Interview With the Vampire Star Delainey Hayles Breaks Down Claudia’s Horrifying New Coven Reality

Delainey Hayles opens up about how coven life isn’t exactly how Claudia imagined it.

At the end of last week’s Interview With the Vampire, “No Pain”, Claudia gets the thing she’s been wanting the most, a place to belong, when she’s finally made a full member of the Paris coven and part of the Theatre des Vampires. Her happiness is short-lived, however, when moments after her induction she’s given a new play written just for her that forces her to play a child for at least the next fifty years. For Claudia, it’s just another cruel blow in an un-life that has been full of them after she was given the Dark Gift too young and is forever trapped in a girl’s body. Now, Delainey Hayles breaks down Claudia’s horrifying new reality with the coven to Comic Book as well as reveals what Claudia really thinks about Armand.

Warning: spoilers for this week’s episode of Interview With the Vampire, “I Want You More Than Anything In The World”, beyond this point.

In the episode, Claudia dutifully takes the stage as “Baby Lulu” in the play specially written for her, but while the play is a massive success, the toll of constant infantilization soon takes its toll on her, leaving her disinterested, despondent, and just going through the motions on stage. When she eventually moves to stand up for herself with Armand, he responds with a cruel punishment, one that forces her to wear her little girl costume at all times, never able to escape the hell she’s in.  For Claudia, Hayles says it is all pure horror, even from the moment she gets the script.

“It’s pure horror for her,” Hayles said. “She doesn’t entirely know what to expect from the show. She’s got the script, but it’s… she wants to see the show, do it, but yeah, when we leave three, it’s horror. It’s the same. It’s confusion. It’s very sad.”

She continued, “From the get-go, she’s just appeasing everyone, but she hates it from when the script is placed in her hand.”

Hayles also said that when it comes to Armand, however, she feels that Claudia both admires his role within the coven, but her thoughts about him change over time — and she also isn’t especially surprised by his treatment of her because she’s already experienced Lestat.

“I think she admires that he’s the maître, he’s in charge of the coven, but she doesn’t know him. I don’t want to say she doesn’t like him. I think she gets to not liking him,” she said.  “She doesn’t mind him in the beginning and in episode two, there’s an element of ‘okay, go ahead Louis, let’s have fun in Paris.’ But towards the latter, she can also read Armand. She knows him, basically because she’s come from being Lestat’s daughter, and worse treatment that she’s had. So, she knows how to deal with Armand because she’s been around, she’s done that, but yeah, I wouldn’t say it’s a shock to her.”

What Is Interview with the Vampire Season 2 About?

You can read AMC‘s official description of the second season of Interview With the Vampire here: “The interview continues in season two. In the year 2022, the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (Anderson) recounts his life story to journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian). Picking up from the bloody events in New Orleans in 1940 when Louis and teen fledgling Claudia (Hayles) conspired to kill the Vampire Lestat de Lioncourt (Reid), Louis tells of his adventures in Europe, a quest to discover Old World Vampires and the Theatre Des Vampires in Paris, with Claudia. It is in Paris that Louis first meets the Vampire Armand (Assad Zaman). Their courtship and love affair will prove to have devastating consequences both in the past and in the future, and Molloy will probe to get to the truths buried within the memories.

Interview With the Vampire airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.