Interview with the Vampire's Eric Bogosian and Assad Zaman Discuss the 'Fight' Between Daniel and Armand

[The following contains spoilers for Interview with the Vampire Season 2, Episode 5, "Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape."]

On Interview with the Vampire, it was all leading toward San Francisco. In the fifth episode of the series' second season, Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Daniel (Eric Bogosian) go back to that initial interview in 1973, the details of which have become mysteriously foggy in both of their memories. While Armand (Assad Zaman) is off hunting Malik, an unsuspecting tech bro, for lunch, Louis and Daniel spend their brief period of unsupervised freedom dissecting the truth of what happened between them and Armand all those years ago.

"Don't forget what the name of this season is," said Bogosian when he and Zaman stopped by TV Guide's video studio. "'Memory is the monster,' and that's the monster." The memories that surface — of Louis attacking Daniel, of Louis' attempted suicide, of Louis and Armand's manipulation of Daniel's drug-addled mind — aren't easy to stomach, culminating in a devastating moment when Daniel realizes how much of his life that incident affected. Armand let him live, but irreparable damage was done regardless: Daniel threw himself into journalism, at the cost of every other significant relationship in his life. 

"I think fear, for anybody, usually is fear of complete and total, all-consuming destruction of yourself," Bogosian said. "Here comes this thing, this monster from the past, and [Daniel] has to kind of eat it, suppress it, and then somehow step on it to get to the next point in his life."

By the end of the episode, Armand has lost control of both his partner and his interviewer, the facade he's been carefully maintaining for decades completely shattered. "I leave Louis alone for one hour," Zaman lamented. "I can leave him alone for one hour! Nothing's going to happen. What can you possibly learn in an hour?" A lot, it turns out. By the time he returns, Louis and Daniel have uncovered enough to know that Armand is responsible for their memories of that night in San Francisco cutting out in precisely the same place.

"The entire dynamics have changed and shifted," Zaman said. "I know it straight away, because that phrase that I very carefully put into Louis' mind about how to explain the situation, Louis says it back to me in exactly the same way that I had put it into his head." That phrase, in response to Daniel's question of why Armand spared his life that night, is "I had a hunch," which Louis stoically parrots back to Armand.

Bogosian described his character as "a fighter," and noted that the fight between Daniel and Armand will continue through the end of the season. 

"The way that you were describing Molloy, and how he's going to fight," Zaman said, addressing Bogosian, "I was hearing it going, "Sh--, he's formidable." I think that's how I felt in that moment."

As dark as "Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape" was, there was one moment of levity that Zaman relished in: when Armand swaggers back into Louis' tree room, wearing the enormous mirrored sunglasses that had belonged to poor Malik. "I love that waltz as well," Zaman laughed. "It was such a long shot, and I was like, 'Let's keep that whole thing in!' But you only see the end of it."

Watch the video above for more of Bogosian and Zaman's breakdown of the scene.

More on Interview with the Vampire:

• A conversation with Interview with the Vampire's Daniel Molloys, Eric Bogosian and Luke Brandon Field
• Interview with the Vampire costume designer Carol Cutshall delves into Season 2's best looks
  
• Interview with the Vampire returns once more, with feeling
• The complete guide to summer TV

Interview with the Vampire Season 2 airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC and AMC+.