The Vampire Armand is finally back in full force in The Vampire Lestat. And, as always, his true intentions are hard to parse. At times, Armand appears contrite for the wrongs he’s managed to stir up in the lives around him, worried about the state of vampire kind and the safety of those he… loves? But, of course, with Armand, multiple motivations are always at play. And it’s hard to tell where tenderness bleeds into manipulation, bleeds into sincerity, bleeds into lies. But, in my book, that’s what makes him so interesting. In the wake of The Vampire Lestat‘s stunning fourth episode, “The Devil’s Road,” Nerdist sat down with Armand actor Assad Zaman to pry open Armand once again and dive into his addictions, confessions, and intentions in the series. Enjoy our full interview with Zaman below, Beloveds.
So in episode three of The Vampire Lestat, Armand introduces himself as an addict. What is he addicted to?
Assad Zaman: He is addicted to lying, to manipulating. He’s addicted to surviving above everything. He hasn’t got the wherewithal, the courage to understand that maybe the world would be a better place without him. He’s like, “No, the world will not be a better place without me. I will find my place.”
He should think that.
Assad Zaman: He should think that! Maybe he thinks, “The world will be a shitty place, but fuck it. I will make it shittier as long as I survive.” Of course, we can debate how sincere he is about being in an AA, especially the same AA as a member of Lestat’s band. Is that a coincidence or is that by design?
Armand also calls himself Arun at that meeting in episode three of The Vampire Lestat. Why does he use that name?
Assad Zaman: Well, part of it might be, obviously, to use as a disguise, although the book is out. I don’t know how useful that is as a disguise if people are reading the book and know that his name is Arun. But also, there’s a more sincere answer there that he… I think where we meet him here, it’s two years after his entire world’s collapsed, everything that he has built has sort of gone away. We don’t know exactly how he spent the two years, but I think there has been a regression. There has been a regression into a past version of himself. I think that’s meant that he’s had to revisit his traumas, his past traumas, and parallel them, compare them with what’s happened here.
One of the things that we know about Armand from the books is that this collapse isn’t the first collapse of his existence. He’s had a few of these in the past, and each one has been devastating in its own way. After each one, he’s had to regroup, rebuild himself from the crumbs, from the ashes, and find who he is and survive again. So each time I think Armand never really gets a chance to really understand his trauma and understand, come to terms with it and really sort of evaluate it. He doesn’t give himself the chance to do it, and neither does anyone else really engage with it, really help him to get through it because they have good reason not to.
He’s a manipulative asshole. He doesn’t do himself any favors. So he’s never really been able to come to terms with the things that have happened. And here, there’s another thing that has happened that’s been devastating, and you’d think anyone would come out of it going, “Okay, wake up. What have I been doing?” That’s what a normal person would do, and hopefully try to come out of it a better person. Does Armand do it? I don’t know. I don’t know that he’s capable of that. I think it’ll take something really big. So Arun is an effect of that. Arun is him coming back out of his cocoon, his two years of sort of hibernating after this devastation. He’s coming out, he’s showing himself, and he’s like the baby version before coming back into Amadeo and Armand. What that’s going to be, we don’t know yet.
If Armand loves Daniel as he implies, and maybe he’s missed him, why did he abandon him for two years after turning him?
Assad Zaman: Does he know that he missed him? Does he know that he is in love with him? I think what’s beautiful about the end of four, that confession that when I read that, I was like, “Wow, this is a really, really fascinating way to make this admission.” Because I don’t think Armand was prepared to… I think it surprised Armand, even, that it came out because it also confirms that what happened in Dubai, the sort of not being able to hear Daniel’s thoughts or being able to be on top of the manipulation, letting himself be discovered was in essence something to do with his affection for Daniel that he himself didn’t understand and couldn’t work out, couldn’t place.
I think that only happens after he’s turned. I think that happens after he’s turned Daniel. And we don’t know the circumstances of his turning Daniel yet. But I think the cocoon period of Armand happened very soon after turning Daniel, because the act of turning himself is something that he’s just done, something that he finds abhorrent. He, as a vampire, finds disgusting, disgraceful, and abhorrent. And so there wasn’t any space in his mind, I think, to go, “Oh, I’m sorry, let’s work this out. Let’s find…” He just runs away. So this is him facing it, him facing Daniel facing his sort of actions.
Daniel asks Armand, “Why are you here?” And Armad gives him an answer, but why has he come back now after staying away for so long?
Assad Zaman: Many reasons. There are wider reasons relating to the Great Conversion that he feels that he has a duty, responsibility to halt and make people understand. Daniel is there creating a documentary about Lestat and vampires, and he’s also Armand’s fledgling… And I said this before, Armand has, even though he hasn’t been around, he has been around. He’s always watching, he’s a lurker, he’s a serial lurker, and he’s been that as his world has crumbled and he’s gone into the shadows. Everyone else has sort of come out of the shadows and are certainly being very loud. Louis is enterprising all over the place, and Lestat’s on a world tour, sort of bringing in the entire world of vampires together, and there’s Daniel documenting it all, and it’s something that Armand finds dangerous, so he has to do something about it.
And at the same time, he’s trying to come to terms with what he’s done in Dubai, what he’s done to Louis and Daniel, and trying to reconcile with that. It’s sincerity that’s always peppered with manipulation or peppered with a mission that he feels like he needs to do to survive.
When I first watched episode four, and Armand left the concert, I was like, “Daniel, go after him.” And then Daniel did. How did that feel for Armand for Daniel to kind of pursue him?
Assad Zaman: Well, in the beginning, I think he just thinks that Daniel is just going to sort of berate him again because that’s what he did in the bowling alley. He fully believes that Daniel has every right to hate him. He left him. He left him completely vulnerable. He left him with something that he didn’t ask for, and so he feels guilt for that, and he knows that Daniel really does hate him in his guts right now, but then I think both of them don’t… Daniel and Armand, they don’t understand what this connection is that’s happening. Armand does more than Daniel, but they don’t understand this vampire bond because it’s new for Armand as well, but the fact that Daniel is asking about Dubai and going, “Was it all a lie? Was it all fake?” Is a moment that kind of comes out of nowhere for Armand.
And in that moment, I feel like he doesn’t want to lie to Daniel.
And I think it comes out, it’s an honest confession that, ‘Yes, you can hate me, you can hate me for what I did. I manipulated you. I turned you, I did some fucked up shit, but that pretending to let you manipulate me… That’s not true. You think you were under my spell, actually, I was under your spell. That’s why you were able to free everyone,’ and maybe that’s part of it. Maybe Armand, somewhere deep inside, is like grateful to Daniel for freeing Louis and Armand from this disastrous, nothing relationship that’s a spiral of misery. So yeah, it’s a really tender moment that comes out.
The Vampire Lestat airs on AMC and AMC+ Sundays at 9 pm ET/PT and midnight, respectively. You can snag The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice to read, if you’d like to know a little bit more about what’s going on.
Rotem Rusak is the Editor-in-Chief of Nerdist. She’s ready for Devil’s Minion to become canon so one of her ships can finally sail.
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