‘Interview With the Vampire’ Stars Eric Bogosian and Assad Zaman Break Down the Season 1 Finale, Tease Season 2

Interview With the Vampire Season 1 ends with a killer twist. After weeks of watching journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) attempt to catch Louis de Point du Lac (Jacob Anderson) out in a lie, Molloy finally confronts the vampire head on. After Louis tells the tale of killing his maker and lover Lestat (Sam Reid), Molloy turns the tables and reveals there’s no way Lestat is dead. Claudia (Bailey Bass) may have wanted to burn him, but Louis threw Lestat in his coffin in the trash. Molloy accurately guesses that Lestat could have survived on rats at the dump and roared back to full health while Louis and Claudia absconded to Europe.

However that’s not the most shocking reveal. For the entirety of Interview With the Vampire Season 1, Molloy has been at odds with Louis’s most loyal servant, Rashid (Assad Zaman). Molloy finally pieces together that Rashid isn’t human. What’s a surprise is Rashid isn’t Rashid. He’s Anne Rice’s next most iconic vampire, Armand.

Decider caught up with two of the actors at the center of these reveals this week to chat all things Interview With the Vampire Episode 7 “The Thing Lay Still”: Eric Bogosian and Assad Zaman. In between chatting about fan art and real life parallels to their characters — Zaman does not believe he as beautiful as the “anime” style portraits he’s seen of Rashid and Bogosian boasted of coming home from school fights with literal bite marks on his neck — the actors explained Molloy and Rashid’s emotions during this climactic sequence and their hopes (and fears) for Interview With the Vampire Season 2.

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE SEASON 1 ENDING EXPLAINED: IS RASHID THE VAMPIRE ARMAND?

So, yeah, the big reveal of the Interview With the Vampire Season 1 finale is that Louis’s manservant Rashid was actually the Vampire Armand. Not only that, but after all that fuss about Louis and Lestat, Louis claims that Armand is the love of his life. It also seems like Armand and Louis are going to kill Molloy, but more on that!

So who is the Vampire Armand? He is a character from Anne Rice’s books whom Louis and Claudia meet when they go to Europe and discover the Théâtre des Vampires. Armand is a 400 year old vampire whom Louis becomes close to.

Now it remains to be seen how much of Armand’s story showrunner Rollin Jones will use or reinvent, but we do know that Jones planned from the start that Rashid was Armand.

“I found out halfway through the audition process that I was — that Rashid was — gonna be revealed as being Armand,” actor Assad Zaman told Decider. ” I remember sitting in the Zoom call thinking, ‘Why? Why are we having a meeting to discuss Rashid?’ I was like, ‘Okay?’ I kind of said to Rollin, ‘You have more important characters to think about,” and then in that meeting, he was like, ‘Look, we’ve got to do a few more auditions and go test you out a little bit more because this is where we want to take the story and this is who Rashid is.’ And that was quite terrifying.”

Zaman also explained that his performance was specifically attuned to not draw too much attention. In Season 1, “Louis, Lestat and Claudia are the main focal point,” he explained, not Armand.

“If you go back now knowing who Rashid is, I’m sure you’ll pick up on some little details or little kind of looks here and there. But on the whole I was – yeah, keeping the lid on it was the main focus,” Zaman said.

That said, Zaman did confirm that there is more than one way to read his character’s reaction to Molloy’s theory that Lestat isn’t dead…

ARE ARMAND AND LESTAT NOW RIVALS FOR LOUIS’S LOVE IN INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE?

The denouement of Interview With the Vampire‘s first season is two-fold. Louis explains how he and Claudia killed Lestat after their scandalous Mardi Gras masquerade and then, in the present timeline, Molloy reveals that Lestat probably isn’t dead and he knows Rashid isn’t who he says he is.

Eric Bogosian said that Molloy reveals all this because he’s already “lost his shit.” He compared the character in his quest for this vampire story to Ahab killing himself in pursuit of Moby Dick.

“There has been all of this tension between Rashid and Molloy throughout and it’s kind of honed the anger. It’s like, ‘Oh, I get it. You guys are, you’re screwing with me, you’re ganging up on me and I’m tired of it, I’m not gonna take it,'” Bogosian says.

However, going forward, Interview With the Vampire fans might be more attuned to the tension between Rashid and another character, Lestat. When Molloy explains how Lestat could have survived, “Rashid” seems furious. Did Armand think Lestat was dead? And is he worried Lestat could be a romantic rival now for Louis’s favor?

“That’s really astute that you got that,” Zaman said. “Those little moments are moments where you’re allowed to kind of look back to it, you’re allowed to go, ‘Okay there. He has an opinion on this.’ Normally if Rashid was just Rashid, you’d wonder why is this guy just reacting to something that happened before his lifetime.”

“You know, Armand and Lestat have a complicated relationship. I mean, we know that Armand is a complicated character himself and there’s a lot of parallels between Lestat and Armand that feel that they’re almost like kind of two sides of the same coin. Their mutual love for Louis is one of those things [connecting them], but I think there’s a lot of envy there.”

“I mean there’s a huge history with Lestat that we’re hopefully going to explore so all of that was in there and that’s him.”

So are we going to learn more about the Lestat and Armand rivalry in Season 2? And will Eric Bogosian’s Molloy even survive that long?

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE SEASON 2?

AMC has already renewed Interview With the Vampire for Season 2, but does that mean that all the characters from Season 1 are returning. Molloy might have explained for us how Lestat survived the season, but Armand says that he’s not going to save Molloy from Louis this time. Will Molloy return for Interview With the Vampire Season 2? Eric Bogosian doesn’t know!

“I don’t know what’s coming. It’s been this way from the beginning and before we got on these calls, I was writing to Rollin, saying ‘So what’s gonna happen?’ and he’s just been very closed mouth about it,” Bogosian said, before teasing he wouldn’t mind Daniel Molloy just waking up in “a coffin underground one day.”

“These guys can do anything they want to Daniel, so I’m as eager to find out as everyone else because of the way the books are structured there’s many, many options that can happen,” Bogosian said. “Although Assad has been like lording it over me how he’s going to throw me around in the future.”

“And I think actually secretly Eric cannot wait for those moments,” Zaman said. “He’s looking forward to those.”

It does seem that while Lestat has been left for dead, Louis and Claudia are en route to WWII Europe, where they’ll probably meet Armand.

“I think for Season 2, I can’t wait to get to the Theatre. I think when we get to the Theatre, it’s going to be epic,” Zaman said. “I think it’s going to be absolutely epic. Yeah.”