If you’ve been following my coverage of The Vampire Lestat, you know it’s no secret that my favorite pair of characters are Daniel and Armand, also known as the Devil’s Minion. As we headed into this season, there was a lot of excitement about the possibility of where Daniel and Armand’s story might go. And largely, fans who know Anne Rice’s books and fell in love with Assad Zaman and Eric Bogosian’s version of Armand and Daniel, were hoping that trajectory would go romantically. And, ultimately, I judge that Armand and Daniel did embark on the beginning of a romantic journey in The Vampire Lestat, although, looking forward at the potential of the story, those of us in Devil’s Minion Nation are pretty hungry for some of the blanks of this season to be filled in as the storytelling perspective of the series continues to shift and evolve. But to help us weather the long hiatus, Nerdist spoke to Eric Bogosian and Assad Zaman about all things Armand, Daniel, where we leave them, where they’re going, how they might have changed after The Vampire Lestat, and, of course, the important things, the potential of intimate moments upcoming.
Sadly, in the finale of The Vampire Lestat, we didn’t see Daniel and Armand share a scene, although we did hear them speak about one another in promising ways. Daniel appears to refer to Armand as “his wife” and “boss.” (Yes, we caught that reference to Queen of the Damned, and we liked it. You can check out Assad Zaman calling Bogosian “Beloved” in return, here.) And, of course, refers to himself continuously as “Manther,” a new word in our vocabulary, which we welcome. Meanwhile, Armand calls Daniel his “companion,” which we know is a Big Deal title for the character to bestow. Before that, in episode six of The Vampire Lestat, of course, the devilish duo beheaded Lestat and Louis in the park, having judged the “fog of love” to be a strong enough distractor, based on their own experiences. Which brings us to the last conversation we see Armand and Daniel have on screen. In episode six of The Vampire Lestat, Armand confesses to Daniel that not only does he love him, but he’s been a part of his life for 52 years. And in that time, has protected Daniel’s peace, interceded on his behalf, saved his life, and, overall, played the role of guardian angel for the human he was so fascinated by.
And that’s… a lot to take in for anyone. So how did we get from New York confessions to decapitations to companionship, and to Daniel’s “Yaoi Manther” era? I ask Eric Bogosian and Assad Zaman to walk me through what Daniel and Armand have been up to in the shadows of The Vampire Lestat.
Zaman begins with a grin, “It’s mainly lots of sun walking tutorials, right?” He wryly offers, alluding to Daniel’s incredible tan (of “whatever you want, sweetheart”) in The Vampire Lestat‘s final episodes. “We’ve been spending a lot of time in the sun. Armand’s been throwing Daniel onto rooftops, and closing the door, and waiting for him to get half-burnt and then letting him back in.”
We all laugh together at the glorious vision that I pass on to the talented fandom creators out there. And then I suggest that such experiments must have involved some kind of blood-sharing between Armand and Daniel in The Vampire Lestat; otherwise, how would Daniel have survived even a second in the Day Walking trials? To which Bogosian exclaims, “Blood sharing! How much blood did we share? If we share blood, then I get very powerful.” And indeed, that is how it might work, according to Anne Rice lore.
Zaman agrees with the sentiment, “Yeah. I think that has to be part of the process in order for Daniel to, I guess, develop that power. I don’t think it can just happen. Yeah. Over time, Daniel needs some of the Armand blood inside of him.”
Of course, Daniel has started off with Armand’s blood inside him, but to really make the transfer of power stick, vampires in Anne Rice’s world often need to exchange blood more than once. That’s why, though Lestat has some of the blood of Akasha in him, he still can’t walk in the daytime like Daniel can… Not yet, anyway.
But how much blood have they shared? Have we missed witnessing that intense moment between Armand and Daniel on The Vampire Lestat? Eric Bogosian levels with us, as only Eric Bogosian can. “I mean, we haven’t had the scenes where we’re actually physically intimate, and I don’t know when we’re physically intimate. I have a feeling that there’s so much to explore. And we actually, we’ve talked about it a little bit, but I think if we had the scene, then we would’ve had that experience. And we wanted to have that scene, and we never got it.” You and me and the whole of Devil’s Minion nation, Eric Bogosian. And, I feel it’s worth noting for the readers at home that Assad Zaman is nodding along quite emphatically to the final portions of the pronouncement.
But Zaman speaks up to pull us all from the ledge, offering: “Which is why there’s always room in season four, I think. There’s a lot of room.” Should we get season four of The Vampire Lestat, there will indeed be room and time for Armand and Daniel, but I think I speak for all and sundry when I say we’re ready to get there as soon as possible and see it actually manifest, so we know there is room and time for it.
Bogosian is still musing about Armand and Daniel in The Vampire Lestat, though, and notes, “I think that given their tremendous energies, and there’s no question they both have huge energies, that there’s been these huge power shifts. I don’t know that they’re necessarily necking twenty-four-seven. I think what they’re doing is that when they’re around each other, it’s very intense. And also, it would have to be very intense to build into what we end up doing, beheading those two guys. I mean, how did we get to that?”
For a minute, Bogosian considers the possibility of Armand’s powers coming into play, noting that we know Armand can hypnotize people into doing things, like Larry and Alex. But Zaman immediately rejects the notion that Armand would use his powers to get Daniel on his side, and we all conclude that Daniel has “picked up the scythe to do some head lopping” of his own free will.
Zaman notes, “Armand uses his mind tricks. We’ve seen him use them. We assume he’s used it with Alex, and we know he’s used it with Larry. Those manipulations are supernatural manipulations. I think with Daniel, it’s kind of been a bog-standard wearing him down and also pushing the right buttons because I know the way he’s being treated by Lestat, and I know who he is, and I know how to manipulate him. That’s the old-fashioned coercing him into it.” Romance, as they say, is not dead!
Bogosian adds that Daniel is “so discombobulated by what’s been going on that he’s… I don’t think he’s being completely rational at this point. But then again, that’s the guy who lived before he became a vampire, was a very rational guy. He lived in a rational world. He lived in a world where he gets the Pulitzer Prize twice for being such a rational guy. He has to be a guy who thinks and speaks and operates in the world in a fairly cogent way. And then now he’s in this crazy world. These guys don’t operate in any normal fashion. They do things, and then they completely reverse themselves two seconds later. I mean, that’s the story of Louis, if no one else. Everybody has all kinds of rationalizations for what they do. But Louis is like evil, and then he gives you those big eyes, and then it’s like somehow he’s not evil? But he’s evil. They’re all evil!” We love this minute for Daniel and Louis, who we hope to see more of as well in the next season.
But ultimately, coming back around to it, where are Daniel and Armand with one another as The Vampire Lestat comes to a close? Basically, it’s complicated. Bogosian notes that he thinks Daniel is still in that anger place, offering, “I think he’s still really angry at Armand. He’s angry at everybody. He just needs to find a spot where he can put himself down strongly so he can start to wreak revenge on these jerks who’ve completely messed him up.” But that’s what all that room in season four is for, right?
As we conclude the topic, Bogosian compares Armand to Iago from Othello, “stoking the fires” of Daniel. And Zaman confirms for me that Armand bought Daniel the “Manther” shirt he’s wearing in The Vampire Lestat, noting, “Yeah, the red one. Definitely. It’s great.” The red shirt that just so happens to carry flowers that mean Daniel is “immersed in love.” Once again we say, romance is not dead, merely undead.
We shift gears then, from Armand and Daniel to Armand and Louis’ scenes together in The Vampire Lestat finale. In an earlier interview, Zaman told me that Armand has “never really been able to come to terms with the things that have happened [to him]. And here, there’s another thing that has happened that’s been devastating [the revelations of Dubai], 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.” But it certainly felt like he was moved by Louis’ final amends to him in the moment. I wonder if that was the “something really big” Armand needed to get him into a different, less self-destructive cycle.
Zaman considers, “I think the one thing about Armand that we know is that he’s so far gone in his destructive sort of characteristics and life and personality that it’s hard. I think that kind of trauma is hard to ever let go of. I think he’s always going to be somewhat messed up in the head. And I think the final scratching of an initial in Louis’ chest was sort of a hint that, as much as he has heard and been moved by what Louis said, he’s still got those sociopathic tendencies inside of him. But I think he knew he wanted some acknowledgment from Louis, and he knew that that’s the whole reason why he brought him there and sort of made this elaborate plan. But I don’t think he was ready for acknowledgment like that.”
Receiving that acknowledgment from Louis really did shift something meaningful inside of Armand. Zaman continues, “I think this is what’s been hard to sort of talk about in past interviews, about ideas like ‘Where is Armand now? What does he not want?'” And in truth, some of this acknowledgment is what he’s wanted. “We’ve only seen little bursts of him up until episode seven,” Zaman shares, “And each one, the thing that he’s missing from each one is this acknowledgment, everyone belittles him, everyone degrades him, everyone degrades whatever he’s been through or makes jokes of it, makes fun of it. And no one’s really, I think the audience as well to an extent, haven’t really fathomed what it actually is that happened to him. And this is the one time, this is the first time, I think, that it’s spoken of. The only other time you ever really get to sit in the Armand trauma is when Armand himself is talking about Marius, when he looks at the painting, and he’s talking about the Boy Arun and how he was taken from his home. That’s the only other time. And that’s Armand talking about it himself. And this is the first time anyone else has really acknowledged what happened to him and where this insane psychopath has come from.”
It’s a series of beautiful sentiments that get right to the heart of Armand. And become all the more beautiful as Zaman shifts back to the core of the question itself, and offers the following about Armand and what he’s wanted and what’s he’s recieved. “And I think that is enough to change him. To what extent? I don’t know. I don’t think it’s like a switch. I don’t think we’re going to see suddenly good and pious Armand next season. I think he still has work to do, like all these characters do. They all have a lot of work to do. But this was, I think, a good cathartic thing for him to have that acknowledgment.” And I could not more fully agree with that vision as an Armand lover. Armand won’t ever be anyone other than Armand, but that doesn’t mean he can never change, that he can never grow.
We’re verging on the end of our time, but I briefly note that the finale of The Vampire Lestat took me back to episode five of season two in its intensity as I watched it. And that I briefly considered how the idea of Daniel’s “bartering with desire” in his youth might be a trauma that’s not the same as Armand’s, but possesses a similar shade to it, a trauma that’s in conversation with Armand’s. “That’s really interesting,” Zaman nods in approving consideration.
Bogosian, still considering some of Zaman’s earlier words, adds, in a tone that suggests he’s deeply judging Armand’s maker, “Marius doesn’t have very nice things to say about you, Assad. I mean, he only says one line, but he really gets nasty.”
“Rotten boy.” Zaman chimes in. “Yeah. I’m his rotten boy, which is very, very, very different from how Armand describes Marius or how Marius is with him in the books. It’s going to be interesting to explore that relationship as well.”
It certainly is. And taking into account Bogosian’s reaction and discussions of Armand, Daniel, and Marius we’ve had in past The Vampire Lestat interviews, if the three of these complicated characters end up together in a room, Daniel’s anger might just find a new target.
As we conclude our The Vampire Lestat conversations for the season, Bogosian offers about one last insight about the relationship between Armand and Daniel, “I think as Armand keeps ripping away layers of Daniel’s personality, it does get down to some basic things. And at that point, you start to have two human, well, not human beings, vampires who are seeing deep down the raw energy, the raw desire, the raw need to control and achieve power in one another. I think at that level they start to… It’s like if you’ve ever been somewhere in a truly foreign land and you run into somebody you know, suddenly you feel like you really like them a lot, even though you barely knew them wherever you come from. And then it’s like, ‘Oh my God, you’re here too.’ And I think there’s a little bit of that. There’s got to be a certain loneliness. He mentions that. He says it very early on, Daniel says, ‘Vampire loneliness. I understand it now.’” And somehow, it seems, against all odds, Armand and Daniel ease that loneliness in one another.
And that’s all she wrote, beloveds. It’s been my truest honor to walk the hallowed halls of Devil’s Minion with you this season. And I can’t wait to do it all again soon.
The Vampire Lestat is now streaming on AMC and AMC+ in full. 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 STILL ready for Armand and Daniel to become canon in The Vampire Lestat so one of her ships can finally sail, but hey, so are Eric Bogosian and Assad Zaman. So the company in the Devil’s Minion standby line is good.
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