‘Interview with the Vampire’ Episode 4 Recap: One Big Vampy Family

Before we get started, I’d like to review the names of the four Interview with the Vampire episodes that have aired so far. “In Throes of Increasing Wonder.” “After the Phantoms of Your Former Self.” “Is My Very Nature That of a Devil.” And now, “The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood with All a Child’s Demanding.” I’m sorry, folks, but IWTV’s episode title game is unmatched.

So too, in many ways, is IWTV itself. With thrilling, throw-caution-to-the-wind speed and a gobsmacking willingness to shift its tone backwards and forwards at will, this week’s episode introduces the character of Claudia, a young girl (albeit nearly three times older here—14, as opposed to five—than she was in Anne Rice’s original novel) whom Lestat turns into their latest vampire companion. Again unlike the source material, he does this expressly at the request of a desperate Louis, who blames his own actions for the race massacre that led to Claudia being trapped within a burning house and nearly dying from the flames. Louis, you see, is not an experienced enough maker of new vampires to trust himself with this task, given the girl’s charred condition, so he relies on Lestat’s expertise.

And from there, it’s off to the races—almost literally, given the number of times Louis and Lestat have to chide Claudia against running in the house. 

As played by an absolutely marvelous Bailey Bass, Claudia is an explosive, and more than a little obnoxious, ball of energy. Permanently stuck with the rapidfire metabolism of a young teenager, she requires twice as much food—that’s twice as many kills, as Louis and Lestat quickly learn to Louis’s chagrin and Lestat’s amusement—as her new “Daddy Lou” and “Uncle Les.” (One important note regarding this little family: Since Lestat is Claudia’s maker, he cannot read her mind or communicate with her telepathically, though Louis and Claudia can do so with one another—one of several factors, which I suspect also include Lestat’s casual cruelty and their own shared skin color, that draw Louis and Claudia closer together.)

Anyway, Claudia is basically a scream, as are the hilarious family dynamics that ensue between the characters as she transforms their lives. 

I loved Louis and Lestat briefly bickering about Claudia’s outfit: “I’m not sure about that pleated skirt.” “It’s chiffon, it has movement!” 

I loved Claudia mimicking The Wire’s Omar Little by whistling “The Farmer in the Dell” before killing a cop. (“Don’t eat cops” then becomes one of the household’s rules.) 

I loved Claudia reacting to going coffin shopping like a kid in a candy store, to the point where they wind up having to kill the salesman to keep him from freaking out about Claudia’s…uncomfortable enthusiasm for her new bed. 

I loved the gang cracking up at a screening of the latest horror hit, Nosferatu.

I loved Louis responding to Claudia’s question about how old Lestat is by saying “160,” only for Lestat to interrupt and correct it to “159,” like a vain middle-aged man. 

I loved some of Claudia’s notable quotables, all of which are taken from her diaries, which reporter Daniel Molloy has been given to read in the present day by Louis’s mysterious observant-Muslim minion Rashid (Assad Zaman) while Louis sleeps. For example: “You wouldn’t believe how time flies when there are people to eat and money to spend!”

I loved Claudia’s fascination with Louis and Lestat’s homosexuality, which she’s puzzled by but ultimately accepting of. I mean, stranger things have happened to her, right?

I loved Louis bringing Lestat and Claudia to his mom’s funeral like a family unit, but threatening his sister with violence when she dares to argue with him about the ownership of the family house and chide him for his absence and his lifestyle.

I loved Lestat taking Claudia out to a lovers’ lane to experiment with eating randy young people, by Lestat’s account the tastiest dish available, leading to a full-on vampire’s-kiss swooning attack by Lestat. That’s the good stuff right there!

Ah, but after that, things get…harder to love. Awakened to sexuality after having been stuck in permament pubescence for several years, Claudia has a meet-cute with a young carriage driver named Charlie (Xavier Mills) who accidentally prevents her from slaughtering a trio of racist white girls making fun of her first stint in clothes for women rather than children. She manages not to eat him, persuades him to go out on a date to an ice cream shop (he figures she must have ice cream anytime she wants, given the mansion she lives in; she assures him that no, she never has it, lol), and most importantly persuades him she’s actually 19.

Then they start making out, and things move predictably from there. Claudia, overcome by passion, kills him without thinking. She drags the body back to the mansion in hopes Lestat can revive him, which he can’t; instead, he tosses the body into their incinerator and forces Claudia to watch the young man burn. This, he tells her, is the cost of getting involved with mortals, who all turn to ashes and dust sooner or later.

In the episode’s disturbing closing, Claudia’s boisterous, devil-may-care diary entry from after the event (“There’s so much more fun out there to have. I’m just gettin’ started!”) is juxtaposed with how she actually handles it: by opening the mansion’s skylight and using the rays of the sun to self-harm. She’s a 14-year-old girl, alright, with all that entails.

Sprinkled throughout all this are the observations of Molloy while reading the diaries and speaking to Louis. Though he covers up his real feelings with his usual sardonic quips — he asks Rashid how Muhammad feels about vampires, he calls Claudia’s diary “a cross between Stephen King and Anne Frank” — he’s both horrified by the kid’s ordeal and cuttingly observant about how she was made to serve as “a band-aid for a shitty marriage” by Louis and Lestat. Louis can only agree. When he’s right, he’s right.

I think that’s the key thing about this episode, written by Eleanor Burgess and directed by Keith Powell, and about the show in general. Its ability to balance the thrills and chills and sex and blood and comedy of an over-the-top Gothic vampire romance with serious observations about race, wealth, addiction, unhappy relationships, and now de facto child abuse and the misery of teenagers is hugely impressive. It manages to deliver pretty much everything you’d want from a vampire show, and more besides. And now we have four core performances that are funny and empathetic and nasty and brilliant, from Bailey Bass as well as from Jacob Anderson, Sam Reid, and Eric Bogosian. 

Between Interview, Andor, and House of the Dragon, those of us who hunger and thirst for legitimately sophisticated nerd-genre storytelling are eating very, very well this Halloween season.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.