In Interview with the Vampire season two, the series gives us glimpses of the complicated past that is Armand’s; a series of tragedies that have left the vampire with an intense hunger for survival and the inability to ever truly find or trust peace. Armand tells us that his earliest memories are blurry, kidnapped by slavers in Delhi, sold to a brothel, and then purchased by his vampiric maker, Marius, whom he “served with all his heart”… Only for that existence to be cut short by the Roman Coven, who burned Marius and his home, and stole Armand away again. As a poignant demarcation of each instance in which Armand was destroyed and remade against his will, a different name was forced on him at each point. Arun, in the brothel, a name which may or may not have been Armand’s at the outset. Amadeo, with Marius. And Armand, from the Romen Coven. It’s a dizzying array of identities, none of which Armand chose to acquire.
And so, it is of particular note that in episode three of The Vampire Lestat, Armand introduces himself as Arun during a group meeting he attends, coincidentally/not coincidentally, alongside the wayward member of Lestat’s band, Alex. Curious about the moment, Nerdist asked Armand’s actor, Assad Zaman, to break it down further with us. Why did Armand call himself Arun in The Vampire Lestat? And what does it reveal about the character? Here’s what Zaman had to say.
Zaman offered the following incredible insights about Armand and his relationship with Arun and his other names and selves:
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 Armand’s 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 Armand 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 there’s one thing that’s true about Armand, it’s that he’s deeply traumatized. And even though he’s likely only play-acting at group therapy, maybe the attendance of it will be somehow helpful for him. Whoever Arun, Amadeo, and Armand are to Armand, they are, all of them, deeply damaged. And five centuries of trauma without understanding it is a lot for any vampire to deal with, especially on their own. Manipulative asshole or not, we’d like him to try to find the way that’s right for him. And maybe even a name that he gets to choose for himself. Until then, we’ll sit with these intense Armand-feelings and wait to see what happens next.
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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