laughs]
I have two makers.
- Ah.
You want her.
You want mommy in the chair?
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- Yes.
- Failure continues in the astral plane.
- [laughs] [bottle whistles]
- Ms. Brown, please note for the record
a change in the chairmanship.
[typewriter clicking]
- [singing in Italian]
- [clears throat]
Ms. Brown, the next item on the agenda.
[typewriter dings]
- [sobbing]
- Let her go.
- OK, getting our bearings back.
Good.
A pedigreed vampire, as you know,
he can endure a great deal.
How are his vitals, Fareed? - Not good.
- I ask about your vitals, Louis,
because I don't think it's landed yet
who sits before you.
- She ain't part of us.
- Please. I don't want to die.
- No, he doesn't want you to die,
but let's see if that holds.
You two met by chance, yes?
The merciful universe acknowledging
your need to grieve and her need for saving.
Or was she conceived
the instant you hurled me into the supporting wall
of our Dubai penthouse?
Brought to life when I used an old photo of Claudia
in her Baby Lu blues and facial recognition software
on my iPad to find a 7 out of 10 in Berlin,
an 8 1/2 in Tunis, or this zone 2 girly
with a grifter's résumé.
- Don't. Don't. - No.
- There's a years-long tale of seduction
and cold commerce... - He told me he had a friend...
- In East London, the setting her up in New York--
- Who Lost his daughter. I didn't think he was booky.
- The 19 times she passed in front of you
before you noticed.
But your withering vitals suggest I speed ahead.
You walk into a Brooklyn diner.
I would say, "Shh, calm yourself.
"He's here for you.
Easy mark."
And she would walk up and say...
[imitating Regina] "Best thing to do with our burgers,
let it cool till the grease is all soaked, bread's all wet."
- He got--he was in my head, but he wasn't there.
- I would say, "Endear yourself to him."
And she'd say, "Had a few more hopes for New York,
"but so far it's been, like, six flatmates, one toilet.
"And it's like, do I want to take my tampon out
in front of the podcaster been with us since Tuesday?"
And you'd say...
- But you caught me at a--a lonely hour.
And I--I don't want to put this on you.
- And I'd say, "He's tender.
Back off."
But she knew better.
- Sure you do. It's right there on your jaw.
What is it?
I remind you of your sis?
- And then I knew she had you.
And her mastery allowed me to drop in and out.
I was in other business with Lestat, with Daniel.
- I'm sorry, Louis.
- All to say, there has been extraordinary effort
put forth towards this reunion.
- What I gone and done to us?
- Just kill me. - No, no.
You're going to make your amends
so we can both get on with our lives.
- [sobbing]
- Or I'm going to lop her head off
with this same blade I did yours
and sew your head onto her body.
- ♪ They said I was dead ♪
♪ They tried to save me ♪
♪ They cut off my head ♪
[pins clatter]
[upbeat hip-hop music playing]
♪ ♪
- Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat.
You took one look at me, had me all figured out.
Yeah, question mark?
Smarter than me?
Maybe.
Better looking than me?
I'll give you that.
More talented? Hmm.
You go do what I did with my life.
You go knock down those doors.
You go get some.
Oh, that's right, you were in a rock band.
Wow, big dick deal.
- He gave me the gift
rather than tell me he love me.
I begged him to say it, say, "Nikki,
I will never love you the way that you love me."
- Gotta say that shit a mile up in the air
if you want it to stick.
- He told you he loved you a thousand times.
- 10,000. [zipper rips]
- But now that I've gotten over
my transformational trauma and find myself
in my day-walking yaoi manther phase...
- There's a hole in your roof.
- I only give a shit about Dan.
Thought you were better than me, didn't you?
Gave me a little camera crew, a laminated backstage pass,
and then you laughed in my face
and jerked off on my lens.
Well, look at you now, spending your last hours
in a fucking bowling bag, listening to Wheelchair Jimmy.
Blow me.
[zipper rips] - Oh.
- There is a lot coming at you, mon cher.
Just remember, you are the only one
who can control the volume.
- [mumbling]
♪ ♪
- Oh, you.
What are you doing here?
Armand tell you to meet me?
- [mumbling]
- Oh, yeah, he's in there.
It's in there.
Lestat's mom made you, yeah?
She give you the autism gift?
You bowl?
- I'm a lot of bad things, but I'm not, like--
- Vitals, Fareed? - Waning.
- I wouldn't have done it had I known he was full fiend,
gonna cut you up like he done.
I was in the grip of it and couldn't get myself out.
- Fareed assured me it would work.
Pop it back on. Let the blood do its magic.
- On a work visa, signed by him.
- Not sure it would work on a mortal,
but this is how progress... - Walk into a police precinct
- Is made--trial and error. - And say, "In some trouble.
It's weird. He's a vampire,"
gonna end up on a grippy sock holiday.
- I listened in on your séance last night.
I think Claudia would approve of this scientific risk.
- We ain't coming out of this.
[muffled] We're gonna die.
They gonna sell a snuff tape, Louis.
Don't give it to them.
- Ah, he's shut us both out.
[laughs]
- [whimpering]
- You know, I've known for some time
Claudia was the aperture through which
I could rip his innards out.
I understood his obsession for forgiveness.
I lived it with him.
He was my Claudia.
But I wasted a near century.
And that is not nothing.
That deserves amends.
- He said to the head on the skewer.
- You think I'm bluffing?
[suspenseful music]
Tell me your name again. - Nelson.
- Nelson. Nelson.
Nelson here is one of my followers.
Pick up that knife. [blade scrapes]
I have about a hundred of them now.
Nelson, rest.
- [gurgling] - [screaming]
[clattering]
- Nelson thinks he was here to stop the Great Conversion,
to return to the Five Laws.
I needed him to stuff your head in a cooler and drive me here.
- [grunts]
♪ ♪
- Rest.
♪ ♪
- I liked you, Louis.
You're a bit messed up, but I liked you.
♪ ♪
Please.
I don't wanna die.
[whimpering]
- Paper.
Paper.
[knife clatters]
- You failed to fill the Ryan Center
of Kingston, Rhode Island.
- Van Gogh sold one painting in his lifetime.
- Thank you, Mother. - Lover.
- "An intransigent Crypt Keeper
in the hokiest light imaginable,"
"Billboard" magazine.
- "If this is the mind, heart, liver
"of someone looking down the barrel of immortality,
then kill me now," theneedledrop.
- "A cross between a self-absorbed
"Robert Plant impersonator and an '80s hot dog,
embalmed with hair gel."
[laughter]
"Only the drummer escapes alive."
- Woof. - Stereogum.
- You saw me front it in Toronto, and you in Detroit,
and I killed it both nights.
- Yes, but we did not see you at Potawa Tommie's
in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
- ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah [typewriter chimes]
- Turn to page 3, measure 95.
["When I Call Out Your Name" playing]
- State your name for the record.
- Marco Piemontessi.
- You were murdered by the Vampire Lestat
after a performance of "Don Pasquale."
- And him.
- As an expert in your field... - Ha.
- As an unwitting meal of the Vampire Lestat...
- And him.
- Walk us through the May 5, 2025, performance of...
- Waiter. - "When I Call Out Your Name."
- Already behind. [volume increases]
You should be anticipating the beat.
And now we are rushing. My, my.
And swallowing our consonants.
Tête.
You could learn something from your Italian mother.
- Grazie bello.
- Always disappearing when she has the chance.
- Ms. Brown, your turn is coming.
Keep typing.
- Flat again.
- At least we don't have to listen
to his violin playing on this one.
- Flat.
The control of a child with your vibrato.
- ♪ Gabriella, Gabriella ♪
- Again, flat.
- Screaming like a witch at the stake,
the hem of your devil's dress catching fire.
- ♪ Gabriella, Gabriella - ♪ Mama, mama ♪
♪ Mama ♪
[music fades out]
- [breathing heavily]
- Come now, Lestat, no falling behind.
[somber violin music]
♪ ♪
- The Lord is a jealous and avenging God!
He is avenging, and He is wrathful!
He takes vengeance on His adversaries
and keeps wrath for His enemies!
The Lord is slow to anger but great in power.
- Why did you take me there?
- His way is the whirlwind and the storm.
The clouds are the dust of His feet!
- Why did you take me there?
- I wanted you to see who they were.
- He rebukes the sea and makes it dry!
- You say we are the witches?
You are the witches!
[crowd shouting] You are all the witches!
You are the witches!
[gasping]
You are the witch-- [crowd gasping]
You are the--
you are-- [gasping]
- Who can stand before His indignation?
Who can endure the heat of His anger?
His wrath is poured out like fire!
- No one who conceals transgressions will prosper.
But one who confesses and forsakes them
will obtain mercy.
[crowd shouting] - They have confessed!
- Even the Marquis stayed home.
- I wanted you to escape Auvergne.
- Marguerite Doree.
Ceased her prayers. Adored the devil in ceremony!
Putrid throats she caused in her father through spells.
- The father favored the daughter.
The mother mixed death cap mushrooms in his cassoulet.
- Jean Bodin.
Ceased her prayers.
Spied by our schoolmaster swallowing...
- The schoolmaster cleans up his transgressions--
most cowardly.
- Chanting the black mass in the breaks between!
And the twin witches, Marthe and Aimée Roulet,
nine years each.
- Aimée Roulet. - What did they cease doing?
- She used to play in our home, Mother.
- Run from this place.
- A bag of gunpowder tied around her neck
so she could burn hot. - Did you run?
- Aimée? - No.
Did you stay home until you were 30?
- Aimée? - Cabbage!
- God, see us again!
all: God, see us again!
- Cabbage!
- God, see us again!
all: God, see us again!
- No! No!
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- I love you.
- Mother? - I love you.
- Mother!
- I love you. - Mother!
♪ ♪
[moaning deeply]
♪ ♪
- Did the same thing to Claudia in New Orleans.
Called it tough love then.
- Then he kills the wolves.
And then your hands wander, Madam Chair.
- He did not have a problem with these hands
for the next 200-odd years.
- Handsome, noble,
with considerable considerables.
Lestat's makers love their Lestat.
- This is not about his vampire life.
Why are we even discussing this?
Strike it from the record.
- [moaning continues]
[paper tears]
- Moving on.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- There were 1,600 of you when we first met, Daniel.
- Oh, you. - 290,000 of you now,
averaging approximately 1.3 meals a day,
that's more deaths
than there are births in the world.
That's a tipping point.
You beat peak oil.
Hello.
- Raglan, this is Alex.
He's on the vampire spectrum.
Alex, this is Raglan.
He's a watcher.
He watches.
He's watchful. He's always watching.
He's a watcher.
[bowling ball thuds]
- Hmm.
You might want to alter your angle of entry
or switch to a ball that reads earlier.
How about that one?
- You roll, Raglan?
- Mentor for the junior fun bunch, yes.
I also came for a particular outdoor concert.
Didn't purchase event cancellation insurance.
We want the bag.
- You usually send Rashid in first.
- He's crosstown,
waiting for the butcher to open.
[soft dramatic music]
- No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
This is nothing.
Artifice.
- I used you to punish.
I never forgave you for Par--
- Paris.
- Never. I never did.
- And now?
- [whimpering]
- Nope.
- Rest.
- Can't. Won't.
- Then what are you sorry for?
- Love of my life was him.
- [sobbing]
- Rest. - [gasps]
- We want him to play the concert.
- I want to play the concert.
- Alex wants to play the concert.
- Why?
- We've been planning it for a year.
- Excuse me?
- Nudging it, urging it on, on the periphery, as we do.
"Make more"?
We came up with that.
- You want the Great Conversion.
- Loss of motor skills, jaw control...
- [crying] - Blood deprivation.
- Heard the witch.
Must've heard bench.
Me, him.
Then.
- [crying]
- Nutrient loss equivalence.
- Even now, still thinking about him.
[suspenseful music]
S-sorry.
- No.
No, Louis, you're declining.
- [crying]
- Use your telepathy. I'll repeat, for posterity.
- [sighs] Too many of us for what's left in the ground.
Cradle your cell phone.
Sell your Range Rover while you can.
- A desperate hour.
- There was a breakout room at the last G7 conference.
They called it
May the Vamps Safely Graze.
- Rescue the head, save the planet.
- It's a bit of a stretch.
Can't see your kind governing, but then
you and I have our own reasonings.
- He pissed me off.
- Evidence of the soul's existence.
- Soul?
- The alchemist Magnus
chooses him to carry on the blood.
And what does he do?
He gifts it to his ailing mother.
Noble.
But the tailor's son?
- Stupid and wasteful.
I was mad.
- [telepathically] I got lies to account for.
- I've got lies to account for.
- Lies to myself. - Lies to myself.
- To others. - Lies to others.
- I know what it's like to build a house...
- A cathedral on top of a lie.
- Cathedral on top of a lie.
- No biological rationale for head here and body there.
That's the soul fighting, Daniel.
- Romps with my rotten boy.
- A--a cat-burgling stint on the devil's road
with Gabriella, Sofia, mother, lover, Madam Chair.
- Live that lie so fully that it might as well be true.
- To live the lie so fully, might as well be true.
- Meaning beyond mortality.
Wonder returned.
[sighs]
Alex, I think you should open with "Big Boss."
- Raglan.
- Daniel?
♪ ♪
- A straight man.
- Straight man.
- Good Negro, an artist.
- Things I wasn't.
- Things I was not.
- And you got some reason to be dark-sided, Armand.
- And you--
you have some reason to be dark-sided, Armand.
- You were sold by who you were sold by.
- Sold into what you were sold into.
- Sold into what you were--
- I saw a lot of that in New Orleans.
- Saw a lot of that in New Orleans.
- On the opposite shore. - On the opposite shore.
- Running houses I ran.
You and I didn't... - You and I...
- Didn't talk about it much...
- We didn't talk about it much.
- With you...
- Shut it off.
- [crying softly]
- 'Cause I didn't want to think on my own sins.
Or picture you at 12.
At 12.
You were 12.
Scared.
Poor boy,
Arun.
You need a love that'll cradle you.
[somber music]
You should have that.
And I was never that for you.
And I'm sorry.
- [whimpering]
♪ ♪
- My coldness,
my denial
drove you to this.
♪ ♪
I saw good in you...
- [crying softly]
- For a while.
♪ ♪
- [sighs]
♪ ♪
[sighs]
♪ ♪
[tape rips]
- [whimpering]
- Bad things happen to girlies who talk.
♪ ♪
- [gasping]
[tape rips]
[door slams]
- Using a standard suture kit.
- [groaning]
- 2.0 absorbable nylon suture to reaffix the head,
close the wound.
Isn't going to do much other than hold the head in place
while it fuses through the blood.
- [groaning]
- I am not a plastic surgeon.
This is not my field of expertise.
[door slams]
- And when she told him that she wanted more darkness,
he looked at her with the eyes of a juvenile.
A great abandonment.
And he threw himself on the shore.
And he let the gravediggers fish him from the tide
and bury him in the sands of anonymity.
- Now that's acting.
- And there he lies for 80 years,
heaved out of the dirt because the mother of all of us
chooses him, lets him drink of her,
makes him a godling.
And what does he do with this honor?
- Hops the "SS Abandoned" in New Orleans.
Gives the gift to a pimp
who lives to make him miserable,
daddy-traps him, slits his throat,
and fucks his ex.
A lot.
Could be nice. - Could be.
all: The soul!
- The failed progeny of Magnus.
- Unworthy chosen of Akasha.
all: The soul!
- Kills the daughter, saves the pimp,
rots in a rotting robe in a rotting shack
in the rotting city.
[chaotic piano music] A tragic crippled thing,
playing a plank for a piano,
waiting for a hug.
all: The soul!
- A book. - A band.
- An album and a cause.
all: The soul!
- But does failure finally fail to find him?
No. all: The soul!
- He sits on a bench like a stupid idiot
in a fog he mistakes for love.
- Could be. - Could be nice.
- Whack! - [laughing]
- Reckless. Self-sabotaging.
Vain.
A brat.
- Stupid.
- Trashy. Tawdry.
- A rotten boy.
- Failure.
- Impulsive. Imprudent.
- And st-st-stutterer.
- Cowardly. Selfish.
- Wretched.
- A waste.
A failure.
- The Bimbo Himbo of Hambone.
- Did you stay home until you were 30?
Cabbage!
- A great abandonment.
[music building] - [laughing]
- Your whole damn life
a failure.
- Unworthy.
- Uncharitable.
- Manipulative.
- Miserable.
- Idiot. - Ignorant.
- A careless caretaker.
- A crooning cartoon.
- A prima donna.
- A peacock.
- Your whole
goddamn life
a pathetic failure!
[music climaxes]
[alarm chiming]
[breathing heavily]
Well done.
Good show. A bit shit.
But that's why you're opening and I'm headlining.
The Vampire Lestat, one life only.
Tickets through Ticketmaster.
Inevitable complaints to Roget and Associates.
[feedback whines]
[bold rock music playing]
[cheers and applause] Bonjour, St-Germain,
Vieux Carré, Tontreal!
Let's hear it for Sofia Gabs
and the Fledglings of Failure!
[cheers and applause] [laughs]
You are all here tonight because I murdered you,
made you, or memorably traumatized you.
Congratulations for your historical proximity to me.
No doubt it was the defining moment of your life.
- We love you, Lestat!
- I love you too. - Play "Long Face"!
- Fuck that song!
That is a song you wash your car too.
[laughter]
Perhaps that's the purposeful life of Lestat.
He made more clean cars.
[laughter]
Should've said that at the long table.
[cheering]
Has that ever happened to you?
You think of the perfect thing to say to the Pope
an hour after you leave the Vatican?
I know you.
I drained you in Vienna.
Christmas Market, 1953.
[bells ringing]
What's your name?
- Enzo. - Enzo.
[festive music playing]
Quite the sharp suit.
I spilled a lot of your blood.
I was in a foul mood that evening.
You deserved better.
[feedback whines]
A lot of familiar faces in the audience tonight.
[cheers and applause] More than a lot.
All familiar.
[bold rock music continues]
Janice. - [giggles]
- CeCi. - Lestat! Lestat!
- Baggage Man, New York Limited.
How's the head? Tickets, please!
"Black Licorice." I wrote a song about you.
I killed you in the Lower Ninth.
Thank you for coming.
[booing]
- Love you, Lestat!
[cheering]
- We've got a great show for you tonight
in a venue of overwhelming sentiment,
because, well, this is the place
that music first wrapped its belt
around my aorta and yoked me
through two centuries plus of vampiric life.
[feedback whining]
[breathing heavily]
[bold rock music playing]
What a life it's been.
- Play "Long Face"!
- Is that you, Dad?
[cheering]
♪ ♪
[laughs]
Regarding life,
recent findings of the many I love most
found my life to be a failure.
[booing]
Right?
[cheering] Right?
I took your blood.
I did my vampire duty.
I brought death, spread fear,
fostered superstition and paranoia.
[laughs]
Moral complaints all fall on the idea that humanity is--
- Failure! - I don't agree.
[crowd shouting] - No one asked you, lady!
- I think in the end--
in the end...
[laughs]
I think
I was pretty fucking great!
[cheers and applause]
- [shouting in Japanese]
- But...
if I failed,
if--if I failed... - [chuckles]
- Then that means I actually attempted something.
[cheering]
Which is more than I can say for most of those
I love the most.
I don't know if I mean that.
[sighs]
That was performative.
I loved you.
I did.
[no audio]
As grotesque as that love appeared to you,
I did.
♪ ♪
[cheering]
Thank you for coming.
[cheering]
- We love you, Lestat! We love you!
- We've got a great show for you tonight.
[cheering]
We're gonna play a new song for you tonight!
We've got TC on the drums, Salamander on the bass,
Plastic Dracula Alex on the guitar,
and I am the Vampire Lestat!
[breathing heavily]
I was supposed to stage dive just then.
[breathing heavily]
Could be.
Hands touch.
I'm feeling a little--
[somber music]
♪ ♪
You need to get your snooze fixed, Lestat.
[gasps]
[feedback whines]
[breathing heavily]
What else?
[breathing heavily]
I'm failing.
♪ ♪
My blood.
I did my best with it.
♪ ♪
No.
No, I let--I let too much spill too often.
♪ ♪
I did not always honor it.
Enzo.
Can--can someone tell--
[breathing heavily]
Can someone tell Enzo that I'm sorry?
He had...
a package with the most beautiful wrapping.
And I hope it got to who...
whom it was meant for.
Grammar.
♪ ♪
- He has a hard time saying it.
Got that from our daddy.
It doesn't mean he doesn't.
It's just his way.
Thank you for loving him,
for loving him the way he needs to be loved.
I still wish you were a woman.
- [laughs weakly]
Me too, sometimes.
♪ ♪
Wow.
- It's not all that once you get there.
♪ ♪
- Silver threads.
Silver threads stretched out over other threads.
[birdsong]
- OK. You sure about that?
[birdsong]
Yes, ma'am.
OK.
♪ ♪
- Would you believe me if I said
the next thing I remember is waking up on my tour bus,
parked in the woods
several hundred yards away from the stage,
where 45,000 frenzied and impatient vampires
and 10,000 naive and beautifully unwell mortals
gathered from all corners of the savage garden
to hear me sing "Make More"?
It was disorienting, my return to the physical world,
her kind and caring words so very different
from her words at the long table.
The shoe leather of how I got there
was explained to me by a man I did not recognize
but who I now call a friend.
He told me his watchful operatives were in the park
the night Armand and Daniel cut through the fog of love
and the flesh of our necks.
They trailed our parts to their destinations
and followed their protocols of engagement.
He was vague about Alex's role.
There was, however, nothing vague
about whose idea it was to bring me
from my immortal brush with mortality
directly to the now infamously catastrophic gig.
And as I talked over their absurd persuasions
for me to perform,
a second thought saved them all from my provoked rage.
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
He didn't go into the details of his day.
I would only hear of them later,
after the concert,
after the mayhem.
Should have quit right then and there.
I know. I know.
This is you, right?
Right? This is your idea? - You want to go out
and tell them that there is going to be no show?
- You want to put me in a coffin, let me have a nap,
and then you put me on fucking stage?
- You want to see what happens when you go out there
and tell them that? - Are you insane?
You tell whoever the fuck brought you back into my life--
- You think that there is going to be a safe mile anywhere...
- That I am not fucking delivering!
- In this sacred garden... - You go onstage!
You get torn apart! - If you do that?
- You do it because I am not going onstage!
I am not fucking singing, you fucking monster!
[whirring]
[inhales]
Struggle to articulate is something.
I look around my living room, where I record this now,
and everything just feels off.
I imagine you're here with me,
my patron.
Whoever you are.
Do you hate me?
Do you smoke?
[chuckles]
Have I scaled the walls of your privilege,
made you feel how I felt in the summer,
spring, and fall of 2025?
Or have I failed at auction,
these reels returned to me unsold?
Am I talking to myself?
[crackling]
- You are listening to "The Failures,"
Album 58, Side A.
["Butterscotch Bitch" playing]
♪ ♪
- What did I say at the start of this,
as to the Queen,
as to destruction unleashed?
Something about the regretful dead
and the... hmm, what was it?
Traumatized alive.
[chuckles]
That I had made a contribution.
Let me take that back.
[distant sirens wailing]
The fault was mine.
All mine.
♪ ♪
- Listen to tracks from "The Vampire Lestat"
wherever you stream music.
♪
- The idea for the episode,
I think came from a fever dream from Rolin Jones,
and he was like, they're headless.
And we were like, "Okay, okay, crazy."
- My first thought about having my head skewered
on a butcher's slab was, "[Bleep] you, Rolin Jones."
because he made a ridiculous promise to me,
you're not going to get like, super bloody again.
[Laughs] He lied.
- Mark.
- It's your turn.
- There are too many prosthetic heads out in the world of me,
I hate it.
- Both the boys find it disturbing
to watch themselves talk back to them.
- Burn them now. [Laughs]
- I don't know who's got my head or where it is now, but...
- Take them out on a Saturday night, right?
- And I think you know the specific ways you've done it.
- Fuck you.
- I've been waiting for this moment.
This was very cathartic for me and Armand,
because all season we haven't seen Armand and Louis interact.
Motivation.
- I acted as a severed head and I acted as a body.
And we just switched around and did loads of different passes.
It was fun. It's quite hard to keep your head rigid.
I had to, like, lock myself into the cutout on the table
and just, like, keep my head very still.
- Also, we brought her.
- Delainey has an all-timer Hall of Fame MVP scream.
- No, she didn't know.
- The butcher scene, it's so icky.
- And action.
- But filming it was fun.
And Armand is-- I was gonna swear then.
He's a scary, scary man.
- Armand! - Ah.
- [Screams]
I think the first scream was the most powerful scream,
because I didn't know it was going to be an animatronic head.
[Screaming]
- Delainey needs to be a scream queen yesterday.
AMC Shudder, look up Delainey Hayles.
You know her. [Laughs]
- In that moment, I think Regina's like,
"How do I get out alive?
Like, Louis, it's too late for you.
But how do I make it out?"
- Paper. Paper.
- Louis and Armand...
It's really beautiful that they get this moment
to just, like, reconcile.
- Picture you at 12.
- That's the moment Armand... - Scared.
- ...finally accepts that... - Poor boy.
- ...this is over.
- Arun, you need a love that will cradle you.
- It's a really powerful moment. I hope it does come across.
It felt really important when we did it.
♪
- I am the chair, the maker.
- Lestat, he's at the long table,
which I knew was coming from the very beginning,
because Rolin had said,
the whole season is going to be revolving
around this concept of the long table.
And where's Claudia?
- She said all she needs to say to you is what she said.
- Originally, it was going to be everyone who was killed,
which is kind of where we get to by the very end
when he's performing on the stage in the Paris street,
which is of no time.
- This whole episode is designed to revisit the past
- and talk to those people... - I'm dead.
...who have been a huge part of his life.
- This is death?
My father's ugly table in your shitty tower.
- Dying.
- For the first time, he's forced to actually deal
with the relationships in his life that he tries to sculpt,
or change, or run away from.
So you're all here to judge me?
- We are the failure finders.
- These people point out to him things about himself
that he maybe couldn't see.
In some ways, he's gaining an education
and he's gaining emotional intelligence about himself.
- Cross between a self-absorbed Robert Plant impersonator
and an 80s hot dog embalmed with hair gel.
- I got to wear that beautiful raspberry suit again.
And I love that suit.
And it's a comfortable suit.
And it makes me feel like Louis in a certain period,
a different Louis to the one we know now.
- At least we don't have to listen to
his violin playing on this one.
- Lestat is coming to terms with the fact
that perhaps none of them like him,
and that's a very traumatizing experience for him.
And realizing that your whole life has been a failure.
♪
- And I love the soliloquies to a bowling bag.
It's kind of crazy and wonderful.
You go do what I did with my life.
You go knock down those doors, you go get some.
- Molloy's pissed off and he's got the guy's head,
and he's like, "I'm gonna yell at this thing."
- I get to gloat, and then ultimately,
things change up again.
- Hello.
- Alex, this is Raglan. He's a watcher.
He watches.
Once again, Daniel is frustrated.
- [Laughs] - Hmm.
You might want to alter your angle of entry
or switch to a ball that reads earlier.
How about that one?
- If you've read all the Anne Rice,
then you know that Raglan James
is a very complicated character, ultimately.
- Alex, I think you should open with Big Boss.
- I fantasize having the power that a vampire has,
and I can't wait to fight with everybody.
- Raglan. - Daniel?
♪
- The soul.
- The failed progeny of Magnus. - Unworthy chosen of Akasha.
- The soul. - He keeps getting kicked down.
Gets back up. Keeps getting kicked down.
Gets back up.
And now he's kicked back down on the floor again.
And he might not be able to get back up right now.
- Failure as a theme, I just think is a beautiful thing.
We should all fail more.
If you don't fail, you don't learn.
- Pathetic failure!
- Even if he listens to all of the failures
while they're sitting there eating his soul
at the dinner table, he still gets up on the table
and says, "Well done. Good job. Good shit.
That's why you're opening. And I'm headlining.
- The Vampire Lestat.
- [Cheers]
- Bonjour, Saint Germain.
I think the overarching whole theme
of the whole show and Lestat's journey
is his whole life might be a total train wreck,
but at least he tried.
At least he's trying.
♪
For me, the greatest shock of this episode
was bringing Paul back into it.
And for Paul to be the one that tells Lestat,
actually, Louis does love you.
- He has a hard time saying it.
Got that from my daddy.
- Beautiful, beautiful moment with Paul
where Lestat is this person who,
however he wants to be self-critical,
he also has to be self-loving in some ways,
and that really opens his eyes.
- You didn't fail, because somebody loved you.
I thought that was like, "Whoa, heartbreaking, heartbreaking.
Insane." It's beautiful.
On second thought, save them all from my provoked rage.
- I think it's really sweet that they just pick up
where they left off.
As extreme as it all gets,
there is actually something very simple about this reunion,
and maybe it's because it's where they acknowledged
a future, so they just pick up again.
I think that's beautiful.
♪
- At the very end of the season,
and it's also the conclusion to the first opening scene
in episode one,
where you now discover what our timeline is.
You can see that Louis and Armand are injured.
Lestat is no longer there. And this is post-Akasha.
This is post the destruction of the world.
I would say he's very,
very responsible for that destruction.
I mean, he woke the Queen.
The fault was mine.
All mine.
♪
- ♪ My head is rollin' round
♪ Will my toesies ever touch the ground? ♪
♪ Hang every rope ♪
♪ Burn every witch ♪
♪ But you'll never catch the butterscotch bitch ♪
♪ Yah, bah-dah
♪ Bah-dah ♪
♪ Yah-dah-dah, dah ♪