EDGE Interview: The Queer Men with Fangs Are Back! 'Interview with the Vampire' Cast Spills the Blood

If you've been yearning for more "creature of the night" drama featuring immortal lovers Louis and Lestat, take heart; your thirst is about to be quenched, as Season 2 of AMC's brilliant reinvention of Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire," which has returned to the cable channel's line-up.

To recap of Season 1's seven-episode epic: Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) summons award-winning investigative journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) to his high-end apartment in Dubai, where he proposes to get back to an interview the two of them began fifty years earlier in San Francisco – an interview that ended abruptly when the brash young Daniel said the wrong thing and suffered a brutal attack. Older now, with two divorces behind him and his health failing, the incisive journalist tamps down his trauma and terror, and accepts the invitation.

Louis is determined to strip away the embellishments he added to his story all those years ago and give an accurate account of how, in 1910 New Orleans, a charming Frenchman named Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) seduced him into a sexual relationship that would, with the bite of a fang, transform from an illicit, but mundane affair into a supernatural odyssey of love, hate, violence, and bloodshed. Louis gained unimaginable power, but he also lost his family and struggled to hold onto his humanity as decades passed. Like many a dysfunctional couple, the feuding pair sought a solution in parenthood: Lestat turned a 14-year-old girl named Claudia (Bailey Bass) into a vampire whose body would never reach physical adulthood. The schism between her juvenile body and maturing mind became acute for Claudia, and Lestat's brutish parenting style didn't help. Claudia ran away to search for other vampire mentors, but encountered only a vicious drifter who sexually assaulted her. Season One ended with Louis and Claudia conspiring to murder Lestat in flashback while, in the present, Louis reveals that he and Daniel have been in the constant company of yet another vampire: Armand, who has been Louis' lover for seven decades, and who was also on the scene in 1973, when Louis and Daniel had their first encounter in San Francisco.

Rolin Jones, who adapted the book to the small screen, continues to reimagine the source material, sticking to the novel's basic story points while wildly reinventing the narrative. As Season 2 begins, Louis and Claudia (now played by Delainey Hayles) are in Europe, searching for some old-world nosferatu but finding only the human-made horrors of World War II and its aftermath. Louis keeps seeing (or imagining) the specter of Lestat, who is happy to interject his dry, often caustically funny commentary. But is this phantasmal Lestat a mere vision, or something more? In present-day Dubai, Daniel and Jacob continue their interview, but, as they comb through old notebooks and artifacts, journalist and vampire both realize that there are unexplained holes in their recollections and begin to suspect Armand.

Season 2's eight episodes balance drama, horror, humor, and camp, with the latter factor amped up considerably once Louis and Claudia finally do happen on a coven of ancient vampire – an acting troupe, of all things, whose presentations include feeding on screaming victims right in front of an audience of unwary mortals. Jealousies, rivalries, and revenge all take shape with the operatic sweep and menace that only the undead can summon.

EDGE caught up with the cast of Season 2, hearing from Jacob Anderson, Sam Reid, Delainey Hayles, and Assad Zaman about the thrill of returning for Part II, the secrets their characters harbor, and just how far these messed-up immortals might go.

Watch this preview for Season 2 of "Interview with a Vampire."

EDGE: Are you happy to get your fangs back into the show for Season 2?

Jacob Anderson: Always happy to get my fangs back in!

Sam Reid> We've finished it now, so we've kind of been defanged!

[Laughter]

Jacob Anderson: Even though this is an adaptation of the second half of the book, I really didn't know what to expect. We'd kind of been told bits, but there were a lot of surprises. This is not one of those situations where the second season is a rehashing of the first. This is very different. We go to places that not only really progress the story, but there are some quite shocking things that these characters do that aren't direct adaptations of the book.

Assad Zaman: We have a very, very strong show that is doing something that not a lot of media is doing at the moment, which is exploring life in in really interesting ways.

EDGE: Delainey, you're new to the cast, taking on the role of Claudia. Was it easy to join in on the fun?

Delainey Hayles: Yeah, I did, actually. I think the book helped me a lot, and watching the series – I watched it over a couple of times, so I was able to see where I was picking up from and understand that Claudia is older this season, and she's a bit different. She's still the same Claudia, but she might approach situations a bit differently now.