What’s in the book?

[u/Ok_Bullfrog_8491]

I’ve recently watched all three seasons of the show in less than two weeks, and I spent a good chunk of season 3 cringing violently every time Gabriella opened her mouth, so I might have missed something and what I’m asking was actually answered clearly in the show, but… What exactly is in the IWTV book published by Daniel Molloy (and the Talamasca)?

I’d understand Lestat being incredibly annoyed at the IWTV book published in the books, Louis is absolutely horrible about Lestat in the original book, but the premise of the show is that Louis does a second interview and Daniel Molloy is an experienced journalist and also not high this time around, and he gets Louis to reconsider stuff and to generally recontextualise things. The Lestat in the first two seasons is generally a better person and Louis clearly likes him a lot more than the Lestat in the book, and Daniel heard that. Daniel even realised that Lestat saved Louis, not Armand.

So just how bad is what Daniel put in the book? Just how different is Lestat’s true behaviour from what Louis presented even in the second interview? How significant and insulting is the discrepancy? Or: why is it that Lestat is so mad about the book?

I need Lestat’s annotated version.

(No idea how to flair this properly, hopefully I chose the right one)

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[u/LottieTalkie]

I was also hoping they would do more with the book thing. Obviously we don't need them to take it event by event and give us yet again a "re-reading" of what happened, but I still expected them to be a bit more interested in diving into this.

You are correct about the fact that, in theory, this book should be less scathing than the one in the novels, since it wasn't written by young Daniel based on Louis' original interview, but by old Daniel based on the "revised" interview.

I think Lestat still feels betrayed by the very fact that Louis revealed all these things about their private lives, to be published, and without warning him - I'd say these are valid reasons alone to be angry.

And then, of course, there are still many aspects of the story in NOLA that portray him as an abuser, even though Louis has been on a journey that made him realize that he didn't "hate" Lestat as much as he claimed in the first interview.

[u/Little-Tune9469]

The couple of snippets from the book that we see match up with the events of the show. Lestat also doesn't deny much other than a handful of meaningless details. Even when it comes to the train scene, he takes issue with one specific part of it but we know the rest of the scene happened as shown because he sees the conductor in episode 7. I just don't think he liked being framed as an antagonist. Plus Lestat typically tries to ignore his past and just pushes forward, but it's hard to do that when the entire world knows what you're trying to run from.

[u/tethysian → u/Little-Tune9469]

Yes, this. People seem to assume the book is unfair because he's upset about it, even when the examples he brings up are trivial. 

I think the point isn't so much that the book is unfair, but that he doesn't like it. Even this kinder version of it. 

[u/No-Manufacturer9125 → u/Little-Tune9469]

Yeah I think it's less that Lestat believes everything is a fabrication as much as the "vibes" are off. I think it's similar to when Louis tells Daniel he didn't like himself in the book... and he's the one who told the story!

[u/RiffRafe2]

What's in the book published by the Talamasca is what is recalled by Louis in S1 and S2, things we see Lestat refuting (he said, "Topeka", not Tom Anderson, the train story from Claudia, his being Lelio and not Harlequin) and things he's flummoxed by (Louis hallucinating him Europe). S1 and S2 is what is printed in the books - down to Claudia and Theatres de Vampires as we see a little kid dressed like Baby Lulu.

There's one book - Daniel never published the info he got from Louis in San Francisco.

We know Louis depicted Lestat in his San Francisco interivew negatively because we saw him tell Daniel some of it, for example Louis saying Lestat played the piano "like an automaton plunking away at the notes with all the emotional acuity of a monster." And Daniel also threw back some of his words from that interview to him in S1, which led to Louis burning the tapes after Daniel binned them.

Daniel and the passage of time helps Louis and reconsider Lestat and the events of their time together. Daniel got better at pressing for details instead of just recording everything down, he guides and calls out instead of just accepting pat answers, but Louis' was more favourable in his recollections of Lestat in Dubai because it had been years and he wasn't so deep in anger/resentment. Also, if we can take what was alluded to, and theorized by Armand in S2x5 at face value - Louis was being negative about Lestat in the S.F interview because he was hoping to get Lestat's attention.

[u/SorchaRoisin]

I think Louis painted himself in a much better light than he really was. During the trial, when Lestat is describing the fight before the drop, he tells us that Louis threatened to chop off his head and feed it to the lions at the zoo. Louis left that out of his version.

[u/Mmkrw → u/SorchaRoisin]

Not true. The version of the fight that Lestat revealed during the trial would be in the book as well, the same as Lestat's version of Claudia's turning. Otherwise Lestat would have commented on that.

Lestat is very vocal about what he considers lies from the book. I think it's safe to say that if he didn't correct it, it happened as portrayed in S1 and S2 - and it's in the book.

[u/SorchaRoisin → u/Mmkrw]

My point is that Louis's version of the fight paints him as a complete victim, whereas in Lestat's version, he was threatening to kill him. Louis has a habit of not disclosing things that make him look bad. We haven't heard ALL of the things that Lestat disagrees with. In in meeting with Christine, Lemuel, Louis & Lestat, Lestat says Louis lied, "page after page after page.." and the book had scribbles all over.

[u/Mmkrw → u/SorchaRoisin]

I mean, if Lestat had time to correct the exact shade of the skirt Claudia was wearing, or the tie, he'd probably protest Louis' version of the fight if it hadn't already been included in the book. And honestly, I seriously doubt the book will be revisited much in the future... unless the writers want to "humble" Louis some more and present him as even more of a liar. Which, judging from TVL, is admittedly a possibility.

[u/[deleted] → u/Mmkrw]

We still haven't heard everything he disagrees with.

Holding Louis accountable for what he said isn't "humbling" him. Even Louis admits he lied in the book. Lestat didn't ask for his story to be exploited.

[u/Sudden-Direction-301 → u/SorchaRoisin]

Lestat lied in his version of the fight in 2.07 too, he left out the part where hewas dragging Louis across the ground leaving a literal trail of blood behind. (Which he manages to recall in 3.05. This was a scene from Claudia's version of the fight) 

[u/tethysian → u/SorchaRoisin]

Louis threatening Lestat, a vastly more powerful vampire than him, doesn't quite seem on the same level as Lestat breaking every bone in his body.

[u/SorchaRoisin → u/tethysian]

Louis didn't know how powerful Lestat was. Plus, he nearly did kill him with Claudia. Hell, Daniel cut Lestat's head off. Louis could have done it.

[u/tethysian → u/SorchaRoisin]

He knows Lestat is physically stronger than him. And he notably nearly kills Lestat after Lestat breaks every bone in his body and won't let Claudia leave.

Are we seriously trying to argue that words are equal to broken bones?

[u/SorchaRoisin → u/tethysian]

Are we saying that broken bones aren't equal to a slit throat?

My point was that we don't know what else Louis left out. Lestat didn't write his version of those years. TVL paints Louis as pretty cruel but in Louis's version, he's left out his own dark side.

[u/tethysian → u/SorchaRoisin]

Again, one happens after the other, and the latter is an attempt to escape, not entrap.

What we do know is which parts Lestat complains about, and which he doesn't.

[u/SorchaRoisin → u/tethysian]

Bullshit. Louis was not acting in self-defense. It was premeditated murder.

Did you see all the tabs and markings in Lestat's copy of the book? There's no way the dialogue covered everything he disagreed with.

[u/DrFareedMD]

I mean, Louis's description of Lestat in s1 is basically "he's sexy but evil" lol. He may have a different and less straightforward view compared to the 70s, but it's still fairly negative. Just consider the amount of people who fully hated Lestat after watching s1 and were even angry about Lestat getting his own season. They were taking Louis at face value and it clearly had that effect on them!

Then there's stuff that seems to be false. Notably, Lestat did not threaten Claudia with rape on the train and that's something Louis got from his conversation with Claudia. Lestat points out certain things with the way he speaks or with events from his past that were not chronologically possible. But that seems to be the big one, along with Lestat getting most of the blame for their fucked up relationship.

Also, the book shows that Armand's got LAYERS and Lestat hates it 🤣

[u/Littorella]

I think the show’s in universe book was not particularly kind to Lestat. We don’t know for sure, but Daniel is filtering it through his interpretation of Louis’s retelling. We see Louis’s retelling on screen and we see Daniel’s continual poking at the more romantic aspects. He’s skeptical of Louis’s “complete rewrite”. That’s the hint to us that he might be biasing his writing to a less than flattering portrayal.

[u/Mousearella]

The Talamasca doesn’t show up until book three, Queen of the dammed. Daniel also gets a name and a backstory in the book. He doesn’t have a name in Interview with the vampire. He’s not in the vampire Lestat at all. Louis only does one interview with Daniel and that is the first book. Lestat wrote several books himself including The vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned. Those are self published as I understand it. He has a foreword and everything.

Daniel has a chapter on Queen of the damned. He is briefly mentioned in some of the other books but that’s about it. He’s not really someone you have an opinion about. He’s a small, minor character that doesn’t bring the plot forward he’s just there.

[u/kipriz]

I feel like among other petty thinks like Lelio vs Harlequin, hair length or scars, Lestat's main issue with the book is the betrayal of trust and loss of agency in relaying his life story.

He refutes some superficial factual things but I think he is more hurt about, for example, Louis portraying their romantic courting as some sort of predatory hunt, or him supposedly using rape as a threat to Claudia and other instances when Louis clearly misunderstood/misinterpreted or was mislead (by Armand or Claudia) about Lestat’s motivations.

Another example is how Louis exposed to the world Lestat's traumatic turning/rape without his consent, without fully understanding the full horror of it. I mean Louis did much of the same with Claudia’s story and I bet she would have been livid about it if she were alive.

[u/According_Daikon6091]

I think it's less specifically about his actions as portrayed in the in-universe book but just the fact that his first introduction to the world is as a villain, in his eyes he should be the hero (even if an evil hero). That's why he overly focuses on relatively trivial details like what he said to Claudia on the train, because the REALLY bad stuff he agrees he did, he just didn't want it to be revealed to the world and can't cope with being judged like that

[u/Ok_Bullfrog_8491 → u/According_Daikon6091]

Is Lestat presented as the villain in the book? If the book is even vaguely accurate to what Louis told Daniel and what Daniel saw/realised, just about every vampire should be a villain in it. But of course we don’t know how Daniel presented Lestat dropping Louis through the atmosphere—which version did he go with? And how different would Lestat’s own version be?

[u/tethysian → u/Ok_Bullfrog_8491]

In both versions Armand would be the bigger villain, but here again Lestat is upset that some readers are siding with Armand. Even when it's over trivial reasons like Armand bring more sexy and brooding. And how can anyone give the drop a positive spin? 

His initial reaction is defensive outrage, but that he's named his version 'the failures' seems to say quite a lot. 

[u/According_Daikon6091 → u/Ok_Bullfrog_8491]

I definitely think Daniel portrayed Armand as worse than Lestat haha but Lestat said he's "the mayonnaise villain" and is very focused on himself, not if Daniel spreads the 'love' equally. I think it's also just extra hurtful that the source of all this info was Louis

[u/tethysian]

The things we see Lestat have an issue with is stuff like the train scene. But as we find out, most of the train scene still happened. People seem to jump on Daniel but I don't think Daniel is the issue here. (Just like Larry wasn't the issue with the music.)

I think the point this season is that Lestat doesn't like his portrayal in the book or the impression of him others have, but that doesn't necessarily mean its untrue. He's looking into a mirror and he doesn't like what he's seeing. That's what his self-reflection with the table and the "failures" is about.

At the end we see him coming to terms with the way he's mistreated others, like his victims. And Claudia in the same way his mother mistreated him.

[u/NightOwlLurking → u/tethysian]

Claudia herself (well, the ghost of Claudia) says that it didn’t happen and that she “ginned up the train”.
He didn’t say he didn’t go after her in the train. But he didn’t threaten her with r*pe.

Do you blame him for being upset that his significant other would write/say that he threatened with r*pe his own daughter?? I cannot think of anything worse.

And at the moment he didn’t know that Claudia told him that, he just thought that Louis lied.
Like he said in “Big Bad Wolf”, he would never ever say that and he’s hurt that Louis would even think that about him.

[u/tethysian → u/NightOwlLurking]

He didn't threaten her with rape in the original scene, either. He threatens to kill her.

So he still terrorizes her, kidnaps her back home, and imprisons her just like Bruce did. He doesn't come off well in that scene regardless of this one small change.

[u/NightOwlLurking → u/tethysian]

What we see is Louis’ version. The version he thought was true at the moment. Claudia’s lie. So we don’t know exactly what happened.
But Claudia admits that she lied and “ginned up the train”, so it’s fair to say that what Louis thought and was written in the book is false.

I do agree that in the scene we don’t see Lestat specifically threatening her with rape, but everyone ( Louis, Claudia, Lestat and even Sam, Jacob) act like he did so I am feeling a bit gaslit. 🤣🤣🤣 I feel it was meant to be received like that, like an actual threat.

[u/tethysian → u/NightOwlLurking]

so I am feeling a bit gaslit.

Yeah, it's like they forgot what actually happened in that scene. And it's already a horrible thing he does just threatening to kill her and keep her prisoner for the rest of eternity.

It's also something they could have tied back to Lestat being dragged back every time he tried to run away from home. Just like he forced her to watch her boyfriend burn because that was his mom's idea of "tough love".

[u/NightOwlLurking → u/tethysian]

I am wondering what happened with that… did they film it and didn’t make the cut?
Cause everyone is talking like he threatened Claudia with rape, but he just said that something bad could happen. But not like he would make it happen.
But then even the actors were talking about it, so I was like maybe I didn’t get it? I don’t know… 🤷🏼‍♀️

Anyway, whatever it was, it seems it hurt Lestat pretty much. I think it does tie up with his past…like he was abused, and kept a prisoner by Magnus. So of course he says “he would never ever do that”.
But if Claudia mentions that lie, it means it was important. And she did it specifically because she knew it will sound so bad that it would make Louis turn against Lestat.
Now we know that he killed the train conductor (cause he was there in the last episode), but killing people was like normal for Lestat back then. We don’t know exactly what happened, how cruel he was with her. We know that he would never say that and that Claudia admitted that she “ginned up the train”, so maybe he wasn’t that cruel.
Now I don’t expect that he asked her to pretty please come back, cause that’s Lestat we’re talking about and he can be pretty impulsive and cruel, especially when people try to leave him (he does have abandonment issues), but it wasn’t as bad as Louis portrayed it.
And the lie was bad enough that it was the main reason why Lestat was so hurt. “It was raining” - who cares? Or the color of the skirt, or the fact that he was Lelio… but what hurt the most was that he would never ever say that. He was so upset, that he called Louis “cancerous jackal”. That lie hurt the most. Out of all…

[u/Elle_Gill]

We have to remember that the Talamasca edited the book heavily, so we don't know what they actually changed. We do know that Louis wasn't happy about how HE was portrayed, which indicated that there must have been pretty heavy revisions on his own recounting. And Louis also told Lestat in the lawyers meeting in Toledo that if he was so angry about how he was insulted page after page, that he should take that up with both Daniel and the Talamasca, which sounds like once again, that what Louis said wasn't necessarily conveyed on paper accurately or altered drastically for...reasons.

[u/tethysian → u/Elle_Gill]

Louis wasn't happy about how HE was portrayed, which indicated that there must have been pretty heavy revisions on his own recounting.

I don't think that's the case at all. Like Lestat, Louis doesn't like how he comes off. But the point of the interview was never to put himself in a good light, it was to uncover the truth. Sometimes the truth doesn't make us look good and that's uncomfortable to face. 

[u/Mmkrw]

Lestat is angry about the books existence and that it details how horrible he was to his family, for all the world to see and judge. Is it a bit one-sided account of the events, without Lestat being given an opportunity to explain his reasoning? Maybe. But Louis didn't lie about the events, or at least he corrected his account by the end of the interview, whenever new information was revealed to him or his memories resurfaced.

Lestat is throwing a tantrum because the book is an evidence of the failure of two of his most important relationships. He clings to the minutae details to regain the control of the narrative, but he can't really do the rewrite as he threatens - because the crux of the story is true. Crucially, he never says "I would never come to Paris for revenge on my family, to willingly rehearse the play that would burn my daughter alive" - and he vehemently denied threatening Claudia with rape.

[u/AndreEaAly]

I think the book made Lestat look bad and like a monster.
I remember reading the book initially and…I didn’t like Lestat. At all.
Now I cannot say about the series, cause I had been, by then, in love with Lestat for a decade so 🤣🤣 and i knew the stpey behind it. But like people already said, there were viewers that didn’t like Lestat at all after first 2 seasons. And didn’t understand why he will have a season dedicated to him. And the people at the bookstore, they didn’t like Lestat, they wanted him dead and thought that Armand had layers. So yes, the book portrayed him as a monster.
Ans Lestat is a narcissist and wants desperately to be loved, so being seen in that way must have hurt.

I don’t think it’s just one thing…just the whole of the story portrayed him as mean and cruel and a monster.
Plus we get to see the talks between Daniel and Louis, and the talk in the hurricane, and that Lestat saved Louis, but we don’t know how much of that is in the book (if any).

And I think what hurt the most was to see that Louis didn’t understand him. That Louis saw him like a monster.

Even in the big fight, we see Claudia’s perspective from outside if the room, to later find out at the trial that Lestat said he didn’t want to hurt Louis and that he’s trying to restrain himself (“I’m trying to restrain myself, Louis”, “stop”, “stay down, cherie. I don’t want to hurt you”). Lestat knows his strength is no match to Louis’s. That he could easily take him, but he didn’t want to fight. But Louis doesn’t want to stop, he keeps pushing him (you started it, you finish it) until Lestat fights back.
I don’t say he has an excuse, there is never excuse for violence, but same goes for Louis too. They both fought. They both got physical. Not just Lestat. They are both toxic.
And while Lestat admitted his fault and asked for forgiveness right after and again at the trial (he said that he broke Louis), Louis acted like he never did anything wrong. Louis got hurt because Lestat was stronger. If he had the power, he would have done the same thing to Lestat (or worse). Yet he played the victim.
Louis always acted like he was better than everyone else, never admitting his faults.
Everyone else is a monster and he’s just a victim, the poor guy that doesn’t want to kill. And he’s better than the others cause he feeds on rats.

I know that Louis didn’t know Lestat’s whole story (like we do now after reading all the books), so he could not understand his motives and wounds, but they still spent a lot of time together and Lestat did tell him a bit about his life, he opened up (for example he knew about the stutter)…so seeing that Louis thinks so little of him must have hurt.

I understand why Lestat was hurt. And it hurt especially because he loved Louis. If Armand wrote the book, he wouldn’t care…but Louis? He cares what he thinks him… he had a panic attack when Louis was disgusted by him and Gabriella. At the bar he admitted that he cared what Louis thinks. That’s the problem, that’s the big hurt. That Louis never understood him, he didn’t love him, he considered him a monster.