Interview with the Vampire (TV Series)

A Vile Hunger for Your Hammering Heart (2022)

Sam Reid: Lestat de Lioncourt

Photos 

Quotes 

• [Claudia returns home after seven years] 

  Lestat de Lioncourt : The prodigal daughter.

  Claudia : I've come to apologize. I put you both in a bad spot. I wasn't right in my head. I am now.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Apology not accepted.

• [Lestat and Claudia fight over Louis] 

  Claudia : [telepathically]  Come with me! Come with me, Louis!

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Louis...

  Claudia : [aloud]  I thought I could live without you, but I was wrong.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Louis.

  [shouts] 

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Louis!

  Claudia : [telepathically]  His love is a small box he keeps you in. Don't stay in it.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : [shouting]  A thousand nights of sulking, and the first sight of her, you are just gonna up and leave me?

  Claudia : [shouting aloud]  Please, come with me! Let's meet vampires worthy of your love!

• Lestat de Lioncourt : [reading from Claudia's diary]  'Dear diary, am I gonna be a virgin every single time I do it? Won't my skin down there grow back like my hair does when I cut it?'

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : Jesus.

• Claudia : Who am I supposed to love? You two have each other? Who's my Lestat? Who's my Louis? I'm not human. What human would want me? Perverts? Like the uncle at the roomin' house who used to watch me pee? Or little boys? And forty years from now, still little boys?

  [shouts] 

  Claudia : How you gonna fix it, huh? Which one of you gonna fuck me?

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Well, you're not my type. I like a fuller figure.

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : Lestat!

  Lestat de Lioncourt : She's being impossible!

• Louis de Pointe du Lac : It's been months. Her meals are too meager. What if you bring one of your kills into her room? We could tie him up next to the coffin...

  Lestat de Lioncourt : She's not surviving on birds or nocturnals, Louis. She waits for that slither of time when I'm on the hunt and you've gone round the back to make nice with the rat catcher.

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : Or she's slowly starving herself.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Bon. I know what I'd do, but you've cut my hands off. My parenting is...

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : Sadistic?

  Lestat de Lioncourt : [chuckles]  ... so save your words when it comes to Claudia.

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : She's in there 'cause of you.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : [slams the piano keys]  Ça suffit!

• Lestat de Lioncourt : You wanted her, you fix her!

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : We're doin' this together.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Do you remember our life, how happy we were before her?

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : Happy? We were not happy!

  Lestat de Lioncourt : An anvil tied around our ankles pulling us towards the pitch-black ocean floor!

• Claudia : Why can't I make one? No matter how much blood I give them, they just lie there gaspin'.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : What is this? Look at me! What have you done?

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : Did you try to make another?

  Claudia : Boy from Ponchatoula. Boy from Hollygrove. Boy with a bow tie out in Algiers.

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : Claudia, how'd you figure this was gon' go?

  Claudia : [to Lestat]  Make me one.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Because you turned out so well.

  Claudia : 'Cause if you don't, I'm gonna go out there and find other vampires.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : If you could find them, which you won't, they would shred you to strips, because you are built like a bird, because you are a mistake!

• Louis de Pointe du Lac : [voiceover]  Claudia's night rambles had exposed us.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Assume we are under suspicion. Assume our finances no longer provide us protection.

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : Make your kills outside the city. One a night. No persons of note--unfortunates, undesirables.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : No more incinerator. New locks on the doors. Shutter the windows. No parties, no friends.

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : [voiceover]  But her absence would lay bare who we were without her, a simmering pot of resentments.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : We should leave the city, start anew, turn a betrayal into an opportunity. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles.

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : Paris.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : No.

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : Mm-hmm.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : We should dismantle her room.

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : You don't touch her room.

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : She'll be back.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : No, she won't.

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : [voiceover]  There would be no Roaring Twenties for us. We would be underground for seven years.

• Lestat de Lioncourt : You draw me into your gloom.

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : It's your fault she's gone. If you hadn't pushed her...

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Claudia.

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : If you hadn't done your...

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Claudia. Claudia.

  [scoffs] 

  Lestat de Lioncourt : I cannot listen to this insanity about Claudia one more time. Bordel de merde. Il me chie dans la malle jusqu'au cadenas!

• Louis de Pointe du Lac : Flaubert's style is so dense.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Louis Armstrong's in town tonight, playing at the Pelican. Should we make it a night of the two Louis?

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : The absence of metaphor is so striking.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : You sound like every pompous Sorbonne student I've ever eaten.

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : Should I do like you instead? Read the first ten pages of every book? Pass myself off as cultured?

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Well, at least you're listening. I sit there thinking, 'Light yourself on fire, see if he would notice!'

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : [talking over Lestat]  Use my middling command of literary canon to impress some hapless human I'm gonna kill in a few hours anyway.

• Lestat de Lioncourt : How was college? Magna cum? Summa cum? Phi Beta Kappa?

  Claudia : I've read a lot of books. Started with Persia and Babylon, the old gods who longed for blood. A lot of it was popcorn, but a few old tomes. A Romanian tract on 'vampirs.' A strange, old Hungarian text, 'Masticatione Mortuorum,' the 'chewing dead.' I plan to leave for that part of the world as soon as I can.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : So, a quick stop home to do laundry before you fuck off for good.

• Louis de Pointe du Lac : [reading a newspaper article]  'Rash of mysterious deaths at university libraries perplex authorities.' Listen to this. 'Housekeeping staff at Vanderbilt University tried to rouse students who appeared to have fallen asleep at their studies, only to discover that they were, in fact, deceased. Similar incidents have been recorded at the College of Charleston, Lincoln University in Jefferson City, and the University of Alabama.' It's her. It has to be her.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : It could be her. But I am the one who is presently standing in front of you. And, unlike Claudia, I am a full-blooded adult with all the right appendages. So if my considerable considerables continue to be squandered...

  [Lestat storms out as Louis keeps reading] 

• Claudia : Let him go! It's me you want!

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Listen to me, and listen very carefully, my infant death. It was *never* you.

• Lestat de Lioncourt : She was a destitute little girl, destined to live an inconsequential little life.

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : And we took it from her. We cursed her.

• Claudia : I've read a lot of books. Started with Persia and Babylon, the old gods who longed for blood. A lot of it was popcorn, but a few old tomes. A Romanian tract on 'vampirs.' A strange, old Hungarian text, 'Masticatione Mortuorum,' the 'chewing dead.' I plan to leave for that part of the world as soon as I can.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : So... quick stop home to do laundry before you fuck off for good.

  Claudia : A quick stop to pick up Louis.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Perused a few folklore anthologies, and now you're going to cross the ocean and take on a society of monsters.

  Claudia : If what I read is lies, then tell me what's true.

  [Lestat stares without answering] 

  Claudia : [scoffs]  Seven years and what's changed, other than you need a housekeeper?

• Lestat de Lioncourt : [dragging Louis by the throat]  I fought myself a million times, fought my nature, controlled my temper. I never once harmed you.

  Claudia : Uncle Les!

  Lestat de Lioncourt : [stops]  It's 'Uncle Les' now suddenly?

  Claudia : Let him go! He didn't do nothin'! Let him go! It's me you want!

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Listen to me, and listen very carefully, my infant death. It was *never* you!

  Lestat de Lioncourt : [to Louis]  I chose you!

  [bites Louis's neck and flies off with him] 

• Lestat de Lioncourt : The vampires out there are vicious.

  [seeing the look on Claudia's face] 

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Oh... but you've learned that already. Who did you meet out there in the American hinterland? Read her, Louis.

  Claudia : That's it, keep him scared.

  [to Louis] 

  Claudia : That's his way.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : The vampires in Europe are much, much worse.

  Claudia : [to Louis]  But I think *he's* scared.

  Lestat de Lioncourt : I never asked. How did Charlie taste? Like the love you'll never really know?

  Claudia : [to Louis]  And when he's scared, he ridicules.

• [Lestat holds a bleeding and beaten Louis while hovering in the air thousands of miles above New Orleans] 

  Lestat de Lioncourt : I have waited, Louis. I have patiently waited, in vain, for you to love me as I love you. Just say it. Say, 'Lestat, I am never going to love you.' It would help me a great deal to hear that from your lips. Your quivering, hateful lips.

  Louis de Pointe du Lac : Let go of me!

  Lestat de Lioncourt : Anything for you.

  [Lestat lets go of Louis, who plummets to the ground] 

• Lestat de Lioncourt : I have waited, Louis. I have patiently waited in vain... for you to love me... as I love you. Just say it. Say, 'Lestat, I am never going to love you.' It would help me a great deal to hear that from your lips... your quivering, hateful lips.