Armand Comin’
Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire took a bit to find itself, but one thing it has been from the beginning is self-aware. The series takes an interrogative approach to its source material, framing Rice’s iconic goth novel and its 1994 film adaptation as the previous version of its story, one in which the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) lies and deceives his interviewer, Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian). The interview in the series, occurring decades later, is supposedly the real story, with Daniel, now a more seasoned journalist, picking through Louis’s earlier account. But while Louis remains an unreliable narrator prone to bristling when Daniel points out contradictions in his narrative, Daniel realizes his own memory has a blank spot too — one involving the vampire Armand (Assad Zaman).
Beloved and infamous in Rice’s universe and integral to the sensual and resentful relationship between Louis and Lestat de Lioncourt, the 514-year-old Armand conceals his identity at first. He’s introduced to Daniel and to viewers as Rashid, Louis’s seemingly human assistant who is rarely seen in their Dubai penthouse without a tablet in hand, organizing Louis’s schedule, assisting Daniel with access to Louis’s personal archives of centuries of collected ephemera, and doing his Muslim daily prayers in the sun. His presence isn’t exactly trivial, but he seems innocuous — until he’s suddenly levitating above Daniel with glowing gold eyes and a self-satisfied expression in the final moments of season one.
For both readers and viewers going in blind to IWTV: lots to unpack here! Let’s discuss how the Armand reveal rewrites the series’s first season, and where season two could go now that Rashid is known to be an auburn-eyed, casually flying-around vampire who has protected Louis “from himself, always have” and whose hand Louis grasps like a giddy teenager. (We will not be doing age-gap discourse, however.)
So what was Rashid’s deal in season one?
In the first season of IWTV, Rashid is Louis’s attentive, slightly snarky assistant, deferential to his boss on nearly all matters but obviously not 100 percent chill with Daniel’s interviewing Louis again. When Daniel describes the relationship between Louis and his maker and lover, Lestat (Sam Reid), as “You played docent to the gentleman vampire,” the implication is that Rashid is to Louis now what Louis was to Lestat then. Rashid lingers in the background until he’s dismissed (often by Daniel, who wants to get Louis alone for his interviews), always calls Louis “Mr. de Pointe du Lac,” and demurs when Daniel tries to ask him questions about his own life, answering with “I serve a god. It is my honor to serve.”
Daniel’s curiosity won’t be abated, though, especially when he overhears Rashid performing Muslim prayers, or salah, in the penthouse’s main living room. Daniel is his typically sarcastic self (“How does Muhammad feel about vampires? Is it Ashura every day here in the penthouse?”) and adds “What is his endgame?” to a file he’s keeping on Rashid. But what Daniel misses is how Rashid’s seeming obsequiousness is actually authority, even smugness. Rashid refers to himself and Louis as “we,” calls Dubai “a child,” and smirks when Daniel is horrified to read a journal of kills kept by Claudia (Bailey Bass), the vampire Louis begged Lestat to make for him as a daughter-companion. The reveal that Armand is no fawning human servant allowing Louis to feed on him but a committed lover actively engaged in Louis’s rewriting of his own history goes against both our and Daniel’s assumptions.
The first season also establishes that when Daniel interviewed Louis the first time, he was an addict who, despite hearing about Louis’s decades of trauma, asks Louis to turn him into a vampire, leading to Louis nearly killing Daniel for missing the point of his tragic story. Daniel can’t remember much from that evening — until he realizes Armand was there, too, and Armand says he saved Daniel from the infuriated Louis. Armand’s past with Daniel (a backstory reworked for the series) factors into whatever power the vampires may hold over the journalist and his book about Louis’s life in the episodes to come. The twist also raises the question of why the pair would hide Armand’s identity in the first place.
Okay, I haven’t read the books. Why should I care about Armand?
Because Armand is an exquisitely rich character, someone who has been alive long enough to dive into all the philosophical questions about being a vampire that Lestat didn’t care about but that Louis obsesses over. Lengthy stretches of Rice’s novel involve Armand and Louis arguing about the moral nature of vampirism and whether there are “gradations of evil,” as Armand puts it. His teachings inspire differing reactions in Louis and Claudia that may tear apart the family they have worked so hard to protect after getting rid of Lestat. It’s dramatic!
The series’ willingness to tweak Louis’s memories based on Daniel’s nitpicky questions about his experiences raises the exciting potential of Armand similarly being in Daniel’s crosshairs. In the novel, Armand is all in on his own ideology and supremacy, and we see some of that at the end of season one when he says of the sun, “What’s a mediocre star to a 514-year-old vampire?” Daniel’s poking and prodding at that will be fun to watch and a totally new experience for both book readers and show watchers.
What does the Armand reveal mean for season two?
The scrapbook Armand throws in Daniel’s lap after revealing himself includes various ads for the Théâtre des Vampires, which hasn’t yet been mentioned on the show but is positioned as important to the story to come. Some light book spoilers here: It’s basically a vampire coven that puts on elaborate, unsettlingly sensual live shows mixing beauty, violence, sex, and death. If you were a tween secretly reading Rice’s novel at the public library so your parents wouldn’t know, these scenes were when you would glance up and down the stacks to make sure no one you were related to was coming around the corner. Very curious to see how series creator Rolin Jones adapts the Théâtre des Vampires and its insularity — it’s not exactly welcoming to Louis and Claudia — and characterizes Armand’s role within it. Maybe Antonio Banderas, who played Armand in the IWTV film adaptation (and whose character inspired What We Do in the Shadows’ Guillermo to want to become a vampire), can show up for a teeny, tiny cameo? That would be nice!
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