What’s Interview With the Vampire Season 1 Episode 4 about? What do Lestat and Louis get up to? Who gets their blood sucked this week?
If you missed the other Interview With the Vampire episodes head here:
- Interview With the Vampire Season 1, Episode 1
- Interview With the Vampire Season 1, Episode 2
- Interview With the Vampire Season 1, Episode 3
This is a review / recap of Interview with the Vampire Season 1, Episode 4: ‘The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood with all a Child’s Demanding’. Viewer beware – spoilers below!
Interview With the Vampire Season 1, Episode 4 Recap
“The white angel he bit me, right on the neck”
In the present day, Rashid informs Molloy that Louis is taking a rest day and directs him to a room of artifacts to peruse. Molloy finds Claudia’s many diaries and starts to read her story of her conversion to vampirism. Her recollections begin with the fire in Storyville and her rescue at the hands of Louis, her “black angel”. Louis begs Lestat to turn her to save her life, which he does.
Claudia immediately recovers from her injuries and is filled with curiosity about her new ‘life’. She discovers that Lestat can’t hear her thoughts as he is her maker, which means she and Louis can communicate without Lestat hearing which is a point of contention. She refers to her new family as Uncle Les and Daddy Lou.
Soon after, they take Claudia out to make her first kill, but things don’t go according to plan when Claudia runs away and attacks a police officer. Given that Claudia was turned at a young age, her metabolism was also frozen, meaning she has a voracious hunger.
The family go to buy a coffin for Claudia but even that ends in death for the coffin maker. Claudia spies Lestat climbing into Louis’ coffin and queries Louis about love between two men the next night while rowing a boat. Claudia celebrates her first vampire birthday with a cake and a couchful of drained gentlemen. The vampires attend a screening of Nosferatu, and find it hilarious, laughing hysterically to the consternation of the human audience.
Louis receives a phone call to tell him his mother has passed away. There is conflict at the wake with his sister over the family home. Lestat takes Claudia to New Orleans’ ‘Lover’s Lane’ to feed on amorous couples in their cars. Claudia turns eighteen (though her body is still that of a fourteen year old) and goes out on the town, where she meets Charlie, a young carriage driver. Later he drops off flowers outside her house and they go on a date, which ends in tragedy when Claudia drains too. Much of his blood and he dies. She begs Lestat to turn him but it’s too late and they cremate his body.
Interview With the Vampire Season 1, Episode 4 Review
As promised in last week’s final moments, this is Claudia’s episode and while it does move at a breakneck pace, cramming in 4 years of her life as a vampire, it works. The amplified speed echoes the way she sees the time pass and her youthful exuberance works as a great counterpoint to the older vampires.
Another huge change from the book and 1994 film is here Louis begs Lestat to turn her to save her, as he feels guilt for what happened to the Storyville precinct. Lestat obliges, seeing an opportunity for them to have a daughter and thus become a family, only to instantly become frustrated when Louis and Claudia communicate via thought. In the book and film, Lestat knew that Louis was going to leave him so he created Claudia as a means to make him stay.
The other major change is making Claudia a teenager instead of five years old. This, combined with the performance by nineteen year old Bailey Bass, allows the series to explore the emerging sexuality of a character who is maturing in every way except physically. Her infatuation with Charlie shows us a Claudia embracing her womanhood, despite appearing to be a fourteen year old girl. Bass’ performance is all wide-eyed and energetic which takes on a darker hue as she becomes an efficient killer, and is, again, a pleasing deviation from Kirsten Dunst’s portrayal in the film.
Using Claudia’s diaries is a smart storytelling device as we get a differing perspective on Louis and Lestat’s life, freed from the questionable recollections of the old and weary Louis, an unreliable narrator at best. Molloy calls them a mix of “Anne Frank and Stephen King.”
The death of Louis’ mother Florence initiates another tense confrontation with his sister Grace to the wake, where they also meet Claudia for the first time. The ongoing tension between them (and up until now his mother, played by genre veteran Rae Dawn Chong), is a nice through line and a remnant of Louis’ former life, another element not explored so much in the previous iterations.
And now it seems, the show will be marching towards the inevitable dissolution of Louis and Lestat’s relationship which has been so well defined and affecting (despite Lestat’s selfishness and Louis’ misgivings), it will come as a bit of a blow to the viewer. It will be interesting to see how the show navigates this turn in the coming weeks – if indeed they do it in this season.
Who’s part of the Interview With the Vampire cast?
- Jacob Anderson as Louis De Pointe du Lac
- Sam Reid as Lestat de Lioncourt
- Eric Bogosian as Daniel Molloy
- Bailey Bass as Claudia
- Assad Zaman as Rashid, Louis’ familiar in 2022
- Steven Norfleet as Paul de Pointe du Lac, Louis’ brother
- Kalyne Coleman as Grace de Pointe du Lac, Louis’ sister
- Rae Dawn Chong as Florence de Pointe du Lac, Louis’ mother
- Jeff Pope as Finn O’Shea
- Chris Stack as Thomas “Tom” Anderson
- Luke Brandon Field as Young Daniel Molloy
- Rachel Handler as Peg-Leg Doris
- John DiMaggio as Alderman Fenwick
- Dana Gourrier as Bricktop Williams
- Christian Robinson as Levi Freniere
- Maura Grace Athari as Antoniette, a blues singer
What did you think of this episode?
Did you enjoy episode 4 of Interview With the Vampire? Let us know on social media.
